My first job in the music business was in the Accounts Receivable department of CBS Records. After a couple of years there I moved into T&E Accounting. T&E stands for Travel and Entertainment. In those halcyon days of the music biz in the late eighties, there was a lot of money spent on traveling and a lot of money spent on entertaining. Employees using their company credit card had to file expense reports documenting all money spent. My job was to audit those reports. If an employee’s reports weren’t filed in a timely manner, I had to cut off his/her corporate card.
In the autumn of 1989, Kate Bush was in town to review the marketing of her then new album, The Sensual World. She was out to lunch with her product manager. The latter called me from the restaurant – her card was declined. She knew she was behind in filing her expense reports, but had no other means of paying for the lunch. I saw to it the lunch was taken care of. As a thank you, when she got back to the office she invited me up to the 12th floor conference room to meet Kate. It was just the three of us. Kate signed a promo shot for me.
The product manager got caught up on her expense reports, I met one of my favorite performers, and Kate Bush got fed. Everybody’s happy.
Today Kate Bush turns 56. Here is a playlist of some of the highlights of her recording career. Her best-selling and most critically-acclaimed album, Hounds of Love, is not on Spotify – I assume there is a remastered reissue of the album on the way – so we’ll make do without her best-known recording, “Running Up That Hill,” her only US top 40 single.
For more on Kate Bush, check out my friend Bradley’s blog here.
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