FEATURE:
Rubberband Girl
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
The Red Shoes to Aerial: The ‘Departure’ and ‘Re-Emergence’ of Kate Bush
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THERE is something appropriate about the title….
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
of this piece, and I actually really like Rubberband Girl. It was a song originally released as a single from The Red Shoes – the lead single everywhere in the world except for the U.S. (where Eat the Music was favoured). Rubberband Girl was the first of five singles released from The Red Shoes. The song marked Bush's return from her third three-year hiatus. Three different versions of Rubberband Girl were released commercially: an L.P., an extended mix and a remix by American D.J. Eric Kupper called the US Mix, which was released towards the end of 1994 on the And So Is Love single. Rubberband Girl peaked at number-twelve on the UK Singles Chart. It is one of the simpler Pop numbers on The Red Shoes, and it speaks of a resilience and determination to get back on her feet after being knocked down; if she was as elastic as a rubber band, then that would be perfect – “A rubberband bouncing back to life/A rubberband bend the beat/If I could learn to give like a rubberband/I'd be back on my feet”. The Red Shoes was released on 1st November, 1993, and I wanted to put out a couple of features about the album as it sort of gets overlooked. I also want to tie it in with her next album, Aerial, which was released on 7th November, 2005 – how Bush, like the visions and lyrics on Rubberband Girl, sprung back to life after years of questions and theories: Had she disappeared and quit music?! Was she a full-time reclusive?
Although, perhaps, The Red Shoes is my least-favourite of her original studio albums, I have extolled its virtues before and nodded to its importance and strengths. I think there are a few weaker or less impactful songs on the second side that means The Red Shoes is not as consistent as The Sensual World four years earlier – tracks such as Why Should I Love You?, Big Stripey Lie, and Constellation of the Heart suffer from slightly weaker lyrics and there is a lack of real memorability and focus. I think the first side of The Red Shoes is incredibly strong. Rubberband Girl is a fun and fantastic single, whilst And So Is Love, Moments of Pleasure, and Lily are right up there with her greatest work! I wrote about the year 1993 fairly recently to show just what Kate Bush had to contend with in terms of her personal and professional life. Her mother died in 1992, and Bush’s long-term relationship with Del Palmer broke up around the time of The Red Shoes’ release (or slightly before). I think, in order to keep busy and motivated, Bush put out The Red Shoes, and she was hoping that it would be a success. There were some positive reviews, but I think a lot of critics were either comparing everything with a high-watermark like Hounds of Love, or they were not convinced by the production values or some of the lesser songs.
In years since, I think The Red Shoes has picked up a bit more praise and attention. Back Seat Mafia reinvestigated the album back in 2015:
“Having fought so hard to establish your commercial and creative freedom, what do you do once you’ve actually achieved it? In Kate Bush’s case, whatever she liked really. Like its predecessor, The Red Shoes sounds like an album where Kate Bush took advantage of the fact she had free reign to follow her muse. It’s an album where Bush sounds both defiant, yet somewhat haunted at the same time, as the previous few years had seen her juggle her music career with a traumatic period of her life away from the industry.
While each of Kate Bush’s albums has something unique to offer (even the much maligned Lionheart), I feel The Red Shoes is one that’s not so much over shadowed by better work, as misunderstood. If it had been an album by anyone else, I’m sure that same audience would hail it as a masterpiece, but because it’s Kate Bush, and her fans seemingly see her above dabbling with pop structures that flirt too closely with the mainstream, or relying too heavily on special guests, it’s unfairly dismissed as a lesser work.
Quite why Ms Bush herself isn’t fond of The Red Shoes is perhaps a more complicated matter. Maybe it’s an album that holds too many personal memories for her, or perhaps she feels in retrospect that some of the material is maybe a touch too personal? Maybe she just doesn’t like the way that The Red Shoes sounds, as in recent years she has confessed her dissatisfaction with the fact that the album was recorded digitally instead of analogue, and has even re-recorded some of the material as part of her Directors Cut album from 2011. Then again, maybe, just maybe, she just gets the vibe that her fans see it a lesser work and that has coloured her own opinions a little in the intervening years?”
There had always been plans of performing live since 1979’s The Tour of Life, and I think 1993/1994 would have been a great time but, because of personal loss and the poor reception The Red Shoes received, maybe that knocked the wind from Bush’s sails and her priorities changed. Another dent occurred when Bush released The Line, the Cross and the Curve. This short film was a way of putting together something filmic and ambitious, but it was not a full tour/stage show and it would be a nice visual accompaniment to her latest album. The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia explains more:
“The Line, the Cross and the Curve is a musical short film directed by and starring Kate Bush. Released in 1993, it co-starred Miranda Richardson and noted choreographer Lindsay Kemp, who had served as dance mentor to Bush early in her career. The film is essentially an extended music video featuring songs from Bush's 1993 album, The Red Shoes, which in turn was inspired by the classic movie musical-fantasy The Red Shoes.
In this version of the tale, Bush plays a frustrated singer-dancer who is enticed by a mysterious woman (Richardson) into putting on a pair of magical ballet slippers. Once on her feet, the shoes start dancing on their own, and Bush's character (who is never referred to by name) must battle Richardson's character to free herself from the spell of the shoes. Her guide on this strange journey is played by Kemp.
The film premiered at the London Film Festival on 13 November 1993. Kate got up on stage before the screening to thank "everyone who'd been a part of making the film" and to speak of her trepidation because her opus was following a brilliant Wallace & Gromit animation by Aardman called 'The wrong trousers'. Subsequently, the film was released direct-to-video in most areas and was only a modest success”.
As I have explained in previous features, Bush herself knew that she had taken on a bit too much. She wrote and directed the film, and she was also the star of it! Without a director to reign her in or help with her performance, she was making a lot of the big decisions and I think her subjectivity makes The Line, the Cross and the Curve promising but not as memorable as it could have been. Regardless, it was a unique chance to see Bush on the screen in a fuller acting role, and there are some astonishing moments from the film. The Red Shoes did reach number-two in the U.K., but I think there was less adulation and critical approval than she had enjoyed in years previous and this, combined with the missed opportunity that was The Line, the Cross and the Curve, meant that Bush did not release another studio album until 2005. She was still processing losing her mother and the end of a relationship, and the impact all of this would have had on her mind and body is incredible.
1993 was not a year when Bush disappeared and we did not see her again until 2005! And So Is Love was released as the final single from The Red Shoes in 1994, whereupon Bush performed on Top of the Pops. I want to cover how Kate Bush came back in 2005 following a 1993 that had a hangover of loss and tragedy, combined with a downturn in critical acclaim and an album that, whilst underrated, was not taken to the heart like Bush’s very best. I will, as I often do, use Graeme Thomson’s book, Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, as it is a bit of a guide when it comes to the 1994-2005 period – so we can fill some gaps between two very important albums! Bush conducted a few interviews in 1993, and one that interests me (and I have quoted from before) was with Q magazine. Some of the questions asked sort of reveal why Kate Bush needed a break and whether she was proud of her current work:
“Do you worry about getting old?
"I don't actually worry about aging, but I am at a point when I'm older than I was and there's a few things I'd like to be doing with my life. I've spent a lot of time working and I'd like to catch up. Over the next few years I'd like to take some time off."
What particular catching up would you like to do?
"Oh, nothing very significant or particular. Nothing, really...just travel and have some holidays. It's silly that I haven't taken more breaks. I've spent a long time in the city and I love being by the sea, and I'm starting to pine for it. I'd like to put energy into stuff like that."
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
How self-centred are you?
"Quite a lot, probably. I must be because of my work. It's all to do with delving into the self. That's how humans function. You're relating stuff all the time to yourself. My work is very selfish. But it's very meaningful to me when I see a letter saying that somehow it's helped someone else. It's quite a selfish thing that I do. And I'm becoming more aware as I get older of wanting to be more, well, giving to others. Like making this film: it feels better that the group is larger and there's more interaction."
Are you proud of what you've done?
(Long pause.) "On some levels, yes. I'm proud of having faced up to difficult times and situations and finshing projects that felt like they would never be finished. But I have spent a lot of time working. I'd like to redress the balance. I haven't wasted any of my life yet, but I'm a bit fed up with being stuck in a studio. I shouldn't complain. It's a privilege, really."
And, finally, are you a recluse and a publicity-shy enigma?
"That does amuse me. Well, the reclusive thing is because I don't go clubbing and I don't do a lot of publicity. I'm a quiet, private person who has managed to hang around for a few years. Ridiculous, really. I didn't think it would be like this. All I wanted to do was make an album. That was the dream. I'd been writing songs since I was little and I just wanted to see them on an album. This was my purpose in life -- to just look at the grooves and think, I did that.
"And then from my first record my life was very dramatically changed. My music was popular instantly. It's a pressure. You can't quietly get on with it. But it was so exciting. My life was turned upside down very fast when I was very young. I was quite a way down the road before I got a chance to look back. At the time it just all seemed like a laugh. That was healthy, though. Keep laughing and you stand a chance of getting through it alive”.
That idea of Bush being a recluse has followed her all of her career. She never has been one, but that word would suggest that, after The Red Shoes, she holed herself at home and did not emerge in public for over a decade! In fact, it was a moment when Bush needed to take stock and carefully consider her next move. Bush has said she was not happy with the production sound on The Red Shoes, and it was not the best time for her. The appeal of releasing more albums in the 1990s waned, and maybe some of the reviews she received for The Red Shoes, and The Line, the Cross and the Curve affected her confidence when it came to a new tour. Whilst it would take a while before Bush returned with a new album, the seed were being planted not long after 1993. In 1996, lyricist Don Black appeared on BBC Radio 2 and talked about an encounter he had with Kate Bush. He asked her who her favourite singer was, and she said (her favourite was) a blackbird; her second-favourite was a thrush. This might throwaway and an answer typical of Kate Bush, but nine years before she released the double album, Aerial, she was sort of indicating where her musical direction was taking her! There is a lot of nature and the outdoors on the album, and second side is awash with the delights of the garden and an English day.
Although King of the Mountain was written about a decade before the other tracks on Aerial, one suspects that Bush was putting together a lot of sketches and other songs around 1995 and 1996. Before Bush and Black met, she had already bought a fourteen-room house in Theale, near Reading. She modified it to her own specifications and she put in her own recording studio and dance studio in the grounds of the house. Some would say that Bush departing the city and buying a large house in a more rural setting was her giving up on music and thinking about the next stage of life. In her mid-late-thirties by 1995, Bush naturally would have wanted a change and a chance to slow down after a pretty relentless past seventeen years of creative and professional commitments. There are articles that posit Bush sort of vanished off the radar post-1993, but one needs to look at what she was doing away from music – laying a foundation for her next move. She would not have had a new album high on her priority list in the few years after 1993, but songs were still coming to her and there wouldn’t have been this feeling that she was done; instead, a change of pace and setting was needed. After the chaos and slightly mad recording of 1982’s The Dreaming, Bush debunked to the country, where she built her own studio and was inspired by the new setting and invigorated after giving herself some time to relax and get back to a healthier lifestyle.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush filming The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
The same can be said of her post-The Red Shoes moves. Thomson notes in his book that The Red Shoes struggled to get off of the ground, whereas Aerial is literally about being of the air. Although the gap between The Red Shoes, and Aerial was four times longer than that of The Dreaming, and Hounds of Love, I don’t think an album like Aerial would have come about were it not for that move – no coincidence that two of her best and favourite albums both arrived after big life changes and recharge after particularly intense and unhappy periods. Prior to her return, Bush did engage in public/music a few times post-1993. She was promoting The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1994; Bush released her cover of The Man I Love (by George and Ira Gershwin) in July that year, in addition to donating two pieces of art to a War Child auction in September – not to mention that appearance on Top of the Pops in November. It was, by all accounts, a pretty busy 1994! Also, in 1994, Bush was commissioned to write several short musical pieces for an advertising campaign in the U.S. on behalf of Coca Cola’s new drink, Fruitopia. Bush had not really done much advertising before 1994 – she was seen on a Japanese advert in 1978 selling Seiko watches backed by her song, Them Heavy People -, so this was an unexpected move!
The short pieces are pretty good, and it would have provided Bush a chance to write new music not tied to a studio album. In the mid-1990s, there was a rise in fanzines and magazines, and there were more visibly negative comments about The Red Shoes, and The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Whilst Bush did not disappear, I think the disappointment she felt towards her album – in later interviews, she said The Red Shoes was the best she could do at the time - coupled with greater negativity took a big toll. Having barely breathed and stepped aside from recording since 1978, one can forgive Bush for going away! Her absence is not quite the big mystery and drama the press made it out to be. So dramatised and almost scandalised was her gap after The Red Shoes, you’d think she was Lord Lucan! Bush had not really allowed herself enough time to grieve her mother’s death in 1992, so it was important to do that. After ending her relationship with Del Palmer, she started one with Danny McIntosh (who she is married to and who appeared on Aerial). There was a period of exhaustion and depression through 1994 and 1995, but Bush was still getting out and was not hiding away. The demo for King of the Mountain was put down in 1996, and her writing process changed: she wrote a song and tackled it when inspiration struck and the time was right, rather than slogging away or feeling pressure to put out an album intensively.
A couple of other Aerial inclusions were finished in 1997, both inspired by her new setting and new-found calm – Sunset, and An Architect’s Dream both feature on Aerial’s second disc, A Sky of Honey. She would have been writing the music for those songs knowing that she was pregnant with her son, Bertie – who she gave birth to in 1998. The period of 1998-2005, for the most part, was Bush finishing her double album – people forget that Aerial is a double album, so it is more like she released two albums in twelve years and not one! - and setting up her home for a new arrival. Bush was not someone who was going to announce the birth to a magazine and invite them to her house for a photoshoot! It was nobody’s business, and the only reason the press found out was that Peter Gabriel – her long-time friend and occasional collaborator – spilled the beans in an interview of 2000. It is ironic that so many in the press wondered where Bush was after 1993, and you sort of felt like there was affection and concern. When they got wind of her son, there were headlines splashed around the press that made you bridle! Referring to Bertie almost as a secret son, and Bush as this recluse who was hiding him away, one can understand why she engaged infrequently with the media after The Red Shoes.
Trying to have a private life and look after her young son, instead, her first mention in many newspapers in years was in such a negative and insulting way! It makes me wonder why people ask where Bush went after 1993, as they know she has a son and wouldn’t have necessarily had music as her main priority in his first few years of his life! After feeling obliged to offer a member of the paparazzi a swift boot after he photographed her and Del Palmer in 1991 attending a performance of Ben Elton’s Silly Cow in London, one can understand her reticence regarding publicity and the press – and why, when it comes to music, one cannot separate the two (and, without that press coverage, it does give the appearance that she has disappeared). In 2001, Bush made a rare appearance at the Q Awards to collect her Classic Songwriter gong – proving that she was not departed or dead; instead, she was getting on with life and was more than happy to be seen out at an occasion like this (where she was being lauded and did not have to face nuisance photographers)! The adulation and affection she received that night should have put pave to the notion that she was a reclusive and irrelevant. I suppose that might have spurred her to continue writing and press on with Aerial and, as Bertie was still very young in 2001 (three), that was also providing inspiration regarding musical ideas.
Although Del Palmer and Kate Bush were not together, he was her engineer and trusted aide during recording, and the musicians were being invited to her home studio as early as 2000. The process was secretive, but it shows Bush had not stopped for too long after The Red Shoes, and she was balancing motherhood with a very complex and challenging album. Despite the fact Bush was busy organising production, daily routines and everything else, musicians who worked on Aerial attest to the fact she was a genial and enthusiastic host who was always smiling and furnishing them with much-needed cups of tea! Albums never came together quickly for Bush, but EMI were quite understanding and Bush and Tony Wadsworth (Chairman & CEO of EMI Music U.K. and Ireland until 2008) were in fairly regular contact regarding progress. There were rumours of albums from Bush since 1997, but by 2004 she had finished recording and was ready to release (in 2005). King of the Mountain was released as the first (and only) single on 24th October, 2005, and Aerial arrived on 7th November that year. The hugely positive reviews for the album must have been a relief for Kate Bush, considering the comparative negativity in 1993. The Red Shoes, and Aerial are completely different albums. The former’s production is not fantastic, and there are cracks appearing on various songs. Aerial, while there are a couple of slightly weak tracks, is a lot more open, uncluttered and the ambition - and its scope and nuance is amazing! Maybe twelve years is a long time to record and release an album, even if it is a masterpiece, but Bush needed the right inspiration to record such an album. Kate Bush was not hiding from the public nor disappeared from view. Instead, she was busy on her own terms and free from the glare of the media changing her life, recording one of her best albums (and her personal favourite) and looking after herself. King of the Mountain turned fifteen on Saturday (24th October), and that is Bush imagining Elvis Presley watching from a mountain, still alive but secluded away from view and fame. Maybe she had her own perception and predicament in mind when she wrote that, only a few years after The Red Shoes came out. That single and the Aerial album coming into the world not only announced that Kate Bush was back, but she was at her strongest and most astonishing…
SINCE 1985’s Hounds of Love.