trivia

Kate Bush - Her career and Kate as a human being

She was born Catherine Bush on July 30, 1958. She is or isn't married(?), but you should bury all hopes since her bassist and engineer, Del Palmer, was her one and only for too many years now. Or so we thought, more recent events revealed she has a new man in her life "Danny" and a son called 'Bertie'.

Kate smokes, but is very reluctant to show this bad habit in public.
Kate is a vegetarian, though she now eats fish.
She's 5'3" (1.60m) and doesn't have a middle name.

She has two brothers, John Carder Bush (Jay), born 1944 - he takes many of the photos of Kate that appear on her albums and Paddy Bush, born 1952, who plays many of the exotic instruments found on Kate's albums.

Kate's first appearance in the public was a little tour through a few London pubs together with the so-called KT (read: Katie) Bush Band.

All of Kate's albums have the KT (originally Knights Templar) symbol hidden somewhere either on the cover or on the vinyl itself, although you might have to have original UK versions of the albums to find them. The KT initials can also be seen in the "Army Dreamers" video. The release of the 'This Woman's Work' boxed set, there appeared a new version of the KT symbol that includes the biological symbol for woman.

Fans of Kate were saddened by the news of the passing of her mother on Valentine's Day, 1992.

And, she doesn't hate to tour, just can't find the time between making albums and videos.

She appeared on Saturday Night Live on December 9, 1978 (With host Eric Idle of Monty Python fame)

Yes, that's Donald Sutherland in the Cloudbusting video.

No, it was not Kate Bush but rather Kate Simmons who appeared nude in Penthouse several years ago. (These pictures were also used on the bootleg Dreamtime.)

Kate's only Tour (the "Tour of Life") happened in 1979, and fans old enough to experience this first hand are the lucky ones. Kate never said she won't ever tour again, but don't expect anything.

There's a video tape ("Live at Hammersmith Odeon") and a 4 track EP from the tour. The video unfortunately only contains half of the show. The recordings of the rest had some technical problems and the result wasn't up to par with Kate's standards. The video (now available in PAL and NTSC) is also available in a video + CD double pack, so Kate finally has an official live album. The only other source are vinyl bootlegs which all are of a very bad sound quality, since they were done from the audience with late 70's equipment. There are plenty of CD pirates from the videotape. Since there is now an official CD of this, please consider buying it, especially if you do own one of the bootleg copies.

The Convention - May 8, 1994, London's Hippodrome.

Short list of events

Lots of rare videos
Lots of live music/dance from fans
Three new Kate songs: The Man I Love, Sexual Healing, and a brand new US dance remix of Rubberband Girl
A raffle, which got the lucky winner the Japanese gold record for Lionheart as well as a kiss stolen from Kate
An auction hosted by Dave from Homeground and Del Palmer where Super-rare ("one exists, two exist,") stuff went away for £2230 pounds (all profits, including these, went to the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital)
A quiz that was won by the Norfolk Alchemists the second time in a row.
Lots of merchandise, some for money, some for free
Paddy Bush and Colin Lloyd Tucker (Bushtucker) presenting their album Skyscraping
Kate herself appearing for a couple of minutes, presenting the main prize of the raffle to the lucky winner and presenting her new film, The line, the cross, and the curve
Kate inspired disco
And, last but not least, lots of fun Thanks to everyone involved, and see you next time!

Prince's triple studio album "Emancipation" contains a song, "My computer", which features Kate on backing vocals, alas, you won't have a chance to find out without being told so.

The KBC newsletter (No.11) brought the following info from Kate herself (brought to you by [WW]):

Dear All,

I've been taking time off work this year and it's been really good for me. I've still kept busy but I've also had lots of time to rest and catch up things. Many, many thanks for your continued support - I've had such positive feedback from you about the last album and the film. I feel so privileged to have such nice people responding to my work. I've just done a song for Donal Lunny who's putting an album together of traditional Irish music. It was fun and very challenging. The lyrics are in Gaelic so I will eagerly await comments from all Irish-speaking listeners in particular. I'm sure Ma gave me a helping hand!

Much love to you, a very Happy Christmas and warm wishes for '96.

Kate x

Lisa added: There is no definite release date yet but it will hopefully be available in or some time after March 1996. The title is to be "Common Ground (Celtic Voices)" and it will be released by Premier Records, which is part of EMI Records. We understand that it will be available worldwide. The album "Common Ground" is now out worldwide, Kate's song is called "Mn'a na Eireann".

Kate has also designed some charity Christmas cards for the Brian Eno project "Warchild".

Early in November '94 the last set of singles for The red shoes appeared, again in the UK only: And so is love. Two CD singles (regular and with 3 video-prints), a Cassingle and a 7" picture single in a poster bag giant 40"x60" poster) have appeared. Moments of pleasure is the first Kate Bush single that is NOT available on 7" vinyl (but there is a poster bag 12"). Guess this again marks the end of an era. (In the UK only four different formats will count as a single release for chart counting, and in this case there were two CDs, the 12" and the cassingle.)

The Line, The Cross, and The Curve finally appeared on video and should be available in good shops around the world.


Photo Courtesy of Debbie Kruger's 2SM page

Kate visiting Mike Gibson and George Moore of 2SM Radio, Sydney, Australia in the late 1970's.