FEATURE:
From Album to Fanzine…
COVER PHOTO: Gered Mankowitz
A Look at the Magnificent Coffee Homeground from Kate Bush’s Lionheart
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THIS feature will be fairly short…
PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
and it will be my last feature relating to Lionheart as Kate Bush’s second album turns forty-two on 12th November. Lionheart is, as I have said a few times, really underrated and an album that came out really well considering she recorded and released it only months after her debut, The Kick Inside. There was not a great deal of time for Bush to write new songs for a second album as she was still promoting her debut! One of the three new songs that was written for Lionheart was Coffee Homeground. I thought the song dated back to 1977, but Bush actually wrote it whilst she was in the U.S.A. in May 1978. I am not sure whether she had designs to include it on an album or whether it was just something she had in mind and wanted to get on paper. I think, alongside other newly-written songs Full House, and Symphony in Blue, Coffee Homeground fits well alongside the seven ‘older tracks’ on Lionheart. The fact that Bush released a ten-track album when her debut contained thirteen songs was, perhaps, another sign that she was very short on time creating new songs or felt other ideas were not strong enough to make it on the album. She has said in interviews how recording Lionheart in France was quite productive and there were ideas and songs, but I still think she would have felt a little pressured or rushed having to put together an album considering her debut came together very differently – some songs she wrote a long time before the album was released; Bush entered the studio to record The Kick Inside when she was ready and the time was right.
I am not sure where in the U.S. Bush was when she wrote Coffee Homeground, but this article from Kate Bush Encyclopaedia gives us some more detail:
“['Coffee Homeground'] was in fact inspired directly from a cab driver that I met who was in fact a bit nutty. And it's just a song about someone who thinks they're being poisoned by another person, they think that there's Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it's got poisen in it. And it's just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of German [vibe] to try and bring across the humour side of it. (Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978)”.
The inspiration and memory of that taxi driver came to her at an opportune moment, and the song that came from it is among the most distinct on Lionheart. There is orchestration and a synthesiser and one hears a dizzying, almost circus-like sound at work. The Kick Inside was a little simpler regarding composition and style, whereas Coffee Homeground is wilder and more eccentric. There are a couple of songs on Lionheart that look at paranoia – the other is another new song, Full House -, and it is interesting that, so soon after her debut album, Bush was bringing the subject of paranoia into her work. Not to suggest this reflected a fatigue from endless interviews and travelling, but she made this huge and interesting leap in terms of her songwriting so soon after The Kick Inside came out.
I do like the way Bush’s voice skips and conspires in the chorus – “Well, you won't get me with your Belladonna - in the coffee/And you won't get me with your aresenic - in the pot of tea/And you won't get me in a hole to rot - with your hemlock/On the rocks”. One best not look too deep beyond Bush’s own story about Coffee Homeground’s start, but I think there is a bit of her own fear and stress in a track that is very much about mistrust and wanting safety. Although Bush had a pretty broad palette through The Kick Inside regards her lyrics, she was touching on new themes and ideas on Lionheart. Coffee Homeground is a really interesting song, and one that contains some of Bush’s best lyrics to that point. Some critics highlighted the track as one of the weakest on Lionheart, but I think it is as arresting, interesting and accomplished as the album’s highlights (songs such as Wow, and Symphony in Blue). There is a bit of history and the fantastical in the song, sort of in the same was as we hear on In Search of Peter Pan earlier in the album. I do love the story in Coffee Homeground. The paranoid man refuses a coffee, as he knows that there is something darker happening downstairs – the coffee shop is almost like Sweeny Todd’s barbershop, where selected patrons are primed for imminent death. “Offer me a chocolate/No thank you, spoil my diet, know your game!/But tell me just how come/They smell of bitter almonds/It's a no-no to your coffee homeground/Pictures of Crippin/Lipstick-smeared/Torn wallpaper/Have the walls got ears here?”.
Bush summons up these smells, strange feelings and vivid images that, in 1978, might have seemed a bit odd to critics who were expecting something more traditional; perhaps they felt the chorus was a bit too throwaway. I think there is more of a Sweeny Todd nod later in the song as the protagonist muses where certain people are who were here before; have they been served a coffee homeground and done away with?! This protagonist will not be lured by a tempting smell – “Maybe you're lonely/And only want a little company/But keep your recipes/For the rats to eat/And may they rest in peace with coffee homeground”. I wonder whether Coffee Homeground is set in a 1970s coffeehouse, but the protagonist is recasting it more of a Victorian locale; perhaps the fear and paranoia has created these strange sights and suspicions! At the end, there is a weird and wonderful mantras: “With your hemlock on the rocks/"Noch ein Glas, mein Liebchen?"/With your hemlock on the rocks/"Es schmeckt wunderbahr!"/With your hemlock on the rocks”. Although every Lionheart track was performed during Bush’s 1979 The Tour of Life, Coffee Homeground at least enjoyed a life beyond the album. Tracks such as Kashka from Baghdad, and Oh England My Lionheart were never released as singles or B-sides; Coffee Homeground did make it as a B-side to Lionheart’s first single, Hammer Horror – both songs have elements of fear and the macabre, so I guess it made sense pairing them.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Press Association
Another new track, Full House, was the B-side to Wow, so I am glad that these songs made it beyond the album – Full House was also released as a B-side to the Japanese single version of Symphony in Blue. The penultimate track – before Hammer Horror – on Bush’s sophomore album, I really love Coffee Homeground and I definitely feel it is one of her hidden treasures. Bush’s experimentation and growth really started to happen on her third album, Never for Ever, after a successful tour and the incorporation of the Fairlight C.M.I., though one can hear shades and flavours of that confidence and boldness on the mad, magical and mysterious Coffee Homeground. Not only is the song a cracker, but it was adopted, in part, as the title to a long-running Kate Bush fanzine. HomeGround is available in book form, and it is well worth getting. The longest-running Kate Bush fanzine started life in 1982. The final printed issue, number 79, was published in 2011. It was run by Krystyna Fitzgerald-Morris, Peter Fitzgerald-Morris and Dave Cross in the U.K. The fanzine was conceived in Dave Cross's flat in May 1982. Twenty-five copies were run off an office photocopier. Through the years, the fanzine was produced with ever more professionality, and in fact got the support of Kate Bush and the people around her. Fans contributed stories, artwork and poetry, while the editors followed every detail about Kate in the press worldwide, even during quieter times. Even though there is a mere nod to Coffee Homeground, it is cool that a treasured and vital part of Kate Bush’s legacy was partly inspired by a great track from her second album of 1978. One can hear some flights of fancy and something very different (compared to The Kick Inside) on Coffee Homeground; it was only a couple of years later when Never for Ever arrived and Kate Bush…
WOULD really start to take flight!