Here’s Why Kate Bush Has Only Done One Tour in Her Entire Career

In April 1979, Kate Bush went on tour in support of her debut album The Kick Inside and her second album Lionheart. Dubbed the Tour of Life, the Lionheart Tour, and the Kate Bush Tour, it lasted six weeks. After that, Bush never toured again.

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The Tour Of Life, as it was later called, was innovative and influential in its time. It started tour trends that persist today, thanks to the design of Bush and her engineers. Overall, the tour was highly successful both critically and commercially. So why did Kate Bush stop touring?

The short answer is, she didn’t want to do it anymore. Kate Bush is widely considered a devoted and passionate artist, and for her, the art itself was more important than touring.

She also cited exhaustion from touring as a reason not to do it again. With the show as physically demanding as it was, it took a toll on Bush. The tour was technologically and artistically innovative, but it was also exhausting.

Kate Bush Never Toured Again After Ending in 1979, but She Inadvertently Set a Design Standard

For her tour, Kate Bush was involved in just about every aspect of the design process. She assisted with choreography, visuals, lighting, and narrative, and the people she chose to work with shared her innovative vision.

For example, Bush is widely considered one of the first artists to use a wireless headset microphone on stage because she danced as she sang. Her sound engineer Gordon Paterson used a wire coat hanger to design the wireless headset, creating the technology exclusively for Bush.

She also utilized rear-screen projection, costume changes, elaborate visuals, and even a magician. According to a report from The Guardian, Bush’s goal was to combine “music, dance, poetry, mime, burlesque, magic, and theatre” to subvert what many rock musicians were doing at the time.

Looking at elaborate modern pop tours, like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, for example, there’s an emphasis on excess and spectacle. Kate Bush’s tour was elaborate and intricately designed, but her music is the same. Over-the-top visuals and costume changes only work when the music is there to support and justify the excess.

In this way, pop tours seem to keep getting more and more excessive as the genre deflates musically. This also brings to mind P!nk’s penchant for singing while doing acrobatics. If the music falls flat, all that’s left is the spectacle.

Kate Bush returned to live performing in 2014 when she did a residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. However, she adamantly will not tour again.

Featured Image by Rob Verhorst/Redferns