IN THE LONG HOT summer of 1976, while I was busy making perfume out of rose petals and selling it to the neighbours from our parched front lawn, an unknown singer named Kate Bush was beavering away in a sweltering flat in London writing amazing songs that would change my life.

My parents had mapped out a fairly academic future for me at a competitive convent school down the road in Ascot. They had no idea that once I had discovered pop music (Blondie, Kate Bush, X-Ray Spex etc) and BOYS, school work would take a nosedive.

By the age of 17, I had moved to a flat on the Kings Road with my first band, who shall remain nameless out of sheer embarrassment, to pursue a career as a singer.

Rob Jovanovic’s biography portrays Kate Bush as a likeable, intensely creative personality. Her alternative, culturally enriched upbringing (spoon-fed Sibelius, C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot and T Rex) is enough to make the book good.

It is written with fondness and filled with train-spotter-ish details about recording sessions and musicians — a little too many for my liking, such a boy thing.

There are plenty of well chosen quotes, some of them very funny and self-effacing: “My tunes were morbid and more negative . . . you’re younger and you get into murders.” A phase I remember going through myself.

Another scary similarity I shared with Ms Bush was writing a letter to Elton John, looking for guidance. She dropped hers at the BBC and I posted mine through his letter box. Neither of us received a reply. Probably for the best! I did not, however, follow Kate’s example and attend mime classes. Not my scene. But, as they say, mime is money.

Kate’s theatrical style and unconventional vocal technique have attracted the admiration of Alison Goldfrapp, P. J. Harvey, Björk and Martha Wainwright, to name but a few. I bet Liz Fraser from the Cocteau Twins was a fan too; she certainly took surreal lyric-writing to another dimension.

Some might find Kate’s privileged upbringing quite galling. No wonder she achieved what she did, I hear you cry. There she was at 18 years old living rent free in a flat in Lewisham. A house owned by her father was split into three flats and Kate and her two brothers had one each. She had a recording advance, a publishing advance and all the time in the world to work on her songs and presentation. Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, a friend of her brothers, took a great interest in the fledgeling Kate Bush and, being an influential character, set her up with musicians, paid for recording sessions and introduced her to record company bigwigs at EMI who signed her.

A bit jammy? Yes, but I believe that you can work as hard as you like to beome a pop star and if you haven’t got that certain something, you haven’t got a hope. Kate Bush has “it” in bucketloads.

There is much talk of Kate’s reclusive behaviour over the past 20 or so years, but I say good luck to her. From 1977 to 1985 she clocked up a pretty impressive catalogue of songs including Wuthering Heights, The Man with the Child in his Eyes, Running up That Hill, Army Dreamers and Cloudbusting. I would be pleased with those five alone.

What a stroke of luck — I was in the car taking my son to nursery and what did I hear on the radio but Kate’s new single, King of the Mountain. It came out this week and will be followed by her first album in 12 years, Ariel. I was thrilled that the single was just what I wanted to hear, pure Kate Bush! A warm voice that draws you in, some nicely avant-garde production and a load of old gobbledygook. Hooray!

It has been said that it’s difficult to understand her lyrics. Jonathan King once went through Wuthering Heights, line by line with a lyric sheet, on air. I think it’s much better to imagine what she is saying and throw the lyric sheet away. As far as I’m concerned the words to Cloudbusting clearly state that she buried her yo-yo in the garden to hide it from the Government.

Tax fraud? Yo-yo fraud! That’s much more serious.

I enjoyed revisiting Kate Bush. But, if you really want to get inside her head, listen to the music. It says more about her than words ever could.

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