I had always considered Kate Bush truly original both as a performer and as a songwriter with an unusually fresh sense of harmony. If her new album next month is awaited with some excitement after a long fallow period, then in 1985 it was assumed that Hounds of Love would be something of a final fling at the conclusion of a waning career. I soon realised how wrong this assumption was when Kate sent me a cassette: it was zany, ambitious and yet utterly Kate Bush, but with gaps where I was to do her bidding. Having chatted at length, she sent me a long letter with the words of the song and precise instructions on how it should unfold... Structure was carefully delineated, verses and choruses written out fully and marked up in colour, and she talked of the sound quality in the most graphic terms.

When the conductor Richard Hickox rang me one day in 1984 to ask if I could help with a rather unusual job for which he and his choir had been engaged, I was i…

Although she had piano and violin lessons at school, Bush is essentially self-taught. I have always been fascinated by the difference of dynamics at work betwe…

Kate will never be an academic artist, drily applying intellectual music theory to the delight of a handful of peers, forging into new areas for the sake of 'p…

My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed …

Basically, I write from a two person standpoint. First, I let the song take hold and I put down the idea as a raw emotional statement. Then I let it breathe an…

When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.