Waiting for Kate Bush (23 page)

East Wickham Farm in Bexley, where Kate enjoyed her girlhood, isn’t very far from where Keith Richards and David Bowie enjoyed their boyhoods. There’s obviously something in the water. (Barry Plummer)

Like David Bowie before her, Kate studied mime with Lindsey Kemp.
(Mick Rock/Starfile)

An early EMI press shot, albeit not the one that had young men hurling themselves in front of London buses.

Kate with her mother Hannah and brothers Paddy and Jay, all of whom played their part in her music. (Mirrorpix)

Kate performs ‘Wuthering Heights’ on
Top Of The Pops
in entirely the wrong clothing.
(BBC Photo Library/Redferns)

Michael Palin is pleased ‘n’ privileged to inform our heroine that the readers of
Melody Maker
voted her Britain’s top female singer in 1979 for the second year running, this in spite of all the infernal screeching on
Lionheart
.
(Hulton Archive)

Live in Copenhagen, a city in a Scandinavian country known for its furniture and breakfast pastries, in 1979.
(Jorgen Angel)

When it came time to perform live, Kate clearly remembered taking dance lessons.
(Rob Verhorst/Redferns)

With Rowan Atkinson, not exactly Peter Gabriel in the sexual charisma department, collecting their
NME
award for The Secret Policeman’s Ball, October 1980.
(Mirrorpix)

Our vegetarian heroine apparently saw nothing untoward about posing with the family’s lionskin rug.
(Hulton Archive)

Kate with comedian Lenny Henry and a pair of
Spitting Image
puppets, signing Comic Relief books in London, October 1986.
(PA Photos)

Kate in make-up for Experiment IV, 1986, hardly her most flattering image.
(Geoff Portass)

At the BPI awards with Peter Gabriel, with whom she collaborated on 1987’s ‘Don’t Give Up’.
(Richard Young/Rex Features)