Kate has just announced on her official site a new 11-track compilation release, Best of The Other Sides. From her official site announcement:

Fish People are delighted to announce the release of Best of The Other Sides. Digital Release 26th September. Coloured vinyl (Lothlorien colour) release and also CD are available from 31st October. The Other Sides was a collection of all the B-sides and other songs that didn’t exist on any album. It was part of the Remastered Box Set that was released in 2018. That set is no longer available. Three of the tracks have been slightly reworked for the release. Pre-order is here.

Best of The Other Sides has been designed for people who didn’t have access to that original box set. The title is self-explanatory.

Kate writes: “We have remastered ‘Experiment IV’ and ‘ You Want Alchemy?’ and both include a small edit. I felt ‘ Experiment IV’ would benefit from a longer intro featuring Alan Murphy’s magnificent guitar. ‘You Want Alchemy?’ also has a small edit that tightens up the outro and we’ve re-eq’d the track. ‘Walk Straight Down the Middle’ has also benefitted from being re-eq’d. Hope you enjoy the tweaks!”

Interestingly, Kate reveals for the first time that “You Want Alchemy? was meant to be one of the tracks on The Red Shoes album, but because there was already so much material, it ended up as a B Side. I love Michael Kamen’s orchestral arrangement in this song. It really takes us to that lovely afternoon, up in the hills with the mad beekeeper.”

The remaining material from The Other Sides will be re released digitally at a later date.

To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…

Hounds of Love – Person of the day

Few people have more of an insight into Kate Bush’s very earliest career and rise to fame than her bandmate and friend, the wonderful guitarist and songwriter, Brian Bath. His work with Kate stretches from her pre-fame outfit, The KT Bush Band right up till the Hounds of Love album where Brian not only adds guitars to Hello Earth but can be heard singing backing vocals on Cloudbusting.

It was an honour to have spent time with Brian over the course of a three-part series of Kate Bush Fan Podcast episodes (here are parts one, two and three) – do be sure to give them a listen if you haven’t – an incredible swathe of Kate Bush musical history is discussed! I spoke to Brian about his growing up in London in school bands with his friend Del Palmer, befriending and making music with a young Paddy Bush in 1970, visits to the Bush family home, forming bands with Vic King and Charlie Morgan and ultimately forming The KT Bush Band in 1977 with Del, Vic and Kate to briefly take the London pub and club scene by storm before Kate recorded her debut album.

We also spoke about Brian being there for Kate’s stunning debut with Wuthering Heights, him leading her band for TV appearances, working on demos and helping build her first demo studio at the farm, playing on the Lionheart album and the incredible experience of playing guitar on the 1979 Lionheart tour, his work on the Kate BBC TV Special, his deep involvement in the recording of the Never For Ever album, co-starring in the videos for Breathing and Army Dreamers, playing on The Dreaming album and starring in the video for There Goes A Tenner, and working on the Hounds of Love album once again with Kate! Listen to Brian briefly discuss the Hounds of Love album with me below:

Hounds of Love – Happening of the day

On this day exactly 40 years ago, 22nd September 1985, Kate’s new album Hounds of Love hit the No.1 spot in the UK Album Chart! This was a momentous happening for Kate and everyone who worked so hard on the album. This was Kate’s second UK no.1 album after Never For Ever hit the top spot in 1980. Kate would reach the chart summit again in January 1987 when her compilation album The Whole Story went to No.1.

After knocking the Like a Virgin album off the top spot, Kate was asked in many interviews about what she thought of Madonna. She (of course) responded graciously as ever!

Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

In the mid-80s, music videos were distributed on video tape and this lovely but hard to find VHS cassette promo video for Cloudbusting is a 1-track VHS PAL release in plastic case with custom picture insert.

Hounds of Love – Trivia of the day!

Why does Cloudbusting end with the sounds of a steam train? It was something Kate came up with when she felt the ending of the song needed something special. This is how she remembered it in the Classic Albums interview on BBC radio 1 (transcript from Gaffa.org) “…everything just started falling apart, ’cause it didn’t end properly, and, you know, the drummer would stop and then the strings would just sorta start wiggling around and talking. And I felt it needed an ending, and I didn’t really know what to do. And then I thought maybe decoy tactics were the way, and we covered the whole thing over with the sound of a steam engine slowing down so that you had the sense of the journey coming to an end.

And it worked, it covered up all the falling apart and actually made it sound very complete in a way. And we had terrible trouble getting a sound effect of steam train so we actually made up the sound effect out of various sounds, and Del was the steam. [Laughs] And we got a whistle on the Fairlight for the “poo poop”. “

To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…

Hounds of Love – Person of the day

We all feel a certain way when the beautiful song, The Morning Fog, concludes Kate’s incredible song-cycle, The Ninth Wave. For some it’s a celebratory moment, a joyful reunion with family and friends. For other listeners, it’s ambiguous, perhaps ominous. Kate herself sees the outcome for her character as very positive – they are finally rescued and the nightmares are over. Providing the unforgettably warm acoustics and soothing tone to the track is Australian-born guitar virtuoso, John Williams.

John is a renowned classical guitarist, well known for his global hit playing the theme music to the film The Deer Hunter. In her fan club newsletter in 1984, Kate wrote about working with John on the track: “He was lovely to work with, and full of enthusiasm and interesting stories, and it took very little time to get what we wanted. John played to a rhythm machine, which is not always easy when the track is delicate and needs to sound light, but for him it proved no problem at all. Paul (Hardiman) got a beautiful sound in quite a live room and close-miked John’s guitar, using the ever favourite Neumann U87 microphone.”

In her recent book about Hounds of Love, author Leah Kardos describes The Morning Fog thus: “reassuringly bright in B major, bobbing down from, B to Asus2 and E/G# and back up again without a hint of darkness or danger. John Williams’s double-tracked nylon string guitar decorates the gently pulsing LinnDrum sequence with delicate picked rhythms and improvised melody overflowing in sunlit sweetness”

In a 1985 interview with Musician Magazine, Kate talks more about John’s involvement:

“Well, as part of the concept of the second side, The Ninth Wave, the last song had to be very positive, very much the idea of everything bursting into light so it’s all suddenly reborn, rather than that everything completely dies. And I thought how lovely the acoustic guitar is, it’s such a delicate and uplifting sound. So I wrote out the part on the Fairlight with an acoustic guitar sound and then wrote the song to that. But I thought it didn’t sound nearly so good as a real guitar would.

I’d met John a couple times over the years when we were working at the same studio, Abbey Road, and times like that. So I asked him if he’d come in and do it. I got someone to write out the part, and he just played it and did it really quickly. Yes, he’s got a lovely way of projecting his own personality in there, you know, the little trills and things. Lovely!“

For the delicate, emotive guitar playing on The Morning Fog in the Before the Dawn concerts in Hammersmith in 2014, Kate utilised the talents of the brilliant Icelandic player, Friðrik Karlsson, on stage…an unforgettably stirring and joyous moment with the entire band including Friðrik joining Kate front of stage.

Hounds of Love – Happening of the day

Another classic Kate performance of Running Up That Hill on the French TV show Demain c’est Dimanche, on this exact day, 21st September, 1985 – 40 years to the day!

Great performance with a classic line-up of familar musicians: Del Palmer on guitar, Paddy Bush on the same balalaika he plays on the track, and Kate’s all-time favourite drummer, Stuart Elliott, hitting a harnessed drum here.

Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

Very nice official promotional French postcard here from 1985 promoting Kate’s fifth studio album. Kate’s French record company declares Hounds of Love the “Record of the Year.”

Running Up that Hill ultimately hit a respectable number 24 on the French singles chart in 1985 – but it would rocket to a new high of number 3 in the same chart in 2022 as Kate’s phenomenal global resurgence took hold. Fantastique! A review of the album was published in the November issue of French rock magazine Best by journalist Francis Dordor. Running Up That Hill was hailed as “one of the most beautiful singles of the year”.

Hounds of Love – Trivia of the day!

In the song And Dream of Sheep, it is Kate’s mother Hannah Bush who speaks the line “Come here with me now“. Kate spoke about it in the Kate Bush Club magazine in 1987:

“An engineer we were working with picked out the line in And Dream of Sheep that says ‘Come here with me now.’ I asked him why he liked it so much. He said, ‘I don’t know, I just love it. It’s so moving and comforting.’ I don’t think he even knew what was being said exactly, but the song is about someone going to sleep in the water, where they’re alone and frightened. And they want to go to sleep, to get away from the situation. But at the same time it’s dangerous to go to sleep in water, you could drown. When I was little, and I’d had a bad dream, I’d go into my parents’ bedroom round to my mother’s side of the bed.

She’d be asleep, and I wouldn’t want to wake her, so I’d stand there and wait for her to sense my presence and wake up. She always did, within minutes; and sometimes I’d frighten her – standing there still, in the darkness in my nightdress. I’d say, “I’ve had a bad dream,” and she’d lift the bedclothes and say something like “Come here with me now.” It’s my mother saying this line in the track, and I briefed her on the ideas behind it before she said it. And I think it’s the motherly comfort that this engineer picked up on. In fact, he (the engineer) said this was his favourite part of the album.“

To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…

Hounds of Love – Person of the day

When it came to choosing Irish musicians to play on her albums, Kate has usually had the pick of the crop and almost none come finer than the great John Sheahan. On the album Hounds of Love, John played whistles on And Dream Of Sheep and fiddle and whistles on Jig Of Life. He would later also play on Kate’s majestic song, The Sensual World in 1989.

She gave me a big hug and said, ‘Oh, you’re playing so emotionally’ – John Sheahan

Born in Dublin on 19th May 1939, John Sheahan took on an active interest in music when he was 12 years old. He learned to play the tin whistle and the fiddle. Enthusiastically supported and encouraged by his parents, he attended the Municipal School of Music in Dublin where he studied classical violin for more than five years.

Here’s a short excerpt from our Kate Bush Fan Podcast episode (not to be missed!) In which I explored Kate’s Irish musical inspirations with musician SJ McArdle. We briefly discuss John Sheahan and you can hear a short clip of him discussing working with Kate:

Kate wrote about working with John at Windmill Lane Studios in a 1984 Kate Bush Club newsletter: “Bill (Whelan) introduced us to John Sheahan, the fiddle player and multi-talented musician from The Dubliners, who was like Santa Claus. He played a piece that Bill had written, and it was so moving and he played so emotively that I started to cry and felt silly, but what a nice experience. I highly recommend it!

One of the tracks we worked on (Jig of Life) was inspired by a discovery that Paddy had made of a fascinating Greek ceremony that he managed to get on tape. We played the tape to Bill, Liam, John and Donal…and as a non-stop shift of Irish musicians put the magic of their race onto the songs, we danced and whooped in the control room….This track was built around John Sheahan. Bill conducted him, I played chords on the piano and Donal played bodhran (a small Irish drum)….We got a good take quickly, and John overdubbed fiddle. Then Donal overdubbed more drum and bouzouki; and then, John playing whistle and Liam playing pipes, they jammed together on the jig that Bill had written for the end of the track.“

John played with a number of bands around the country until he met The Dubliners in the early 1960’s. John was the only member of the Dubliners to have had a formal musical education and played with the band for over 50 years. John had a big chart hit in Ireland with his beautiful composition The Marino Waltz which charted at No.4 in Ireland. He has worked with Mary Black, Ronan Keating, Terence Trent d’Arby and U2.

Speaking to The Independent newspaper in 2020, John remembered: “She was fastidious about getting things right. I remember playing the tin whistle. She was saying ‘this is absolutely beautiful but when you get to this note can you just slide up’. She was a real perfectionist. I was into origami and I left a couple of little birds and frogs around the studio. The following Christmas I got in the post a present of this official origami book from Japan she had acquired from somewhere. She was charming. It was a beautiful experience.”

Hounds of Love – Happening of the day

The video quality is very poor but we are SO grateful that this clip has survived for us to enjoy! One of only two occasions I can recall seeing Kate singing Cloudbusting prior to the Before the Dawn shows a full twenty nine years later in 2014! On 7th September 1985, Kate appeared on Show Vor Acht on German television. Here we have Kate, Del Palmer and Charlie Morgan, performing a simple but utterly charming routine and adding some umbrellas to the proceedings (as she also did for Italian TV on Fantastico in 1985!).

After appearing alone on stage, Kate is then joined first by Del who hands her a brolly, and then Charlie joins the line up. The two boys occasionally check their watches and have some mock banter, swaying to the music and looking anxiously at the skies for rain as Kate sings. Later, all three put up their umbrellas for the rest of the song before it’s abruptly cut short with a fade out at the 3:43 mark! A lovely, lovely performance all the same. She would also perform Running Up That Hill on the same show with Del and Charlie – which we discussed in an earlier time capsule post.

Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

Kate Bush sheet music is one of the nicest collectibles you can pick up with beautiful reproductions of album and single sleeve artwork (a generous A4 size), and sometimes issued in quite limited runs. Kate’s sheet music sold consistently well in the 1970s and 1980s and the Hounds of Love album and singles sheet music publications were no exception.

The nice thing about Hounds of Love is that not only was the album sheet music issued as a 35-page gloss-cover paperback book for 12 songs, including a 16.5″ x 23″ full colour poster inside, but all four singles (Running Up That Hill, Cloudbusting, Hounds of Love and The Big Sky) were published as unique 4-page “lyrics and chords” paper sheets with full colour cover, when they were each released in 1985/1986. Wonderful artefacts from the time.

Hounds of Love – Trivia of the day!

A bit of a bonus oddity artefact today! I can sense your excitement. Hounds of Love was released as a 7″ single in the USA with the album cover “hounds” artwork on the sleeve, front and back. The b-side was the non-album track, Burning Bridge. Okay, so nothing very unusual there…until you pick up the USA promo version of this single.

The single that was released to the US media on promo only (not for sale) copies also has the same sleeve above and also has the regular Hounds of Love single on the vinyl A-side. However, the vinyl B-side doesn’t deliver the promised Burning Bridge. Instead it offers up a totally unique “Extended Version” of the song, running a full 40 seconds longer than the regular Hounds of Love track!

Note though, that this isn’t the brilliant “Alternative Hounds of Love” mix released on 12″ vinyl in many territories with a full new vocal by Kate, also available on The Other Sides collection (2019). So what is it then? At about the 2 minutes 22 secs mark it…suddenly drops in the first verse again (!), making our brains go “huh, what just happened?” And that’s it, a very strange one. Maybe it was a US radio thing at the time. This extended mix also surfaced on a promo 12″ in the US, but no misleading picture sleeve this time, same A- side.

Anyway, a nice person has helpfully made it available below for us all to scratch our heads at…enjoy!

To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…

Hounds of Love – Person of the day

In 1985 Kate acknowledged: “This album could never have happened without some very special people….many thanks to especially Haydn Bendall and Brian Tench, who put a lot of hard work into this project“. Brian Tench is credited as one of the three engineers on the album (along with Del Palmer and Haydn Bendall) and he mixed the final album, a career highlight for him!

The mixing of the Hounds of Love album was the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle after more than a year of concentrated work on the album. In music, mixing is the creative process of combining individual recorded audio tracks (like vocals, drums, guitar, etc.) into a single, cohesive, and well-balanced final audio file. Producers and mixing engineers achieve this by adjusting volume, equalization (EQ), and applying effects such as reverb and delay to create depth and space, ensuring that each element has its place in the song and sounds clear, balanced, and professional across different playback systems.

In a recent interview with Mojo, Brian said: “I’ve worked in all these famous studios – Montserrat, New York…but it (Kate’s farm studio) still has a special place in my head and my heart. It was just fantastic.” Every morning Brian was greeted at the farm by the Weimaraners Bonnie and Clyde, as famously pictured on the sleeve. “I think they only got used to me in the last month I was there,” Brian laughs. “We’d have breakfast, dinner sometimes, and just sit there talking about what was going on, what was needed, and also talk about other things to take your mind off the album, and then go back into the control room and continue. It was a really lovely atmosphere. Her mum was lovely, dad was lovely. Her brothers are great. Kate has a lovely personality. You enjoy being around her. We had a great time. It was very relaxed, lots of fun...she has to get along with the people that she works with, they have to try and understand her world. ‘I want it to sound like the trees in the distance…’ OK, let’s try and do that.”

What’s remarkable to many in the industry, is that all of this was done at Kate’s own home studio at East Wickham Farm, newly kitted out, and not some big expensive recording studio – they made it work. Brian says: “it was all manual..(for example) the big sound on Hello Earth, I think was us throwing bricks into the pool out in the back garden recording on a Nagra (portable audio recorder) and then slowing it down. I mean…these days you just go “Oh we want this” and it’s there, it’s a button. It wasn’t then. Everything had to be created.“

Brian kicked off his career in music in the late 1970’s, starting fresh out of school as tape operator at Mayfair Studios, then working with some of the biggest pop names of the time, including Hello, Slik and the Bay City Rollers, later progressing to projects with new romantics such as Visage and Landscape. He also worked on records by Phil Collins, Bow Wow Wow, The Bee Gees, Tina Turner, Bucks Fizz, and Midge Ure.

Brian remembered the long days and commute to the studio. “I was driving from Primrose Hill to Kent six days a week, 12 hour days, then back again. You never stayed the night, Kate didn’t either because it was the Mom and Dad’s house, then they (Kate and Del) went off because they had a drive as well to the country house, a little cottage 40 minutes away from the studio…it was dedication! But again if you’re traveling somewhere that you actually really enjoy…you get there and it’s all “what are we doing today?” and we look on the board of our list of tracks and where we’re at and how we’re going and you know “What’s going up on the board today?” “Oh this one’s still up from yesterday we still got to do” and there was a joy, you don’t mind that traveling.”

“Kate’s voice we had very bright and in your face,” Brian told Mojo. “Kate is a great vocalist. She’d go off into the studio and say, ‘Let me try this voice.’ The lights would be off so you couldn’t see her and this voice would come out, and you’d go, Wow, is that same person? It was just incredible. She could make her voice dance, give emotion in a single word just changing its inflection, and all of a sudden you feel drawn in, moved somewhere. Her breath control was fantastic. She could sing a line just holding her breath and get to the end.”

As you can imagine, it was an intense and exacting process for Kate’s fifth studio album, but not without its fun: you will hear Brian’s voice at the start of the song Waking The Witch! Which one? Possibly putting on an accent for “We should make the night, but see your little lights alive” but we really need to ask him!

Hounds of Love – Happening of the day

Kate performed her perennial fan favourite song, Under The Ivy, on television just once. It was a live performance of the song, with Kate singing and playing the grand piano at Abbey Road Studios in London, broadcast on 19 March 1986 during the 100th episode of The Tube, a popular Channel 4 music show which ran from 1982 to 1987.

Speaking to Doug Alan in 1985 , Kate described what the song is about:

“It’s very much a song about someone who is sneaking away from a party to meet someone elusively, secretly, and to possibly make love with them, or just to communicate, but it’s secret, and it’s something they used to do and that they won’t be able to do again. It’s about a nostalgic, revisited moment. I think it’s sad because it’s about someone who is recalling a moment when perhaps they used to do it when they were innocent and when they were children, and it’s something that they’re having to sneak away to do privately now as adults.“

When Kate released The Other Sides compilation in March 2019 she highlighted some tracks from the collection to talk about on her official site. She wrote about this taping of Under The Ivy:

“I needed a track to put on the B-Side of the single Running Up That Hill so I wrote this song really quickly. As it was just a simple piano/vocal, it was easy to record. I performed a version of the song that was filmed at Abbey Rd Studios for a TV show which was popular at the time, called The Tube. It was hosted by Jools Holland and Paula Yates. I find Paula’s introduction to the song very touching.

It was filmed in Studio One at Abbey Rd. An enormous room used for recording large orchestras, choirs, film scores, etc. It has a vertiginously high ceiling and sometimes when I was working in Studio Two, a technician, who was a good friend, would take me up above the ceiling of Studio One. We had to climb through a hatch onto the catwalk where we would then crawl across and watch the orchestras working away, completely unaware of the couple of devils hovering in the clouds, way above their heads! I used to love doing this – the acoustics were heavenly at that scary height. We used to toy with the idea of bungee jumping from the hatch.”

A few weeks later, in early April 1986, Kate would also sing live at the piano, this time performing Breathing, over three nights for Comic Relief at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Kate later spoke about her love for Abbey Road in Mary McCartney’s 2022 documentary film about Abbey Road Studios “If These Walls Could Sing.” Kate’s audio narration recalls working on Never For Ever in the studio “We were working in Studio Two. It still had the valve desk that the Beatles had used. And the live room was completely untouched since they’d been there. There was a genuine fear that the sound in the room might be changed if they even repainted it.“

Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

As classic and timeless as Hounds of Love undeniably is, it was released in the 1980s, and that decade’s fashions speak for themselves! Inserted into early copies of the Hounds of Love vinyl album were merchandise sheets offering exclusive prints and these fetching official white Hounds of Love Sweat-Shirts and T-shirts complete with some very Eighties colour graphics of those hounds.

The sweat-shirts are described as “designer style“, so this was no bog-standard apparel you were getting for your £14.99! The sheet also lets us know that the “quality Screen Stars brand” t-shirt’s “entire front features specially designed Hounds motif in 6 colours.” A bargain at £5.99 then, but, we imagine, a nightmare to keep clean. Impossibly cool. As you would expect these are now scarce and fetch considerable price in good condition!

Thanks to Pekka Hiltunen for photos.

Hounds of Love – Trivia of the day!

A quick one today! The exact meaning of Kate’s famous backward vocals heard during Watching You Without Me was the subject of great debate among fans when the album was released in 1985. There was no mention of what they actually were on the printed lyrics, and this was very much pre-Internet for anyone not au fait with newsgroups and mailing lists. It became set as a competition question in the Kate Bush Club newsletter, and ran for several issues as fans struggled and failed to capture what Kate was saying…one guess was “Sonic morn, sonic morning, let me in on the dawn in of.” Not quite.

Fast forward to 2025 and you can simply pick up a copy of Kate’s book of lyrics, How to be Invisible – where she has, helpfully, inserted the lines into the song for you! “Don’t ignore, don’t ignore me. Let me in, and don’t be long.” We wouldn’t dream of ignoring you, Kate.

To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…

Hounds of Love – Person of the day

Without Peter Reich there would be no Cloudbusting, the song Kate sings on the Hounds of Love album told from his perspective as a child, about his father, the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Peter’s “daddy” died in a US jail in 1957 and after his father’s death, Peter left the USA to study French at Grenoble, eventually returning to take degrees at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and at Boston University School of Public Health. He has been a VISTA volunteer in Oregon, has worked with drug addicts in Boston and also as a journalist in New York, and for the past thirty years has worked at Boston University School of Medicine. He lives in Massachusetts. In 1985 Kate spoke at length in interviews about how his childhood memoir, A Book of Dreams, inspired her song.

From the Kate Bush Club newsletter, Kate wrote: “(Cloudbusting was) inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It’s about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child’s point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a “cloudbuster”; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting.

They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy – as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then – and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn’t allowed to keep it.

But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden, so that he would placate his father but could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It’s a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo – how special it was – and yet how dangerous it was considered to be. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people); and he loved how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve it whenever he wanted to play with it. But there’s nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it’s very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child’s eyes, but told by a sad adult.“

Kate reached out to Peter Reich and had a lovely response from him. Speaking to Q Magazine in 1990, Kate said: “When it was finished, I wrote a letter to Peter Reich saying what I’d done. It was important to me in some way to have a sense of his blessing because his book really moved me. He sent me back such a lovely letter. It was an incredible feeling of returning something he’d given to me.“

Hounds of Love – Happening of the day

Kate’s beautiful Little Shrew animation in support of War Child, wasn’t the only short film that Kate directed very recently. When she announced some rather unusual and elaborate new editions of the album Hounds of Love in November 2023, one of them, the Grammy-nominated The Baskerville Edition (more on that below), is accompanied by a beautiful new Cloudbusting-themed “unboxing” film, which depicts a young Peter Reich (actor Gus Turner) receiving the record and telling his story. It’s extremely touching to see her return to Peter’s story four decades later.

You may recognise the young actor from the TV show Ted Lasso. As well as showing off this extraordinary new vinyl package, which Kate is clearly very proud of, the film has a wistful time-warp quality to it – here we see Peter Reich in the 1950s in his father’s study, receiving a parcel from England, covered with 2023 King Charles postage stamps, exclaiming “Woah! This got here much sooner than I thought! Looks like it’s been on quite a journey…” He unwraps the record package and is very excited to see the song Cloudbusting listed in the tracklisting. The part where he sings “it’s you and me, Daddy” is extremely touching. At one point the camera seems to be from the point of view of the record package’s flashing lifejacket light, a neat intertwining of imagery between The Ninth Wave and Cloudbusting. Later, the boy discusses Kate’s inspiration for the song and is called away by the voice of Wilhelm Reich, played by no less than Sir Ian McKellan off-camera! “Come here, Peeps…let us go now.”

A look at the credits for the short film reveal that no expense was spared making this delightful piece. Written and directed by Kate, the director of photography is Seamus McGarvey (twice Academy Award nominated for Atonement and Anna Karenina) and costumes are by Emmy-award winner, Odile Dicks-Mireaux (Chernobyl mini series). Kate’s son Albert McIntosh is credited as assistant artistic director.

Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

The 2023 12″ vinyl Baskerville Edition of Hounds of Love features new illustrations by Timorous Beasties on the front (with two hounds in a heart shape – spot the KT symbol!), centre gatefold (Kate, being hoisted by sea creatures, in her life jacket with flashing solar powered red LED light) and back (including a solar panel to charge the light battery in daylight). The inner sleeve features the Cloudbusting silhouette. The Baskerville Edition of Hounds of Love was the first in a series of illustrated editions of Kate’s albums, followed by The Dreaming and 50 Words For Snow, also illustrated by Timorous Beasties. An expensive proposition for fans to be sure, but unique.

Kate’s site says that “the best way to charge this solar panel is in bright sunlight (but not with the vinyl LP, it might warp!) In that situation it will charge really quickly, within ten minutes. Smoked glass doesn’t work well at all and neither does a very cloudy day. LED indoor lightning won’t work at all, but halogen lightning should be good. Do not put the solar panel closer then 10 cm from an artificial light source as this could cause heat damage to the solar panel. We hope you will experiment and please be patient if it’s a little temperamental. This is an innovative idea and designed to be environmentally friendly.”

The challenges for this piece were creative, structural, and technological. In the case of the latter, the need to source an LED and solar panel that is small enough to be incorporated into what is essentially a standard gatefold sleeve. In turn, to produce a sleeve design that could structurally support and protect the circuitry and solar panel seamlessly into the overall design. Further attention to design detail is the way the illustration wraps around the edges of the sleeve to great effect. In the end Pozzoli worked with a partner to develop a bespoke solution for the LED.

This circuit board was exclusively designed for The Baskerville Edition so it would fit into the standard thickness of the gatefold sleeve. This ingenuity meant that The Baskerville Edition was actually nominated for a 2025 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package, with Kate and her son Albert McIntosh both nominated as art directors – forty years later and Kate is still being nominated for awards for Hounds of Love! If you look closely at the circuit board below you will see the “Fish People” name stamped on it – so don’t tear open your package just to see this!

About her new editions, Kate wrote: “It’s been great fun putting together these new versions…It’s very exciting to see the resurgence of appreciation for the physical presence of albums released on vinyl. It’s how it’s always been for me, especially when I was a teenager. The whole buzz of the record store was part of the experience. Buying an album was an event. There’s a special emotional connection that happens between the possessor of an album, the music and the artwork, when it exists in the real world. It’s something we can treasure in a unique way.“

Hounds of Love – Trivia of the day!

Did a world famous hat designer make a special hat for Kate? Very likely! In the unboxing film for The Baskerville Edition of Hounds of Love (above) Philip Treacy is thanked in the credits. Philip Treacy OBE is an Irish haute couture milliner, who recently told the radio programme Desert Island Discs that he first met Kate by chance a few years ago in the queue at a coffee shop! Philip is a big fan of Kate’s music. We note that Peter Reich in the short film mentions that “she should have worn a Stetson” (in the original Cloudbusting video) after we earlier see photos of young Peter in that type of hat…so Kate fixed it!

HomeGround and KateBushNews.com are proud to be working once more with Cabaret vs Cancer and The Royal Vauxhall Tavern to bring you another night of amazing music and cabaret, celebrating the one and only Kate Bush on Wednesday 5th November! GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!

This show will be packed with world class singers and cabaret acts, each binging you their different and original takes on a whole range of Kate songs, from the much loved classics such as Running Up That Hill and Wuthering Heights to album tracks and b-sides, if you love There Goes a Tenner and Under The Ivy, as well as Babooshka and King of the Mountain, then this is the night for you. 

The line up for this fourth CvC Kate show includes, Jonathan Hellyer (with Paul Cooper), Sooz Kempner, The Fat Black Duchess, Ripley, Ebony Rose Dark, Alexa Vox and Michael Mayell, with the whole thing hosted and brought together by the amazing Michael Twaits. Money raised via ticket sales and a raffle on the night will go to supporting Cabaret vs Cancer, to help people affected by cancer. You can find out more about CvC here.

Advance tickets are £14 each, plus booking fee AVAILABLE HERE. Artwork designed by Reece Connolly

To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…

Hounds of Love – Person of the day

The striking-looking actor and dancer featured in Kate’s 1986 video for her Hounds of Love single, Gow Hunter, sadly passed away in June 2011 aged just 51 years old. Kate described him on her official site: “I’m so very sad to hear the news about Gow. He was a lovely man and such fun to work with as the male star in the video for Hounds Of Love. He really had the face of a great film star. He was just brilliant.“

A choreographer and dancer, before his death, Gow had been living in Tokyo and published several photography books. In the video we can enjoy Gow’s beautiful performance as the wrongly accused man in Kate’s Hitchcock-inspired promotional film for the single Hounds of Love which was released in February 1986. It is hard to imagine anyone more perfect in this role. On February 10th 1986, Gow reprised his role as the “wronged man” at the end of Kate’s televised performance of the song at the BPI Awards, doing a twirl with Kate in a wonderful moment, fresh as they both were from having completed the music video the previous month.

From his official biography in 1997: “Trained in classical ballet Gow danced with various ballet companies and continued with diverse and challenging work in Television, Video, Film, Theatre and Opera. He has been very fortunate to live and work in many different countries….Paris, Rome, Geneva, Seoul, London to name a few and work with very talented performers/directors such as Kate Bush, Placido Domingo, David Bailey and Robert Lepage.

After a successful career as a professional dancer Gow was accepted into Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design where he completed a B.A (Hons) degree in Textile Design. His designs have been seen on the catwalks of London Fashion week, solo exhibitions and his own label of knitted textile accessories. Gow has always had a passion for anything creative and photography has always been one of his most inspiring pastimes. Gow lives in Tokyo since 2007 and spends much of his time taking pictures of Japan and is beginning to fulfill his lifetime passion of photography.”

Hounds of Love – Happening of the day

Today we celebrate the making of the beautiful promotional video that Kate directed for the third single and title track of the album, Hounds of Love, filmed in December 1985. The single was released on February 17th 1986. Kate wrote about it in the Kate Bush Club newsletter: “Hounds of Love is the third single, and trying to follow the Cloudbusting video was extremely difficult. I still wanted to follow the approach of making “a short film”, and this time we wanted to suggest a piece of “Hitchcock”: a short thriller.“

Kate continues in the KBC newsletter: “Paddy inspired me into a 39 Steps theme, and for the two-three weeks over Christmas my life became this third video. It was particularly hard organising meetings over Christmas; everyone was busy partying. At one meeting someone turned up in fancy dress. The advantage was that I got a brilliant crew who were free to do the shoot because it was Christmas-time, generally a very quiet period.” 

The 39 Steps, released in 1935, is a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in which a Canadian civilian in London, Richard (Robert Donat), becomes caught up in preventing an organisation of spies called “The 39 Steps” from stealing British military secrets. Mistakenly accused of the murder of a counter-espionage agent, Hannay goes on the run to Scotland and becomes tangled up with (and literally handcuffed to!) a woman, Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), while hoping to stop the spy ring and clear his name.

Kate’s brother, John Carder Bush, took many memorable set photographs during the shoot (see some great examples in his book, “Kate: Inside the Rainbow”) and wrote a fantastic piece about the shoot in the Kate Bush Club newsletter: “The Hounds of Love video was a first for Kate in another way. It was her first official role as Director, and she had the unenviable but so creative task of being in front of the camera and behind it at the same time. In this situation video playback is essential when the actual shoot is being made on film (all the videos from this album so far have been shot on film and not on video), but unfortunately nobody has yet been able to perfect a system of video playback synchronised with a movie camera, and the system available is in black-and-white and of very poor quality. This was a much more concentrated video than Cloudbusting in the sense that, apart from a short location on Wimbledon Common in the freezing cold at night, the locations were at the same studio. “

John continues: “The first set, of a museum some time during the 1940s, was a masterpiece of lighting and design. Light poured through the long, tall windows, like real daylight, from tungsten monsters that smoked and hummed far above us. When the extras and the main performers came on the set it was uncanny, as the clothes and make-up totally transformed everyone: it was a bit like coming face to face with my parents and their friends when they were young. Many of the people had been picked for their similarity to well-known faces of the time – did you spot Hitchcock and Einstein? – and all were chosen for their visual appearance. It would have been enough to have had a couple of hours just to photograph them in the museum setting. Although the set was quite spacious, the important take involved a circular shot, which meant that all the set would be covered quite quickly–with nowhere for me to hide.

“Fortunately this had been taken into consideration for the benefit of the smoke and wind man: an alcove in the museum led off to the back of the set; so I ducked in there too. The sequence would go as follows: the camera would start moving around Kate; the wind and smoke man would lean out with his wind machine and then struggle back into the alcove; the camera would come round, its crew hanging onto it like merrymakers doing the conga; and I would leap out and catch the end of the take. Because the lens that they were using was so wide, there was no other thing to do. It was very hot on this set, and the contrast was extraordinary when we went outside to queue for lunch, because it started to snow.

“The second main set was smaller and represented a church hall party in full swing, again sometime in during the forties. There were even civil defence instruction letters on the notice board. The party started at nine in the morning, and went on until eleven o’clock at night, and each partygoer had to stay fresh and happy-looking for every shot. Luckily for the camera, all the food and drinks were just props, and however tempting they looked they had to be left alone. For me the real highpoint was when the actual conga began.

I had never thought of the Hounds of Love track being danced to by a line of drunk merrymakers doing such a traditionally establishment dance as the conga, but it was so striking that I am unable to hear the track now without seeing that line moving through the set over and over again. But however atmospheric it was for the eye, it was not the easiest place for stills. Because there were so many people on the set as well as in the shot, hiding space was limited, and getting photos of Kate amongst all the action was almost impossible. Again, the circular camera shots meant that all of the room was being used, and this time there was truly nowhere to hide.”

John concludes his excellent report with “But then, when we pull back even further from the ongoing party and go with the cans of film, the process moves into yet another field of high energy, where technicians and editors and video-transfer people take over. The cans of film go in one direction and I go in the other to pick through my rolls of film and find out what I have been able to harvest.“

Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

This massive promotional Hounds of Love single release advertising poster measuring 60″ x 40″ would have graced the walls of the tube stations of London back in February 1986 to promote the single release. It’s a beautiful image, with the black and white single sleeve portrait of Kate’s face against the lakeland background, and three inset still photographs of Kate from the video shoot, taking off her glasses to face her apprehended lover – all images taken by John Carder Bush. The poster is very impressive when framed – a beauty!

Hounds of Love – Trivia of the day!

English film director Alfred Hitchcock made cameo appearances in 40 of his films. They began during production of The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog when an actor failed to show up, and the director filled in for him. The playful gesture became one of Hitchcock’s trademarks, with fans making a sport of trying to spot his cameos. Kate honours this tradition by having a Hitchcock lookalike walk across the frame in the opening museum scene of the music video for Hounds of Love!

In a 1990 VH1 interview Kate discusses the great director: “One of my favorite people from the movies was Alfred Hitchcock, because for me the guy was a genius. He was completely revolutionary, he was very witty, but witty in a very “out there” sense, and I still think people are learning about the film industry from him every time they watch one of his films. Beautiful. It’s like the guy had a camera for a pair of eyes…I wouldn’t like to sit here and say that feel like I’m emulating Hitchcock, but definitely he’s a tremendous influence on me whenever I’m making a video. You know, he’s really the ultimate reference point.“

To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…and today, September 16th, marks exactly 40 years since the album was released!

Hounds of Love – Person of the day

“‘S Murph, playing his guitar refrain…” – one of the brilliant guitar players Kate worked with most consistently throughout her career, and her dear friend, Alan Murphy, was foremost in her mind as she wrote the lyrics to her searing, emotional ballad, Moments of Pleasure. Deeply missed, having passed away at only 36 years of age on October 19th 1989, Alan was widely considered one of the greatest and most gifted guitarists of his era.

Alan first worked with Kate as part of the band on her 1979 tour, and subsequently added his guitar genius to her entire 1980s output on the albums Never For Ever, The Dreaming, Hounds of Love and The Sensual World. As well as his work with Kate he is also well remembered for his collaborations with Go West and Level 42 (watch a brief clip of Alan interviewed on the set of a Level 42 video here). About working with Kate, Alan told Guitarist magazine in 1986: “For me, working with Kate was the beginning of everything. It was also different because it wasn’t blues by any standards; in the early days we never did anything that I actually knew how to do, everything I did was sound or colour texture.“

On the Hounds of Love album, Alan can be heard playing guitar on Running Up That Hill, The Big Sky and Waking The Witch. Writing about the making of the Hounds of Love album in 1984, Kate said: “The tracks were still growing, though retaining their “space”, and two tracks cried out for guitar. Alan Murphy, as I’m sure you all know, has played some wonderful guitar on the albums, and this was no exception. We worked one long day, and it was very exciting to hear how the tracks blossomed with every overdub. There is a good musical communication between the two of us, and I find that inspiring. We wanted a very “heavy”- sounding guitar, so we used Al’s amp in a very live room and miked up the amp. Haydn got a frighteningly raunchy guitar sound, and Al did the rest.“

About The Big Sky Kate writes: “the structure of this song changed quite a lot. I wanted to steam along, and with the help of musicians such as Alan Murphy on guitar and Youth on bass, we accomplished quite a rock-and-roll feel for the track. Although this song did undergo two different drafts and the aforementioned players changed their arrangements dramatically, this is unusual in the case of most of the songs.“

Alan’s spectacular work on Waking the Witch transformed the song. Kate writes: “This song was written through a guitarist – Alan Murphy. The track would have had the wrong feel with a keyboard instrument. All he had to work to was the drum track, and I tried to hum and point patterns out. Everything he came up with sounded great; we spent the day building up the guitars, then built vocals, Fairlight, sequencers over the top. Thanks for that, Al.“

Alan can be spotted having lots of fun with Kate in The Big Sky video and, of course, Kate paid loving tribute to Alan in her 1991 video for Rocket Man – she performs with her band but there is an empty chair, a guitar and a candle where Alan would have been, and cross-faded footage of him playing in the closing choruses. “This is one of the last tracks that he did with us,’ Kate told BBC Radio 1 in 1991, ‘and it’s particularly nice for me to feel that it’s not only keeping him alive, but I know he would be really thrilled to know that the single was doing so well. And it’s nice for all of us that loved Al to know that he can be a part of this now.” Thank you for your beautiful work, Alan.

Hounds of Love – Happening of the day

Hounds of Love, the fifth studio album by Kate Bush was released exactly 40 years ago today, on the 16th September 1985. It was a massive commercial and critical success and to this day regularly finds its way onto most lists and polls of the greatest albums of all time. Rightly so, it’s an exceptional work that continues to fascinate and inspire listeners. It is also clearly one of Kate’s favourite albums; she played almost all of the songs from the album during her live shows in 2014! Here’s a UK TV ad from later in 1985:

The marketing for the album by EMI was unprecedented for one of Kate’s releases, with hundreds of thousands of pounds spent in the UK alone on print and TV advertising, bus advertising, fly posters, window displays and full page ads in the music media. It paid off with the album rapidly attaining Platinum status in the UK with over 300,000 copies sold, and later being certified as having sold well over 1 million copies in the UK and a similar number abroad.

It was her biggest push in the USA to date, with limited-edition colour vinyl LPs and cassettes, a very wide-spread print-ad campaign, a ton of visible posters, and even some success getting the videos aired on the TV networks.

Hounds of Love was released on vinyl, XDR cassette and the (relatively new) compact disc format. It entered the UK Albums chart at number one, knocking Madonna’s Like a Virgin from the top position and, remarkably in the USA it reached Number 30 in the Billboard album charts, her highest ever position there. It would chart even higher in the USA in 2022 reaching number 12 riding on the wave of success that Running Up That Hill had that year. It was, as the kids say, a smash hit!

Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

These lovely items, framed and signed limited edition Hounds of Love art prints, measuring 9″ x 13.5″, were available in two designs and sold via the 1985 Exclusive Merchandise Edition ordering insert in commercial LPs of Hounds of Love in 1985. There were 1,000 copies only. These retailed at £19.99, so, a bargain. Being items signed by Kate herself, they are now, of course, much sought after!

Hounds of Love – Trivia of the day!

A quick one today – Hounds of Love was the first Kate Bush album to be released in South Korea! So now you know. Ah, the wonderful things these time capsules bring you!

To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…

Hounds of Love – Person of the day

Bill Whelan is best known for composing a piece for the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, Riverdance, a seven-minute display of traditional Irish dancing that became a full-length stage production and spawned a worldwide craze for Irish dancing and Celtic music and also won him a Grammy. Before this, Bill had been involved in many ground-breaking projects in Ireland since the 1970s. As a producer he has worked with U2 (on their album ‘War’), Van Morrison, The Dubliners, Planxty, Andy Irvine & Davy Spillane, Patrick Street, Stockton’s Wing and fellow Limerickman Richard Harris. Whelan wrote and arranged pipes and strings for Kate’s song Night of the Swallow in 1982, and went on to handle all the Irish arrangements on her albums Hounds Of Love and The Sensual World.

Kate wrote about the Hounds of Love sessions with Bill, and Jig of Life in particular, in the Kate Bush Club newsletter: “The main reason for going (to Ireland) was to work in Windmill Lane with Bill Whelan. We met in London, and I played Bill the demos, and he started thinking about ideas. We agreed that we’d need a couple of weeks up front to go through all the arrangements and sort out the musicians and studio time. Not only was Bill a dream to work with, but he made us feel very at home, and we got to see Ireland in a really fun way. Bill introduced us to John Sheahan, the fiddle player and multi-talented musician from The Dubliners, who was like Santa Claus. He played a piece that Bill had written, and it was so moving and he played so emotively that I started to cry and felt silly, but what a nice experience. I highly recommend it!“

In her recent book on Hounds of Love, Leah Kardos notes that Jig of Life “took inspiration from the ceremonial music of Anastenaria, a centuries-old ecstatic dance and fire-walking ritual performed during religious feasts in Greece and Bulgaria.”

Kate continues in the fan club newsletter: “One of the tracks we worked on was inspired by a discovery that Paddy had made of a fascinating Greek ceremony that he managed to get on tape. He knew it would get in to the inspiration centre, and that’s what it did. We played the tape to Bill, Liam, John and Donal; and Paddy, who was on his way to the West Coast of Ireland to visit the Lakes, stayed with us in Dublin and joined in the general fun, and as a non-stop shift of Irish musicians put the magic of their race onto the songs, we danced and whooped in the control room.

We consumed the information from Pad’s tape as much as we could. I’d only finished writing the song the day before on Bill’s piano while his wife brought me cups of tea and biscuits (thank you, Mrs. Whelan). This track was built around John Sheahan. Bill conducted him, I played chords on the piano and Donal played bodhran (a small Irish drum). We did this in one studio, baffled off from each other. We got a good take quickly, and John overdubbed fiddle. Then Donal overdubbed more drum and bouzouki; and then, John playing whistle and Liam playing pipes, they jammed together on the jig that Bill had written for the end of the track. Bill is very talented, as they all are, and I think his arrangements and ideas are fantastic. It really is fun working over there.“

In 2022, Bill spoke about working with Kate to Hot Press Magazine: “Kate really was the strongest, yet most gentle presence in the studio and great fun,” he reflects. “I did three albums worth of work with her. And we laughed as much as we worked. We had all these little private jokes and stuff that she did. She’s quite mischievous with her humour, but you know, the public image that you had didn’t appear.”

“We used to have a surround on the fireplace,” he says, “which Kate was sitting on. And my son Brian, who was about four, came in and I introduced them. I said, ‘this is my son, Brian, this is Kate’.  And she said, ‘Hello, Brian’. She was very sweet. And he said, ‘Who are you?’ And she said, ‘I’m Kate Bush’. And he said, ‘Hmm’. And then he went out that door. And we were still chatting at the fire when he came back in holding The Dreaming album.  And he sat down beside Kate Bush again. And he looked at the photo on The Dreaming album, which is Kate, sort of, obviously in a kiss or about to, and she’s got a ring, like a wedding ring, on her tongue. She looks beautiful. And, here, she was in jeans and a jumper. And he looked at her and he looked at the sleeve. He looked at her again. And he said ‘You’re not Kate Bush’. And she was knocked out with that. She was great to work with.” Bill loved working with Kate. “The sort of image that one has of Kate — the ethereal and so on – she’s actually very grounded. She’s very serious and focused on the work, but she’s a really sweet, lovely person; very person-oriented.”

Hounds of Love – Happening of the day

Despite being nominated for three awards at the 1986 BPI Awards, Kate left empty handed! The following year, however, at the 1987 BPI Awards, she was presented the award for Best British Female Artist by Ray Davies of The Kinks, cementing the critical impact of the Hounds of Love album now coupled with her massive selling The Whole Story compilation being still at the number 2 position in the album charts having spent 12 weeks in the Top 4 (twice hitting No.1 in January). It all felt massive.

The ceremony was held on the 9th February 1987 at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London and apparently garnered a massive worldwide television audience. After a short acceptance speech, Kate was asked to remain on stage to present Peter Gabriel with the award for Best British Male Artist, the two having achieved a Top Ten hit single with the duet Don’t Give Up in 1986.

Kate posed for many, many photos on the night with her friends and collaborators Peter Gabriel and Experiment IV violinist Nigel Kennedy and also a series of group shots with fellow award recipients on the night; Five Star, Neil Tennant, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Paul Simon and The Bangles.

Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

The An Interview With Kate Bush – Canadian promo vinyl LP, was an interview and music release in card sleeve with grey ‘EMI America’ labels, most copies with an A4 printed cue sheet and some copies presented in an oversized ribbon-tied ‘Hounds Of Love’ folder with press pack. This item was issued to the press in November 1985 after ‘Hounds Of Love’ was certified Platinum in Canada. Nice find if you can pick one up!

Hounds of Love – Trivia of the day!

Did you know that early copies of Hounds of Love attributed a quote on the back cover incorrectly to a poem called The Holy Grail instead of the correct title The Coming of Arthur? Kate discovered this oversight during a press interview as the album entered the Top Ten, and she quickly rectified the error on all subsequent pressings of the album!

When speaking to Hot Press in 1985 about coming up with the title of The Ninth Wave, Kate explained about the quote from The Coming of Arthur by Alfred Lord Tennyson. “The Tennyson thing is a bit misleading because rather than that inspiring the b-side, I needed a title for all the pieces and there wasn’t any line in the songs that really was right. It needed a title that said something, so I was looking through some books, and I found this quote from Tennyson that I thought was perfect, so that was it.” Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was an English poet (1809-1892).

‘Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame’

– ‘The Coming of Arthur’

Tennyson’s own handwriting was faithfully mimicked by designer Dick Bird for the pieces of confetti launched out into the audience during the Before The Dawn shows in 2014 – announcing the start of The Ninth Wave – a wonderful detail Kate remarked upon in her programme notes.