Del Palmer, bassist and long-term collaborator with Kate Bush – obituary
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Del Palmer, who has died aged 71, was a bass player and sound engineer who was Kate Bush’s right-hand man in the studio, as well as her long-term partner during the 1980s; the singer also became renowned for her lavish, big-budget promo videos, and Palmer was often featured in a leading role.
Derek Peter Palmer was born in Greenwich on November 3 1952; he was 15 when he acquired his first bass guitar, borrowing £20 from his mother to buy a Hofner Artist.
He played in a band called Tame, with Brian Bath on guitar and Vic King on drums; they eventually became the KT Bush Band after Kate’s Bush’s brother Paddy, a friend of Palmer’s, suggested that they help give her some experience of playing live. He realised when he saw her perform that his life had changed.
“I knew I had to be involved. She was going to be huge – that was obvious to me when she was 17 and still a very raw artist.”
They secured a residency at the Rose of Lee pub in Lewisham. “The first night there were about 10 people,” he recalled. “By the time we finished the residency there were people out in the street who couldn’t get in the door, it was so jammed.
“I thought: ‘Where does this girl get all her energy from?’ She would be up at the crack of dawn, and she didn’t stop from that point onwards. She would travel into London for dance classes, come home and sing, then play and work on the music. When I was completely knackered and had to sleep, she would still be working on Wuthering Heights at two o’clock in the morning – to the point where we would get complaining letters from the neighbours.”
Thanks in part to the help of Dave Gilmour, who was given a demo tape by a mutual friend of the Pink Floyd guitarist and the Bush family, Kate was given a sizeable advance by EMI – who insisted that her backing band was replaced by session musicians for her debut album, The Kick Inside, released in February 1978. But by the time the follow-up, Lionheart, came out nine months later Palmer’s position as her regular bassist was secure.
Their professional relationship had become personal, and Palmer played on Never for Ever (1980) and The Dreaming (1982), as well as being her main man in the studio and engineering her self-produced masterpiece Hounds Of Love (1985).
Their relationship ended in the early 1990s, but they continued working together, and he engineered her 1993 album The Red Shoes, working with her as she composed in the studio, programming electronic drums and the Fairlight sampling computer.
“There have been lots of times when I’ve had quite heated arguments with her,” he recalled in an interview to promote the album. “I’d say something wouldn’t work, to which her response has been, ‘Indulge me... Just do it.’ ”
He played on later Kate Bush albums – Aerial in 2005 and 50 Words for Snow (2011) – while he also engineered albums for Roy Harper and Alain Stivell, as well as Sister and Brother, Kate Bush’s collaboration with Midge Ure on his 1988 album Answers to Nothing.
Palmer also made appearances in Kate Bush’s acclaimed videos. He was a getaway driver in There Goes a Tenner in 1982, then in 1986, in the video for Experiment IV – released as a double A-side with Don’t Give Up to promote her second compilation album The Whole Story – he played a patient on a secret military base who has the titular experiment performed on him.
It also featured Hugh Laurie, Peter Vaughan and Dawn French but was deemed too gruesome to be shown on Top of the Pops.
In 2018, Palmer returned to the stage after a long absence, touring England and Ireland with a covers band, Cloudbusting, playing songs from the Kate Bush back catalogue.
Del Palmer, born November 3 1952, died January 5 2024
