Interview: Sarah Louise-Young

Sarah-Louise Young was five years old when British superstar Kate Bush performed her chart-topping debut single 'Wuthering Heights' on the BBC’s Top of the Pops in 1978. “I remember dancing around the living room, trying to do the dance moves. And my eldest brother – I've got four older brothers – had the poster. It's a very famous poster of her in this leotard, showing more nipple than she had realised until she saw her picture on a bus.” She was captivated by Bush’s eyes and beautiful face.

“I'd walk past his door and see her face and hear the music,” she recalls. However, Young wasn’t able to fully appreciate the power of Bush until she was old enough to purchase her own record player. “I feel like the music just kind of got absorbed into my body… but she's kind of been the soundtrack to my life.”

She is “almost jealous” of younger fans who are only just discovering Bush’s discography. “I'd love to go back in time and listen to [The Kick Inside (1978)] for the first time,” Young says. Unlike some fans online who are miffed by her 2022 cultural resurgence, due to the inclusion of 'Running Up That Hill' in Season 4 of Netflix’s Stranger Things, Young fervently welcomes the new fanbase. “I haven’t yet encountered that in real-life. My experience of Kate Bush fans is they are the most open, friendly, generous, spirited people. They just get excited that someone else loves her music,” she says.

“Her music is literally saving someone’s life. It was just such a wonderful fusion of those two things. So for me, I think it can only be a positive thing.”

The idea for An Evening Without Kate Bush, co-created with Russell Lucas, came about in 2014, when they were wrapping up their West End production Julie Madly Deeply, dedicated to actress Julie Andrews. “There was something in the room that was greater than anything we could just perform at an audience. So that got us interested in the relationship between the fans,” Young explains.

The two Bush fans’ discussion then shifted to how “most of them have never seen [the musician] live”, as her last concert appearance occurred in 1979. Then, unexpectedly, Bush announced her 22-night residency, Before the Dawn, at the Hammersmith Apollo, causing the duo to halt their plans for a few years. “We were worried that people would think we were being parasitic.”

Regarding the production’s title, Young says, “It's like she's always there, because her music’s always there, but she, the artist, isn't. And so what is the experience of the fans when the person they love is not physically present? How do they celebrate? How do we pay tribute in our own lives to the music?”

Young believes Bush still resonates with audiences because of her ability to evolve and think deeply about the human condition. “She sang about climate change before people were talking about it. She did a song about a man who falls in love with a computer to the extent that he has lost touch with his family before the internet was invented.”

Finally, what if Bush was there?

“I think it might be too much for [the audience], she'd have to come in such heavy disguise that I don't think they would be able to focus.” She adds: “I would love to just meet her as an ordinary woman with a profoundly exceptional talent. It would be nice to have a cup of tea with her. Maybe some toast and Marmite and talk about birds or something else because I think that's who she is. I don't think she would be comfortable with adoration.”

An Evening Without Kate Bush, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, until 2 March