When you’re a massive celebrity in your own right, vouching for an unknown artist once can be a tremendous career boost. Vouching for an artist multiple times, even when the studio is trying to get you to admit to “selling them a dud,” can be the difference between that rising musician actually cutting a record or fading into obscurity with the rest of the unsigned, undiscovered artists.
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David Gilmour took up the cause of the latter for a 1980s art-pop icon who, fortunately for the future singer, was the younger sister of a friend of Gilmour’s friend, Ricky Hopper. The Pink Floyd guitarist pushed for this artist’s debut album over the course of multiple years, and in the end, his hard work paid off.
Kate Bush Was Discovered in Her Living Room in Kent
By the late 1970s, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour was supplementing his career as a producer and talent scout for EMI Records. It was through this work that Gilmour crossed paths with the younger sister of a friend of a friend. “My friend came to me and said, ‘Listen, my friend has a little sister who’s really groovy. Have a listen,’” Gilmour recalled in a 1987 interview. “I said, ‘All right, I’ll have a listen.’”
Gilmour visited his friend’s friend’s house in Kent and listened to the young woman at the piano sing an original song, “The Man With the Child in His Eyes.” Kate Bush fans will likely recognize this track title from her debut album, The Kick Inside, and indeed, she was the young woman sitting at the piano in Kent that fateful day in the late 1970s. Gilmour admired Bush’s songwriting and knew that she had an innate talent that EMI Records might appreciate. So, he began working with Bush in a producer-artist capacity.
First, Gilmour selected three songs out of the 40 to 50 originals Bush had written and paid for the studio time to cut three professional singles. Gilmour then took the masters to EMI and asked them if they were interested in putting out Bush’s songs. “They listened to it, and they said, ‘Yes, we’ll have it, please.’”
Simple enough, it would seem, but the events that unfolded over the next two years were a testament to how fickle and stubborn the music industry can really be.
David Gilmour Fought With EMI Over This Future 1980s Art-Pop Icon
When David Gilmour first presented Kate Bush to EMI Records, he already had another producer in mind who could help her cut the record. For reasons unknown to Gilmour, EMI Records opted to go a different route with a producer of their own choosing. This relationship proved to be unproductive, as did the next EMI pick and the next. Eventually, someone from the company approached Gilmour. “He said to me, ‘Come on, Dave. It’s alright. We won’t say anything. But admit it. You sold us a dud here. You sort of conned us. We don’t care, you know. It’s normal business. But admit it.”
“I said, ‘Give me a f***ing break,’” Gilmour continued. The Pink Floyd guitarist pushed back against the label’s hesitations, telling them that if they wanted Bush’s album to be successful, then they ought to re-hire Gilmour’s original choice for a producer. The label obliged, and sure enough, Bush released her debut album, The Kick Inside, in 1978. The album, which featured the first Bush song Gilmour ever heard and the art-pop’s chart-topping hit, “Wuthering Heights”, was a massive success.
From there, Bush continued to grow as an artist, pushing her creative limits and taking a more hands-on role in her production process. If it weren’t for the whim of a young woman’s brother’s friend’s friend (and the persistent pushing of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour), the world might have never had the pleasure of hearing songs like “Wuthering Heights”, “Running Up That Hill”, and “Babooshka”.
Being the squeaky wheel certainly pays off—in this case, for all parties involved.
Photo by David Redfern/Redferns
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