Review: 'Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush'

While many of the hugest pop stars live lives of such strangeness that their music may only seem like a minor player in their biographies, Kate Bush's life has always been an extreme dichotomy between outlandishly rich artistry on vinyl and stage and utmost simplicity in her private life. There are no tales of Bush dumping TVs out of hotel windows or snorting ants. She was more likely hanging out with her brothers or Hoovering the living room. Of course, her music is so deep, startling, original, and infectious, so incomparably magical and obsession-inviting, that fans naturally want to know every little thing about her. 

So, Tom Doyle's Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, is not the first biography of this unusually down-to-earth artist, nor is it the most comprehensive, despite its cover blurbs. That honor goes to Graeme Thomson's indispensable Under the Ivy. However, Doyle's book is structurally unique. Instead of telling her story as a straight narrative, as Thompson did, Doyle offers fifty short chapters, each of which comes at a different event in Bush's life or aspect of her work. As well as chapters on each of her albums, there are ones on live performances, TV appearances, videos, her work relationships with Prince and David Gilmour, her love of David Bowie, her childhood, her Stranger Things-abetted "resurgence," and so on. There are also transcripts of Bush's appearance on some call-in show and excerpts from the author's own lengthy interview with her around the release of Aerial. 

This can make for a choppy read for those expecting a traditional biography, and it's not necessarily the most engaging way to tell someone's life story. It feels a bit like a bio for fans with Internet-age attention spans. However, there are many valuable things in Running Up That Hill. Doyle provides the clearest explanation for Bush's magnificent "Ninth Wave" suite I've ever read, and the interviews clarify just how refreshingly grounded and funny she is despite a media and fan-base that prefer to present her as some sort of spaced-out, goggle-eyed faerie queen. Doyle also deals with those nasty rumors is Bush some sort of frothing Tory in a way that should delight any fan with a conscience. So, ultimately, you will get a nice sense of who Bush is and why she's such an extraordinary artist from reading Running Up That Hill if you can get a hook into the structure.

(Disclosure: Rowman & Littlefield, the publisher of Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, owns Backbeat Books, the publisher of my two books, The Who FAQ and 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute, both of which are much, much choppier than Tom Doyle's book).