FEATURE:
With Her Ego in Her Gut
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport Photography
The Dreaming’s Leave It Open: An Eccentric and Beautiful Kate Bush Epic
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IN the runup to Aerial turning fifteen next month…
I am going to write about the album and approach it from different aspects. It is such an important album and, when Kate Bush released The Red Shoes in 1993, there was this twelve-year pause where many wondered whether she would return and if her career was over. I shall explore Aerial more through the next few weeks but, in the latest feature that investigates a song very closely, I wanted to get inside of The Dreaming’s Leave It Open. There are a couple of reasons why I wanted to highlight this song. In the coming weeks, I am going to study one of my favourite songs from The Dreaming, All the Love, but I am fascinated by Leave It Open, as it is one of the more experimental and strange songs from the album that people do not really talk about. In the U.K., Kate Bush released three singles from The Dreaming. The first, Sat in Your Lap, is a marvellous track that was released fifteen months prior to The Dreaming coming out in June 1981. With the album completion nowhere in sight, I guess there might have been some pressure from EMI for Bush to put something out – it has been less than a year since Never for Ever was released but, as is the way with the music industry, there is always pressure to keep momentum up and put something out – lest people, as they always did through her career, think that Bush had disappeared! That single peaked at number-eleven, and it was a successful release.
The other two singles, The Dreaming, and There Goes a Tenner, were not as popular – the former reached number-forty-eight and the latter failed to chart. Suspended in Gaffa was released in Europe and Australia instead of There Goes a Tenner – the single did alright in terms of chart positions, and it would have made a better U.K. release. Night of the Swallow, a clear highlight from The Dreaming, was released in Ireland in 1983, over a year after The Dreaming arrived. The Dreaming was strange in terms of its single releases because, as I have written before, I think there are songs that would have made successful and fine singles – including Houdini, Get Out of My House, All the Love, and Leave It Open. Never for Ever’s (1980) singles – Breathing, Babooshka, and Army Dreamers – were all very strong and mixed deception, nuclear war, and young men dying in war. Hounds of Love’s singles – including Running Up That Hill (a Deal with God), and The Big Sky – were all successful, but The Dreaming was a bit of an odd time. Bush has said herself that she felt herself going a bit mad whilst making the album, and I think a lot of critics at the time dismissed the album as being too odd and experimental and not commercial enough. Bush was never going to put out the sort of more accessible songs she did for Hounds of Love, and I love The Dreaming as it was Bush producing alone for the first time and stretching her creative wings.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional shot for The Dreaming (single) in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
In a recent magazine special from MOJO (their Collectors’ Series), they placed Leave It Open at number-thirty in the top-fifty Kate Bush songs, and I think it would have made a good single! Rather than put out There Goes a Tenner – which a song that I like - and I can see why Bush wanted to release it - but it lacks a special something -, Leave It Open would have been great. Maybe it would not have bothered the top-twenty, but I feel it would have fared better than even The Dreaming’s title track, as it is a wonderfully rich, imaginative, and striking. I love all the vocals on offer and one is hooked by the lyrics right from the first verse: “With my ego in my gut/My babbling mouth would wash it up/(But now I've started learning how)/I keep it shut”. In terms of the song’s inspiration, I have grabbed some information from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, where Bush herself explains and shed some light:
“Like cups, we are filled up and emptied with feelings, emotions - vessels breathing in, breathing out. This song is about being open and shut to stimuli at the right times. Often we have closed minds and open mouths when perhaps we should have open minds and shut mouths.
This was the first demo to be recorded, and we used a Revox and the few effects such as a guitar chorus pedal and an analogue delay system. We tried to give the track an Eastern flavour and the finished demo certainly had a distinctive mood.
IN THIS PHOTO: Bush attends a record signing at Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street in London for her album, The Dreaming, on 14th September, 1982
There are lots of different vocal parts, each portraying a separate character and therefore each demanding an individual sound. When a lot of vocals are being used in contrast rather than "as one", more emphasis has to go on distinguishing between the different voices, especially if the vocals are coming from one person.
To help the separation we used the effects we had. When we mastered the track, a lot more electronic effects and different kinds of echoes were used, helping to place the vocals and give a greater sense of perspective. Every person who came into the studio was given the "end backing vocals test" to guess what is being sung at the end of the song.
"How many words is it?"
"Five."
"Does it begin with a 'W'?"
It is very difficult to guess, but it can be done, especially when you know what the song is about.
I would love to know your answers. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982)”.
That idea of Bush writing about humans opening themselves and not allowing their egos to drag them down; being receptive and open-minded instead of ignorant – it is an attitude and mentality that resonates with everyone, and the way she delivers these thoughts is incredible. Those who highlight The Dreaming as being weird and mad could do well to look at an album they embrace and love: Hounds of Love. Listen to tracks on the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave, such as Waking the Witch, and Jig of Life, and there are similarities with Leave It Open.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pierre Terrasson
I really love one of The Dreaming’s hidden gems, and it is a song that perfectly closed the first side of the album – it follows the wonderful and skipping Suspended in Gaffa, before we get to the first track on the second side. Just to go off on a semi-tangent before carrying on, and I think The Dreaming is the only Kate Bush album where the track sequencing is a bit off. I think the last four tracks are perfectly arranged - Night of the Swallow, All the Love, Houdini, and Get Out of My House -, but I think Leave It Open should have opened the second side (thinking about it, the song would be more powerful and moving there than the end of the second side), whereas The Dreaming (track-six) should have been moved to the second track, after Sat in Your Lap, and I would have moved tracks two, three and four - There Goes a Tenner, Pull Out the Pin, and Suspended in Gaffa – so that the final three tracks on the first side are arranged like this: Pull out the Pin, There Goes a Tenner, and Suspended in Gaffa. I guess it is only minor rearrangement, but I think it would make for a more satisfying listen! In years since its release, The Dreaming has been seen as head-spinning, brave, wonderfully inventive, incredibly modern, and underrated – John Lydon (the Sex Pistols, PiL) has called it his favourite Kate Bush album.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 1982 during the There Goes a Tenner shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from his book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
Maybe singles like The Dreaming, and There Goes a Tenner defined people’s views of The Dreaming as a whole, whereas I feel songs like Leave It Open got overlooked a bit. The feverish and hugely evocative song is a mini-masterpiece on an album full of them and, when we consider Kate Bush’s best-ever songs, I feel it warrants a place in everyone’s top-twenty-five – fair crack for MOJO putting it in the top-thirty, but I think it is even stronger than that! The track is full of thought-provoking lyrics – “Harm is in us/Harm is in us, but power to arm/Harm is in us” -, and a line that practically defines The Dreaming: “We let the weirdness in”. Now, The Dreaming is seen as one of Bush’s best albums, but I think there was still a perception of what a female artist should be in 1982. When Kate Bush spoke with NME in that year, she addressed this:
"There're so many females that don't fit in any category at all. There're a lot of people that would love to pin them in those categories. When an image is created around a person--especially a female--there're so many presumptions thrown in. There are a lot of of female artists who are stereotypes, and who nearly fall into those niches people talk about, but there're a lot who don't. When you mention traditional females, it sounds as though they have nothing within them--epitomes of a situation. Any singer is a human being working inside and letting all kinds of different energies come out.
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from his book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
"The labelling that comes with the creation of an image is always a disadvantage. When someone has done something very artistic, it won't be let out when they've been packaged. When a female is attractive--whether she emphasises it or not--she's automatically projected with sexual connotations. I don't think that happens so readily with me.
"When I started, it seemed that a lot of singers were singing as if they weren't even related to the lyrics. They'd sing about heartbreak, and keep a big smile on their faces. For me, the singer is the expression of the song. An image should be created for each song, or at least each record; the personality that goes with that particular music. But I don't think that will ever be seen by the majority of people who look at the pictures and see the so-called images come out.
"When I was first happening, the only other female on the level I was being promoted at was Blondie. We were both being promoted on the basis of being female bodies as well as singers. I wasn't looked at as being a female singer-songwriter. People weren't even generally aware that I wrote my own songs or played the piano until maybe a year or so after that. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist inside a female body. The idea of the body as a vehicle is...just one of those things. But I'm someone who talks about music and songs”.
I wanted to throw the spotlight to Leave It Open, not just because it is a part of an album that, to this day, people overlook or try to define too narrowly, but I think it is a perfect combination of Bush’s growing confidence and ambition, together with the blissful dose of madness and beauty – a song that has plenty of vital lyrics and some incredible vocals! From its pounding beats and trippy voices, to the wonderful production (from Bush herself), the sublime Leave It Open is one of Kate Bush’s…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport Photography
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