Wonderful! I just went to YouTube and watched the video. It’s so fun and playful (I love the look on the ullian pipes player’s face when he’s sitting there with nothing to do yet, as well as Kate conducting the shooting stars and later, fireworks), but the moment when the camera lingers on the empty chair, with a guitar propped on it and a burning candle, is powerful if you know why it’s there, and only associates, hardcore fans and Alan Murphy fans would know.
Also on YouTube is another video of “Rocket Man” as “performed” (it’s lip-sync, like the black and white video) on the Terry Wogan show. There too is a guitar propped up on an empty chair. I love how she decided that no way was she going to get someone to replace Alan just to make it look more like a real band.
Just go to http://youtube.com and type in Kate Bush Rocket Man into the Search.
Regarding Kate being beloved and admired and influential…
Before this thread ups and dies, I want to post these. It’s not anywhere near complete, I could find many more just by culling through old fanzines, but thanks to a very kind person at the Kate Bush forum who gathered these together, I present these to this thread.
That song actually got some airplay on the local, “commercial” FM stations when it was released as a single. Remember, it reached #30 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
“Running Up That Hill” was just one of many, many songs that made up the soundtrack of my youth. There have been dozens of songs that have planted seeds in my memory, only to be resurrected years later. “RUTH” just happens to be the latest I rediscovered.
Man! The formatting went to hell on that! Sorry. I was so concerned with checking that the Bolding was working I didn’t even notice all the line breaks.
I hate to move the goalposts on you … but: when I talk about hooks, I mean instrumental hooks. What made me even bring up hooks at all is that I could vividly recall the percussion of “Running Up That Hill” from just a 30-second clip, despite not having heard the song in 15-20 years. I wasn’t able – from an obviously insufficient 30-second clip – to latch on to anything similar in “Babooshka” or “Cloudbusting”.
Dunno, but I really think that “American Pie” is a bad example to use for this point. “AP” is one of the quintassential “story” songs in American popular music. The full story laid out in the lyrics and the associated nostalgia has always been the song’s main draw, IMHO. Fans of the song have spent 35 years dissecting the meaning of the lines, even enlisting Cecil’s help on one occasion. Sure, lots of folks don’t approach the song that way … but lots do.
These examples make a point that you don’t intend – lyrically deep songs that became big hits in the U.S. As long as people were requesting airplay, and were buying the 45s, comprehension of the lyrics wasn’t an issue. In fact, I’d say it’s a testament to The Police’s and Springsteen’s artistry (taking nothing away from Kate Bush) that there songs were essentially aural double-entendres that could grab listeners on two levels.
Agreed – that’s something I was trying to demonstrate earlier.
What of that? Kate Bush’s lyrical complexity isn’t her sole draw, either, from what Equipoise and others are saying.
HUGE THANKS to SkipMagic for taking the time to go through those quotes and remove the line breaks. I appreciate it so much.
Here are some more, and I think I’ve gotten the line breaks taken care of.
I hope the skeptics among us read all those quotes. Not that an opinion can ever be proved “right,” or anything like that. Just that my opinion (speaking only for myself) that Kate is an extremely important artist, who has had vast influence, and who is the quintessential “musician’s musician,” places me in pretty good company. At least, I hope that it will make the label “Kate Bush fan” less of a reason for immediate, unexamined dismissal on the subject.
Again, not arguing from authority here. Just saying, there’s a difference–if a small one–between being a lone voice howling in the windy wilderness, and being huddled out there with the likes of those quoted above. To reiterate:
You’re certainly welcome, although I’m afraid that I’ll now have to disappoint you a bit.
My initial assumption–when reading through the code to fix the line breaks–was that you pulled some of your longer posts from various sources, and then included them all into the same quote box. Following your links, however, I saw that giant chunks of the original text were included in your post. I’m afraid that much what you posted in your two bigger posts went beyond Fair Use. Because of that, I’ve gone ahead and removed the extra text. You did mention your source material (and in some, included links), so the Teeming Millions can read more what was originally written if they’re interested.
In the future, just post a small amount (I usually suggest a paragraph) and paraphrase the rest. Keep on including, of course, an attribution to the source material.
Sorry for the confusion. I should have caught this the first time.
I used to be a big Kate Bush fan back in the '80s. Last year I bought an iPod and put nearly all of my CDs on it, so I listened to Kate’s albums again. It was a bittersweet experience. Sweet because I like the music, and bitter for my Lost Youth.
I’m playing a few of the 2,500 songs I’ve put on iTunes so far, and the last one I played was Peter Gabriel’s Games Without Frontiers featuring Kate Bush.
Jeux sans frontieres
Jeux sans frontieres
Jeux sans frontieres…