FEATURE:
Screen Dreams, Movie Queens and Vaseline
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Kate Bush’s Wow
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IN my various approaches and dissections…
of Kate Bush’s second album, Lionheart, I have mentioned the single, Wow. As the album celebrates an anniversary on 12th November, I wanted to go a bit deeper and investigate certain songs to demonstrate how strong the album is and why people need to give it a closer listen. Although one of Lionheart’s issues is that it is an album that was fairly hastily assembled and created without very few newly-penned songs from Bush, she did manage to record a splendid album that boasts a few of her very best singles. She has quite a nice problem on her hand regarding the running order. Maybe producer Andrew Powell had a bigger say but, when it came to the opening track, do you go for something quite dreamy and immersive like The Kick Inside’s Moving, or do you open with a bolder track as Bush did with future albums like Never for Ever (Babooshka), The Dreaming (Sat in Your Lap), and Hounds of Love (Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)!? In a way, there are similarities between The Kick Inside, and Lionheart regarding how it opens and develops. Both lead with a softer and very beautiful opening track: on Lionheart it is Symphony in Blue, whereas Moving starts The Kick Inside. Both tracks also have a run of three slower tracks before throwing in something harder and faster for track-four – Kite on The Kick Inside; Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake for Lionheart.
I think it was the right decision having Symphony in Blue open Lionheart as to create a natural bridge between the two albums but, like The Kick Inside, the standout single is saved for slightly later. Lionheart’s best-known song, Wow, arrived two tracks after the first track. It is strange that Wow was left as the second single from the album, and why Hammer Horror was chosen as the lead single. I can appreciate how The Kick Inside was still resonating by October 1978 so, when Hammer Horror came out (which was the first single), perhaps there was not the desire to rekindle public interest with a big single. Wow eventually came out on 9th March, 1979, and it reached number-fourteen in the U.K. That single position always baffles me, as it is an urgent song and it sports one of the best choruses of Bush’s career. Clearly, she wanted to nail the song as those who worked on Lionheart recount Bush doing endless vocal takes – especially on the chorus – to get it right. Maybe releasing Wow in 1978 would have resulted in a better chart position, and I am fascinated to learn what the process was regarding planning the single releases from Lionheart. Wow is a fabulous song and is one of Bush’s best-loved. In a recent MOJO special magazine regarding Kate Bush, they placed Wow at number-nine in her best fifty tracks. MOJO observed how, even in 1979, there was still this image of Bush being quite a high-pitched and eccentric singer, and Wow perfectly mixes the more wide-eyed ‘wows’ and ‘unbelivables’ with deeper strings; there is a tonal balance where there is more soaring and high-range vocals and darker sounds that levels things up.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
In 2018, PROG put Wow at number-nine (that magic number!) in their list of the best Bush songs; Consequence of Sound marked it as Bush’s seventh-best song. They remarked the following:
“Bush’s second album, Lionheart, came out in an unseemly rush nine months after her debut. The singer later confessed to feeling undue pressure from her record label, who were keen to cash in. Yet the album still flaunted some gems, and its second single, “Wow”, is the most tempting jewel among them. Lyrically, it speaks of the artificiality of the stage — the inner loneliness, the repetition of performing, the gushing falsehood of praise, the never quite making it– but more broadly it seems to be about the duplicity of show business and, by implication, the music industry. The song is blessed with striking melody lines with orchestral instruments complementing sensitive bass. Whether dropping an innuendo about Vaseline, scaling vocal heights, or descending two octaves to hit an unexpected bass note, Kate Bush is always in command of her stage”.
I could go on, but Wow has received big acclaimed through the years – The Guardian ranked it as Bush’s thirteenth-best single. Before digging deeper into various outside aspects of the song, I want to bring in an article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, where we hear Bush’s story of Wow:
“I've really enjoyed recording 'Wow'. I'm very, very pleased with my vocal performance on that, because we did it a few times, and although it was all in tune and it was okay, there was just something missing. And we went back and did it again and it just happened, and I've really pleased with that, it was very satisfying. (Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978)
'Wow' is a song about the music business, not just rock music but show business in general, including acting and theatre. People say that the music business is about ripoffs, the rat race, competition, strain, people trying to cut you down, and so on, and though that's all there, there's also the magic. It was sparked off when I sat down to try and write a Pink Floyd song, something spacey; Though I'm not surprised no-one has picked that up, it's not really recognisable as that, in the same way as people haven't noticed that 'Kite' is a Bob Marley song, and 'Don't Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake' is a Patti Smith song. When I wrote it I didn't envisage performing it - the performance when it happened was an interpretation of the words I'd already written. I first made up the visuals in a hotel room in New Zealand, when I had half an hour to make up a routine and prepare for a TV show. I sat down and listened to the song through once, and the whirling seemed to fit the music. Those who were at the last concert of the tour at Hammersmith must have noticed a frogman appear through the dry ice it was one of the crew's many last night 'pranks' and was really amazing. I'd have liked to have had it in every show. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Summer 1979)”.
Wow is a song that was written long before recording started for Lionheart, and Bush searched and kept working on the song as she felt something was missing; there was this desire to provide an emotional connection that resulted in numerous takes and experimentation.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
On a side-note: two different bands feature on Lionheart. Bush wanted her old band – from the KT Bush Band days – to play on the album, but producer Andrew Powell stepped in and wanted the band of more experienced musicians who appeared on The Kick Inside to reprise their roles. Two songs (the other being Kashka from Baghdad) feature the older band - drums: Charlie Morgan; guitars: Brian Bath; bass: Del Palmer; electric guitar: Ian Bairnson; mandolin: Paddy Bush; Synthesizer: Duncan Mackay. Although Bairnson, Mackay and Paddy Bush feature on The Kick Inside, Del Palmer would appear in a more permanent role from 1980’s Never for Ever onwards. Wow is classic Kate Bush, in the sense that there are huge vocals, a hugely memorable chorus and lyrics that are a lot more interesting than what many of her contemporaries would have been producing. The video is great, as Bush commits to the theatrics of the song and there is a line, “He’s too busy hitting the Vaseline!”, where she pats her bottom suggestively – when The Whole Story (a greatest hits package) was released in 1986, the original video was replaced; maybe Bush was not comfortable with such cheekiness! What I love is that Lionheart is an album that featured duality and distinct shifts in mood. Wow is a lot more fun and satirical, whilst there are songs such as Oh England My Lionheart, and Symphony in Blue, which are more emotional and restrained. It is interesting that there are two versions of the studio recording of Wow. There is the album version and the single version. The single version is an edited version of Wow; on all European Wow singles, the first twelve seconds of synthesiser chords have been removed.
Returning to the article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, and it is amazing that critics were slightly lukewarm regarding Wow:
“The music paper Sounds seemed a little underwhelmed by 'Wow': "I hear this mediocre chanteuse crooning her way through this silly song. (...) I realise that a lot of people would like to go to bed with her, but buying all her records seems a curious way of expressing such desires." Meanwhile, The Guardian called 'Wow' the "undisputed highlight" of the Lionheart album. "An eerie gentle number with perceptive lyrics. The verses still sound a little muddled but get better with playing" said Record Mirror. And Melody Maker added: "The most precisely focused Kate Bush single since Wuthering Heights despite the self-indulgent lush production”.
One can attribute the mediocre reviews to stuffiness and ignorance, but Wow has since gathered so much affection! On an album that has to fight for attention and acclaim, I do feel that Wow is not an anomaly of genius! It is the highlight for many, and I was keen to highlight the track as it so good! It is also amazing to think that Bush had this song in her locker when she was recording The Kick Inside, and I wonder whether she was keeping it back or never intended to release it – as she needed to put out a second album quickly, Bush searched through some older songs so she could have an album ready in time. It is a classic and, though some people criticised her for her overuse (in interviews and music) of words like ‘wow’, and ‘amazing’, Lionheart’s second single is more than deserving of…
SUCH giddy excitement.