As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical sense — these have been gloomy weeks in the primary Berkmann residence. Even the mother of my children managed to acquire a last-minute freebie, even though she only really likes the first two or three albums and Bush didn’t play those. Admittedly, I would have had more chance of getting tickets if I had applied for some, but no sensible English male turns down the chance to sulk like the teenager he most certainly was when he stuck the poster that came free with Lionheart on his bedroom wall. No doubt everyone under 40 thinks we have all gone mad. If so, it’s a madness that was seeded a long time ago.
What we are giving thanks for is Bush’s survival, and our own. Like one or two of her contemporaries, she has found a second creative wind in middle age, having kept quiet for a few years when it must have seemed that the ideas had run out. From the outside it looks like a career that has been artfully and skilfully managed, although I’m sure it was much more haphazard than that. But long experience, and a belief in her own instincts that never seems to have wavered, have brought her to a point at which it would have been a considerable surprise if her shows had not been as excellent as they turned out to be. We trust her to get it right.
There is luck involved, though: so much luck. I was thinking this recently when the last of the Ramones’ original line-up keeled over. Tommy Ramone, first drummer and later the band’s producer, died of cancer in July at 65.
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