Coachella festival organisers reportedly turned down the chance to book Kate Bush because they were worried that people "wouldn't understand her".

Marc Geiger, head of music at the William Morris Endeavour Agency, made the claim in a feature in the New Yorker about the inner workings of the festival.

"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.'"

A spokesperson for Kate Bush told The Independent: "It was never Kate's intention to play any more shows than she did in London. The show was conceived for a very specific type of venue. No discussions were ever had with Kate about playing any festival, including Coachella."

Kate Bush returned to the stage in 2014 for 22 shows in London - her first live performances since 1979 - which sold out in minutes and attracted rave reviews.

Speaking to The Independent about her hiatus from live shows she said: "It wasn't designed that way, because I really enjoyed the first set of shows we did [in 1979]. The plan at the time was that I was going to do another two albums' worth of fresh material, and then do another show.

"But of course, by the time I got to the end of what was The Dreaming album, it had gone off on a slight tilt, because I'd become so much more involved in the recording process.

"Also, every time I finish an album, I go into visual projects, and even if they're quite short pieces, they're still a huge amount of work to put together. So I started to veer away from the thing of being a live performing artist, to one of being a recording artist with attached visuals."