To celebrate 20 years of the Aerial album, we’re putting together a time capsule each day this week leading up to November 7th (the release date anniversary). It’s a daily miscellany of the events, people and objects that relate to Kate’s extraordinary eighth studio album. We can’t believe it’s been two decades, for so many of us this still feels like a “new” album, and the album’s beautiful gifts just keep revealing themselves…
Aerial – Happening of the day
Kate gave very few press and radio interviews for Aerial and for the first time she did no filmed interviews at all to promote the album. So, veteran music writer Tom Doyle at Mojo Magazine scored quite a scoop when Kate selected that publication for an exclusive cover feature and extensive interview. The cover feature was accompanied by two great new black and white portraits of Kate by Trevor Leighton, who took Kate’s publicity photos for this album.
In 2022 when writing in his subsequent book framed around this encounter, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, Doyle explained how the interview happened:
“Ahead of the interview, a plan had been hatched for us to meet at Abbey Road Studios. The day before, Bush suddenly changed her mind and decided to move the location to her home. She wasn’t about to give me the address, though, hence this air of mystery. The car arrived just before 10.30 a.m. on a bright, early autumn morning to pick me up from my home in north London. It was 22 September 2005, a Thursday, and I was heading to an unknown destination. All I knew was that I was being driven to Kate Bush’s house… Bush had been missing from public view, pretty much, for the past twelve years.
But she’d finally agreed to break her silence with an extensive, exclusive cover story for MOJO magazine and I’d been asked to do the interview. It was an equally exciting and unnerving proposition. In the days and weeks leading up to this point, the anticipation had been ramping up. At the west London home-cum-office of Bush’s then-manager, I’d heard her first album in a dozen years – the multi-layered and immediately brilliant twin disc Aerial – three times already.“
From the interview, extracts of which were published in late October in The Guardian newspaper here: “For the last 12 years, I’ve felt really privileged to be living such a normal life,” she explains. “It’s so a part of who I am. It’s so important to me to do the washing, do the Hoovering. Friends of mine in the business don’t know how dishwashers work. For me, that’s frightening. I want to be in a position where I can function as a human being. Even more so now where you’ve got this sort of truly silly preoccupation with celebrities. Just because somebody’s been in an ad on TV, so what? Who gives a toss?“
Doyle wrote: “If the outside world was wondering whether Kate Bush would ever finish her long-awaited album, then it was a feeling shared by its creator. “Oh yeah,” she sighs. “I mean, there were so many times I thought, I’ll have the album finished this year, definitely, we’ll get it out this year. Then there were a couple of years where I thought, I’m never gonna do this. If I could make albums quicker, I’d be on a roll wouldn’t I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don’t know why. Time…evaporates.”
It was wonderful to hear Kate discuss her music and the huge changes in her life and how she had to manage recording the record in between raising her son, Bertie, who of course was her priority throughout the whole process. Mojo were equally thrilled about her album. In the same issue it was given a 5-star “Mojo Instant Classic” rating in their review by Jim Irvin. “Kate Bush is the greatest living British artist in song and this is her masterpiece.” The review was accompanied by a full page illustration by Fiona Wylie.
Tom Doyle got to chat to Kate again in 2006 for Q Magazine’s 20th Anniversary celebration issue (Kate appeared on one of the 20 collectible covers for this issue). In the interview Kate reminisces with the magazine about the previous 20 years. Her high point? “Well it’s got to be having my son Bertie” Her low point was of course the death of her mother Hannah which Kate describes as “like the end of the world”. Kate joked about how 20 years ago she thought the record company’s insistence on a greatest hits package was “a crap idea…and of course it turned out to be my biggest selling record (The Whole Story)”. Kate confessed to drinking too much tea, to being “really exhausted” after Aerial came out and how she definitely hoped the next album wouldn’t take 12 years – and yes, it was to be just a mere 5 years away…
Tom Doyle’s book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, has a lot of unpublished material from the day he spoke to Kate at her house and also covers moments from her career in an interesting way – highly recommended and available to order here.
Aerial – Person of the day
As a person running the Kate Bush News site in the long gap between albums, I lived for any morsel of information that confirmed that yes, Kate was working on new material. A significant revelation came in an interview conducted on 30th November 2000. The American Grammy award-winning jazz drummer, Peter Erskine spoke about working with Kate on her next album.
Interviewer: “Kate Bush? Tell us more about that. I didn’t know she had a new album.” Peter Erskine: “First one in a while, I guess. I think it will be about another year before it comes out. Wonderful poetry and great songs; beautiful voice, and a lovely woman. Cool drum tracks, too, if I may say so…” Erskine commented that he makes his conga-playing debut on the album. Peter played drums on An Architect’s Dream, Nocturn and on the end section of Prologue.
Peter later spoke to Graeme Thomson about the Aerial sessions. Graeme posted an excerpt of his chat with Peter on his blog here. “There was a bit of secrecy attached to everything, in terms of where the drums would be delivered – there was a protocol that they wanted observed,” he says. “The cases should be labelled in a specific manner so it would not be apparent to anyone handling those along the way where they were going or what the project was. They had a car service that would pick me up [from my hotel] and drop me off a specific spot and then I’d get through the security gates, but there was nothing disproportionate. They’re all very well-balanced, an incredible amount of normality. That security apparatus is to maintain some normalcy.”
Erskine was there for three days and played, by his estimation, on seven or eight tracks, although he only appears on three: ‘An Architect’s Dream’, ‘Prologue’ and ‘Nocturn.’ It was a leisurely process – “they just work at a different pace” – which encouraged experimentation, a very much more organic process than Bush’s most recent albums. Erskine even recalls that at first he, bass player John Giblin and Bush performed together as a kind of ad hoc jazz trio. “Kate was playing piano,” he says. “Like, ‘here’s a new song I’m working on…’”
Later, he added his contributions to previously recorded backing tracks. On ‘King Of The Mountain’ he “came up a wacky idea. I put on a beat like the Weather Report track, ‘Nubian Sundance’, this double tempo, free-syncopated, aggressive drumbeat. It’s not the easiest thing to play, and then I added a half-time Ringo-style beat as a counter point. When Del mixed it I said it sounded like [US drummer and member of Presley’s TCB Band] Ron Tutt with Elvis, and she gave me a startled look: ‘Of course, that’s what the song is about – Elvis!’” Erskine hadn’t picked up on the lyrics nor Bush’s idiosyncratic Elvis impersonation. “I had no idea,” he laughs. “Her tune conveyed this subliminally to me! I’m sure at some point they realised that the drum part I put on was an absolute mess, but the nice thing was that they indulged the idea.”
“She was always offering tea,” says Peter Erskine. “The running joke at the session was that Del or John [Giblin] would say, like a British actor’s voice in a movie, ‘Ah, you’re a fine woman, Kate.’ That was the motto, I remember.” Says Susanna Pell (who played on the track Bertie), “We arrived and went straight to the studio and within minutes this woman arrived and said, ‘D’you want a cup of tea?’ And that was her. She bumbled off and made a cup of tea. She was just incredibly nice. Very unassuming, she knew what she wanted and had a clear vision but in the nicest possible way. When it was all over she sent us a personal cheque with a very nice note attached, thanking us. It was just a very, very pleasant experience.”
Graeme Thomson’s excellent biography of Kate, Under The Ivy can be ordered here. Read more about Peter Erskine at his official site here.
Aerial – Artefact of the day
(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)
Kate’s very first online merch store had a few items, t-shirts, sweatshirts, lithographs, mouse mats, but possibly the most charming was this now much sought after 2006 Aerial desk calendar which featured artwork from the single and album release.
January had a still image of the flying Elvis costume from the King of the Mountain video, while December featured some extra designs for King of the Mountain by Bertie! Lovely.
Aerial – Trivia of the day
In May 2015, Kate agreed to allow her song, π (Pi) from Aerial’s A Sea of Honey, to be featured on the long-running animated TV series, The Simpsons, in an episode entitled “Mathlete’s Feat“! In the episode the math teams from Springfield Elementary and Waverly Hills Elementary compete against each other in an event. Watch it below on Youtube!
Aerial – Bird of the day
The Goldcrest is one of the smallest breeding bird species in Ireland and Great Britain, measuring just 9cm in length. Very active, moving quickly between branches and can be difficult to get a good view of. Adult male Goldcrests have a bright yellow crown stripe with at least some orange tint. Bordered by thick black stripe on either side, with the rest of the head greyish green. The back, rump and tail are dark olive-green and there is a small white wing-bar. The underparts are pale grey-green. Adult female Goldcrests are identical to males, except that the crown never shows any orange (pure yellow). Juveniles lack the ornate head colouring of the adults, having a plain grey head instead.
In December 2021, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, Kate posted the following as part of her Christmas message on her site. “I’d like to mention something that happened a few weeks ago on a walk; stopping to look at the view, I noticed something moving in a tree right beside me. It was a Goldcrest – the smallest bird in Europe, even smaller than a wren. I stood still, hoping not to frighten it away. Its colouring is beautiful – a peacock’s eye on each wing and a striking yellow streak on its tiny head. This gorgeous little ball of fluff flew away after ten minutes or so. I’ve only ever seen one once before and very briefly. It made my day. In these strange times, I really hope you can get the chance to stop for a moment and feel nature around you.”
Leave a Reply