Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush

by Tom Doyle

Overview

"Praiseworthy."—The Guardian

The most comprehensive book on Kate Bush to date, featuring exclusive interview content with Kate herself, close friends, and collaborators

Kate Bush: the subject of murmured legend and one of the most distinctive musicians of the modern era. Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush is a multi-faceted biography of this famously elusive figure, viewing her life and work from fresh and illuminating angles. Featuring details from the author’s one-on-one conversations with Kate—as well as vignettes of her key songs, albums, videos, and concerts—this artful, candid, and often brutally funny portrait introduces a refreshingly real Kate Bush. Tom Doyle also intertwines vivid reconstructions of transformative moments in her career and insights from the friends and collaborators closest to her, including her photographer brother John Carder Bush and fellow artists David Gilmour, John Lydon, and Youth.

With Netflix’s Stranger Things inspiring a new generation of fans, Kate Bush has made an incredible resurgence in popularity and has broken new records. Running Up That Hill is a vibrant and comprehensive re-examination of the artist and her many creative landmarks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538181164
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	07/15/2023
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Tom Doyle is a highly acclaimed music journalist and author of three books: The Glamour Chase: The Maverick Life of Billy MacKenzie, Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s, and Captain Fantastic: Elton John's Stellar Trip Through The '70s. He is a long-standing contributing editor to Q, and his work has appeared in Mojo, Billboard, Sound On Sound, The Guardian, and The Times. He has been responsible for key magazine profiles of Paul McCartney, Elton John, Yoko Ono, Keith Richards, U2, Madonna, Kate Bush, and R.E.M. among many other artists. He lives in London, England.

Table of Contents

1. Moving Back into the Light
2. Through the Back Door
3. The Sister in the Photographs
4. The Artful Bushes
5. The Girl at the Piano
6. A Songbird in the Garden of a Starman
7. Guest Testimony
8. ‘The Man That Started It All’
9. Round the Pubs
10. Live in the Studio
11. ‘A Bag o’ Cats!’
12. Public Image Limited
13. Lost in France
14. ‘Your Hair Looks Really Nice’
15. ‘The Fear and Sparkle’
16. Smash!
17. A Right Royal Mishap and Blunder
18. Echoes in the Walls
19. Guest Testimony
20. Let the Weirdness In
21. ‘Pull Out the Pin’

22. Back in the Lens
23. An ‘Uncommercial Record’
24. The Hardest Sell
25. Retreat, Rethink
26. A Night at the Laserium
27. ‘The Ninth Wave’
28. Making Rain
29. ‘I Used to Be Kate Bush’
30. ‘Under the Ivy’
31. ‘Something Good’
32. Change the Past and Future
33. A Remote Connection
34. ‘Moments of Pleasure’
35. The Line, the Cross and the Curve
36. Public Image (Further) Limited
37. An Inimitable Artist?
38. ‘Ooh, I’ve just come!’
39. A Sea and Sky of Honey
40. ‘A Coral Room’
41. Guest Testimony
42. ‘I Obviously Have a Very Recognisable Nose’
43. ‘Among Angels’
44. Before and Beyond the Dawn
45. ‘Bigger Fucking Waves’
46. Tory Furore
47. The Ultimate Kate Bush Experience. ..
48. ‘KT’
49. The End of the Day
50. Strange Phenomena
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

05/01/2023

Journalist Doyle (Captain Fantastic) delves beyond Kate Bush’s recently revived 1985 hit “Running up That Hill” in this colorful career retrospective. Drawing on his 2005 interview with Bush for Mojo magazine and conversations with her friends and family, Doyle contends that her exacting creative vision—“She can see and hear exactly what she wants to get,” according to Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour—classes Bush as more “visual auteur” than celebrity musician. Doyle tracks Bush’s creative impulse from writing poems as a child to spending hours creating music in her barn turned recording studio at East Wickham Farm and producing her own albums. Comprehensively charting her career, from The Kick Inside (1978) to Director’s Cut (2011), Doyle captures a more multidimensional view of the artist, allowing glimpses into her personal life, including the earth-shattering loss of her mother in 1992 and her friendship with David Bowie. Split into 50 brief chapters, Doyle’s portrait stitches together a comprehensive, revealing commentary on the notoriously media-shy artist and her complicated relationship to her craft, public persona, and audience (“If you make music and you don’t let people hear it, you could almost say it doesn’t exist,” she once said). Bush’s new-generation fans and original devotees will devour this. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Funny and illuminating. A refreshing take on one of our most complex, gifted artists.

MOJO

For more than 40 years, Kate Bush has been a singular voice in popular music. In 50 mostly short chapters music writer Doyle offers a multifaceted portrait of the English singer. Catherine Bush was raised on a farm in what Doyle calls a pastoral oasis outside London, surrounded by music and poetry. Her father played classical compositions on the piano, and she listened to drinking songs and sea shanties as well as King Crimson and Pink Floyd. Using a quirky approach, Doyle weaves in the highlights of the singer’s career: her early days in the KT Bush Band, playing London pubs in the late 1970s; releasing her debut album, The Kick Inside, in 1978, which included the ghostly “Wuthering Heights” and “Running up That Hill,” her most popular song. Doyle concludes with her surprising pop-culture resurgence when “Running up That Hill” was featured on the sci-fi drama Stranger Things, introducing her to new generations of listeners. Bush has retained a veil of mystery, due mostly to her intense desire for privacy. Doyle does his best to gently lift that veil.

Booklist

Running Up That Hill offers a range of new ways to appreciate the single-minded inspiration that it springs from.

Uncut

A very beautiful book.

Chris Hawkins

The best book ever written about Bush.

Louder Sound

Approaching its subject from inspired angles...probably the best [Kate] Bush book to date.

Record Collector

Long-term Kate Bush devotees and new teenage fans won over by Stranger Things will both find enlightenment in Tom Doyle’s prismastic portrait of the elusive artist.

The Times (UK)

Praiseworthy.

The Guardian

Until the artist puts her own pen to paper […] this is the closest we’ve ever come to understanding the enigmatic, uncompromising Bush on page.

James McMahon

07/01/2023

Kate Bush has long combined her unique musicianship, deft wordplay, dancing, directing, and an eclectic flair for innovation with a certain reticence for self-promotion. Perhaps this is unsurprising for someone who was, to her own chagrin, topping the British pop charts as a shy teenager. A lifetime spent following her muse—having fought for and achieved artistic freedom—has meant that many have devotedly watched her career and hoped to achieve similar success following her red-shoed footsteps. Bush deserves a wise and sympathetic biographer, and acclaimed music journalist Doyle (Captain Fantastic: Elton John's Stellar Trip Through the '70s) is both, offering a fascinating and probing work. Bush continues to produce innovative music and is having something of a moment; her 1985 song "Running Up That Hill" was used in the series Stranger Things and became a 2022 hit, her first Top 10 song in the U.S. She was also appointed a Commander of the British Empire for her contributions to music and is a 2023 inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. VERDICT A timely and definitive biography of one of music's most eclectic and influential artists.—Bill Baars

Library Journal

Long-term Kate Bush devotees and new teenage fans won over by Stranger Things will both find enlightenment in Tom Doyle’s prismastic portrait of the elusive artist.” —The Times (UK)

“Praiseworthy.” —The Guardian

“Doyle tracks Bush’s creative impulse from writing poems as a child to spending hours creating music in her barn turned recording studio at East Wickham Farm and producing her own albums. Comprehensively charting her career, from The Kick Inside (1978) to Director’s Cut (2011), Doyle captures a more multidimensional view of the artist, allowing glimpses into her personal life, including the earth-shattering loss of her mother in 1992 and her friendship with David Bowie. Split into 50 brief chapters, Doyle’s portrait stitches together a comprehensive, revealing commentary on the notoriously media-shy artist and her complicated relationship to her craft, public persona, and audience ("If you make music and you don’t let people hear it, you could almost say it doesn’t exist," she once said). Bush’s new-generation fans and original devotees will devour this.” —Publishers Weekly

“For more than 40 years, Kate Bush has been a singular voice in popular music. In 50 mostly short chapters music writer Doyle offers a multifaceted portrait of the English singer. Catherine Bush was raised on a farm in what Doyle calls a pastoral oasis outside London, surrounded by music and poetry. Her father played classical compositions on the piano, and she listened to drinking songs and sea shanties as well as King Crimson and Pink Floyd. Using a quirky approach, Doyle weaves in the highlights of the singer’s career: her early days in the KT Bush Band, playing London pubs in the late 1970s; releasing her debut album, The Kick Inside, in 1978, which included the ghostly “Wuthering Heights” and “Running up That Hill,” her most popular song. Doyle concludes with her surprising pop-culture resurgence when “Running up That Hill” was featured on the sci-fi drama Stranger Things, introducing her to new generations of listeners. Bush has retained a veil of mystery, due mostly to her intense desire for privacy. Doyle does his best to gently lift that veil.” —Booklist

“Kate Bush has long combined her unique musicianship, deft wordplay, dancing, directing, and an eclectic flair for innovation with a certain reticence for self-promotion. Perhaps this is unsurprising for someone who was, to her own chagrin, topping the British pop charts as a shy teenager. A lifetime spent following her muse—having fought for and achieved artistic freedom—has meant that many have devotedly watched her career and hoped to achieve similar success following her red-shoed footsteps. Bush deserves a wise and sympathetic biographer, and acclaimed music journalist Doyle is both, offering a fascinating and probing work. Bush continues to produce innovative music and is having something of a moment; her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” was used in the series Stranger Things and became a 2022 hit, her first Top 10 song in the U.S. She was also appointed a Commander of the British Empire for her contributions to music and is a 2023 inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A timely and definitive biography of one of music’s most eclectic and influential artists.” —Library Journal

“Approaching its subject from inspired angles...probably the best [Kate] Bush book to date.” —Record Collector

“The best book ever written about Bush.” —Louder Sound

“Running Up That Hill offers a range of new ways to appreciate the single-minded inspiration that it springs from.” —Uncut

“Funny and illuminating. A refreshing take on one of our most complex, gifted artists.” —MOJO

“A very beautiful book.” —Chris Hawkins, BBC Radio 6

“Until the artist puts her own pen to paper […] this is the closest we’ve ever come to understanding the enigmatic, uncompromising Bush on page.” —James McMahon, Virgin Radio UK

From the Publisher