kate bush 2014 tour

• Consequence

Kate Bush’s first concert in 35 years: setlist + photos

This evening, Kate Bush took the stage at London’s Eventim Apollo for her first live concert in 35 years. Dubbed “Before the Dawn”, the performance marked the beginning of Bush’s 22-date residency at the Apollo, which runs through early October.

According to the Guardian , the concert lasted nearly two hours and consisted of two separate suites. Bush began with some of her biggest hits — including “Hounds of Love”, “Running Up That Hill”, and “Joanni” — before transitioning into a full performance of “The Ninth Wave” from her 1985 LP, Hounds of Love . After a brief intermission, she performed “Sky of Honey”, the second half of her 2005 LP, Aerial , before ending with “Among Angels” and “Cloudbusting”.

As is to be expected, the visual component of the concert was apparently also quite impressive, involving costumes and elaborate backdrops.

According to Tim Jonze of the Guardian :

She created sea scenes through using bits of cloth, she was on video in a life jacket, there was one bit where a lounge was wheeled on stage, and you got to watch a conversation between her husband [Danny McIntosh] and son [Bertie] who are watching Liverpool v Chelsea on the TV. She disappears behind them as if she is haunting them. There’s a sea horse skeleton walking around the stage.” Advertisement

Meanwhile, The Mirror wrote:

Bush’s long time away from the stage has evidently left her determined to add something more than song performance to the live experience. A lighting rig amplified with the sounds of helicopter rotor blades soars over the audience belching more smoke, Bush’s drowned character appears in a drawing room theatrical scene as she and actors play out mimed exchanges harking back to her earliest dramatic roots. But at the heart of the artful contrivance and outlandish effects the assertion of the simple verities of love longing, domesticity and family life were given full reign. There was undoubtedly only one artist who would have had the bloody mindedness, nerve and beautifully skewed imagination to pull it off.”

Here are a few photos from the concert:

Kate Bush SPOILERS: pic.twitter.com/nyEkh4OkoU — DΔ/ID (@Teenldle) August 26, 2014

FIRST PICS: Kate Bush wows music lovers in AMAZING comeback gig http://t.co/1kG1FWoEVA pic.twitter.com/Ntr7uJMnu5 — Daily Star (@Daily_Star) August 26, 2014

Wow! This looks stunning! I'm so excited!!!! Counting the sleeps to my first show! #KateBush #beforethedawn ???? pic.twitter.com/vCPZpM1x0N — Louie Bromley (@louie1401) August 26, 2014

Reportedly, a number of big-name attendees were in the audience, including Björk, Lily Allen, and Madonna.

Setlist: Lily Hounds of Love Joanni Running Up That Hill Top of the City King of the Mountain

The Ninth Wave And Dream of Sheep Under Ice Waking the Witch Watching You Without Me Jig of Life Hello Earth The Morning Fog

A Sky of Honey Prelude Prologue An Architect’s Dream The Painter’s Link Sunset Aerial Tal Somewhere in Between Nocturn Aerial

Among Angels Cloudbusting

(Note: An earlier version of the setlist incorrectly listed several songs)

Bush returns to the stage tomorrow night. Here’s the full list of confirmed performances:

Kate Bush 2014 Tour Dates: 08/27 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 08/29 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 08/30 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/02 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/03 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/05 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/06 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/09 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/10 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/12 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/13 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/16 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/17 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/19 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/20 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/23 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/24 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/26 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/27 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 09/30 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo 10/01 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo

Personalized Stories

Around the web, latest stories.

Shrek 5 Gets July 2026 Release, with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz Returning

July 9, 2024

Water from Your Eyes Announce New Covers EP, Take on Chumbawamba's "The Good Ship Lifestyle": Stream

Eddie Vedder Describes Pearl Jam's Recent Health Issues as "Near-Death Experience"

Skillet and Seether to Embark on Fall 2024 US Co-Headlining Tour

Tim Heidecker Announces New Album Slipping Away, Unveils Video for “Well’s Running Dry”: Stream

Sunset Rubdown Announce First New Album in 15 Years, Reveal North American Tour Dates

NILE and Six Feet Under Announce 2025 US Co-Headlining Tour

MJ Lenderman Announces 2024 North American Tour Dates

Kate bush's first concert in 35 years: setlist + photos.

The story of Kate Bush's The Tour Of Life

What happened when Kate Bush finally decided to go on the road in 1979

Kate Bush has long cornered the market in reclusive, media-averse mystique, but it wasn’t always that way. On April 3, 1979, early evening news show Nationwide dedicated a show to the 20-year-old singer.

The event on which the 25-minute special was hung was the opening night of Bush’s first – and to date – only tour. “Most live artists make their mistakes either in private or in front of a very small audience,” intoned the moustachioed reporter. “Tonight, Kate Bush starts at the top, in front of several thousand. She can’t afford to fail.”

But then Bush was big news. Her star had been arcing across the firmament ever since she first appeared on Top Of The Pops just over a year earlier. That memorable performance, playing her first single, Wuthering Heights , had introduced her as an utterly new and fresh talent. There had been an instant clamour for her to play live, though it would be 14 months before she did.

Looking at Nationwide from the vantage point of 2014, it’s amazing how much unguarded access she granted the filmmakers over a six-month build-up. Footage of early production meetings where people are crammed onto chairs and sofas in a tiny dressing room is followed by a clip of a leotard-and-leggings-clad Bush being worked hard by choreographer Anthony Van Laast during three initial weeks of “gruelling exertion” just to prepare her for several weeks of even more intense choreography.

Remarkably, the camera was allowed into Wood Wharf Studio in Greenwich, south London, where the singer was drilling her eight-piece band through Kite and Wow. Here, it’s possible to get a real sense of the pub gigs she’d started out playing just a couple of years before (“I think the main reason they listen to me is because I’m paying their wages,” she says of the rest of the band, her girlish, sing-song voice cut with chewy south London vocals).

Towards the end of the film, after a brief post-gig chat with an exhausted but exhilarated Bush at the Liverpool Empire, the camera cuts back to an earlier interview. Sitting with her back to a studio mixing desk, she puts a ‘posh’ interview voice on as she answers a string of questions.

At one point, the off-screen interviewer asks, given that she’s achieved so much so swiftly, what has she got left to achieve?

Prog Newsletter

Sign up below to get the latest from Prog, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!

“Everything – I haven’t really begun yet,” she says, offering a glimpse of the maturity and self-awareness that have always driven her. “I’ve begun on one level, but that’s all gone now, so you begin again.”

She would “begin again” many times over during the ensuing years, but never would she do it onstage. She didn’t retire entirely from live performances – there would be the odd one-off here and there throughout the 80s – but never again would Kate Bush put herself through such an exhilarating, ground-breaking, draining experience as her 1979 tour.

Until now...

When Kate Bush announced earlier this year that she would be performing 15 dates at London’s Hammersmith Apollo throughout August and September (a figure since bumped up to 22 shows) under the banner Before The Dawn, the reaction was shock and awe. Shock that she was finally following up that original tour, a promise she’d made many times but all but her most optimistic fans had long given up hope on her ever keeping. And awe at the prospect of what a woman who broke so much ground could deliver with 35 years of artistic and technological advancements at her disposal.

But there was also a question of just how she could follow up the original spectacle, retrospectively dubbed The Tour Of Life. 35 years on, that extravaganza has grown to almost mythical status – a strange state of affairs given that it was witnessed by more than 100,000 people at the time.

Footage of an hour or so of the show is freely available to view on YouTube, highlighting a performance that bridged the worlds of music, dance, theatre and art. But there’s even more footage that has never been made public – including that of the magician Simon Drake, who played seven different characters during the show.

But in many other respects, the tour was utterly grounded in reality. The singer spent six months beforehand working herself to the bone as she attempted to forge a brand new model of what a live show could be, then another two months doing the same as she took it around Britain and Europe. And it was hit by tragedy when lighting engineer Bill Duffield was killed in an accident after a warm-up show, his death almost bringing the whole juggernaut to a halt before it had even started.

But all that was in the future when the idea for the tour was conceived. Ironically, Bush herself was the first to admit that there was no need for her to do it. “There’s no pressure,” she said in 1979. “But I do feel that I owe people a chance to see me in the flesh. It’s the only opportunity they have without media obstruction.”

“Kate was never at ease in the public eye,” says Brian Southall, who was Artist Development at Bush’s label, EMI, and had worked with the singer since she was signed. “Whether that was performing on Top Of The Pops or doing interviews. She was very reserved, very wary, I think by nature shy. So this spotlight on her was new.”

The singer was fully aware that anything she did would have to raise the bar on everything that came before. But even then, she was trying to manage expectations – not least her own. “If you look at it, it’s my reputation,” she said 1979. “And yes, I hope that it’ll be something special.”

EMI were unsure what the show would involve, so the costs were reportedly split between the label and Bush herself. In return, they got an artist who threw everything into her biggest endeavour so far.

“She was very determined about how her music was presented and performed – that was pretty obvious from her first album,” says Southall. “So no one saw any reason to step in and stop it. The rock’n’roll story was that you put singles out, you put albums out, you went on Top Of The Pops , you toured. But she wasn’t prepared to do the conventional thing.”

In fact no one realised just how unconventional it would be – with its choreography, dancers, props, multiple costume changes, poetry and in-house magician, there was no precedent with which it could be compared.

Rehearsals began in late 1978. Bush had already trained with experimental dancer/mime artist Lindsay Kemp, one-time mentor of David Bowie. But this tour would entail a new level of aptitude entirely, and the stamina to simultaneously dance and sing for more than two hours every night.

Dance teacher Anthony Van Laast was brought in from the London School Of Contemporary Dance to choreograph the shows and help hone Bush’s abilities. Van Laast brought with him two protégés, dancers Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst. Van Laast put the singer through the equivalent of boot camp at The Place studio in Euston, working with her for two hours each morning. Bush’s own input was crucial to the developing routines.

“Kate knew what she wanted, she had very specific ideas,” says Stewart Avon Arnold today. “What she wanted was in her head, and she wanted people around her who could help her put it into movement. She had so many hats on at that point – artistic, creative, musical.”

If the mornings were for the dance aspect of the slowly coalescing show, then the afternoons were for the music. As soon as she was done with Van Laast, Bush would make the eight mile journey to Wood Wharf Studio in Greenwich, south London, where she would meet up with a band that included Del Palmer, guitarists Brian Bath and Alan Murphy and her multi-instrumentalist brother, Paddy Bush. Also present was her other brother, John Carder Bush, who would perform poetry (and whose wife would provide vegetarian food for the tour). It was hard work for everyone involved and as the show neared, Bush would work 14 hours a day, six days a week.

“You have to make things more obvious so people can hear them,” she said of the live interpretation of her songs. “Maybe make them faster.”

While Bush was utterly in command, sometimes necessity was the mother of invention. With the singer literally throwing her whole body into her performance, holding a traditional mic would be difficult. So a mic that could be worn around the head was devised.

“I wanted to be able to move around, dance and use my hands,” she said. “The sound engineer came up with the idea of adapting a coat hanger. He opened it out and put it into the shape, so that was the prototype.”

In early spring 1979, the various creative wings finally came together at Shepperton Studios. There was the odd stumbling block. Del Palmer, Bush’s bassist and boyfriend, was less than impressed with some aspects of the choreography when he first saw it.

“In those days, dance wasn’t as popular as it is now, and I don’t think Del was clear on what we were doing,” says Stewart Avon Arnold. “There was a bit where we picked Kate up. I remember him going, ‘What they hell are they doing to Kate! They’re holding her between the legs!’”

In late March, a week before the tour was due to start, the whole production moved to the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, north London, for dress rehearsals. Like everything over the past six months, the whole endeavour was undertaken in secrecy.

“It’s like a present that shouldn’t be unwrapped until everyone is there,” reasoned the singer. “It’s like hearing about a film. Everybody tells you it’s amazing – and you could end up disappointed. You shouldn’t get people’s expectations up like that.”

By the time the tour was due to start on April 3 in Liverpool, everyone drilled to within an inch of their existence. If Bush was nervous, she wasn’t letting on.

“There was no suggestion that Kate was scared about going on the road,” says Brian Southall. “I certainly never got a sense that she was nervous about the financial aspect of it. If money was her concern, she’d have been out making albums every year rather than every 10 years. It’s not something that crossed her mind. The creativity was all-important.”

Still, to iron out any potential last-minute problems, a low-key warm up show had been arranged at the Poole Arts Centre in Dorset. It was there that tragedy struck.

Lighting director Bill Duffield was an integral part of the show. A 21-year-old boy wonder who had worked with Peter Gabriel and Steve Harley, he shared the same forward-thinking mindset as Bush herself.

The circumstances of what happened in Poole remain unclear. Some reports said that Duffield fell from the lighting rig while helping to clear the stage away following the show, others said that he fell 20 feet through a hole in the stage. Either way, Duffield sustained serious injuries that would result in his death a week later.

“People were concerned for his well-being,” says Brian Southall, who met up with the Bush entourage in Liverpool the following night. “They were wondering how he was and if and when he would recover. Sadly he didn’t. I think the real shock came when his death was announced.”

24 hours later, with the Nationwide TV cameras posted outside the Liverpool Empire, Kate Bush’s first tour got properly underway under a cloud – albeit one the public weren’t aware of.

If the build up had been intense, then the show itself was a magnificent release. Theatrically divided into three acts, the 24-song set featured tracks from her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart , plus two as-yet-unheard tracks, Egypt and Violin .

But that was where any similarity with a standard rock show began and ended. On an ever-shifting stage of which only a central ramp was the sole constant physical factor, Bush was a human conductor’s baton leading the entire show. As the scenery shifted through the opening Moving , Room For The Life and Them Heavy People , so did the costumes – and the atmosphere.

“I saw our show as not just people on stage playing the music, but as a complete experience,” she later explained. “A lot of people would say ‘Pooah!’ but for me that’s what it was. Like a play.”

Indeed it was – or perhaps several plays in one. On Egypt , she emerged dressed as a seductive Cleopatra . On S trange Phenomena , she was a magician in top hat and tails, dancing with a pair of spacemen. Former single Hammer Horror replicated the video, with a black-clad Bush dancing with a sinister, black-masked figure behind her, while Oh England My Lionheart cast her as a World War II pilot.

Like every actor, she was surrounded by a cast of strong supporting characters. As well as dancers Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst, several songs featured magician Simon Drake, who performed his signature ‘floating cane’ trick during L’Amour Looks Something Like You . And then there was her brother, John Carder Bush, who recited his own poetry before The Kick Inside , Symphony In Blue (fused with elements of experimental composer Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie 1 ) and the inevitable encore, Wuthering Heights .

But at the heart of it all was Bush, whirling and waving, reaching for the sky one moment, swooping to the floor the next. Occasionally she looked like she was concentrating on what was coming next. More often, she looked lost in the moment.

“When I perform, that’s just something that happens in me,” she later said. “It just takes over, you know. It’s like suddenly feeling that you’ve leapt into another structure, almost like another person, and you just do it.”

Brian Southall was in the audience at the Liverpool Empire. Despite the fact he worked for EMI, he had no idea what to expect. “You just sat in the audience and went, ‘Wow’. It was extraordinary. Bands didn’t take a dancer onstage, they didn’t take a magician onstage, even Queen at their most lavish or Floyd at their most extravangant. They might have used tricks and props in videos, but not other people onstage.

“That was the most interesting thing about it – her handing it over to other people, who became the focus of attention. That’s something that never bothered Kate – that ‘I will be onstage all the time and you will only see me.’ It was like a concept album, except it was a concept show.”

Two and a quarter hours later, this ‘concept show’ was done and the real world intruded once again. If there was any sense of celebration afterwards, then the main attraction was keeping it to herself. “I remember sitting in the bar after the show at Liverpool and Kate wasn’t there. She was with Del,” says Southall. “She wasn’t an extrovert offstage. There were two people. There was that person you saw onstage, in that extraordinary performance, and then offstage there was this fairly shy, reserved person.”

Her reluctance to indulge in the usual rock’n’roll behaviour was both characteristic and understandable. It was a draining performance, night after night as the tour continued around Britain and then into Europe. It was hard work for everyone involved.

“We went out, but not exceptionally,” says Stewart Avon Arnold. “We weren’t out raving until seven o’clock in the morning on heroin. There’s no way we could have done the show the next day.”

They occasionally found time to let their hair down. The Scottish Sunday Mail reported that certain members of the touring party indulged in a water-and-pillow fight at a hotel in Glasgow, causing a reported £1,000 damage. EMI allegedly agreed to foot the bill, though they stressed that the singer wasn’t present during this PG-rated display of on-the-road carnage.

After 10 shows in mainland Europe, the tour returned to London for three climactic dates at the Hammersmith Odeon between May 12 and 14. The second of these shows was arranged as tribute to the late Bill Duffield. Bush and her band were joined onstage by Peter Gabriel and Steve Harley, both of whom had worked with Duffield. Gabriel and Harley tackled various Bush songs ( Them Heavy People , a renamed The Woman With the Child In Her Eyes ) and played their own songs (Gabriel’s Here Comes The Flood and I Don’t Remember , Harley’s Best Years Of Our Lives and Come Up And See Me ), before everyone came onstage for a cover of The Beatles’ Let It Be .

“Kate asked us all to come and sing with Peter Gabriel and Steve Harley,” says Stewart Avon Arnold. “We were onstage, singing chorus with these two icons. And I’m not a singer. It was an emotional night.”

48 hours later, the tour was over. And so was Kate Bush’s career as a live artist – at least for another 35 years.

Kate Bush hasn’t truly explained why she never took to the road again after that very first tour. Various theories have been posited – a fear of flying, the psychic damage inflicted by the death of Bill Duffield, the sheer effort of will and vast reservoir of energy that it took to get what was in her head onto the stage. The latter seems most likely, though it could just as easily be a combination of all three. Or it could be none of them.

“I need five months to prepare a show and build up my strength for it, and in those five months I can’t be writing new songs and I can’t be promoting the album,” she once said, the closest approximation to a reason she has ever offered. “The problem is time… and money.”

Not that there wasn’t a call for it, especially overseas. America was one of the few countries where she didn’t sell records, and the idea was floated that she play a show at New York’s prestigious Radio City Music Hall so that her US label, Capitol, could bring all the important media and retail contacts to the show to see what the fuss was about. “She’s not a great flier,” says Southall. “And she wouldn’t do it.”

Even more tantalising was an offer to support Fleetwood Mac in the US in late ’79. A high-profile slot opening for one of the most successful bands in the world would was an open goal for most artists. But Bush wasn’t most artists.

“Like most support acts, she was going to get half an hour, no dancers and no magicians, so just going up there with four musicians and banging out a couple of hits,” says Brian Southall. “And she wasn’t prepared to do that.”

Not that she has ever ruled it out. In fact, in all of the increasingly infrequent interviews she has given since then, she’s been asked when she would next tour. The answer has always been a charmingly vague tease that, sure, it could happen if the circumstances were right. She once floated the idea that she would write a concept album specifically to base a stage show around (it never materialised), while at one point she was rumoured to be working with Muppet creator Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop on a new idea, even announcing in 1990 that she would be playing live the following year (that never materialised either).

But now, out of the blue, she’s finally delivered on that promise (though, tellingly, it’s for a residency rather than a tour). “She’s only playing one venue,” says Southall. “That means she can nest without the hassle of taking it all on the road for weeks on end.”

What exactly her belated live return holds in store for her fans isn’t clear. “I don’t know whether she’ll refer back to the original show in any way,” says Southall. “Will there be dancers, will there be magicians, will there be dancing elephants? I think she feels comfortable with more people onstage with her. I think the idea of her sitting down at a piano and playing an hour and a half of Kate Bush songs would terrify the life out of her. The idea of having people around who she is comfortable with and finds some support from, whether that’s Dave Gilmour turning up or whoever.”

The only thing that’s certain is that it won’t be a by-the-numbers live show.

“She’s an innovator,” says Stewart Avon Arnold. “She did things that had never been done before. She was the first one in this country to merge creative rock music with creative dance. She didn’t have a genre. She had a mentality.”

This article originally appeared in issue 46 of Prog Magazine, May 2014

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock , Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw , not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo , the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill . He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.

Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd's The Moon And The Melodies to be reissued on vinyl in August

Damian Wilson to celebrate birthday with rare London solo show

"I think that was his statement to me": Sammy Hagar took Alex Van Halen's recent sale of his musical equipment personally

Most Popular

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Live Review: Kate Bush's First Show in 35 Years

Before the dawn, let's go back 35 years. “The Kate Bush show that's been wowin' 'em is a tribute to… the old-style ideology that defines the relationship between artist and audience as purely that between worshipper and worshipped,” wrote NME 's Charles Shaar Murray of Bush's first tour in 1979, during the aftermath of England's punk heyday. He continued in this vein; he wasn't a fan. “The Kate Bush experience is an exercise in the time-honored art of battering an audience to death and making them like it.”

Popular memory now records Kate Bush's Tour of Life as a high watermark for the live rock experience, an extravaganza of song, dance, and mime featuring headset microphone innovation (bow down, Madonna) and a stylized womb-egg (take that, Gaga). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the whirling dervish behind it was considered an anomaly during punk, her work being about imagination and detail rather than crude, simple style. By 1985's Hounds of Love , though, she was a globally successful icon who had mastered a wide-eyed brand of art-pop while turning songs about nuclear war from the point of a foetus ("Breathing"), dead soldiers from the perspective of a bereaved mother ("Army Dreamers"), and the restless search for knowledge by feckless humans ("Sat in Your Lap") into UK Top 20 hits.

There are other bits of Murray's review that won't find favor today, but his points about idolatry and excess ring true on the opening night of Bush's 22-date Before the Dawn run at London's Hammersmith Apollo. Fans scream at the stage before the show starts, and when the lights go up, they whoop like a soccer crowd. When Bush appears, there is barely any oxygen left. This is a Second Coming, all right.

But this gig is about more than a night out: It's about what one woman's return means, what it represents. Born within a month of Madonna and Michael Jackson, Bush remains a rare female embodiment of complete creative control, something she established when the music business was a proper business. She was the first woman to write and perform a British #1 ("Wuthering Heights") and have a British #1 album ( Never for Ever ), and she's also produced her own work since 1982's The Dreaming . She still defines her career, resolutely, on her own terms, but this doesn't mean it's not right to gawp at her uncritically—although tonight's gig is a great one, it isn't perfect.

Before the Dawn begins with "Lily", from 1993's The Red Shoes . Everything else aside, Bush's presence alone is surreally moving. Here is a 56-year-old woman who looks like a 56-year-old woman, in a long black coat, black hair trailing down her back, singing to us. She doesn't look like an idol at all. There'll be too much discussion about her beauty, of course—Robert Plant, an artist similarly sexual in his younger years, and on his own path, never gets that now—but it is wonderful that she looks as she does on the stage. This isn't kowtowing to convention, after all. This is mum doing whatever the hell she wants.

Nevertheless, the start of the show underwhelms. The first seven songs of the set are delivered simply and plainly, Bush's band lining up conventionally behind her. A mixture of hits ("Hounds of Love", "Running Up That Hill") and album tracks ("Joanni", "Never Be Mine") shimmer out one by one, lit diamonds in a stage set sparkling in basic configurations. The biggest shock is her 16-year-old son, Bertie, being pointed out in the backing singers. The band, and Bush's voice, also wobble at points; her singing is definitely not note-perfect tonight, despite what others have said. Nevertheless, it remains a lovely, special thing, like a whisper up the spine, especially over the high notes in "Top of the City". It's just enough to carry this opening section, which lacks theatrical weight.

Then comes the “wind whistling” during "King of the Mountain", and—bang—everything goes crazy. The band's drummer is suddenly stage-front and spotlit, swinging a rope. Smoke and yellow paper fly out from guns on the stage. The paper features the poem on which The Ninth Wave—the suite of songs on Hounds of Love 's second side—was based. You realize the first seven songs were a MacGuffin, an elaborate ruse. The effect is jolting and astonishing.

From The Ninth Wave section of last night's show. Photo by Ken McKay. Copyright Noble and Brite.

What follows is the greatest part of the show, as the story of a woman lost at sea is brought to dramatic life. Projections of waves toss and surge on a screen, as do heavier ones, on the stage floor, wrought in fabric. The set is like a whale's mouth, huge teeth bending in, with a back projection of our girl in her lifejacket. Dancers in strange steampunk costumes menace the stage; at the end of the set, they carry Bush away in tragic and terrifying fashion.

Then there's a man phoning the coastguard, and Bush's husband and son in their living room, arguing about dad burning the dinner. This set-piece begins embarrassingly, before taking another dramatic turn: Bush turning up behind the door, unseen, in black, like a ghost. What would happen if she was lost, we all wonder, as her stunning songs, performed stunningly, ram this message home. It's an incredible half hour.

The second half of the show is given to a lesser-known suite: A Sky of Honey, from 2005's Aerial , about the progress of a perfect summer's day. The stage concept is similarly ambitious: A wooden boy mannequin, manipulated by a man dressed in black, is trapped in a strange place, before something happens to him—there is the suggestion of blood, pain, and dramatic light. There is a narrative about mothers and sons here, which packs a proper punch, but Bertie Bush is also here again playing a painter. His presence, especially when he's singing, feels rather heavy-handed, and as the other songs aren't particularly strong, this part lags. Maybe too much son, mum. It's OK though. Kate Bush is only human.

And her humanity is what we should all love her for, anyway—for helping to turn a spirit of restless invention and emotion into a music industry touchstone, for translating high art, high thinking, and her huge heart into catchy, hooky modern pop music. The two-song encore that sends us on our way shows us that knack in excelsis: "Among Angels", from 2011's 50 Words for Snow , played by Bush, perfectly, alone on the piano, then "Cloudbusting", her 1985 hit about Wilhelm Reich's rain-making machine, with her band. Tonight wasn't an exercise in the time-honored art of battering an audience to death and making them like it, after all. It was about a raft of new ideas from someone who we didn't expect to see onstage again. Some were good, and some great, long to linger in the mind. And if the screaming stops long enough, we may even appreciate them, too.

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions ), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from Pitchfork. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Kate Bush concerts: tears and awe, but no phones

It was the culmination of 35 years of pent-up hopes, wishes and frustration. But for the thousands of fans who poured out of Kate Bush's first live show for more than three decades, the consensus was that this performance had been worth the wait.

The first date of the Before the Dawn tour, which was shrouded in mystery even as fans filed into Hammersmith Apollo on Tuesday night, proved to be as theatrical an affair as many had suspected.

Returning to the venue where she last sang on stage – in 1979, aged 20 – Bush, now 56, opened the first of 22 dates barefoot and dressed in black, leading a procession of backing singers on stage singing Lily from her 1993 album The Red Shoes.

Shortly after the show began, the writer Caitlin Moran tweeted: "Kate bush, in black, barefoot, hounds of love, running up that hill, king of the mountain. JESUS."

Bush continued the set with the songs Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill before the performance moved into the lavish theatrical affair that had been rumoured, based around The Ninth Wave – a seven-track concept piece from the Hounds of Love album – about a woman drifting alone in the sea.

Songs were interspersed with theatrical pieces based on the tale of being lost at sea, with the set including a rescue helicopter flying overhead, a full portable living room and sea monsters.

Giving her reaction after the show, fan Iwona Boesche said: "I've been a fan of Kate Bush from the beginning. It was the best concert or show that I've ever seen and that I will ever see.

"She has just as good a voice as ever, maybe even deeper than before – it's very warm, velvety and expressive as always.

"She's so dynamic and she didn't hold back at all. I cried and everybody around me cried. It was amazing in every respect and she sang all the songs I was hoping [for]."

She added: "When she was doing The Ninth Wave, you felt the cold of the water, you could see it, you could hear it.

"The sea monsters were really very scary. But mostly what she managed to convey was the coldness, the darkness, the solitude of being alone at sea.

"And another thing about the concert was that I was sitting next to people I've never met before but we all held hands throughout, she just created this warm, intimate atmosphere."

Bush's desire for her 22-night residency to be without the sea of phones, cameras and tablets to ensure she could have "contact" with her audience was also strictly adhered to, with a pre-show announcement requesting everyone turn off their mobiles and security guards patrolling throughout the performance.

Fans were said to be respectful of Bush's wishes, with Ben McMullen saying: "I didn't see a single phone, everyone was so respectful of it. It felt like it would be like taking your phone out in church."

Bush's 16-year-old son, Bertie, was also a constant presence during the show, singing in the backing choir always on stage, taking part in several of the acting scenes and even singing his own solo.

Bush paid tribute to him early on in the performance and, writing in the programme, said: "Without my son Bertie this would never have happened.

"Without his encouragement and enthusiasm, particularly in the early stages when I was very frightened to commit to pushing the 'go' button, I'm sure I would have backed out. Throughout he has been my chief consultant, my editor, my confidant."

Rob Hunter said this intimate family connection on the stage had elevated Bush's performance further.

He said: "I found it very touching that she had her son on stage from the point of view that this woman in the eyes of the world has been so inaccessible.

"But having her child on the stage beside her and the way they interacted, she suddenly seemed exposed and very accessible and it felt like a very warm-hearted moment.

"And that connection came across on the stage. And she seemed spellbound by how people responded to her and how many people love her."

Fans from as far away as the US and Australia flocked to attend the opening concert.

Chad Siwek, who flew from Los Angeles, described standing at the venue on Tuesday night as "like a dream. Kate Bush just means everything to me, she cares more about her work and pleasing her fans than the commercial value or just making money off it."

He paused as his voice broke with emotion, before adding: "I'm sorry, I'm getting choked up but it's just my whole life I've been a huge Kate Bush fan."

Daren Taylor, drummer for band The Airborne Toxic Event, had taken a similar journey to make it to the opening night.

"I've flown in from Los Angeles today just to see Kate Bush," he said.

"It's not easy to express what Kate Bush means to me. Her music touches me, and I'm sure everybody here, in very unique ways. I don't think any two people will tell you the same thing that her music means to them."

For Patrick Bastow, the show was "unlike anything else I have seen. It was a mixture of a West End show and a rock concert.

"The attention to detail that she put in was phenomenal – the lighting, the sound is like nothing I've seen.

"I thought she looked a little nervous to begin with but by the end she looked like she was loving it. The audience didn't really know how to take it. She sang beautifully, she moved gracefully."

He added: "All the theatrics of The Ninth Wave part of the show really brought the songs to life. And then just seeing her on the piano, which I had been hoping for, that was a wonderful moment.

"Interestingly, she did do some new things and she did re-interpret the songs and put new music into the show. Maybe that's why she didn't want photographs and camera phones because she's done something so different.

"I didn't see one person lift a phone. They say 35 years ago that Kate Bush moved rock concerts on, well she's done it again I think."

Guillaume Chatelain, who travelled from Lille, France, for the concert, said this was a moment he had been waiting for since he first heard Babooshka on the radio when he was 14.

"Kate was my first love," he said, as he left the venue clutching several posters and a T-shirt. "It was like a dream, like I fell down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. My world will never be the same."

• Pop and rock

More on this story

Kate Bush publishes open letter thanking fans for 'surreal journey'

Kate Bush to release DVD of her London comeback shows

Kate Bush back on stage after 35 years – in pictures

Kate Bush returns: the view from the front seats

Kate Bush has eight entries in this week's UK Official Albums Chart

Kate Bush: 10 of the best

Kate Bush: Before the Dawn – reviews roundup

Most viewed.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Music Review

Vision Undimmed by Decades

By Ben Ratliff

• Aug. 26, 2014

LONDON — Kate Bush, through the decades, has become known as a farseeing artist, carrying out ambition at her own speed. Surely, that perception has been encouraged by all the images in her songs of places where the view is unobstructed. Shores, mountains, skies.

Those images came through, in word and light and theater, during her concert here on Tuesday night at the Eventim Apollo; they gathered force until nearly the end, in the final bars of the lengthy song cycle “Sky of Honey.” Barefoot, dressed in a dark caftan, Ms. Bush slowly put on bird wings, and then suddenly spread her arms into a giant span, when she was yanked up by a pulley into sudden darkness.

The audience went adult-crazy at that moment of apotheosis, about which more later. But there were also songs about the opposite condition: being unable to communicate, being mortally trapped. It’s the natural flip side. One doesn’t make its case without the other.

Ms. Bush has been in show business for 40 years, and most of them without shows. She was 16 when EMI signed her, in 1974, and is 56 now. She never truly stopped making records, though there were some long gaps. But before Tuesday — the first of 22 performances of an extraordinary spectacle called “Before the Dawn” — a 1979 six-week European tour was the last time she played a full concert.

Perfectionists can develop fears of delivering incompletely, and fear has been cited, in various anecdotes, as one of the reasons for her absence. (Parenthood, too, which also involves long-distance vision.) The heavy-stock program printed for the show details an 18-month collaborative gestation with musicians, actors, light and set and production designers, the novelist David Mitchell, 3-D animators, an illusionist and puppeteers. In it she heavily credits her son, Bertie McIntosh, now 16 and a singer in the show, as well as its creative adviser.

“Without his encouragement and enthusiasm,” she wrote, “particularly in the early stages when I was very frightened to commit to pushing the ‘go’ button, I’m sure I would have backed out.” Part of a concertgoer’s interest before the curtain rose on Tuesday was not in how we would react to the likes of her, but how she would react to the likes of us. Would she be spooked? Is it all too much?

Ms. Bush’s music starts with illustrations of motion: In her skyscraper voice, which has inevitably lost some top end, and her precise phrasing, which has grown more relaxed; in the sequential movement and radical key changes of some of her songs; and also in her body language, which in her old videos gave the impression of liberation and play. It also starts with a basic force of wonder and the desire to connect patterns in nature, so that the distance closes between people and animals and weather patterns. She forces herself into naïve places, not to know less, but to know more.

The concert, with a seven-piece band and five backup singers, traced a slow climb to the final quick ascension. She started with a set of stand-alone songs, some of them mid-'80s hits — “Hounds of Love” and “Running Up That Hill” — but also tracks from later records: “Lily” and “Joanni.” She stayed away from her earliest work, with the greatest vocal gymnastics, and at first moved warily.

Then she performed entire halves of records — the conceptual, interwoven-story parts. First was Side 2 of the album “Hounds of Love”: the seven songs collectively titled “The Ninth Wave,” with a central character trapped under ice, and possibly returning to her family as a ghost. It’s like a soundtrack to a disjointed film, and here the theater took over; for a stretch, the vocalists sang against surround-sound backing tracks.

There were actors with fish-skeleton heads, a rescue crew in life jackets. A film of an astronomer with a telescope calling the Coast Guard to report a sinking ship, with dialogue written by Mr. Mitchell. Another film of Ms. Bush singing face up in the cold water. An apparatus with flashing lights and sound — a rescue helicopter — descended from the ceiling. And in the second section of the story, Ms. Bush as ghost suddenly appeared in a living room set aslant, as if sinking into the floor, to visit her partner and son.

The subject of “Sky of Honey,” the second CD of her 2005 double-disc album, “Aerial,” is bird flight and song and sun — beauty, basically — and onstage, a 19th-century painter figure, played by young Mr. McIntosh, pantomimed putting it all on canvas, while a young boy, in the form of a wooden artist’s model turned into a puppet, acted out his fascination with birds. (At points Ms. Bush sang, and laughed, to mimic birdsong.) The songs use repetition, much more than her earlier work, and slow, hypnotizing grooves; the drummer Omar Hakim found the center of them, and Ms. Bush finally began to move to them like a dancer.

“Before the Dawn” is light and film and movement and theater, but also a rock show, dense, cathartic and physical. The audience, still as stones during the music, stood to cheer whenever tiny between-song intervals allowed. After the full-band final encore, “Cloudbusting,” it would not leave until the tech crew arrived to dismantle the stage. “Thank you so much for such a wonderful, warm and positive response,” Ms. Bush said, with remarkable composure. She’s going to do this 21 more times?

Arts and Culture Across Europe

Whether you’re looking for frothy musicals or fiercely charged political writing, here are some of the shows vying for the attention  of visitors and residents seeking out London theater this summer.

A production of “Richard III” at the Shakespeare’s Globe theater faced criticism because a nondisabled actor plays the scheming king. But disputes like these miss the point , our critic writes.

The violent history of the Dutch colony that is now New York is not well known in the Netherlands. The curators of a new exhibition at the Amsterdam Museum  want to change that.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is a treasure trove of art and design. Here’s one besotted visitor’s plan for taking it all in .

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s co-artistic directors have put together a challenging debut season . But many visitors come to Stratford-upon-Avon seeking something more traditional.

Kate Bush explains why she didn’t tour for 35 years

The singer's 'Before The Dawn' London residency in 2014 marked her first full live shows since 1979's 'The Tour Of Life'.

Kate Bush has explained why she has performed live so infrequently during her career.

The singer’s 22-date ‘Before The Dawn’ residency at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in 2014 were her first full live shows in 35 years. She previously performed 28 shows across Europe on 1979’s ‘The Tour Of Life’.

Asked about her lengthy hiatus from the stage, Bush told The Independent : “It wasn’t designed that way, because I really enjoyed the first set of shows we did [in 1979]. The plan at the time was that I was going to do another two albums’ worth of fresh material, and then do another show.”

She continued: “But of course, by the time I got to the end of what was ‘The Dreaming’ album, it had gone off on a slight tilt, because I’d become so much more involved in the recording process.

“And also, every time I finish an album, I go into visual projects, and even if they’re quite short pieces, they’re still a huge amount of work to put together. So I started to veer away from the thing of being a live performing artist, to one of being a recording artist with attached visuals.”

Bush’s eagerly-anticipated ‘Before The Dawn’ live album was released on Friday (November 25). She has recently spoken about the possibility of releasing a live DVD of her 2014 London residency  too.

Recommended

This week, she also paid tribute to ‘the genius and beauty’ of her ‘hero’ David Bowie .

“One of the most powerful things that I heard recently was ‘Blackstar‘ by Bowie,” she said. “I thought it was beautiful. Very moving of course, but I think one of the best things he’s ever done.”

Speaking of their relationship and the tribute she wrote following his death, Bush continued: “Well I was asked whether I would write something, and because he meant such a lot to me, I really felt moved to do so. He was one of my great heroes when I was growing up. He was such a brave artist, so unusual, and I loved his music. I met him a few times; he was really charming and playful. But I just sort of admired what he achieved creatively.”

When asked about both artists’ history of challenging gender norms, Bush replied: “I think when I’m working creatively, I don’t really think of myself of writing as a woman. I just think of writing as me, as a person, if that makes sense.”

READ MORE: Kate Bush’s Before The Dawn Shows Begin: The Story Of The First Night

• Related Topics

You May Also Like

Infinity song: “we’ve grown up dreaming really big. and now we can make it happen”, these are the video games your fave bands play on tour, kasabian – ‘happenings’ review: concise, colourful affability, give it some welly: meet one of uk indie’s wittiest new songwriters, ‘maxxxine’ review: mia goth gives one of horror’s great performances, more stories, taylor swift shares acoustic version of ‘fortnight’ with post malone, here’s a look at netflix’s upcoming korean reality show, ‘the influencer’, ‘the devil wears prada’ sequel reportedly in the works with meryl streep and emily blunt, fyre festival founder billy mcfarland is connecting donald trump with rappers for his presidential campaign, watch eminem take a chainsaw to his alter ego slim shady in grisly video for new single ‘tobey’, tom cruise and doug liman are still discussing an ‘edge of tomorrow’ sequel.

Before the Dawn (lost unreleased footage of Kate Bush concert; 2014)

Cover for the live CD of "Before the Dawn".

Status: Lost

Before the Dawn was a 2014 concert residency performed at London's Hammersmith Apollo by British musician Kate Bush. Some of the performances were recorded with the intention of producing a concert film and a live album. While the live album was released in 2016, Bush decided not to release the concert film , meaning that none of the recorded video footage of the shows can currently be viewed.

• 1 The Concert
• 2 The Recordings
• 3 Viewable Show Assets
• 5 References

The Concert

Before the Dawn was Kate Bush's first live concert in 35 years, taking the form of a multimedia theatrical experience which utilised dance, puppets, 3D animations, and magic tricks. The show proved immensely successful: tickets sold out in under 15 minutes and reviews were universally positive. [1]

The Recordings

People attending the shows on September 16th and 17th were told that the venue's seating arrangements would be adjusted on those days so that the venue could "film the show for a DVD release", [2] confirming that recordings of the show were planned to be made and sold.

The live CD was eventually released on November 25th, 2016 [3] , though there was no concert film to accompany it. In an interview with NME, Kate Bush confirmed that the show "was filmed" and "has been archived" but that no DVD would be released of it, claiming that "the CD is, in a way, much more representative of being at the shows than a DVD". When asked if she might ever release the DVD, she responded "There might be something at some point, but there’s certainly no plans at the moment. I want to very much move on and do something new". [4]

It is unclear from Kate Bush's comments whether any of the concert film has been edited or if all that exists is the raw footage.

Viewable Show Assets

A video for the song "And Dream of Sheep (Live)" was released on November 21st, 2016 to advertise the CD. It uses footage that was filmed for the concert and got "projected onto a large oval screen which hung above the stage" during the performance. [5] It contains none of the recorded footage from the concerts though.

• ↑ Kate Bush fansite which collates a lot of information about the concert and its reception. Retrieved 27 May '20
• ↑ Article from Smooth Radio confirming the announcement of a live DVD. Retrieved 27 May '20
• ↑ Amazon.com page for the Before the Dawn CD. Retrieved 27 May '20
• ↑ NME interview with Kate Bush about the lack of DVD release. Retrieved 27 May '20
• ↑ The video for "And Dream of Sheep (Live)" featuring material used in the concert. Retrieved 27 May '20
• Lost recordings of real incidents
• Completely lost media

We love Kate Bush

'I think Kate Bush epitomises everything you could ever want to be as a woman; a literary poetic lyricist, multi instrumentalist, a superlative soprano, a worldly romantic, a wild interpretive dancer, a rubber band girl, a breathtaking beauty (she reminds me of Vivien Leigh) - who wore a leotard like no other and a specialist in karate... The woman is a goddess.

So obsessed am I with la Bush that my party piece for many years was to don a catsuit, long black cape and wig and perform my own interpretation of her dances for anyone who'd watch, sadly at Glastonbury a couple years back my cape and wig went walkabout with Suggs. I think he was doing everyone a favour. If you see him tell him I want my wig back.

'L'amour looks something like you' (from the kick inside) is my absolute favourite Kate Bush song - who else could incorporate the lyrics "the feeling of sticky love inside" I'm counting sleeps to her gigs in September. I will be so overexcited to finally see her live that I may need to be darted or restrained.'

' Kate Bush made me want to be a pop star. My bedroom wall was covered in her posters and I spent hours practising her interpretive dance moves in my leotard. I loved her originality, her bonkers-ness, the sense she was utterly in control. I like her Greta Garbo attitude to fame. The less you see, the more you want. But you know when she steps back on stage it will be electric.'

Louise Wener, writer and former Sleeper frontwoman

Alice Levine , Radio 1 DJ

' Kate Bush is God. She's a fairy tale, an enigma and hallelujah she's returning. Without her it's hard to see how Bjork would be Bjork, how PJ Harvey would be PJ, how Florence would be the Flo we know. She inspired new possibilities vocally, artistically and she was brave enough to disappear and now to come back into the limelight. What a woman.'

Deborah Coughlin, founder of Gaggle

kate bush , www.redonline.co.uk, Kate Bush Style

'Her theatricality and imagination has always been inspiring to me’

Paloma Faith, singer

Music Reviews

14 break-up songs to listen to on repeat

Kirsty Gallacher's podcast will have you hooked

10 dreamy songs for when the sun is shining

Why you should listen to A Legendary Christmas

All you need to know about the Spice Girls tour

Harper Beckham gets Spice Girl-inspired haircut

Meghan And Harry Are Off To See Hamilton!

Ellie Goulding just announced she's engaged!

Michael Bublé announced that his wife is pregnant again in the sweetest way

Christina Aguilera did a makeup-free photo shoot and she looks stunning

A Spice Girls superhero movie celebrating girl power is on the cards

• Moscow concerts Moscow concerts Moscow concerts See all Moscow concerts ( Change location ) Today · Next 7 days · Next 30 days
• Most popular artists worldwide
• Trending artists worldwide

• Tourbox for artists

Search for events or artists

• Sign up Log in

• Get the app
• Moscow concerts
• Change location
• Popular Artists
• Live streams
• Deutsch Português
• Popular artists

Kate Bush  

• No longer touring
• 49 past concerts

Join Songkick to track your favorite artists and never miss them live.

Past concerts

Eventim Apollo

View all past concerts

Live reviews

On Wednesday 3rd September a 5 month (and 35 Year) wait was over as I got to see one of my all time favourite musicians, Kate Bush. When 7.45pm came, so did Kate, leading a procession of her backing singers, including son Bertie, and launching straight into Lily, from The Red Shoes album. This, and nearly all subsequent songs got a standing ovation. Next up was a storming version of Hounds of Love with was received with rapturous applause. Kate's voice has matured over the years and now has a rich, mellow timbre, probably another reason why she wasn't going to perform any material from her first four 'high pitched vocal' albums. The other numbers in this first set were Joanni, Top of the City, Running up that Hill and King of the Mountain. It was now that problems set in, the next part of the gig was going to be 'The Ninth Wave' which makes up the second side of the Hounds of Love album and is a narrative piece written to be played as a whole but it just started with a film of an Astronomer calling the coast guard to report a missing ship when it stopped and we were told there were technical difficulties and we would have first a 10 minute, then a thirty minute break. This soon passed and we were back to the show starting with a canon fire of confetti out into the audience of tissue paper with an excerpt of Tennyson's poem, 'The coming of Arthur' on it.

Kate's image is on a screen at the back of the stage floating in the pitch black sea wearing a life jacket and off stage she starts singing 'And Dream of Sheep' , lip-synching perfectly and then it was through the rest of the songs that make up 'The Ninth Wave' with the stage full of waves made of silk, Ships Buoys, Fish People and even a representation of a rescue helicopter flying over the audience, its search beam flicking over the sea of people.

Then it was our second and scheduled interval, a chance to catch your breathe and retrieve pieces of confetti from the stage and aisles. The second half was the performance of A Sky of Honey, from the Aerial Album, with son Bertie taking the part of the Painter and directing what happened on stage. And again it was a visual feast with an artistes wooden model controlled by a puppeteer, church bells, Blackbird's song and when we got to Aerial, a crashing crescendo with two huge trees that fell from the roof, one which impaled Kate' grand piano and then Kate herself turning into a Blackbird and briefly taking off from the stage before the lights went dark. This resulted in a huge ovation from the audience, the noise was deafening ! The expected encore was listened to in total silence as Kate played Among Angels (From 50 Words for Snow) solo at the piano before leading audience in an ecstatic rendition of Cloudbusting ! And then it was over, a magical,emotional,crazy,dreamlike, vision of this women's work. Worth waiting 35 years for, you bet !

Report as inappropriate

The last time Kate Bush went on tour was the year I was born so it seemed surreal that in 2014 she decied to hold a residency at the Hammersmith Apollo. First things first - her voice has held up amazingly well, I was stunned by how strong her vocals were on songs like 'Hounds of Love'. Unlike other artists this was not a Greatest Hits but a strong focus on her 1985 album 'Hounds of Love' and the 20 years later 2005 'Aerial' album.

Kate took an entire section from each album and followed through with a visual and musical experience.

The 'Ninth Wave' portion of the show had far less singing but more dramatics. I commend her use of staging, actors and video but there were a couple of parts that were cringe-inducing like the dramatic scene between her son and his father and it lasted probably about 10 minutes too long. Hearing the second part of the Aerial LP live was absoultey amazing in particular 'Sunset' and teh Spanish guitars through to the gorgeous 'Nocturn'. I loved the use of the live puppeteer operating the wooden puppet which helped to create quiet an unsettling and eerie image that ended with the entire on stage band, singers and actors wearing very creepy bird masks. The show lasted just under 3 hours with a 20 minute interval and she ended with a magnificient 'Cloudbusting' which felt like the perfect end to a show many never thought would ever happen.

After almost 37 years of being a huge fan I finally got to see Kate Bush sing her songs live and what an evening. No songs from the first four albums but some truly amazing performances and the most emotional concert I've ever been to. The first few songs were Kate singing with the band as a straight rock show, looking relaxed and as if she was enjoying it as much as the audience. They then moved on to an extended visual show around the Ninth Wave - the second half of the Hounds of Love album. By the time that had finished we had had an hour and a half that in itself would have constituted a great show but that was only the first half. The second half was based around A Sky of Honey with bits from 50 Words for Snow and a solo piece from her son Bertie - great voice if a bit more on the theatrical side. The whole thing was again based around a visual performance that enhanced the experience. For the encore Kate sang alone at the piano and then the finale was back to the Hounds of Love album with Cloudbustin. All in all a wonderful evening and we are back again tomorrow. Hopefully this will stir her interest in live performances and we'll see further shows - and new albums!

If anyone tells you they know what a Kate Bush live show is like, frankly, they’re either one of the luckiest people in the world, or they’re an outright liar. The singer, inarguably one of the most influential in the last thirty, forty years of modern music, has been strictly a studio based artist for so long that live shows have not been performed with any regularity since her one and only ever tour, way back in 1979. It’s no wonder then that news of her return to the stage was greeted among her fanbase as if it was the second coming of some soprano voiced Messiah. Reportedly, she retired from the stage in the late Seventies due to wanting more control over the final product - something only a retreat to the studio offered - and as such, one can expect attention to detail to be of utmost importance when she makes her live comeback. From the footage available of those long mythologized shows of yester year, with Bush crawling around the stage as if climbing a horizontal mountain, her otherworldly voice as spellbinding as her piercing stare, anyone lucky enough to grab a ticket for the forthcoming nights is in for an unparalleled treat.

So. I thought the staging and her voice were amazing. I thought all the song choices were perfect and didn't 'miss' the real oldies.. (in fact there were quite a lot of nods to the classics that haven't been picked up on) Real thought in that set and lighting design visually and aurally perfect..

I know she's not a lithe 19 year old (who is?) but I wished she had stood still a bit more. Especially in the first half when she just waddled about like a drunk at a bus stop. And I wish that both the concept pieces had been played as continuous works rather than breaking it up to give room for applause.. It lacked urgency - especially the 9th Wave. But some real WOW moments, some seriously swoonsome moments, and the ending of Ariel crystallised in about one minute why we love her . Really felt in the presence of something special.

Posters (3)

Touring history:

Last event:

Popularity ranking:

• Alex Aiono (3671)
• Kate Bush (3672)
• Average White Band (3673)

Concerts played in 2024:

Most played:

• London (29)
• Manchester (2)
• Birmingham (2)
• Frankfurt (1)
• Mannheim (1)

Distance travelled:

• Most popular charts
• Campaigns for promoters
• API information
• Brand guidelines
• Community guidelines
• Terms of use
• Privacy policy
• Cookies settings
• Cookies policy

Get your tour dates seen everywhere.

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

Kate Bush Tour 2014: Kate Bush Is Running Up That Hill For Fiirst Concerts Since 1979; Musical Icon Opened Doors for Miley Cyrus, Tori Amos; Kate Bush Takes to Twitter To Announce Return (VIDEO)

Kate Bush Tour 2014: Kate Bush took to twitter to announce she will be performing live for the first time since 1979. Kate Bush, the singer of Babushka, is one of the most influential musical artists who put art back in art-rock. The Spice Girls, Madonna, Kylie, Cyndi Lauper, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Miley Cyrus all walked in Kate Bush's Red Shoes.

Kate Bush influenced a generation of musicians, male and female. While it's obvious to point to Tori Amos as one of her Kate Bush's most fervent students, modern pop stars from Lady Gaga to Katy Perry have benefited from the Kate Bush's stage craft. Miley Cyrus' MTV VMA's performance 2013 owes a major debt to seminal performances by Kate Bush.

The "Running Up That Hill" singer, Kate Bush, took to Twitter to announce she will play a 15-date residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in London from 26 August.

Kate Bush's announcement that she is returning to the stage for her first tour in 35 years is a welcome surprise to music fans everywhere. Kate Bush only announced 15 London dates. Kate Bush will play her first concerts after 35 years at London's Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith.

According to the Daily Star, Kate Bush tour 2014 kicks off in August. The show is called "Before The Dawn." Tickets go on sale starting next week, the Daily Star reported.

The 55-year-old British singer's last album '50Words For Snow' was released in 2011.

Kate Bush Music Twitter tweeted: "Kate Bush will play a series of UK shows in August and September 2014."

Kate Bush put the announcement on her Facebook page, "I am delighted to announce that we will be performing some live shows this coming August and September. I hope you will be able to join us and I look forward to seeing you there. We'll keep you updated with further news on the web site. Meanwhile, all details of concert dates and tickets are in the note below. Very best wishes, Kate"

Since the end of her 1979 tour, Bush performed at a some charity shows and made cameo appearances at concerts by Peter Gabriel and David Gilmour. Kate Bush did a duet with Rowan Atkinson on a song called "Do Bears S**t In the Woods?" at a charity show. All Kate Bush's performances happened in London.

Kate has teased with the idea of returning to the concert stage. The last time Kate Bush Tour rumors flooded the airwaves was after the release of her seventh album, "The Red Shoes." Kate Bush has released seven albums.

In 2011, Kate Bush told the British rock magazine Mojo "It was enormously enjoyable. But physically it was absolutely exhausting."

Elton John and Stephen Fry appeared on Bush's last album. Kate sang on several songs on Peter Gabriel's 1980 album called "Peter Gabriel," including the massive hit "Games Without Frontiers." Peter and Kate collaborated again six years later on "Don't Give Up" after Dolly Parton turned him down.

Kate Bush's 2005 album "Aerial" was her first release for 12 years.

Latest Photo Gallery

Most popular, did leeteuk come out as bi super junior leader remark becomes hot topic.

(G)I-DLE Yuqi's Hair in 'Klaxon' MV Raises Brows: 'Please Don't Piss Me Off'

Red Velvet Irene Sparks Internet Frenzy with Her Unexpected Reaction to Smoking Staff

K-Netz Rave Over Red Velvet Irene's Visuals Among 4th-Gen Idols: 'She's Not Losing...'

THIS SM 'Surprise Rookie' Who Appeared in aespa's Concert Becomes Hot Topic: 'We Need Her Debut Now'

Fashion & style, red velvet 'cosmic' fashion: get your 'summer horror' vibe on with these 5 festive outfits.

TWICE Nayeon’s Stage Outfits Cause Debate Among ONCEs — Which 'Fit Is the Best?

G-Dragon Reveals BIGBANG's Current Situation: ‘No, We Don’t Talk About...'

The Boyz Juyeon's Latest Airport Outfit Has K-Netz In Hysterics: 'I'm Laughing So Hard!'

TWICE Momo Contemplates On Near-Decade Career, Gratitude To ONCEs, Members, More In Photoshoot

Follow Kate Bush on Ents24 to receive updates on any new tour dates the moment they are announced...

• Be the first to know about new tour dates
• Alerts are free and always will be
• We hate spam and will never share your email address with anyone else
• More than a million fans already rely on Ents24 to follow their favourite artists and venues

Past Events

Here are the most recent UK tour dates we had listed for Kate Bush. Were you there?

October 2014

• Wed 1 Oct London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush

September 2014

• Tue 30 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Sat 27 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Fri 26 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Wed 24 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Tue 23 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Sat 20 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Fri 19 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Wed 17 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Tue 16 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Sat 13 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Fri 12 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Wed 10 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Tue 9 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Sat 6 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Fri 5 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Wed 3 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Tue 2 Sep London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush

August 2014

• Sat 30 Aug London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Fri 29 Aug London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Wed 27 Aug London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush
• Tue 26 Aug London, Eventim Apollo Kate Bush

Chappell Roan’s Tour Wardrobe Is a Case Study in How to Build a Pop Star

Stylist Genesis Webb on crafting the singer's signature aesthetic

It’s been an unusually rich summer for pop music , but the 26-year-old pop singer has still managed to break through, thanks to what feels like a genuinely new blend of powerhouse vocals, queer pride , and high-camp style. Her origin story feels tailor-made for a moment when audiences prize authenticity but are also looking for escapism: Talented Midwestern girl flees sheltered Christian upbringing for L.A., writes a bunch of sad songs for a label that doesn’t quite know what to do with her, has a queer awakening, and is reborn on a new label as a glitter-spangled, face-painted phoenix, rising from the ashes with an album of bangers about sex, love, and dancing.

Like her pop foremothers, she couldn’t do it without a finely honed look, which means she couldn’t do it without her stylist, the also-26-year-old Genesis Webb . “She brings the element of glam drag, and then I bring an element of more punk club kid,” Webb recently explained to Bazaar .

Webb met Roan at a V magazine shoot, where the two bonded over being from the Midwest and growing up far outside the industry. “Coming from more lower-class backgrounds, it just kind of brings this sense of familiarity in a space like that. And she’s also such a girl’s girl, and I was one of the only girls on the set,” the stylist said. But what really stood out for Webb was Roan’s clarity of vision. “I’d worked with a couple people prior who were way bigger than her and who didn’t really have a lot of opinions. But she had this really specific thing that she wanted to do.”

That specific thing pays tribute to drag queens and pageant queens, horror movies and historic pop divas. It wasn’t exactly Webb’s personal aesthetic, which skews to the darker side: She’s more likely to wear black shredded garments and bleach her eyebrows. The first thing you notice about her is the big rosary tattoo inked up her neck, which she says she got to ensure she would never “work a normal job.” But she vibed with Roan’s appreciation for what she calls “Midwest trashy glam,” and Roan admired the racks of vintage Webb brought to the shoot.

Now, if you happen to be a scholar of Weird Pop Girl Aesthetics, you might recall that Lady Gaga met her own frequent fashion director and co-world-builder, designer Nicola Formichetti, on a V magazine shoot back in 2009. This might not be a coincidence worth mentioning, except that when Webb met Roan, the stylist was there as Formichetti’s assistant . Chappell Roan is clearly working in Gaga’s wake; she has the theatrics, the giant voice, the queer fan base that she’s here to serve. But she also warbles like Kate Bush, flouts convention like Madonna, and dances like nobody’s watching like Robyn.

As Roan’s stylist, Webb’s fashion influences are just as informed and thoughtful. She pulls from twisted old films like John Waters’s 1972 filth extravaganza Pink Flamingos (tagline: “An exercise in poor taste”) and the 2003 club-kid-murderer drama Party Monster . At one point, she references an Elton John look from 1980. She describes herself as “anti-fashion,” but worships at the antlered altar of Alexander McQueen.

“I watch his shows to this day, and I’ve seen them a million times, but I literally shed a tear because of how beautiful it is,” Webb says. “I love Rick Owens and Yohji Yamamoto, that very dark and long silhouette. Personally, I like a lot of black, but then there are designers who have recently taken over my brain, like Viktor & Rolf or Thom Browne. I love that Chappell World is opening me up to, like, ‘Oh, we can do a little color, we can add more, take more risks.’ And I’ve just gained a huge appreciation for the campy theatrical aspect not being so dark, like McQueen.”

Her breadth of pop culture references, she says, came from Tumblr, her main escape when she was coming of age in Oklahoma City and feeling alienated from everyone around her. “Anything weird, I just wanted to suck it up because I was in a space that did not allow a lot of that. Tumblr was so valuable. It introduced me to things like Party Monster or Kids , Harmony Korine.” Kids today, Webb points out, are absorbing pop culture at a much more frenetic pace than she was a decade ago. “It’s like you can barely keep up with what’s being put out, so why would these kids try to find [things] from the past? I like bringing the references for the kids [in Chappell’s outfits], so they can be like, ‘Who the fuck is this? Who’s Divine?’ ”

But if the Chappell Roan concert experience is for the kids, it’s also for, well, everybody else. “She cultivates such a huge queer space—obviously, having drag queens open—and it’s just such an amazing and safe experience,” Webb says. ‘And then I think just adding on the ’90s, ’80s, also queer references to bring it all together just works really well, and gives it the ability to jump across generations.” On TikTok, fans have rallied around a video of a white-haired older man belting out Roan’s hit “Pink Pony Club” from the balcony at a show. Webb says he’s the uncle of Roan’s drummer Lucy, but the point remains: Roan has created a space for the 26-year-olds and the Pink Pony Pawpaws.

Webb is aware that the fans are reading into every look, searching for hidden meanings. “It’s crazy,” she says. “We have to do more. People really think we’re doing the Muppets. I love it. It’s funny.” So is it true she’s been basing Roan’s looks on iconic Miss Piggy moments , as the meme suggests? She laughs: “On the record? It’s just divine intervention.”

Below, Webb breaks down four recent Chappell Roan looks.

Governors Ball

New york city, june 9, 2024.

“That one was super collaborative. I sent Chappell a reference of a Playboy Bunny coming out of a cake, and she was like, ‘Let’s do an apple. We should have it be a bong, a smoking apple.’ The Statue of Liberty came naturally. It’s so camp and obviously so New York, and Elton John’s done it. And I had saved that Monique Fei dress for a long time, because of the butt opening.

“She’s so game. She wants to do everything. I even made attachments for the belt, because I thought she might not want her butt out. And she was like, ‘Can we take these off?’ ”

Kentuckiana Pride

Louisville, june 15, 2024.

“Our makeup artist, Andrew , he’s from Kentucky and he’s a club kid; his looks are insane. So for him to do the Divine look in Kentucky, it all made sense. And then at the bridge of ‘Casual,’ these fireworks just went off . It was for a baseball game or something. It was just serendipity. But like a lot of the trajectory we’ve had, it felt like it was meant to be happening. It really feels magical, to be honest.”

Boston Calling

Boston, may 26, 2024.

“The band is in old vintage outfits that I got from the liquidation sale of a costume house in L.A. And then for Chappell, the reference was this old cowgirl leotard that I’ve had saved since even before working with her. Zana Bayne made it; she’s just such an amazing artist. Lacey Dalimonte made the custom coat, with trinkets on the collar that are customized for her. It even has a little Divine trinket.”

Manchester, Tennessee, June 16, 2024

“This really amazing latex company, Aimless Gallery , reached out to me and wanted to do full looks for everyone, for nothing, just because of their belief in us. I had wanted to do the Party Monster nurse look for Halloween for so long. It was just a really sick queer reference that I feel like people who are younger haven’t seen. I went to Bonnaroo in 2014, when I was 16, and I was showing everyone that movie. So to be back in the same place, seeing those looks, it brought it full circle. I was crying the whole time.”

Izzy Grinspan is Bazaar's digital director. Previously, she was the deputy style editor at New York magazine's The Cut, and before that, she ran the gone-but-not-forgotten shopping website Racked.

Art, Books & Music

Bazaar Book Chat June Pick: ”The Safekeep”

It’s the Summer of Pop Girl Reconciliation

11 Queer Artists on Their Music That Moves Them

Curator Mashonda Tifrere Is Here to Build a Legacy

Jennie Gets Sporty in New Adidas Sneaker Campaign

The Queer Awakening of “Bridgerton”

Nikole Hannah-Jones’s New Black Literary Salon

The 16 Best Queer Books for Pride Month and Beyond

Victoria Monét Has Come to Save Summer

Penn Badgley Stars in Ariana Grande’s New Video

Raye’s “Genesis” Is More Than a Song

• Statistics Stats
• You are here:

Kate Bush Concert Setlists & Tour Dates

Kate bush at eventim apollo, london, england.

• Hounds of Love
• Top of the City
• Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)
• King of the Mountain
• Astronomer's Call
• And Dream of Sheep
• Waking the Witch
• Watching Them Without Her
• Watching You Without Me
• Edit setlist songs
• Edit venue & date
• Edit set times
• Add to festival
• Report setlist
• The Astronomer's Tale (video)

More from this Artist

• Artist Statistics
• Add setlist

Most played songs

• Them Heavy People ( 35 )
• Wuthering Heights ( 33 )
• Moving ( 32 )
• The Man With the Child in His Eyes ( 32 )
• Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake ( 31 )

More Kate Bush statistics

Jennie Abrahamson Jeanne Added Aesma Daeva American Arson American Idol Ensemble Tori Amos Anathema Angra Annie Cheevers Tina Arena Asava Avec Sans Avec Sans Baby Bushka Bat for Lashes Pat Benatar The Best of Britain Big Something Diane Birch Jade Bird Birdy Bishmanrock Andrew Bishop Aloe Blacc black midi BLAIR Blind Channel BLØF Marcela Bovio Tim Bowness / Peter Chilvers Scott Bradlee & Postmodern Jukebox British Electric Foundation Claudia Brücken Danica Bryant BY-PASS Emily Callacher Bill Callahan Candy Says Danny Cavanagh Kate Ceberano The Chainsmokers Dolph Chaney Olivia Chaney Charlotte Church's Late Night Pop Dungeon The Children's Zoo China Drum Chromatics The Church Cleef Cloudbusting

Showing only 50 most recent

View covered by statistics

Artists covered

The Beatles Peter Gabriel Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel Roy Harper Mildred J. Hill & Patty Hill Elton John Gladys Knight & the Pips The Miracles

View artists covered statistics

Gigs seen live by

508 people have seen Kate Bush live.

whichway2 Declan SteveTheBoater michaelp42 malsplifing Carson123 JJ100 MutinyInHeaven ajweiner3 Goonerdavem paulcarless radiojazzz MitchellSt Zamal chibb73 esteveyb Supersix4 alex_macrow DebB hboss jsubsinsky OheMCee intothefireuk spg1 iainbart the00 bedsitter BobbytheCat AllanH brainysod grope4lunar HoundPig _BCP_ Lolharrison kevoftheyear DarrelB musakrandom WillemVK krisanthonyxxx xxxkrisanthony br1anh jaggedlittlekid grota Mr-Kamikaze elsbetw alexfrzn woolrich429 holloway_s Tether18 Ola65

Kate Bush on the web

Music links.

• Kate Bush Lyrics (de)
• Official Homepage

Related News

Kate Bush Played Her Last Show with 26 Songs On This Day in 2014

This Day in 1979 Kate Bush Begins First + Only Tour with 22 Songs

Tour update, marquee memories: pond.

• Jul 8, 2024
• Jul 7, 2024
• Jul 6, 2024
• Jul 5, 2024
• Jul 4, 2024
• Jul 3, 2024
• FAQ | Help | About
• Terms of Service
• Ad Choices | Privacy Policy
• Feature requests
• Songtexte.com