Well, it was the reason I came.

Through a tremendous and really anomalous bit of luck, plus a fair bit of strategy, back in March I had scored tickets to Kate Bush’s once-thought-impossible return to live performance.

She had not performed live since 1979, long before producing her masterpiece album, “Hounds of Love.”  In the meanwhile, she had withdrawn from public life (she never had pop star scandals or fame whore moments anyway), and was seen as a legendary recluse, who still put out an album every decade or so, when she felt like it, but did not play the usual fame/PR game.

The very notion of her performing in public again was so impossible that I don’t think most people had seriously considered that it could ever happen.

But, out of the blue, it did.  She announced that she would be back with not a one-off, not a tour, but a 22 show residency at the Eventim Apollo theater in Hammersmith, London.

Music lovers of a certain vintage have absolutely heard of the venue involved, formerly known as the Hammersmith Odeon. An art deco medium-sized theater whose highest fame was being the scene of David Bowie’s infamous final Ziggy Stardust concert, where, after an amazing show, documented by D.A. Pennebaker in Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture, he retired the Ziggy character, and the band, at the end of the show, with no warning. “Not only is it the last show of the tour, it’s the last show we’ll ever do.”

Of course Bowie performed on and on (until disabled by a heart attack a decade ago), but not as Ziggy, and not with The Spiders from Mars.  Similarly, Kate Bush’s first and only tour ended at the Hammersmith Odeon, and it looked like her own live performance retirement happened there in 1979 as well.

But not so.

Armed in the very early pre-dawn (hmm…) hours with many desktop open windows, as well as the same on mobile phone, I worked refresh buttons like mad, particularly targeting shows near the end of the 22 show run, and somehow, from one of the smaller ticket vendors (NOT Ticketmaster) got in.  Not only that, but a dead center seat in the very front section.

I could not believe it, especially when the entire run of shows sold out in about ten minutes. Twitter was full of outraged British folks who were left disappointed, and here was I, sitting in the dark in Los Angeles, with a confirmed seat to the most anticipated concert of a generation or two. (At least among certain demographics.)

Big stuff for the former desert kid who remembers listening, utterly baffled, to that strange, impossibly high voice and her bizarrely themed songs on cassettes obtained on rare early 80s trips to Las Vegas or Salt Lake City malls, as there was no proper record store in my town then. Now I would hear that voice in person, in London, mere feet away. Life. It’s a strange thing.

Of course, there was the small problem of location, as I live on the other side of the world from London.  Would I even be able to get over there?  It had been a very complicated year, and as often as I have been there, you never know for sure if you can pull off a specific trip.

The tickets themselves were allegedly unscalpable, even though many were advertised very rapidly.  Seats as good as mine were on eBay and other places at around £1,500. But the catch I suppose was that IDs are checked at the venue, and the name has to match the ticket. I imagine the scalper actually has to show up at the door to do the transfer.  So if I couldn’t get to England, I would be out of luck, unless I networked with a nefarious scalper who happened to have the same name as myself.

Luckily, after a great deal of uncertainty, events over the next few months proved to favorable. I was able to book a flight, and the concert was at my favorite time to visit London anyway.

Time passed, I got there, the night came, and then it was just a stroll up to the corner at Kings Cross to catch the Piccadilly Line straight to the concert.

Right out of the Hammersmith Station exit, there it was, the Eventim Apollo (Hammersmith Odeon).

First surprise was that a big freeway overpass, the Hammersmith Flyover, runs smack dab in front of the place. I don’t remember seeing that in the footage of all the glam teens awaiting the Ziggy concert, I’ll have to go back to that movie and look again.

The attendees this time around were of course much more middle-aged and affluent, but no less vibrating with enthusiasm.  There was a line for standby tickets, I guess to take last minute cancellations.  They were much younger than the ticket holders, but no less enthusiastic. As each ticket holder went past them they turned heads in unison, like hungry coyotes, another opportunity to get in, lost.

The bouncer did indeed give a cursory ID ticket check, and it was into the Art Deco lobby, already seething with fans mobbing the merchandise stands as well as the bar.

I muscled into the queue get my own officially branded KB loot before finding my seat.

And good grief, my seat.

I knew I had a good one, at the dead center of the row, but since it was for row K, I thought I was 11 rows back. But it was much closer, row six! They had pushed the stage several rows out into the audience. The perfect seat, great view of the whole stage without craning your neck up as you do if you are in the front row.  Yet close enough to see the Kate sweat, if she did. (SPOILER: She didn’t.)

There was no curtain, no opening bands, no entrance music.  You just saw a big, fancy band setup, but no set, scenery or anything.

I was a bit surprised.  Kate’s reputation is for theatricality, of course, and I figured the presentation would be more complicated.  I had pretty much avoided all spoilers of the show, in spite of it being about a month into the run.  Muted all the Twitter hashtags, only read the headlines of reviews, which in themselves were just jibbering praise.

So I really did not know what I would be seeing or which songs would be performed, but I knew I was in for something much more than a nostalgia jukebox act (like the David Bowie tribute act, Holy Holy, which I had seen and enjoyed the night before, or, for that matter, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney these days). Whatever she did would be a surprise, and that was exactly what I had wanted to preserve.

With no opening acts or intro music, the start was more like a play than a rockshow, starting with the dimming of lights, scramble of stragglers to seats and the cooing of anticipation. It began with the intro to the “Director’s Cut” improved arrangement of “Lily.”  Just the (very large) band on their platform, straightforward, nothing edgy.  The backup chorus singers chugged in across the stage in a conga line, and behind them, yes, was Kate.

Barefoot, resplendent, absolutely beaming.  She took to the microphone and began the song, which is a belter, full-on.  And that voice.  Absolutely note perfect, powerful and LOUD, at times I could even hear her directly over the amplification, I was so close.  Spine tingling, it was really her, really there, feet away, and that voice of hers is no technical Auto-Tune creation, but REAL SINGING. Her voice is mature now, not the screeching teenage girl of “Wuthering Heights,” but fuller, deeper, stronger.

Of course it was a standing ovation just for showing up, but man, she went on to earn it with a set of crowd pleasing, familiar songs. Nothing she had ever performed live before, mind you, but when you haven’t performed since 1979 that leaves you an enormous catalog that includes your best work.  “Running up that Hill,” for example.   One of my favorite things was watching the backup singers (including Kate’s 16 year-old son Bertie McIntosh) “arf arf arf arf-arf arf arf”-ing to “Hounds of Love.”

After a while, amazing as they were, I was a bit confused.  I had of course expected a unique theatrical experience from her, and several songs in she was presenting a rather standard (though terrific) rock concert fronting a band, standard-looking rockshow lights behind them. Fun, but not exactly artistically groundbreaking, is it?

Oh me of little faith…

Kate was singing “King of the Mountain,” her simultaneous tribute to Citizen Kane and Elvis (as you do), and a theme of the song is wind.  Wind noises rose and rose through the song and only increased as it reached its end; it was not stopping.

A percussionist came out in front of the band whirling a big, uh, whirly thing that made a whining, windy sound , getting more and more intense in its vortex, and then, DARK. CRACK. Flash, lightning, BOOM. Big cannons around the stage blew enormous confetti into the audience.

Clearly, the real show had just barely begun.  Each piece of “confetti” was actually this parchment, with text from Tennyson’s poem “The Coming of Arthur.”

We were now in The Ninth Wave.

Projected on a scrim in front of the stage, an astronomer calls the authorities – he has witnessed some kind of shipwreck.  Serious business, but as with most Kate Bush ventures, there is grim humor as he tries to relate what he has seen.  This introduces the storyline – there has been a tragedy out at sea; and a search for possible survivors begins.

The stage is then re-revealed, a spooky, theatrical set framed by a sort-of ship skeleton. Reminded me of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. The connection is pretty obvious in retrospect.

Sheets of material form waves.  Another film projection reveals Kate, floating in water with a life vest, beginning to sing “And Dream of Sheep,” the start of The Ninth Wave suite, (the 2nd side of 1985’s “Hounds of Love” album.

“Little light, shining…” It was a bit confusing, the vocals were clearly live, and amazing, but she was singing in perfect sync with prerecorded film of her in the water?  I figured her lip-sync skills had just topped even the best drag queen. But a later reading of the concert program revealed that all the vocals were recorded by Kate live IN THE WATER in a huge film soundstage flotation tank, really floating for hours and hours. Remarkable, as the vocals were indeed just perfect.

To be honest, from here on out I can’t give a blow-by-blow description; I’m sure that can be found in many other places.  I can just say that a chilly, delirious drama played out, in a dynamic between the filmed Kate in her life vest (representing the reality of a shipwrecked woman waiting for rescue), floating, and the “in person” Kate, acting and singing on the actual stage, representing the fears, hallucinations and delirium in the woman’s head.

Such things consisted of skeletal fish people dressed in netting much like the Sea Devils from early 70s Doctor Who. Intentional? I bet so.

There were zombie floater backup singers.

Witch hunters, Kate getting pulled down into ice on one side of the stage through a trap door, emerging up in another part of the stage, a domestic house set which appeared, with a teen son (played by Kate’s real life son Bertie McIntosh) and his dad (not Kate’s real life husband), unaware of what mom/wife was going through, so making jokes about watching QI on BBC 2.

Bertie looks and sounds nothing like Kate, and his speaking voice is uncannily like that of UK comedian David Mitchell (Peep Show, countless quiz shows, if you aren’t familiar with Mitchell, he has a whiny, angry, nasal voice; not a voice one would choose if you could from the genetic grab bag). Real-life Kate lurks behind them, singing but invisible to them as the house rocks back and forth on the ocean. Amazing.

Again, I forget exact order of events, as it was a completely immersive experience, but at one point enormous helicopter things flew out over the audience to a tremendous noise, throwing spotlights all around the audience, looking for survivors.

The skeletal fish people found the imaginary Kate (aka the on stage one, yes, the real Kate is imaginary and the film Kate is real, I know it seems confusing) and carried her unconscious form, still barefoot, out into the audience.

The floating Kate is finally found by rescuers and a hand reaches to pull her from the water.  After this, the company sings the redemptive relief of “The Morning Fog.”

End Act 1, to a cacophonous ovation. Interval (or, as Americans say, intermission) time.

Brain filled and scrambled with strangeness, I rushed for the restroom and then a drink.  A fellow in line at the bar with me summed it up as well as I could, “I thought absolutely anything could happen tonight, and that’s exactly what happened.  And we’re only halfway.”  Yep.

Kate had specifically requested no photography whatsoever during the show, and at least from the front where I was sitting, people complied.  I assume people in the balcony were naughty, however.  So I only really got the intermission pic. (Other show pics here are official press release photos and from the program.)

The second half of the show was also theatrical, but much more abstract.  It was a live presentation of A Sky of Honey, the second half of Kate’s 2005 album, “Aerial.”

It began this time not with a bang, but etherially, with snow and giant doors, through which came a large featureless wooden puppet, operated by a black-clad puppeteer.

The band was more up front than during the Ninth Wave suite. The puppet explored and wandered about the stage quizzically, comically annoying the musicians.

The music is more laid back and less creepy, like a summer evening, and the stage set and lighting definitely reflected that.  Themes are of sunsets and birds.

In several points Kate sang/spoke just in birdsong, and quite proficiently, too.

Her son Bertie was even more spotlighted in this one, playing the role of a painter (on the album this role was played by the now disturbingly imprisoned Rolf Harris) trying to capture sunset “Magic Hour” lighting.

The artist is distracted by the puppet creature, which he tells to “piss off.” Bertie got his own song, a newly written one called “Tawny Moon,” which accompanied amazing projected 3D moon footage (accurate, even the details on the far side, to my armchair astronomer’s eye).  His singing voice can’t compete with his mom’s, but we clearly owe the whole concert to him, as his mother did it only with his encouragement and collaboration.

Again, the things that happened were abstract, and the music immersive, so I cannot provide specific details in the correct order.  But let’s say that over the course of the suite we have a cranky painter, a childlike wooden puppet, and Kate as a bird-obsessed woman who suddenly begins to grow feathers on her arm and have it transform into a wing, and then she entirely transforms into an enormous blackbird and TAKES FLIGHT into the air.

Oh, and meanwhile a forest fell from the sky, trees impaling the stage and a piano.  And the wooden puppet suddenly broke away from his puppeteer AND RAN FRANTICALLY AROUND THE STAGE ON HIS OWN. Thus was the climax of the show. Baffling and, once again, jawdropping.

For an encore, Kate came out alone and performed “Among Angels” from her most recent album, “50 Words for Snow,” solo on piano, fragile and magical.

She was absolutely beaming, shyly, and thanked the audience profusely, as if we did all the work that night. She also entreated us, maternally, to be absolutely sure we got home safely.  “Really, I want you to be sure you are safe.” She knew many of us had come a very long way to be there.

For the final song, the entire band returned for “Cloudbusting,” the hit 1985 song about an eccentric scientist who believed the world was powered by orgasms, and who was arrested by the government for constructing a machine that could generate rain.

For Kate Bush, this sort of topic is pop music material.  It was arranged as a triumphant march, and turned into an absolutely glorious singalong for the entire audience, many of whom rushed to the front of the stage.  Again, spine tingling, thrilling.

And with that it was over.

A bold statement perhaps, but it was rather like being able to see Beethoven, “Ok, here I present my Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, and a few bonus themes you will probably recognize.” The real stuff, straight from the tap, as she sees it in her own head.  More than music, theatre or dance.  Was it what the Germans call a Gesamtkunstwerk?  Yeah.  I think so.

And it came to pass that in the end, we fragile humans, dazed by three hours of constant mental input, confusion, wonder and joy, were left to stumble outside, gaze once again in disbelief at the marquee out front (with requisite selfies), and grab the Tube home, to go to sleep.

But in this case, for a former small town desert boy, wandering stunned and thrilled through the London night, it was waking life that was the real dream.