Does anyone know about the recording of this song on her "Red Shoes" album?

- Did Kate go to Paisley Park or did Prince work with her in England?
- Did they record any other tracks (titles please!)
- How did Lenny Henry get involved in this too???? He sings backing vocals!

There must be a great story in here somewhere.

i think this a brillaint track.
i heard somwhere that she sent Prince the stuff that Lenny and her had done in England for him to add vocals and guitar.
But i think he Princified it somewhat..

im sure someone will correct me if im wrong.

dasmf said:
Does anyone know about the recording of this song on her "Red Shoes" album?

- Did Kate go to Paisley Park or did Prince work with her in England?

No, they talked on the phone. Kate sent Prince her master tapes of the song, and Prince
added new tracks to it and sent it back to her. (well to be more accurate, from what I heard
he resampled loads of stuff from her tapes and transfered it all onto two 2" tapes of his own
and layered loads of musical ideas onto them, and sent the whole lot back to her, along with
some final mixes)

- Did they record any other tracks (titles please!)

No

- How did Lenny Henry get involved in this too???? He sings backing vocals!

He's a friend of Kate's. From what I heard, when Kate got her tapes back from Prince,
he'd radically reworked her song and filled the tapes up with all sorts of extra guitar parts,
keyboards, drum loops and backing vocals. But the one bit that Kate was hoping he'd sing,
he hadn't recorded (not that she'd specifically asked him to). Apparently she was really
disappointed, but was too embarrased to get Prince to do it again, so she got Lenny Henry
to sing the lines for her instead.

Michael Koppelman and Del Palmer were interviewed regarding the recording in Uptown Issue #45 (full interview in magazine)

http://www.uptown.se/2004...bush.shtml

These are comments from Michael Koppelman regarding the recording:

http://gaffa.org/moments/2_2j.html
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[This message was edited Sun Jun 27 9:27:20 2004 by langebleu]

hu hu. hu hu. hu hu.

U said ,"Bush."

bananacologne said:

Just use a REAL browser so you don't get pop-ups! Like Safari (sorry Mac only), Mozilla, Firefox.....

I probably should pick this up and listen to it again since I've not listened to it since it came out. I wasn't impressed. I WAS impressed that I didn't find it Princified (a la Sugar Walls)...my thoughts then as now are that these 2 fierce artists couldn't find common ground. Kate Bush is definitely an acquired taste...I think Prince is more mainstream than Kate Bush is.

TheBoostress said:

You didn't find it "Princified?" That's funny, because his mark is all over it, especially on the keyboards. I do agree that Prince is more mainstream than Kate could ever be, though.

Personally, I love the track. The rest of the album is pretty great, too.

Del Palmer interview on the matter:

http://gaffa.org/reaching/i93_ss.html

Watching Prince at Earls Court, Kate received a note from him expressing his
admiration for her work. After subsequently contacting him and getting his
agreement to help out on a track, on analogue tape was sent over to Paisley
Park, but when it arrived back three months later, there was nothing to be
heard. When Kate attempted to telephone him, she was told by assistants that
he was working on it. Then, a month later, a couple of Paisley Park tapes
arrived. Palmer played them.

"He'd looped a four-bar section from the chorus of the song that Kate
had written and just smothered 48 tracks with everything you could possible
imagine: Guitars, keyboards, drums, voices. I sat there and thought, `Well,
this is great, but what are we going to do with it?' So, I made a general
mix of the whole thing, gave if to Kate, and she puzzled over it for months.
We kept going back to it over the course of a couple of years, and
eventually, with a lot of editing and work on her part, she turned it back
into the song that it was."

Basically, then, a case of pick `n' mix; "Here it is, take what you
want"?

"That's exactly what it was. Because she'd said to him `I want you to
sing this bit here and I want you to sing that bit there', and he'd sung it,
but he'd done it over the loop that he made up. So, we had this piece of
vocal that she wanted but it was everywhere, all the way through it, so we
had to take the bit that we needed and put it in where we wanted it--we had
to reconstruct the verses so that they worked with her lyrics. Then we took
out the original drums and replaced them because it was now basically a more
up-tempo song. At the same time, we also tried to turn it back into a Kate
Bush song, and although in a lot of ways it didn't turn out as we'd hoped--I
have to be honest--it's still very interesting.

"There was one vocal section which Prince actually didn't do and Kate
was so pissed with this. Then, one day she hit on the idea of getting in
Lenny Henry, who's actually a great singer. It was like he'd worked in
studios his whole life--he had no trouble doing it. Kate sang him the part
she wanted him to do and then he sang it. Then she asked him to do a harmony
which he worked out with her. I used a little bit of compression, just to
make the voice sound a little more throaty."


I have seen reference to an (possibly another) interview that Del Palmer gave to Fachblatt Musikmagazin (printed in January 1994) on the same subject. However, the content is very similar to the above and it could be that a translation of the same interview was used. The trnscript I have read could therefore possibly be a re-translation because the content looks very close but not identical to some of the above.
.
[This message was edited Sun Jun 27 9:42:10 2004 by langebleu]

I always really liked this song. The guitar solos are nice.
I know a Kate fan who hated it.
It does sound like a Prince song
I think that the whole first verse reads like
Prince lyrics. The first line of the song is:
"The finer Purple, The purest Gold"

I really like about half of The Red Shoes album.
Some cool songs.

TheBigBang said:

I found it very Princified. I loved songs like Hounds of Love and Running up that Hill.
THis had a completely different sound and theme.

Instead of singing about struggles and desperation, Kate found her self basically singing about vaginas. Yes, Prince had a way of converting other prominent performers at the time to his will and they all just end up doing a song about vaginas.

Go listen to it again, I'm sure you'll agree.

BorisFishpaw said:

Prince himself has mentioned that there were others.

Cloudbuster said:

What about "My Computer" on "Emancipation"? She sings backing vocals on that one...

I dream of Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights live again with Prince on the guitar

jn2 said:

Nasalhair said:

I absolutely love this song. I think it was a brilliant collaboration that showed equally each other's mysterious talent. Of course, there are probably better songs that the two have done, but this one was definitely good enough for Kate to put on her album. Don't hate!

pbrite said:

I'm with you. So many of Kate's fans rate it as one of her worst ever songs. Personally, I feel it's more to do with their dislike of Prince. They're missing the point. It's a great song.

WHOA! I was just listening to this song last night...and I think it's incredible!

I love that song!

the organ part hooked me straight away but the chorus sounds too brash compared to the verses, that were built up delicately with kate and that angelic voice. the guitar/synth instrumental just sounds cheesy to me, a bit rushed. why didnt prince do those male vocals in the 3rd verse? (if he had the choice) they are tailor made for him, with the subject level as well.
I think that could have had better exposure to at the time as i never heard it on the radio (i suppose when do album tracks ever get exposure? i have never heard darling nikki on the radio yet)

spoida said:

So, basically you don't like Prince's input on the song.

Cloudbuster said:

Can you actually HEAR her?


wow...

CookieMonster said:

I know. I thought P was a complete wank-stick for burying her in the mix.