JONI MITCHELL & KATE BUSH

[tannis]

FROM JONI MITCHELL
Song to a Seagull: "I Came To The City" & "Out of the City and Down to the Seaside"
TO KATE BUSH
Aerial: "A Sea of Honey" & "A Sky of Honey"

Kate Bush Joanni
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Ay-DU86nQ

"This is KaTe Bush speaking. On the whole, I listen to very few lady singers. I identify myself much more with male singers, especially male songwriters. But the people I really admire: Billie Holiday, she's in a right of her own. David Bowie, I think he's an incredible songwriter. Bryan Ferry I think is an imnportant writer. the other people I do listen a lot ot are Steely Dan. And I think the main common denominator for the people that I like are that they are songwriters. They all seem to be either male groups or male single personalities who write their songs and sing them. And I think this is why I tend not to listen to females as much becasue the few that do get this together I don't find particularly interesting. Joni Mitchell stands on her own. I think Joan Armatrading too - she's special. But on the whole, I think I just identify more with male songwriters."
1978, "Self Portrait", The Kick Inside promo LP/cassette Interview
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/im78_tki.html

"I really enjoy some female writers, like Joni Mitchell, but it's just that I feel closer to male writers. Maybe I want to be a man," she laughs.
Melody Maker, "The Kick Outside", Harry Doherty, June 3, 1978
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i78_mm2.html

Joni Mitchell - Marcie - Concert Unknown (AKA Germany 1968)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMdKH0MVMLI

Kate Bush - Mrs. Bartolozzi
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZnA4jHuyzs

I: And I was reading an interesting review of your new album in the Sunday Times yesterday which kinda compared you to Joni Mitchell. You know, sorta Britain's answer to Joni Mitchell. [Kate laughs] Have you ever heard that comparison? Or how do you react when you hear that sort of comment?
K: Well actually I find that very flattering cause I think Joni Mitchell's really great. So yeah!
1982 BBC Radio 1 interview, by David Jensen (?)
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/ir82_bb1.html

I must admit, while of course I love the mature Kate Bush, what I do miss is that very young and enchanting, almost ecstatic sort of voice on the early albums. You don't often sing in that high register these days but rather an octave or so lower.
Kate: "Well, I think it's li e periods you go through. Albums are really very auto-biographical, and at that time I was writing and experimenting to try to push my voice higher and into different areas, and I'm not really sure why, but I think at that time I felt my voice was strongest at that pitch. But I find that interesting 'cause when she was really young, Joni Mitchell used to sing very high, though now she's very low and jazzy."
Musician (unedited), Peter Swales, Fall 1985
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i85_swa.html

Joni Mitchell-The Fiddle and the Drum
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6z79WMOPtk

KATE BUSH ARMY DREAMERS studio - lipsynch
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfhYoaaYEbU

On her fifth album, the musical enigma that is Kate Bush continues to travel a unique path between the fragile piano sensitivity of Joni Mitchell and the exploratory Fairlight-driven drama of Peter Gabriel.
Record January/February 1986, Ira Robbins
gaffa.org/reaching/rev_hol.html

In 1981, with the confidence of a Joni Mitchell, she decided to take complete charge of her destiny, and, already responsible for every aspect of her life-style, took equal control of her music in producing The Dreaming, a ground-breaking and adventurous album in the style of the third Peter Gabriel.
Guitares et Claviers, "Englishwoman Is Crossing The Continents", Yves Bigot, February 1986
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i86_gec.html

Joni Mitchell-For Free (BBC)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmzN1p5q2sY

Kate Bush - The Saxophone Song
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3QlYNHC82c

Has your voice lost any of its range?
"I can get up there if I need to, but I just prefer working in this range now. I think a lot of females go through that. If you listen to Joni Mitchell, her early stuff is very high, and with each album she gets lower and lower. It's just a progressive thing for people."
Much Music, "The Story So Far", Laurie Brown, May 30, 1987
gaffa.mit.edu/gaffa.org/reaching/iv87_mm2.html

Ask almost any current female singer-songwriter where she got her musical inspiration, and the name Kate Bush is mentioned almost as often as that of Joni Mitchell. Canadians have been particularly smitten: Jane Siberry, Sarah McLachlan, Rebecca Jenkins, Loreena McKennitt, Shirley Eckhard and more --all have fallen under the spell of this four-octave dream weaver, who was still a schoolgirl when she conquered Europe's pop charts in 1978 with her debut single, Wuthering Heights.
"Oh, I feel honoured," Bush says, politely side stepping the comparisons. "How lovely to be compared up there to Joni Mitchell."
Toronto Star, "Singer's singer Kate Bush makes A Rare Appearance", Peter Howell, December 14, 1993
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i93_tst.html

Joni Mitchell Live At The Carnegie Hall 1972 blue
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb8beTBeU1E

Kate Bush - And Dream Of Sheep
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHIWyj2Bsa8

"Kate is a complete one-off," Gilmour says. "I can't think of anyone like her. Joni Mitchell was also a one-off, an original, but Kate is nothing like that. We need more people like her, especially as so much music amounts to little more than formulaic copying of genres. Those who have followed in her shadow are but pale imitations."
The New Statesman, "The Wow Factor", Jason Cowley, February 7, 2005
gaffa.org/reaching/rev_aer_UK1.html

You get dreamy pieces, like Pi and Mrs. Bartolozzi (sounding like something Joni Mitchell might have written for her Blue album) and pulsing songs like the marvelous How To Be Invisible and Joanni. Bertie, a love song to her son (who also makes a guest appearance later in the second CD), evokes music of the Renaissance.
Guitar Noise, "Kate Bush – Aerial", David Hodge
www.guitarnoise.com/review/kate-bush/

Joni Mitchell - Little Green Lyrics
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBT4MYbX4io

Bertie - Kate Bush
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTifdOtpcs

The second disc of Aerial is a cycle titled A Sky of Honey, a dappled portrait of a summer day from dawn to nightfall to dawn again, with particular lingering on birds and sea. With arrangements by the late Michael Kamen at Abbey Road Studios, it shifts from Joni Mitchell-ish jazz to hard rock to Gypsy Kings to histrionic chorales in a genre known only as Kate Bush, and back. But ultimately it does, as she sings, "become panoramic," immersing the listener in colour and more than earning its grandeur.
The Globe and Mail, "This woman's new work, old style", Carl Wilson, November 4, 2005
gaffa.org/reaching/rev_aer_ca.html

While it's debatable, as acolytes claim, that Kate Bush's impact on Western music and female artists in particular is as profound as Joni Mitchell's, it can't be denied that Bush has attracted more than a fair share of serious attention from new artists in the years since her so-called self-exile began. This includes R&B singer Maxwell, whose reworking of Bush's childbearing chronicle "This Woman's Work" was a hit in 2001, as well as male-dominated British rock acts Placebo and The Futureheads, who scored a hit last year with a version of her "Hounds of Love."
The Toronto Star, "Lost and Found", Greg Quill, November 5, 2005
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/iv05ts01.html

"Coyote" Joni Mitchell
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSZcK48cTiU

Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love - TOTP
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-0KdYr1ys4

Aerial is a mysterious, meditative work reminiscent of Joni Mitchell in her Hissing of Summer Lawns/Hejira period, in both its music (the upright bass and piano jazz of "Sunset") and its themes. At that point in her career, Mitchell began writing about the inner lives of older women who were becoming invisible in a culture of glittery youth. Bush takes up the cause with a smirk on "How To Be Invisible." With its spidery guitar lines and witty take on the witches’ incantation from Macbeth ("Eye of Braille/Hem of anorak/Stem of wallflower/Hair of doormat"), the song celebrates the coiled power of ignored and underestimated women.
Portland Phoenix, "Womanly work: The return of the inimitable Kate Bush", Joyce Millman, November 23, 2005
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/revaerUS3.html

Gilmour later told an interviewer: "I didn't realise how commercially successful she might be. I thought of her more really, I suppose, in the terms of someone like Joni Mitchell - the level of a lady who's very talented, but would appeal to a more esoteric audience. But she had different ideas.''
The Independent, Kate Bush: The Sequel, September 2, 2005
gaffa.org/reaching/rev_aer_UK1.html

Joni Mitchell-The Beat Of Black Wings
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hN7hYVlJ1Y

Kate Bush - An Architect's Dream
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTQuXr0pDuw

Another British sensation, Kate Bush, was certainly an influential and intelligent figure, but was also a typical compromise of the 1970s, only half-heartedly experimental, continuously flirting with the pop charts. She helped redefine the singer-songwriter in the era of the new wave, but then the new wave had already made that figure obsolete. Her main contributions were in the vocal department: a four octave range that mauled folk, opera and world-music, often in a shrill register halfway between a childish scream and a soprano passage. Her arrangements were not revolutionary at all, borrowing from Joni Mitchell as well as Peter Gabriel, although they introduced electronics into a new rock format and crafted claustrophobic atmospheres. Kick Inside (1978), a terrifying personal diary, and The Dreaming (1982), the ultimate testament of her eccentric, lush, futuristic sound, represent the two poles of her work.
A History of Rock Music: 1951-2000, Piero Scaruffi, (2003, p.151).

[Barry SR Gowing]

As I get older I find myself listening to women more than men. St Vincent (AKA Annie Clark) is an artist I find particularly fascinating these days (and for at least the last 6 years). Mind you, St Vincent has mentioned that her favourite artists are Kate Bush and David Bowie, so it's probably little wonder that I like her!

Joni Mitchell is a marvel, of course. I suspect that when Kate first talked about other female songwriters back in 1978 that she didn't have so many to choose from. I would have thought that Laura Nyro might have appealed to her back then, but perhaps Kate wasn't aware of her (or possibly just wasn't into her).

I "liked" Kate from the very start, but there was some point some years ago when she went from being liked to "Wow, unbelievable!" A moment of revelation, if you will. I think I had a similar revelation about Steely Dan a little later.