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“Oo

"Ooh yeah, you're amazing. We think you are really cool..."

Reviled by some for a kooky weirdness often misconstrued as arrogance, Kate Bush hasn’t released an album in eight years and is reported to be a virtual recluse. Yet her fan base is as adoring as ever.  

“Heathcliff, it’s me your Cathy, I’m come home, so cold, let me into your window”.

I first heard these words wafting through the airwaves when I was just four. It was 1978 and the Kate Bush phenomenon was just about kicking in. Her voice hit my tiny eardrums with an intensity unrivalled by any other musical sound I’d heard previously. Too young to appreciate Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Pat Benatar, Carly Simon or any other female vocalist at the time, as a little girl I liked this accomplished and subtle musician because she did the kind of dancing I could do. It wasn’t long before my younger sister and I were crimping our long hair and whirling around the living room, throwing terpsichorean shapes with chiffon scarves (Isadora Duncan here we come!). We didn’t have things like Spice Girls back then (thank God).

The thing was that because of the bizarre phrasing and elongated syllables I could never quite get the lyrics, and neither could anyone else. What was she on about? At four I’d never heard of “Wuthering Heights” so I hadn’t the slightest clue who Heathcliff was – or even if that was what she was saying. Through the verbal fog and broken syntax I could just about make out “it’s me, your cafe…” and then, what? It didn’t really matter, though. I just wailed along, joining in with all the “oohs” and hoped for the best.

I didn’t see or hear much more of Kate post Wuthering Heights until I was twelve, when my mum gave my dad  The Whole Story on vinyl for Christmas. I made a copy on cassette and insisted it was played at every opportunity, particularly in the car on the way home from school, as we snaked our way down the quilted hills of the south-eastern Lincolnshire countryside. Often the screeching at the end of Breathing would grate so I’d have to fast forward to the beginning of Wow, when my sister and I would try to sustain the notes for as long as she does. We especially loved the line, “Ooh yeah you’re amazing, we think you are really cool”, miming the words, pulling stretched expressions as if in slow motion. I look back and delight in the innocent ignorance I had about her reference to “Vaseline”.

As I headed deeper into darkest adolescence Kate suited my personality more and more, especially The Dreaming – probably her most intense album to date. I loved the challenge of listening to it, like hacking down thorny branches by the light of a full moon in a haunted forest. The voice of the anguished Suspended in Gaffa meditations could have been my own: “Suddenly my feet are feet of mud, it all goes slow mo. I don’t know why I’m crying. Am I suspended in Gaffa?” I saw so much of myself in this song it became my signature tune: “I’m not a Pandora, I’m much more like that girl in the mirror, between you and me she don’t stand a chance of getting anywhere”. And lines from Strange Phenomena had to be about periods: “Soon it will be the phase of the moon when people tune in. Every girl knows about the punctual blues, but who is to know the power behind our moves?”…  No one else seemed to dig her at school and I was glad of it. Although never an out and out goffick it struck me as strange that Kate seemed so much closer to gothic in its purest sense than those who tried to be by dying their hair black, hanging out in intimidating, disdainful groups and listening to The Cure. You only had to listen to Under the Ivy:

I sit here in the thunder

The green on the grey

I feel it all around me…  

But go into the garden

Go under the ivy

Under the leaves

Away from the party

The irony didn’t pass me by.

Kate was making music I could grow with. We were evolving together. You could tell her voice had obviously matured and developed when you listened to the new Wuthering Heights vocals at the beginning of The Whole Story. Gone was the early schoolgirl squeaking and straining. Her voice now had a much earthier, richer, fruitier tone, tinged with a vibration from a different realm – the music of the spheres or that range of sound that only dogs can hear. She now made full use of her three-octave range. The wailing at the end of Wuthering Heights was of a much more erotic, orgasmic nature, writhing, weaving, twisting itself up into a hysterical frenzy, and brought the song to a new adult, x-rated level. It was as if she had undertaken classical voice training and was singing from somewhere deeper inside her stomach, or just from somewhere deeper inside. Maybe it was because she’d got older, or maybe she’d kept her voice bottled up in a cellar for years, like a vintage wine. Whatever she’d done, she could now sing the theme tune to Neighbours and make you want to cry.

My appreciation grew even more as I started to understand her words more and make my own interpretations. Realising that the imagery on the Hounds of Love album sleeve represented Ophelia was a breakthrough that helped me to make allowances for the embarrassing dog impersonations in the Hounds of Love track. And once I understood that the narrator of Breathing was actually an unborn child (hence the references to “nicotine”) I knew that the screeching at the end was justified. Likewise, I also managed to forgive her reference to “My pussy queen” in Egypt, when I balanced it with the great ending of that track, which reminded me of malevolent fairies casting hexes in a graveyard… Nevertheless, there were still some lyrics I just couldn’t get: “Take your shoes off and throw them in the lake” (Hounds of Love)? Someone’s a little bit house proud around here! And as for Kite…

Her loveable idiosyncrasies reflect paradoxes in us all, her voice evoking at once the strength of a determined woman and the wide-eyed tenderness of a little girl. A simple sigh or “ooh” can turn into multiple sounds, conveying intense, sensual longing, or the scratching of ice into fragmented crystals. Pouting those succulent crimson lips she can achieve an intricacy and intimacy of sound that sees you cowering in a claustrophobic confessional, or envision her freaky madwoman persona screeching in the cloisters, waking up the monks or nuns. If you listen hard enough to the delicate paean Why Should I Love You? you can actually see her rose-bud mouth kissing the words out in a delicate o shape, the notes trembling, intimate and sensual, like she’s whispering in your ear.

Now I’m a big girl I see Kate as much more complex, gutsy and aggressive than ever. More tough kooky than kooky per se. Lyrics such as, “I see you walking down the street with her, I see your lights going on and off” and, “Don’t want your bullshit, just want your sexuality” aren’t belted out by no wilting Pre-Raphaelite. As Kate herself has said, “A lot of people assume I’m a big Emily Bronte fan. It goes with his whole preconception they have of me as a Bronte fan, a Tolkein fan, a Pre-Raphaelite lady, which I think is actually a big misconception”. Age has also brought about a deeper understanding, but whether that’s because I’ve grown with her or because a kind of transcendental, indirect route to enlightenment has taken place through so much listening, it’s hard to say, but it’s increasing all the time. It’s a cliché but true: each time you listen you hear something different, something subtle. Her voice is getting more velvety and operatic, and you know that, even though you might not always be able to understand whatever it is she’s singing, she believes in it with utter conviction. Gone is Suspended In Gaffa as a personal signature tune. I now want Moments of Pleasure played at my funeral… Unless she provides anything else beforehand, that is. Just release another album, Kate, and put your fans out of our misery.  

Out on the wily, windy moors

Terpsichorean shapes

More Terpsichorean shapes

Kate: all the Spice Girls rolled into one with a cherry on top

That pound coin must be under there somewhere!

Kate runs up that hill

Batty, but we love her

If anyone says I'm batty again I'll punch their Wuthering Heights out!

You see, I'm all grown up now

It's hard work being a sex-rock goddess, you know!

Oh feel it, oh oh feel it, Ophelia it, my love...

Kate ponders the meaning of Kite

How does it go now, "I'm a little teapot"?

Big stripy lie moving like a wavy line,

coming up behind

No wilting Pre-Raphaelite

On the other hand...