Classic rock: Kate Bush, from David Gilmour to “Stranger things”

“The record company initially thought I’d sold them a bad product and wasted two years on it. They were being difficult with the producers and refused to sign Andrew Powell, the guy I’d suggested they sign, until I went after them,” David Gilmour recalled in 2015 of how he landed Kate Bush her first recording contract with EMI, the label for which Pink Floyd recorded.

It was 1976. The guitarist of the British rock band had been struck by those demos that his friend Ricky Hopper had made him listen to: although rough and “domestic”, those recordings – that a very young Kate Bush had made together with her musician brothers – revealed all the potential of the singer-songwriter from Bexleyheath. That Catherine was a crystalline talent John and Paddy, the two older brothers, exponents of the folk scene in the Welling area, south-east of London, had already understood when as a young girl she began to study piano and violin on her own, developing an incredible voice with a range of four octaves. Her reinterpretations of Beatles and Rolling Stones covers on the stages of London, as the vocalist of the KT Bush Band, left everyone speechless.

The debut with “The kick inside” and “Wuthering heights”

Gilmour had seen it coming.

“The Kick Inside”, Kate Bush’s debut album, shipped to stores by EMI in February 1978, was a success, despite the arguments between the singer-songwriter and the record companies that had marked the eve of it and which concerned the promotional single to use as a lead single. The bigwigs at EMI wanted to focus on “James and the Cold Gun”, while Kate insisted on “Wuthering Heights”. In the end, perhaps exhausted after two years spent fighting with that tenacious and stubborn singer-songwriter and her mentor, who managed to impose Andrew Powell as the album’s producer (already alongside the Alan Parsons Project), they gave up. And they were “forced” to witness the artist’s triumph: “Wuthering Heights” reached the top of the English charts in a month and its success was such that sales of Emily Bronte’s novel of the same name, “Wuthering Heights”, which inspired the song, increased significantly. Influencer ante-litteram, one might say. With that particular voice, her mimicry skills (learned thanks to lessons with the maestro Lindsay Kemp, the same one David Bowie had turned to), that exotic charm and that surreal air, the Kate Bush phenomenon conquered everyone. The consecration came when a year after the release of “The kick inside”, in April 1979, after more than six months of rehearsals, Kate Bush debuted at the Palladium in London with her first show: a total art show, with continuous costume changes, a different scenography for each single song (from cowboy America to ancient Egypt), dancers, clowns, illusionists. And she, who the Guardian would have defined as “impressive”. Hers were the lyrics, the music, the choreography and even the costumes of the show, which received the acclaim of the public and critics: in addition to being an influencer ante-litteram, also independent ante-litteram.

The style, unprecedented

With albums like 1980’s “Never For Ever”, 1982’s “The Dreaming”, 1985’s “Hounds of Love” (which would be rediscovered forty years later thanks to “Stranger Things” and the presence of the hit “Running Up That Hill” in the Generation Z phenomenon series), 1989’s “The Sensual World” and 1993’s “The Red Shoes” she revolutionized the high-charts pop of the 80s by mixing art pop with alternative rock and electronic, classical and folk, creating a distinctive and unprecedented style, always maintaining almost total creative control over her music, without ever compromising her artistic vision. A rather rare feat, especially for a woman in the music industry of those years. The rest is legend. In the truest sense of the word.

Retirement and artistic legacy

After “The Red Shoes” Kate Bush decided to disappear completely, show the middle finger to showbiz and disappear to remain eternal.

“I felt like my sexuality, which I hadn’t had a chance to explore on my own in some ways, was being exposed to the world in a way that I found impersonal. It was a lot of fun, but physically it was terrible,” she said, who didn’t want to be munched on by the industry. She would only resurface in 2005 for a new album, “Aerial,” then again in 2011 for “Director’s Cut” and “50 Words for Snow.” If fellow singers Tori Amos, Björk, Florence Welch, and St. Vincent have all cited Kate Bush as one of their main inspirations, there’s a reason.