Breathe in Deep

“Change is a very important thing. On any level, I do want to change; not only as a person, but as a musician. I think it’s starting to happen a little, just slightly different.”
Kate Bush, April 1979

Released in September 1980, Never For Ever stands discrete within Kate Bush’s slender, esteemed catalogue. Boasting two of her most loved singles – Babooshka and Army Dreamers – Never For Ever also contained Breathing, Bush’s first real deep dive into unselfconsciously mature material.

Like her public persona at this time, Never For Ever is an album that still has one foot in ‘old showbiz’ (EMI protégé, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop guest, a target for prime-time TV parodies); yet the other displaying her development (working with established artists such as Roy Harper and Peter Gabriel, and the album’s unsettling subject matter). Commercially, her previous long-player, Lionheart, hadn’t been a roaring success, and its singles had not set the charts ablaze. It was time to change course.

Never For Ever was an album of firsts for Kate Bush: her first co-production; her first release after renegotiating her EMI deal; her first time recording at Abbey Road, and her first use of the (then brand new to the country) sampling synthesiser Fairlight CMI, which was so to shape her material for the next decade.

“I feel this is perhaps why this one is like starting again. It’s like the first album on a new level. It’s much more under control”
Kate Bush

Bush’s new-found confidence and step away from the machine (something she was soon to perfect) was to inform Never For Ever – an album influenced by death, technology, relationships and a 21-year-old simply bursting with ideas. “There are 10 tracks, and if there is a main theme, it’s about human communication and its difficulties,” Bush wrote in September 1980, a few months after her 22nd birthday. Although largely stylistically different, Never For Ever fitted into the pattern of the day for art rock experimentation crossing borders and genres. It is blessed with the same spirit as Robert Fripp’s Exposure, David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), Fear Of Music by Talking Heads, and Peter Gabriel’s third album. Never For Ever may not be the masterpiece that 1985’s Hounds Of Love is frequently cited as being, but, for many, it remains their favourite Kate Bush album, and one that unquestionably paved the way for future triumphs.

was Kate Bush’s first studio recording after her groundbreaking The Tour Of Life in spring 1979, which had turned the notion of a live concert on its head. Fully choreographed by Anthony Van Laast, the sold-out 28-date tour was a visualisation of her first two albums, and . Much was made of it costing between £200,000 and £250,000 and employing 40 people – it was just at the very cusp of the touring industry being taken seriously. There was a BBC TV special on the tour to coincide with the opening night at Liverpool Empire. Reporter Bernard Clark asked Bush,