KATE BUSH and ALFRED HITCHCOCKPerhaps some strange transformation takes place over when she is asleep!
KB: "Yes, I have very strange dreams you know. Over the years I've collected the most incredible star cast of them. Very famous people come and visit me."
Curiouser and curiouser...
KB: "Peter O'Toole came round to dinner last week and my mum met him and thought he was wonderful. Keith Moon often comes round for tea as well. I have a lot of vivid dreams, most of which I can't mention. The images I get from them sometimes bleed into my songs."
Most of Kate's heroes like Oscar Wilde, The Pythons, Roxy Music, Billie Holiday and Hitchcock have all visited her, but her mum didn't like Hitchcock - maybe she was just frightened by him?
KB: "Hitchcock was definitely a genius. His dreams must have been extraordinary. He must have plucked his ideas out of the sky, or had a private line to Mars."
Melody Maker, "Fairy Tales & Nursery Rhymes", August 24, 1985gaffa.org/reaching/i85_mm2.html“Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.”
~ Alfred HitchcockZwort: Going back to the obscurity of some of your songs that are personal to you, and how you feel people pick up on this-- can you give some detailed examples?
Katie: Right, back to your question. I think it works on the basis of: if it moves you, it could move others. Hitchcock was talking about his films and saying the best subjects for his films that were frightening were things that frightened him--like Vertigo. Apparently he was terrified of heights. It seems logical, doesn't it?
Zwort: Yeah, sure. Hitchcock was brilliant.
Katie: Yes, I agree, a genius...
Kate's KBC article, Issue 21 (Winter 1987), "Cousin Kate" by Zwort Finklegaffa.org/garden/kate23.htmlHitchcock once said that “the way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them”; his films can, therefore, be regarded as projections, conscious or otherwise, of his own neuroses onto the silver screen. Some critics have suggested that Hitchcock had a severely pathological psychology. PADDY: One more question.
FAN: [
Inaudible. Something like do you have a favorite Kate Bush song?]
PADDY: For me. Yes, yes. [
inaudible], singing on the end of it, but it's Get Out Of My House, really, was my favorite track. I think if Alfred Hitchcock ever made hit singles [Laughter] [
inaudible] And I love it, I love the energy that it deals with. It's fantastic.
Convention 1985, Romford, Englandgaffa.org/dreaming/con_85.htmlMother Stands For Comfort:
“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” Norman Bates tells Marion Crane in Psycho.Hounds of Love is the third single, and trying to follow the Cloudbusting video was extremely difficult. I still wanted to follow the approach of making "a short film", and this time we wanted to suggest a piece of "Hitchcock": a short thriller.
Paddy inspired me into a 39 Steps theme, and for the two-three weeks over Christmas my life became this third video. It was particularly hard organising meetings over Christmas; everyone was busy partying. At one meeting someone turned up in fancy dress. The advantage was that I got a brilliant crew who were free to do the shoot because it was Christmas-time, generally a very quiet period. If you get to see the video, let us know if you spot Hitchcock's appearance?
Kate's KBC article, Issue 19 (Spring 1987), Even More Hounds Of Lovegaffa.org/garden/kate21.html"There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating."
~ Alfred HitchcockROCKET'S TAIL (For Rocket) "Rocket's my cat, but it was written for the Bulgarian girls. Ridiculous collection of images, [Just read the lyrics and you'll see immediately that Kate is deliberately deflecting the request for an explanation. This is not a "ridiculous collection of images"! -- IED] nothing to do with Rocket, really. He just started it all off.
"At the time the only song I could think of that mentioned rockets was Rocket Man [which, by the time she was working with the Bulgarians, Kate had already agreed to record a cover version of for the forthcoming Elton John/Bernie Taupin tribute album], but since then there have been about three of them. I feel a bit like the Python sketch with that guy making eight-millimetre films, saying, 'Hitchcock had his Rear Window out while mine was still at the chemists'."
NME, "In the Realm of the Senses " October 1989gaffa.org/reaching/i89_nme2.html“Give them pleasure the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.”
~ Alfred HitchcockExperiment IV is notable for featuring Nigel Kennedy on violin, who at one point replicates the screeching violins from Bernard Herrmann's famous scoring of the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film
Psycho (wiki).
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Choice Cuts: Alfred Hitchcock's PsychoWOMAN'S VOICE:
No! I tell you no! I won't have you bringing strange young girls in here for supper--by candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap erotic fashion of young men with cheap erotic minds!
NORMAN:
Mother, please!
WOMAN:
And then what, after supper? Music? Whispers?
NORMAN:
Mother, she's just a stranger! She's hungry and it's raining out.
WOMAN:
(
mocking) 'Mother, she's just a stranger.' As if men don't desire strangers. Ah! I refuse to speak of disgusting things, because they disgust me! Do you understand, boy? Go on! Go tell her she'll not be appeasing her ugly appetite with my food, or my son! Or do I have to tell her 'cause you don't have the guts, boy? Huh, boy? You have the guts, boy?
NORMAN:
Shut up! Shut up!
GET OUT OF MY HOUSEMOTHER:
No! I will not hide in the fruit cellar. Ha! You think I'm fruity, huh? I'm staying right here. This is my room and no one will drag me out of it--least of all my big, bold son!
NORMAN:
Now come now, Mother! He came after the girl and now someone will come after him! Mother, please! It's just for a few days. Just for a few days so they won't find you.
MOTHER:
(
mocking) 'Just for a few days!' --In that dark, dank fruit cellar! No! You hid me there once, boy, and you won't do it again. Not ever again! Now get out! (
pause, then quietly, ominously) I told you to get out, boy.
THE WHOLE STORYDR. RICHMOND:
No. I got
the whole story--but not from Norman. I got it--from his mother. Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with. And now, the other half has taken over--probably for all time.
DR. RICHMOND:
Like I said--the mother... (
Richmond gives the following account to the whole group in the style of a lecture.) Now to understand it the way I understood it, hearing it from the mother--that is, from the mother half of Norman's mind--you have to go back ten years, to the time when Norman murdered his mother and her lover.
Now he was already dangerously disturbed--had been ever since his father died. His mother was a clinging, demanding woman, and for years the two of them lived as if there was no one else in the world. Then she met a man--and it seemed to Norman that she threw him over for this man. Now that pushed him over the line and he killed them both.
Matricide is probably the most unbearable crime of all--most unbearable to the son who commits it. So he had to erase the crime, at least in his own mind. He stole her corpse. A weighted coffin was buried. He hid the body in the fruit cellar. Even treated it to keep it as well as it would keep. And that still wasn't enough. She was there, but she was a corpse.
So he began to think and speak for her--give her half his life, so to speak. At times, he could be both personalities, carry on conversations. At other times, the mother half took over completely. Now he was never all Norman, but he was often only Mother.
And because he was so pathologically jealous of her, he assumed that she was as jealous of him. Therefore, if he felt a strong attraction to any other woman, the mother side of him would go wild. (
to Lila:) When he met your sister, he was touched by her, aroused by her. He wanted her. That set off the jealous mother, and Mother killed the girl.
Now after the murder, Norman returned as if from a deep sleep. And like a dutiful son, covered up all traces of the crime he was convinced his mother had committed.
SAM:
Why was he--dressed like that?
DISTRICT ATTORNEY:
He's a transvestite.
DR. RICHMOND:
Ah--not exactly. A man who dresses in women's clothing in order to achieve a sexual change or satisfaction is a transvestite. But in Norman's case, he was simply doing everything possible to keep alive the illusion of his mother being alive. And when reality came too close--when danger or desire threatened that illusion--he dressed up, even to a cheap wig he bought. He'd walk about the house, sit in her chair, speak in her voice. He tried to be his mother! And, uh--now, he is.
Now that's what I meant when I said I got the story from the mother. You see, when the mind houses two personalities, there's always a conflict, a battle. In Norman's case, the battle is over--and the dominant personality has won.
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho - screenplaywww.paradiselost.org/psycho.html
Inaudible. Something like do you have a favorite Kate Bush song?]