Anna knows...🔥
Are there any fans of Anna Calvi among us?
On “Aerial” and “50 Words For Snow”: “I like the fact that (Kate) is embracing her age, her family and her life, and that it doesn’t mean that you still can’t be a really amazing artist. That’s what I’d like to imagine myself being like in 20 years’ time. I love how unafraid she is of taking risks. She does some crazy things on her records, especially with her voice. It sounds like there is a complete surrender to her art, and I find that really inspiring.”
(The Guardian, 20 April 2012) “There’s something absurd and yet beautiful in her work. That playfulness and imagination is incredibly inspiring. I love her voice and the way she can manipulate it for different songs; sometimes it feels fragile and thin, like a whisper, and other times it feels incredibly forceful and deep. It feels like she can channel so many different characters and yet they all feel distinctly personal and very much her.”
(Evening Standard, 15 August 2014) “What’s really inspiring is the depth of character, the depth of the imagery, the depth of imagination and sound KB uses, the way she creates these worlds.
She inhabits her songs better than anyone. It’s incredible how she can be at once extremely experimental and also create amazing pop music. The only other person I can think of that can do that is David Bowie. She’s been a huge inspiration to me. You can write a song, strum a guitar, make a melody, but when I listen to her records, it reminds me how much further you can go if you have the imagination, the drive, the vision.
There’s one piece I love, ‘The Morning Fog’.
I always thought that the character was dying, drowning, with the lyrics: “I’ll tell my father/I’ll tell my loved one/I’ll tell my brothers/How much I love them”. It nearly always drove me to tears, but I found out the song was about being rescued and feeling appreciative be to alive. I’m happy because now I can listen to it and not feel really sad. If someone else did it would be really cheesy but when KB does it, it’s just really beautiful."
(from iNews, 6 Dec 2018)
#katebush#inspiration#annacalvi#guitar#photographer#geredmankowitz
Kate about some B-sides. I must add, quite a few are among her best beauties🔥
Those songs which you've used as flip-sides on singles, like ‘Warm and Soothing’, `The Empty Bullring’ and `Under The Ivy’ on which you simply accompany yourself on the piano with no other arrangement, were those tracks recorded originally just as demos? “No, they weren't, but in a way they are just demos. `Warm and Soothing' was a demo-tape which we did basically just to see what Abbey Road sounded like.
We wanted to work there, and we went into Studio Two, and really the only way we could tell if it was going to sound good was if I went and did a piano vocal. So I did, and it sounded great. ‘Under The Ivy’ we did in our studio in just an afternoon.”
(from Peter Swale’s interview for the magazine “Musician”, fall 1985) “The Empty Bullring” (B-side of the 7” “Breathing” released in April 1980. “This is a song that I first had ideas for quite a few years ago. It is really about someone who is in love with someone who is obsessed with something that is pretty futile. They can't get the person to accept the fact that it is a futile obsession. To put it into a sort of story form: he became a matador, and got gored so badly that he couldn't carry on. But at night he climbs out of the window and runs off to a bullring, when there is no-one there, and he fights a bull that doesn't exist.
Tamlain is a girl in a traditional fairy story, who is locked up in an ivory tower.”
(KB Club #14, 1983)
#katebush#geredmankowitz
What about the Kate Bush images? I can vividly remember seeing that on tube posters and all over the place at the time.
Gered Mankowitz: “On the buses as well. They had an album which they were absolutely thrilled about but they didn’t have a cover. Actually, that’s not true, they had a cover that they weren’t happy with. And they didn’t have a really strong image of her so they called me in and played me some music, played me Wuthering Heights and told me it was the single. And I couldn’t believe my ears.
I said to whoever it was I was working with at that point, ‘ I’ve got to listen to that again because I can’t believe what I just heard.’ And listening to it two or three times I said ‘What we need is a photograph that people are going to want to look at again and again and again. Something that’s going to surprise them like the music does.’ And watching some videos of her it was quite clear from what I saw and from what I heard and had been told, that dance was an incredibly important form of expression for her. And I always thought that the rehearsal clothes that dancers wore were sexy and great to look at and so I suggested that maybe I get some leggings and leotards and scarves and things like that. And we talked to Kate and she liked the idea and she came to the studio and disappeared into the dressing room while I set up this old canvass. It’s actually an old boxing ring canvass. The mirror was in our dressing room and I used the ring as a background for this session. She came out quite a long time later just wearing this pink leotard and she just looked absolutely wonderful and it was just perfect for her. It was a wonderful colour and she just looked ravishing and I thought the contrast of this beautiful young woman and this shabby non-descript canvas would work, and it did. Everybody fell in love with the picture and it caused a sensation. It did its trick and I worked with her on maybe seven or eight sessions after that.” (from retrosellers.com, 2010) “It was used as an advert on the front of London’s buses and caused havoc with the rush-hour traffic!”
(from Mankowitz.com)
#katebush#genius#wutheringheights#geredmankowitz#photography