Kate Bush Artistfacts

July 30, 1958

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Kate Bush Artistfacts

Born in Southeast London, Kate grew up in a family immersed in music, art and literature. She learned to play violin at age 11 but didn't like it; she began to set her poems to her own chord formulations.
She started playing the piano a lot by age 12 to accompany her brother Paddy's fiddle playing and to generally let out her frustrations. By age 13 she had written many songs, some of which would later appear on her first 2 records.
At age 14 Ricky Hopper, a family friend with connections to the music business, took her tape of 30 songs to all major record companies, with no success (her music was deemed too morbid and uncommercial). Kate seriously considered a career in psychiatry or social work, while Hopper took the tape to an old friend from Cambridge University, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Gilmour was impressed, and by age 15 Kate was recording demos in Gilmour's home studio. Again there is no interest from the record companies. Refusing to give up, Gilmour put up the money for a three-song demo done to full professional standards. This did the trick and EMI signed her a short while later. In an unusual move, EMI paid Kate to take a series of lessons to improve her already inventive songwriting as well as singing and dancing. Finally in 1978 "Wuthering Heights" was released and went straight to #1 in the UK. This made her an overnight sensation and sent her subsequent album, The Kick Inside, to #3, selling over 1 million copies in the UK. >>
Suggestion credit:
Lee - Ottawa, Canada, for all above
When "Wuthering Heights" rose to #1 in 1978, Kate Bush became the first female to top the UK charts with a self-composed song.
Kate Bush became the first female artist to have eight albums in the UK Top 40 simultaneously in the week following the start of her 2014 comeback live shows in London.
Her 1980 album, Never For Ever, was the first commercially-released album to incorporate the Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesizer. Bush incorporated the Fairlight on many of her subsequent releases, and the device achieved ubiquity in pop music of the decade.
She rejected a song John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, wrote for her called "Bird In Hand." It was about rescuing parrots from the parrot trade in Brazil.
Her 12-year hiatus between the releases of The Red Shoes and Aerial inspired the 2007 documentary Come Back Kate.
She began producing her own albums with her fourth release, The Dreaming, in 1982. Featuring the hit lead single "Sat In Your Lap," the album peaked at #3 in the UK, but was widely criticized for being too experimental and not commercial enough.
Never For Ever, Hounds Of Love, and The Whole Story all hit #1 in the UK. The remaining eight albums landed in the Top 10.
In the US, her highest-charting album is The Red Shoes, which peaked at #28 in 1993, and her top single is "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)," which landed at #30 in 1985.
She had a longtime romance with her bassist/sound engineer Del Palmer until the early '90s. In 1992 she met guitarist Danny McIntosh while recording her album The Red Shoes and the pair married not long after. They welcomed a son, Bertie, in 1998.
Although she's been nominated three times, Bush has never won a Grammy.
She was asked to record the theme song to the James Bond film Moonraker but declined because she was about to embark on her 1979 Tour of Life. The gig went to Shirley Bassey.
Kate Bush attended St Joseph's Convent Grammar School, Woolwich Road, Abbeywood in SE London. She wrote poems for the school magazine, including The Crucifixion, Blind Joe Death and Epitaph for a Rodent. Kate left school in 1976 walking away with 10 O-levels.
Kate Bush was known as Cathy until she left school.
Kate Bush made her first television appearance in Bio's Bahnhof, a German live music talk show presented by Alfred Biolek in a former train depot. She appeared, along with Udo Lindenberg and Vicky Leandros, on the ARD show's first ever episode dated February 9, 1978.

Comments: 4

Mickilus from Midland Ontario CanadaKate is in a class of her own...and if you truly wanna hear all the talents she possesses...listen to The Dreaming...that is the album she took off on...and everything else is just as brilliant.
Roberta Trevisan from S?o Paulo, BrazilHer songs speaks to me a lot! God bless my goddess!
Minna from Joplin, MoHer song RUNNING UP THAT HILL was so beautiful. I first heard it while I was sleeping and it woke me up like a strange dream. Haunting and lovely, I'd never heard anything like it.
Carissa from Seattle, WaKate Bush is a musical goddess. I think she is a great singer and I have great repect for her. Hounds of Love is a masterpiece.

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