Kate Bush’s representative has set the record straight over claims the singer was turned down by the Coachella music festival.
Rumours began on Monday (10Apr17) that Kate had been rejected by the Californian music festival over fears Americans “wouldn’t understand her”.
Marc Geiger, head of music at the William Morris Endeavour Agency, made the claim while being interviewed for the New Yorker magazine about Coachella.
“I’ll say, ‘Kate Bush!’ And (Coachella CEO) Paul Tollett will go, ‘No!’ and we’ll talk through it. I’ll say, ‘She’s never played here, and she just did 30 shows in the UK for the first time since the late seventies. You gotta do it! Have to!’ ‘No! No one is going to understand it,'” he said in the piece.
However, a spokesperson for the Wuthering Heights star has hit back at the rumours, insisting Kate was never in line to play the festival, which takes place over two weekends, 14-16 April (17), and 21-23 April.
“It was never Kate’s intention to play any more shows than she did in London,” the representative told NME. “The show was conceived for a very specific type of venue. No discussions were ever had with Kate about playing any festival, including Coachella.”
Legendary singer Kate won critical acclaim for her string of exclusive Before The Dawn shows at London’s Eventim Apollo in 2014 – her first live shows in 35 years. It had been speculated after the success of the concerts that Kate might embark on a world tour or a festival slot, but the singer later admitted she didn’t know how to follow-up the shows.
“The thing about that show is that a lot of the material was already, most of the material, was already written,” she explained previously. “And to start something like that from scratch is another whole world of work isn’t it. I don’t know. It was an extraordinary thing to be involved in, especially to have got the response that we did… It was really magical.”
