Kate Bush has stressed the importance of retaining creative control over her live shows.
She’s just released a 3CD and 4LP titled Before The Dawn which was recorded during her 22-date run in London in 2014 – Bush’s first full live performances since 1979.
And she reports she wanted to completely oversee the production as she wanted to keep the shows “personal.”
Bush tells the Independent: “The big thing for me, and it has been from quite early on, is to retain creative control over what I’m doing.
“If you have creative control, it’s personal. What I didn’t want to do was step into someone else’s show. Also, that was what was exciting for me – the idea of putting this big visual piece together.
“Though there was the most extraordinary team of people working on the show, there wasn’t a single person on that team that didn’t have very important input on what the show became.”
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The decision to release Before The Dawn on audio formats only has raised a few eyebrows – especially considering the theatrical nature of the live shows.
And Bush confirms the reason was a deliberate move.
She continues: “People are surprised that there’s no DVD of the show, but I’d like to mention this live album that Elton John put out, 17-11-70, which was something that I loved so much.
“To have an album where you could imagine what the show was, I found that incredibly exciting, and in a way, this live album is almost more representative of what it was like to be at the live show.”
Bush released a video for And Dream Of Sheep earlier this month, which she recorded in a water tank at Pinewood Studios.
She says of the shoot: “I’d never worked in water before, and we didn’t know, purely from a technical point of view, if we could find a microphone that could cope with being submerged. So a lot of research went into that.
“Also, lying on your back, it’s a different way to sing, and we weren’t sure we were going to achieve what we wanted, certainly from an audio point of view.”
She adds: “What was probably most difficult, particularly on the first day, was that I was in the tank of water for so long that I actually got really cold. Hour by hour, it was becoming more realistic!”
Before The Dawn is now available.
