5. Kate BushHounds Of Love
Not only was it important to me that young men were letting go as I was growing up, and I saw men as being more fragile than the generation before me, it was important to hear women let go. I was thirty when this record came out and I was absolutely knocked out.
She was very young and I think the songs are absolutely extraordinary but the thing that really stands out about Kate Bush is how she’s a very private person, and I held onto this when I came back into music, because I thought; ‘how can I do this? I’m so shy.’ But I thought of Kate Bush and I thought that there’s someone who’s such a very private, private person who when it comes to the performance absolutely 100% commits to it, let’s go like a shaman and still maintains the whole of her credibility as a person.
I was very frightened of letting go when I came back to music. I was frightened of opening my mouth and having a sound come out that wasn’t tight and restricted and squashed. And I thought about Kate Bush, and Yoko Ono actually, and thought about how both of them are these private women and yet manage to let go almost as someone who is having sex would let go. To let those extraordinary sounds and yelps and squeaks and squeals out and not be embarrassed about it. That’s the thing that really moved me, apart from the thing that she’s an arranger, a writer, a producer, and has an extraordinary talent.
I’m an inverted snob. I can’t stand that she was middle class but I can even forgive her that because I do think she is absolutely extraordinary and I do think she has moved thing on for women. And you should forgive anyone anything it they’ve done that, even being middle class. Even her privilege, I think she transcended it. I think that’s what’s extraordinary about a lot of these people, same with Syd Barrett, they transcend their upbringing and transcend their background. You become a timeless person, and a classless person when you do that.
