The moment Jimmy Page realised Kate Bush was a “genius”
It’s pretty clear that Kate Bush has always been worthy of her genius tag, and it’s also evident that most people who were around to witness her grand entrance into the world of music in the late 1970s clocked this fact from the beginning. Releasing her debut single, ‘Wuthering Heights’ at the age of just 19, Bush rapidly became one of the most promising stars of the UK’s art rock and pop scene, and kept up a remarkable level of consistency from this moment onwards.
The song itself was groundbreaking in many senses, most notably that she had become the first woman to top the UK singles chart with a song that she had written entirely by herself, and the fact that she was only a teenager at the time and it was her debut single made the feat all the more remarkable. However, it was clearly no fluke that she’d managed to achieve this, as her debut album, The Kick Inside, is perhaps even more of a towering achievement for someone of her age to produce.
Despite her incredible talents, she rarely ever presented her brilliance to a live audience, choosing to retract from performing at the tender age of 20. This decision would have been a major disappointment for fans of hers, although those who did manage to see one of her early shows would be able to make a rather impressive claim of having done so. That being said, the sheer quality of her recorded output was still enough to gawp at, and every record seemingly revealed a new layer to her inventiveness as a songwriter.
Plenty of other notable musicians have often praised Bush for having had a talent far beyond most, and it didn’t take long for her to accrue a number of esteemed fans, such as David Gilmour, who helped her record her earliest demos. Among these scores of famous followers was Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, who knew he was experiencing the emergence of greatness the first time he heard one of her earliest hits.
In 2023, he paid tribute to Bush and her marvellous career by writing a short letter posted to social media, where he described his experiences of hearing her for the first time. “Kate Bush is an artist and writer of some of the most extraordinary material I have had the pleasure to experience,” Page wrote. “From hearing ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ written in her teens and on her debut album I knew this was a unique talent with a depth of profound understanding of all things musical. She continued to grow artistically and released a catalogue of fascinating lyrical music over the years.”
However, the reason he was posting this at this exact time was due to the fact it marked the anniversary of the fact that he’d been lucky enough to attend one of her Before the Dawn residency shows at Hammersmith Apollo in 2014; a rare 22-night run of shows that marked her first public performances in 35 years.
Speaking of his experience seeing her nine years prior, Page said that “the feeling for love and respect for Kate was tangible,” and that he was blown away by how she’d managed to keep her artistry at the highest level despite rarely performing live. “Her show displayed the measure of her genius and vision both past, present and future,” he continued. “Each and every one of us was truly moved by her concert both visually and musically.” Not many people can consider themselves fortunate enough to have seen Bush perform live, but you know full well that those who have have experienced something unlike anything else.
