FEATURE:
Out of the City, Into the Country, Then Out to the World
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin
Kate Bush and the Importance of the Year 1983
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IN this feature…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in October 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Sunday Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
I want to discuss an important time in Kate Bush’s career. 1983 was the year I was born (I was born in May) and, unbeknownst to me, this incredible artist was about to embark on decisions and life changes that would feed into her most successful album, Hounds of Love (1985). To understand why 1983 was so important, one needs to look at 1982’s The Dreaming. The album was released on 13th September, and it was the first album Kate Bush produced alone. One of the things one can say about The Dreaming is that it was uncommercial. The Dreaming (single) did not crack the top-forty; Sat in Your Lap finished outside the top-ten, whilst There Goes a Tenner did not even scrape into the top-seventy-five. Even though The Dreaming made the top-three in the album charts, it was clearly the biggest step away from the Kate Bush we knew in 1978 – when her debut album, The Kick Inside, was released. The album was certified silver, but it was her lowest-selling album to that point: ironically, Hounds of Love (her next album) was her highest-selling studio album. Having released two records in 1978 (Lionheart was her second release), embarked on a huge tour (Tour of Life) in 1979, and followed that with a brilliant third album, Never for Ever, in 1980, it is small wonder Bush wanted to take more control of her work! The fact she managed to release an album in 1982 at all was a minor miracle – today, one does not see artists take on so much demand and work!
That is not to say that Bush was unhappy with everything prior to The Dreaming - yet the album definitely marked an evolution. Bush was producing; the music was more experimental and demanding than anything she had put out. I will not go into too much detail regarding The Dreaming – suffice to say it was a very challenging time. It was a surprise for such an unconventional album to enter the charts at number-three! Clearly, it did resonate with a lot of people! The Dreaming was the first Bush album to enter the US Billboard Top 200, largely due to the rise of college radio there. I will talk more about her growth in the U.S., as she really started to plant some seeds in 1983. I also want to source from Graeme Thomson’s biography, Kate Bush: Under the Ivy. The Dreaming was a marked shift forward, and one suspects it was more where Kate Bush wanted to be at the start of her career in terms of sounds and scope. By the standard in the 1980s, The Dreaming did take a long time to come together and, with fairly poor sales (in their terms rather than what was actually achieved), EMI were a bit concerned. The fact Bush wanted to produce her next album definitely met with resistance and concern – how long would a follow up to The Dreaming take…and how much would it cost?
Reading page 197 from Thomson’s biography of Bush, it is interesting to see where the songwriter was in 1982. Bush had clearly immersed herself in recording and the world of the studio; somewhere that was “an inclement micro-climate, a hostile, self-contained ecosystem fuelled by smoke, chocolate, fast food – she was “lasting three months on Chinese takeaways during the last part of the album,” she (Bush) said”. Bush was not sleeping well and, this combined with a poor diet, meant that she was losing some of the discipline she had accrued during the busy period of 1978-1980. In June 1982, Bush holidayed in Jamaica with her family, but she was unable to unwind – the calm, sun and relaxation of the setting must have been jarring for someone who had been consecrated and sequestered in a small space for a long period! Bush was busy promoting The Dreaming by filming its videos, making personal appearances and generally going full-out.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signing copies of The Dreaming/PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Still
From the end of 1982 until the summer of 1985, Bush was rarely seen in the public forum – at least in comparison to the previous few years of her career. She made the odd appearance here and there, but there was this important spell of recovery and rest that preceded 1983. “During her prolonged absence, there were mischievous media rumours of nervous breakdowns…” (page 198 (paperback edition) of Graeme Thomson’s Kate Bush: Under the Ivy); other sources remarked on her weight gain and disappearance from the public eye – not that Bush ever courted it at all! Now, we do not think twice when an artist takes a few years to follow up from one album; there was expectation that Bush would be right back to work and release something not long after The Dreaming – looking back at Hounds of Love, it is clear that period of a couple of years or so was just what was needed in order to create a masterpiece!
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush looking on in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport Photography
One of the big changes that happened in 1983 was Bush’s diet. “Tea (up to 20 cups a day) chocolate and cigarettes have been her most enduring vices, but work has always been her addiction. It took her six months to recover from the experience of making The Dreaming” (page 199, Kate Bush: Under the Ivy). Bush, by her own admission, was a wreck and needed to slow down. She consulted her father, a doctor, who diagnosed stress and nervous fatigue. His advice was for her to rest. Having released an album and promoted it hard, if Bush had continued to work on a new album straight after The Dreaming, one wonders what a toll that would have taken. I will talk about commercial decisions of 1983 that benefited her career but, during 1983, Bush went to see films; she spent the summer with her boyfriend, Del Palmer (who was playing bass (and other instruments) for her up to that point; he was one of the engineers on Hounds of Love and remains her right-hand man to this day – the two met and began playing together in 1977; they started dating not that long after); she bought a VW Golf and drove herself, and she enjoyed cooking, space, and a much better diet. Largely subsiding on chocolate, tea and fast food through much of 1982, she did overhaul her eating habits in the period afterwards; she also took up dance instruction again – she was not dancing as often during 1980-1982 than she had been from 1978-1979. Whereas she was making The Dreaming in a dingy London studio through 1982 (and in 1980 and 1981), Bush built her own studio to professional specifications this time around.
One can imagine the scenes and sights whilst Bush and Palmer (largely) were making The Dreaming in a very small space. The intensity, experimentation and darker colours of The Dreaming were a world away from the natural world-influenced, brighter and happier sounds of Hounds of Love. 1983 was a very important and productive year for Bush. She and Palmer moved into a seventeenth-century farmhouse in the Kent countryside, which was not far from Central London and Wickham Farm (her family site in East Wickham, Welling). Bush described her new farmhouse thus: “I’m sure there’s a kind of force, a magnetic energy saying, ‘Come in, we’re meant for each other” (page 199, Kate Bush: Under the Ivy; quote source: The Times, 27th August, 1985). Maybe the romance of stumbling upon an idyllic farmhouse was slightly exaggerated, but the clean air of the country and the influence of nature and the open space was something Bush responded to very positively. In 1983, she spent a summer out of the house – something, as she said, “I didn’t do for several years” (page 200, Kate Bush: Under the Ivy; quote source: Fachblatt Musikmagazin, November 1985). The image of Kate Bush gardening and not toiling in the studio was a rare and welcomed sight! She had failed to ease into a balanced and rounded life since 1978. As Kate Bush: Under the Ivy explains (on page 200), Bush and Palmer’s relationship was more committed and, during a rare radio phone-in on 29th July, 1983 (the day before her twenty-fifth birthday), she revealed that Del was her boyfriend.
ART CREDIT: Noelle McClanahan Broughton
I can guess any domestic time she and Palmer shared prior to 1983 was quite short; meals were very samey and, largely, unhealthy…and there would be little time to enjoy time outside – although the hustle and grime of London is not especially beckoning! Bush had a London home in Eltham as a base, but she was not often found there. After 1979’s Tour of Life, she was more often found in the studio, so taking up dance again was a big step (no pun intended). Before the run-up to Hounds of Love, a lot of her dance routines were assembled on tour vans and in rushed moments. Now, she was getting g fit again and enjoying a more regular routine of dance. Not only did the smiling nature encourage songwriting and inspiration; physical movement played its part. The Dreaming was quite gloomy and raw; Hounds of Love is an album of brighter colours - as Graeme Thomson explains in Kate Bush: Under the Ivy: (Hounds of Love was) “decked out in greens, lights blues, dusky purple and silvers” (page 202). I will come to her professional pursuits of 1983 very soon but, in terms of harmony and comfort, it seems like the year was one for change. “For me, it’s like 1976”, she wrote to her fan club in the summer of 1983. “It was a particularly special year, when things were full of adventure…I feel in many ways that ’76 and this year linked it together for me” (page 202, Kate Bush: Under the Ivy; quote source: ibid). Bush returned to making music at East Wickham Farm, and she invested in a 48-track studio in the barn at the farm.
PHOTO CREDIT: Denis Oregan
She equipped her recording space with a Soundcraft mixing desk, two Studer A80 24-track machines, along with compressors, emulators and a Fairlight (taking influence from Peter Gabriel, who sort of introduced Bush to the ground-breaking technology years previous). Although there was a slight distance between Bush and her record label EMI by 1983, she was becoming more comfortable around technology – in no small part due to her new happiness and setting -, and she definitely wanted to produce. The idea of Bush producing another album alone after The Dreaming’s poor (ish) sales performance was not overly-welcomed by EMI – one of the first times Bush had faced real push and doubt from the label. By autumn of 1983, Bush had her studio completed, and there were not the same pressures she felt beforehand regarding cost and time schedules. Whereas studios like Abbey Road could charge £90 an hour, having her own studio was a huge money-saver and lifeline. If EMI were unhappy with Bush’s production ambitions and the fact a new album was not instantly on the cards, they could not object to her new-found happiness and autonomy – they would not have to spend quite so much money on Hounds of Love had Bush recorded it all at a professional studio. With a room that looked out on trees, birds and the countryside, Bush has a perfect view in which to dream and create some of the best music of her career. Kate Bush and Del Palmer worked up most of Hounds of Love between the summer and autumn of 1983.
Rather than discarding demos and working on final versions later, demos were kept and worked on at East Wickham Farm for the final versions. In the summer of 1983, Running Up That Hill (originally entitled A Deal with God; the title was changed, as the mention of ‘God’ was seen as blasphemous/controversial by religious organisations and bodies in the U.S. and, as Bush was looking for more exposure there, she begrudgingly changed the song’s title). Most of the remainder of Hounds of Love was written by the end of 1983. As Hounds of Love turns thirty-five in September, I think it is important to note Bush’s change of environment from 1983. I am not going to get into the blow-by-blow diary of Hounds of Love, but Bush worked up the twelve tracks from Hounds of Love and B-sides by the end of the year – the album itself was recorded between January 1984 – June 1985. Bush played her new tracks to Paul Hardiman (engineer) on 6th October, 1983, as he visited the newly-constructed farm studio for the first time. Hardiman engineered the first stages of Hounds of Love; sessions began on 4th November and, between 7th November and 8th December, they began working on backing tracks. When it came to transitioning from the fatigue of The Dreaming in 1982 (and the recording and writing in the months and years prior to that) to the germination and development of Hounds of Love in 1983, Kate Bush was a very different woman – healthier, happier, more confident and enjoying the benefits of country air, love and family.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and some canine friends in an outtake from the Hounds of Love photo session/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Not only was Bush laying the foundations for Hounds of Love in 1983; there were a couple of different releases that arrived that year too. Before I mention them, take a listen to this interview here:
“In this 1983 interview Kate talks about the 1979 video to her UK concerts. The videos were released in the US in 1983 with the intention to help promote her music there and reflected performances of songs from her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart.
In the interview Kate talks about what inspires her to write and where the ideas come from and how she discovered dance which has become a feature of her live and recorded performance”.
Kate Bush’s eponymous E.P. arrived on 15th June, 1983 (you can check it out here; it was released by EMI in the United States to promote Bush, who was relatively unknown there at that time. It peaked at 148 in the US Billboard Pop Albums chart. The E.P. was also released in Canada, but with an extra song. The E.P. was in the U.S. press. "An excellent, if somewhat schizophrenic, introduction to British singer Bush" wrote Alex Cain in Pulse! (August 1983). J.D. Considine wrote in Musician, in September 1983: "An easy introduction, at the same time it introduces (...) a number of Kate Bush's failings". If the reviews were mixed, it was important to have a release for the North American market. Fans were aware of her there, but Hounds of Love was the first of her studio albums that made a big impression – The Dreaming reached 157 on the US Billboard 200; Hounds of Love reached 30 on the same chart.
In an interview with Brian Berry from Wireless in September 1983, we learn more about the E.P. and Bush’s feelings towards it:
“Capital/EMI America's latest attempt to bring Kate Bush's music to a wider audience is in the form of a "mini-album" simply titled, "Kate Bush". Kate hails from England and has been an international sensation since her first album, The Kick Inside, was released in 1978. However, in America her music has only been enjoyed by a small, but devoted cult following. The "mini-album" contains no new material, but rather it includes five songs previous [sic previously] available on three of her previous recordings. The album had been timed to coincide with a visit by Kate to the States last June. A massive promotion via the press had been planned. However, the visit was postponed due to transportation problems that arose. I asked Kate about the five songs and if she felt that they were fully representative of her work. "Quite honestly, I don't think I would have chosen those five. It has very much to do with the record company and what they see a market for. I did want "Sat In Your Lap" to be on there. It's also quite nice to get the French song on there 'cause I quite like that." The French song is a new version of "The Infant Kiss", which originally appeared in English on her third album Never For Ever. The French version, as it turned out, was targeted for the Canadian record market.
"I think there's so much aimed at the Canadian market where there's a French population and the song was especially done for the French people, so it made sense to put in on the Canadian version." The "mini" concept is something that Capital/EMI has had substantial success with in breaking new or unknown artists. Thomas Dolby, Missing Persons, and Duran Duran are but some of the acts that have been established through this approach. The record is lower priced and is appealing to a customer that may want to sample an artist's work. This is a welcome idea if it will help sell Kate's music to the masses”.
If Kate Bush is inessential in terms of her cannon, it was important to make her better-known to U.S. and Canadian audiences. The tracklist was as follows:
Side one
Sat in Your Lap
James and the Cold Gun (live, taken from the On Stage EP)
Ne t'enfuis pas (only on Canadian version)
Side two
Babooshka
Suspended in Gaffa
Un baiser d'enfant (French recording of The Infant Kiss)
The Single File video was also released in 1983 (a box-set was released in 1984). It contains all of her music videos, from Wuthering Heights, to There Goes A Tenner. The compilation was originally slated for release in April 1983 - it was then put back until June 1983. In the end, the video was released at the end of November. There was a strong poster campaign in London in support of this release too.
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
Three personal appearances were planned in co-operation with the retailer, WHSmith: 7th December, 1983 in Cardiff; 8th December, 1983 in Kingston-upon-Thames, and 9th December, 1983 in London's Holborn Kingsway. The first one was aborted when Kate missed the train to Cardiff and then got on another one heading in the wrong direction: fortunately, the other two went ahead as planned. Although Bush was not gigging or releasing new material in 1983 – although The Dreaming’s Night of the Swallow was put out as a single on 21st November, 1983 –, she was busy preparing a new album and promoting a couple of releases to widen her popularity and push her music to new territories. In spite of the fact it is rarely talked about, 1983 was a busy and transformative year for Kate Bush - she began recording demos for Hounds of Love in January 1984. Few in the media knew what changes she was making and what was coming together in these relaxed and idyllic settings! I can understand why EMI were sceptical regarding Bush helming her fifth studio album but, as we know, that gamble paid off handsomely! In a Q Magazine interview of December 1993, Bush reacted to The Dreaming and her experiences with it:
"I look back at that record and it seems mad," she says now. "I heard it about three years ago and couldn't believe it. There's a lot of anger in it. There's a lot of 'I'm an artist, right!'" Fingers burned by the experience of The Dreaming, she decided that a studio of her own and a retreat into her domestic shell was a priority. Thus was ushered in a period of stability from whence came the enormously successful Hounds of Love and, in 1990 [1989], The Sensual World. These later records reflected her growing interest in the studio as a compositional tool and her growing desire to stay well out of the public eye”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for The Dreaming in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
I can understand why, post-Hounds of Love, Bush felt that The Dreaming was her going a bit mad. Although, that said, Aristotle was very wise when it came to the subject of madness: “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness”. Although some corners of the media were not completely seduced by Kate Bush in 1983, I think a lot of people were discovering her music off the back of The Dreaming and the E.P. release in North America. Though 1983 was not the most important and game-changing year for Bush, I think it was a time when she made some huge decisions and embarked on the finest and most successful stage of her career. It is clear the creation of Hounds of Love was a very happy space. Bush, as this article explains – would take her time recording future albums and not burn herself out with promotion:
“We had lovely times,” says Haydn Bendall. “You walked through the garden into the kitchen: all the family’s business and conversations took place around this huge kitchen table. [Her brother] Paddy was always around, and the two dogs were there, Bonnie and Clyde, the hounds of love on the album’s cover. There were pigeons and doves all over the place, her dad smoking his pipe and her mum making sandwiches. It was idyllic.”
If The Dreaming had been uneasily ahead of its time, on Hounds Of Love Bush seemed effortlessly attuned to the mood music of the mid-’80s: big hair, slick technology, irresistible hooks married to an insistent rhythmic pulse. Melodic and diamond hard, it was a bewitching alchemy of lean pop classicism and intrepid, occasionally unhinged experimentation. Not only was it a superb artistic statement, it was cleverly constructed, front-loaded with the most accessible songs before introducing the more demanding “Ninth Wave” material.
Ever since, she has recorded new material at her own pace in her own studio, releasing it with increasingly little fanfare or promotion and then promptly vanishing again for lengthy intervals. She may now be a negligible physical presence in the pop firmament, but 25 years after its completion, Hounds Of Love still casts a magical spell, and having a hand in its creation remains a high watermark for all those involved”.
I have huge admiration for The Dreaming and the singles Kate Bush put out in 1982 but, clearly, she worked herself to the bone to get it made in her own image. The subsequent mixed reviews and poor sales (for the singles at least) must have dented her confidence somewhat. Other artists would have taken years to recover and toiled to make an album that was as personal and original as The Dreaming, but one which would sell better and find them back in the critical good books. Three years after The Dreaming was put out into the world, Bush delivered her most successful and well-received album. After a tough and tiring 1982, she was keen to revitalise and rejuvenate, not only as an artist but as a person. More relaxed, working at her own speed; a brighter, calmer and more inspired artist emerged – aided and augmented by the picturesque surroundings of her countryside residence. In a way, the year 1983 was the warm and promising spring…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush as a nun in 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin
AFTER a long and slightly cold winter.