You can't have degrees of uniqueness - unless your name is Kate Bush. An unknown teenager insisting to the giant record company EMI that her first video-single must be a dance version of her favourite novel, 'Wuthering Heights', even though no-one would be likely to make out the opening words "Out on the wild and windy moors..." or most of the other words, for that matter. She just was a complete and utter original.
Others may be called unique for launching a new movement. Kate was a sparkling mosaic of different movements, as unclassifiable as her colourful home background. There was actually a bit of a cultural vacuum in pop music at the time (1978), sloppy-floppy hippie protest having been replaced by angry punk rock, full of foul language and trashed hotel-rooms - which the public, unsurprisingly, soon tired of.
And in danced Kate - outwardly vulnerable and gamine, inwardly tough as teak (a karate champion, among other things), distilled from ingredients as diverse as Elton John, Lindsay Kemp, Greenham Common, Aboriginal Dream Time and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
A session musician at Abbey Road remembers the moment. He said that 'Wuthering Heights' would either bomb-out or take the world by storm. Well, all those unexpected effects merged into a potent cocktail indeed. Three hit albums in the first two years tell their own story.
Kate's timing was lucky in other ways too. She was able to exploit the full potential of the synthesiser, as well as the wireless headset. But mostly it was that rich mixture of creative influences that did indeed go on to take the world by storm. A commentator remarked that she had managed to build an exclusive Kate Bush Universe that we could share, but only from afar.
