FEATURE:
Oh to Be in Love
The Ongoing Impact of Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside on Me
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I would not normally put out…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
three different Kate Bush-related features in a week but, as it is her birthday today (30th July), I wanted to add an extra one to return to my favourite album ever, The Kick Inside. It turned forty-two in February, and it is a record that I am deeply enamoured of. I wanted to focus on the album as, in my view, it is the best thing Bush put out and, even though it is her debut, it is the thing I love the most. There has been news recently that Bush might be collaborating with Big Boi on a project of his but, until it can be confirmed, there is no solid news as to when we might hear her on record again. Until we do, it is a great time to look back on her incredible back catalogue. Before I move on, this article provides the background to Kate Bush’s debut album:
“By 1975 Kate Mush had recorded several cassettes’ worth of demos and song sketches on her dad’s Akai reel-to-reel tape machine. Impressed, her family enlisted Ricky Hopper, a record plugger friend, to hawk them around the labels in the hope of getting a publishing deal. After all the majors had turned them down as “uncommercial”, Hopper contacted his old Cambridge University buddy David Gilmour. The Pink Floyd guitarist was sufficiently impressed to invite Kate to record a demo at his Essex home studio, backed by him and the rhythm section from Unicorn, a band he was also nurturing. “I was convinced from the beginning that this girl had remarkable talent,” Gilmour later said.
After that didn’t work either, Gilmour decided the only way forward would be to record three properly arranged songs. Putting up the money himself, he booked time at London’s AIR Studios in June 1975, bringing in arranger friend Andrew Powell, who had worked with Cockney Rebel, Pilot and Alan Parsons. They recorded The Saxophone Song, The Man With The Child In His Eyes and Maybe, with members of the London Symphony Orchestra (the first two songs would appear on The Kick Inside.
Gilmour played the demo to Bob Mercer, then head of EMI’s pop division, who was impressed enough to sign her up. A deal was eventually sealed by July 1976. Having left school with 10 ‘O’ Levels, Bush set up a company to manage her affairs – a precocious glimpse of the total control that would come later in her career.
The Kick Inside was recorded at AIR studios over six weeks in July and August 1977 with producer Powell. Like Mick Jones of The Clash diligently soaking up Sandy Pearlman’s laborious realisation of his group’s second album so he could co-produce their masterpiece London Calling, Bush watched Powell work, absorbing the ropes to use when she struck out on her own a couple of years later”.
I will put out a podcast relating to The Kick Inside one day, because it would be great to dissect and examine the album with other people. I adore the sheer beauty of the songs and how, even though piano is at the centre, Bush manages to add as much texture and variation with her vocal phrasing and lyrics. The songs have their own skin, and the breadth of subject matter is amazing.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional shot for Wuthering Heights in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
There are links where one can hear Bush’s early demos, and there are great playlists and sites where one can hear the buds of The Kick Inside. I would encourage people to listen to the demos as it shows, even before Bush’s first recordings for the album, she was this prodigious talent! Maybe there was a perception that Bush was being marketed as a female body rather than a songwriter on her debut. Bush referenced that herself in 1982, and there were grey areas. There were photographs where Bush’s physique was more important than her expression, and some media sources were more concerned with her body than her music. I think a lot of the shoots from 1978 are very expressive and memorable, and they do stray from the more sexualised. From Kate Bush’s first T.V. appearance on 9th February, 1978 to the end of 1978, The Kick Inside kept her very busy indeed! Of course, prior to February 1978, the world was introduced to her remarkable debut single, Wuthering Heights. Like so many people, this was the first experience and taste of Bush’s music, and it might be one of the reasons why the album remains my favourite. I saw the video for Wuthering Heights as a child – at the same time I saw the video for Them Heavy People (which appears on The Kick Inside) -, and it was a revelation! I do not think I had ever discovered an artist through a video rather than the music itself, and the impact of that video changed everything.
I know I have written about The Kick Inside a fair bit through the years, but it is album that consistently intrigues me. Of course, Wuthering Heights is what most people associate with the album. This article from The Skinny, goes into more details:
“The song that gets the most attention on The Kick Inside is, of course, Wuthering Heights. Now a bona fide classic, endlessly gushed over as an exemplar of 70s art pop (against the grain of the then-ubiquitous disco and punk). It's also destined to be forever remembered for its equally famous visual of Bush dancing in a white dress with cheesy post-production effects (or the 'red dress' American version, with equally theatrical dancing on some real-life moors), still a few years before MTV would make the music video a mainstream creative medium.
Wuthering Heights was the first self-penned number one for a female artist in the UK, written when Bush was 18 (released a year later). Bizarrely, EMI had decided that James and the Cold Gun would be the first single from the album, but Bush was determined that Wuthering Heights should be the first release and – amazingly for a young woman in the music industry in the 70s – she got her way. This imperturbable drive towards her own creative vision is something that Bush would continually exhibit throughout her career.
Lyrically, the song deals with the ghost of Catherine (Cathy) Earnshaw – from Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights – pleading to be released from her purgatory and let back in from her post-death wandering on the moors. Despite the novel's ambiguity when it comes to Cathy's affections (for either Heathcliff or Edgar), Bush asserts that Cathy longs for Heathcliff, 'I'm coming back to his side to put it right / I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering, wuthering heights' – i.e. the wild, passionate side of her character that she supressed during her lifetime. As a mission statement for an artist unmoored from conformity, social mores or traditional expectations, it's more or less perfect”.
If one wants a start point for Kate Bush, then starting at the beginning is the way it should be done. There is so much to love about The Kick Inside. From the beautiful opener, Moving, to the title track at the end, there are so many beautiful stories and layers that beckon you in and keep you coming back for more. I think the boldness and confidence through the album is especially impressive! As Bush was a teenager when the album was written, it is all the more impressive that the songs tackle themes that stray away from the traditional boy-meets-girl. From menstruation and synchronicity of Strange Phenomena, to incest and suicide on The Kick Inside, there is this blend of more traditional songs of love and passion together with more challenging themes.
Though Bush’s voice would develop and widen as her career progression, I do really love her in the higher range. It is not everyone’s preferred sound, but I think it is what makes the album so entrancing and gorgeous! I still think The Kick Inside is seen as a promising debut, and there is almost this shared feeling (among critics) that she would do better. That is subjective, but it is the way The Kick Inside is brushed aside by some that bothers me. In recent years, there has been more of a positive and constructive approach to the album but, even so, there is more attention paid to albums like The Dreaming, and Hounds of Love. Today, there will be a lot of tribute paid to Bush, and many people will share their memories of her music and the songs/albums that mean the most to them. I love everything she has put out, but The Kick Inside will always be the album I come back to the most. I wanted to put out this feature, not only to have my say on Kate Bush’s birthday, but to, hopefully, turn more people onto The Kick Inside. It is a remarkable work that has provided me with so much strength and joy during the hard times we find ourselves in. It remains for me to wish Bush a happy birthday and, for anyone who is unfamiliar with the sensational The Kick Inside, to go out and buy it and…
IN THIS PHOTO: On 9th February, 1978, a 19-year-old Kate Bush experienced her first T.V. appearance, performing the A and B-sides of Wuthering Heights (Kite) on the West German T.V.’s Bios Bahnhof (Bio’s Station)
FALL for its many charms!