The 100 greatest UK No 1s: No 14, Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights (Guardian, maybe subject to copyright)
The late-80s had started a move to dream-pop bands, when The Goths first dressed up to perform their gigs every Friday and Saturday night at The Bohemian Café, 79 Elizabeth Street the city between 1989 and 1993.
“I’d have called us ‘Dream-scene’, rather than ‘Dream-pop’. There is a fair bit of pop in our stuff, but our gigs, at our venues like The Bohemian Café, were a very low key affair indeed, in actual fact”.
1970-1972
“When I was about five, a mate of mine from preschool played me the single Help! by The Beatles on his sister’s record player. I think that really got me started, because my preschool teacher noticed I could sing in tune, after that, my mother started me on piano lessons.
1973-1974
“My eldest brother added The Blue album ‘The Beatles 1967-1970’ to his record collection. I played Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Old Brown Shoe, and the others a hundred times.
“Next, he came home with ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ when I was eight. That totally changed everything. I’d try to decipher the lyrics, “Get a good job with more pay and you’re o-kay!”
“What was aspirational for me I think was that it sang about all the trappings that come with being a famous rock star, yet the album was all about conflict, greed, time, death, insanity”.
Kate Bush
“I was into all kinds of prog rock from that early point, through punk, post-punk, the changes afoot in the last year or two especially, in the seventies.
“What drew me to Kate Bush was her theatrical performance based on this gothic nineteenth-century novel. Kate Bush really comes across as the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw, back from the grave to haunt Heathcliff. It was the perfect performance.
“It was also this perfect piece of meter and lyric writing, the way the themes in the novel are picked out. She has this series of beautifully spun lines that really hit the nail on the head, really conveying this impact of the storyline. She comes across as being possessed by this kind of crazed spirit herself.
“I was definitely subliminally influenced by Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush back in 1978. My songwriting style draws from nineteenth-century novel, literary character, spirits, ethereal goings on and such, I think, as a result”.