Kate Bush never intended to take a 35-year break from performing live.
The ‘Hounds of Love’ hitmaker undertook a 22-date residency at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in 2014, her first set of shows since her initial tour in 1979, but she insists her reputation as a recluse wasn’t deliberate, it is just that she spends so long recording and making videos.
She said: "It wasn’t designed that way, because I really enjoyed the first set of shows we did.
"The plan at the time was that I was going to do another two albums’ worth of fresh material, and then do another show.
"But of course, by the time I got to the end of what was ‘The Dreaming’ album, it had gone off on a slight tilt, because I’d become so much more involved in the recording process.
"And also, every time I finish an album, I go into visual projects, and even if they’re quite short pieces, they’re still a huge amount of work to put together.
"So I started to veer away from the thing of being a live performing artist, to one of being a recording artist with attached visuals."
But the 58-year-old singer admitted her long hiatus from performing meant she felt "very nervous" about getting back on stage because she worried she wouldn’t be "any good".
She admitted to the Independent: "Yes, I was very nervous. I wasn’t sure if I would be any good, that was my concern.
"I knew that I would enjoy putting the show together – in a lot of ways, I approached it as if I was making a really long video, because a lot of my visual work is quite theatrical, so this theatrical work would be quite filmic, it would be a natural progression.
"But I was very nervous about going onstage and performing."
Thankfully, the ‘Running Up That Hill’ singer received a positive reception every night.
She added: "But the response was just beyond anything I could have wished for, every night, the audiences were so excited and so responsive."
Two shows from the tour were filmed, but Kate has no intention of releasing the performance on DVD, and thinks her live album, ‘Before the Dawn’, is much more "exciting".
She said: "People are surprised that there’s no DVD of the show, but I’d like to mention this live album that Elton John put out, ’17-11-70′, which was something that I loved so much.
"To have an album where you could imagine what the show was, I found that incredibly exciting, and in a way, this live album is almost more representative of what it was like to be at the live show."
Kate Bush didn’t intend to stay off stage so long
