2000 – 2016
A BRAND NEW DAWN
THE LENGTHY PAUSES BETWEEN PROJECTS WERE ALMOST SUFFOCATING, BUT WHILE THE PACE HAS SLOWED – THIS YEAR’S STRANGER THINGS BOOST ASIDE – KATE BUSH’S IMAGINATION WAS ALWAYS SOARING. THE 21ST CENTURY HAS YIELDED SOME OF HER MOST INTERESTING WORK TO DATE, PLUS THE MOST UNEXPECTED GIFT OF ALL – ARETURN TO THE LIVE STAGE FOR A RECORD-BREAKING RESIDENCY IN LONDON…
MARK ELLIOT
Kate attends the 2001 Q Awards at the Park Lane Hotel in London to pick up the Classic Songwriter award
© Dave Benett/Getty
The silence was deafening. Kate Bush’s retreat into a domestic life that had gathered pace years earlier seemed a permanent state of affairs at the start of the new millennium. The birth of her son Bertie in 1998 naturally consumed much of her focus and there was a sense that the rough and tumble of the music business – an industry that she had rarely felt entirely at ease with – was moving ahead without her, increasingly self-absorbed by the devastating impact of digital technology on its financial structures. If the door had been left ajar, it was clear that Bush was in no likelihood of banging on it again any time soon.
KATE BUSH WAS NOW BECOMING INCREASINGLY DISTANT FROM THE CAMERAS, BUT WHILE THE POPULAR PRESS OFTEN PAINTED HER AS AN ECCENTRIC LONER HER PEERS CONTINUED TO CELEBRATE HER LEGACY
Kate Bush was now becoming increasingly distant from the cameras and the promotional merry-goround that was considered necessary to maintain a profile in the music business. While the popular press now often painted her as an eccentric loner, her peers continued to celebrate her remarkable legacy and influence on their work, and in 2001 Q magazine awarded her with its prestigious Classic Songwriter Award. When Midge Ure introduced her win to a standing ovation at the 12th annual event, it was a rare public appearance for the artist. “I am actually making an album,” she told the crowd, “but it’s just taking longer than I thought and I’m having a really great time with my son.” She dedicated the win to her father, who she said would always find time to listen to her work when she first started writing as a young girl. No doubt it was that sort of parental nurturing that in part drove her decision to distance herself from a working life that had inevitably required periodic compromise – aposition she felt increasingly unable to accommodate.
To everyone’s shock, Bush followed this rare public appearance with something almost unthinkable at the time: a momentary return to the live stage. On 18 January 2002, she joined David Gilmour for a performance of Comfortably Numb at London’s Royal Festival Hall. If the collaboration appeared to begin hesitantly (there was nothing of the occasion to showcase the way Bush first appeared at the microphone), her haunting vocals ultimately offered the depth and gravity the moment deserved. It was her first live performance since the pair had played her Running Up That Hill at The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball in 1987.