The musician Kate Bush always adored: “I love him”
When landing in the 1978 charts before even turning 20, Kate Bush seemed to arrive in the music world with such dizzying originality that it was impossible to guess exactly who her formative heroes were.
Aside from her vast literary and cinematic influences, Bush’s early work glowed with unmistakable rock and pop precedent, but fed through her distinctive creative filter.
Hazarded guesses can detect Queen’s chamber pop bluster, the progressive scope of Pink Floyd, and David Bowie’s anchorage to the artistic underworld, but, while shaped by the vanguard, Bush was never tethered to a rock climate fast becoming stale, making complete sense to the punk flashbang by the decade’s close with her uncompromising songcraft.
Throughout her career, various artists have been namechecked or intimated as key influences guiding Bush’s road to stardom. Roxy Music, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, and Stevie Wonder all hovered around Bush’s lyrical pen as a teen, counting hundreds of song sketches that would eventually blossom into The Kick Inside and Lionheart records.
Right up there in her personal hall of fame, however, was Elton John, an artist she eventually managed to collaborate with, roping him in for ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow.
“He is one of my great musical heroes, and when I wrote the song, I very much had him in mind and hoped that he would be interested enough to come and sing on the song,” Bush revealed to The Huffington Post at the time. “At the risk of sounding corny, it was like a dream come true having him come into the studio and sing so beautifully. I think his performance on the song is so fantastic; it’s so emotive. I love him singing in that lower key. I really couldn’t have been happier with what he brought to the track.”
One of Bush’s examples of mining the human condition via a fantastical lens, ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ casts her and John as two lovers who keep crossing paths in different time periods, historic tumult tearing them apart before meeting ad infinitum.
Lending a vintage gravitas to the piece, John’s presence on the piece works like an instrument in itself. His contribution never intrudes like a celebrity cameo but serves as an essential creative component of the song, as she achieved with the select circle of artists brought in to her sessions over the years, from Prince to Eric Clapton.
It’s easy to see the path paved by John the closer you look at his body of work. Wielding a sturdy, classic sense of songwriting while blowing the doors off toward colourful escapism, such alchemic forces would shine all over Bush’s celebrated output. While covering ‘Rocket Man’ for 1991’s Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin tribute album, Bush let slip on the one John record from earlier in his career that she loved the most. “My very favourite album of his was Madman Across The Water,” she confessed. “But I love everything Elton does.”
