My Kate Bush moment

 Kate Bush is having a moment, and it's a wonderful thing. I first heard "Running up that Hill" in the late summer of 1985. I was nineteen and preparing to go to university (I'd missed a year due to failing my exams the previous time). I already liked KB so anticipation was high for her new material. Although it really wasn't that long compared to the gaps between releases now, it seemed an age since her last album, the gloriously bonkers The Dreaming. I was upstairs in my bedroom listening to Radio 1 when they played her new single for the first time and I knew instantly, from the first few bars, that it was fantastic. The drums, the weird textures, reminded me of Peter Gabriel. Later that year my sister got the album on cassette and I was able to borrow it and listen on my Walkman. It's still a wonderful LP, and "Running up that Hill" has never not sounded brilliant, one of those incredibly rare songs that just never stops being fresh and exciting every time you hear it.

My absolute introduction to KB goes back much earlier than that, though. It was March 1978. I was in the backseat of mum and dad's car, driving to Swansea. My sister would have been next to me. "Wuthering Heights" came on the radio, and I (like millions of others) was enraptured. But somewhere along the line I got my wires crossed. At that point I hadn't seen a photo of Kate Bush, and yet due to some misheard or misunderstood comment on the radio, I got it into my head, temporarily, that the woman singing the song was the same one who played Princess Leia in Star Wars. So, for a very short while, my mental image of Kate Bush was essentially Carrie Fisher with the big ear buns. I know, it makes no sense at all, but when you're twelve, you accept stuff like this. I should also mention that the reason for being in the backseat of the car was this: it was my birthday and we were off to see Star Wars for the very first time.