FEATURE:
Rolling the Ball…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at her family home at East Wickham Farm in 1978
Kate Bush’s Them Heavy People
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I like doing a few Kate Bush song-specific features…
as they allow me to delve a bit deeper. I am going to look at her later albums and songs in future pieces but, now, I am interested in one of my favourite Bush songs: Them Heavy People from The Kick Inside. Everyone knows my feelings towards her debut album and, whilst Wuthering Heights, and The Man with the Child in His Eyes are the U.K. singles that many people associate with that album, there are terrific songs that do not get as much attention. I have said before how I wish there were more than two singles released in the U.K. from The Kick Inside. Them Heavy People was released in Japan (where it reached number-three), and I think it could have been an even more successful U.K. single. Moving was released in Japan but, as one of the best songs on The Kick Inside, it could have been hit here. I like the fact that Them Heavy People enjoyed success in Japan as it is one of my favourite songs. My first exposure to the song was seeing the music video when I was a child. I saw the Wuthering Heights video included on the VHS of Bush’s 1986 greatest hits compilation album, The Whole Story - and then I saw Them Heavy People shortly afterwards. The song is about religion and the teachings of Jesus and George Gurdjieff (among others). The song expresses an insistent desire to learn as much as possible while she is still young.
There was a music video made for the live version of Them Heavy People – that track was the lead from her On Stage E.P. of 1979. I love the video, as Bush looks incredible and she pulls these wonderfully exaggerated facial movements. With her dancers, we get this great routine where we see, among other things, her smashing one of the dancers with a chair and, in return, she gets a bottle to the head. It is goofy and fun, but it would have been interesting to see it released in the U.K. and having an official video filmed – I would have liked to see if the concept would have been different to the video that we see. Bush performed Them Heavy People on several T.V. programmes, including her only appearance on Saturday Night Live in the U.S. and the short-lived Revolver in Britain. I want to bring in the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, as there is an article where we get to read some useful background on Them Heavy People by Kate Bush:
“The idea for 'Heavy People' came when I was just sitting one day in my parents' house. I heard the phrase "Rolling the ball" in my head, and I thought that it would be a good way to start a song, so I ran in to the piano and played it and got the chords down. I then worked on it from there. It has lots of different people and ideas and things like that in it, and they came to me amazingly easily - it was a bit like 'Oh England', because in a way so much of it was what was happening at home at the time.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978
My brother and my father were very much involved in talking about Gurdjieff and whirling Dervishes, and I was really getting into it, too. It was just like plucking out a bit of that and putting it into something that rhymed. And it happened so easily - in a way, too easily. I say that because normally it's difficult to get it all to happen at once, but sometimes it does, and that can seem sort of wrong. Usually you have to work hard for things to happen, but it seems that the better you get at them the more likely you are to do something that is good without any effort. And because of that it's always a surprise when something comes easily. I thought it was important not to be narrow-minded just because we talked about Gurdjieff. I knew that I didn't mean his system was the only way, and that was why it was important to include whirling Dervishes and Jesus, because they are strong, too. Anyway, in the long run, although somebody might be into all of them, it's really you that does it - they're just the vehicle to get you there.
I always felt that 'Heavy People' should be a single, but I just had a feeling that it shouldn't be a second single, although a lot of people wanted that. Maybe that's why I had the feeling - because it was to happen a little later, and in fact I never really liked the album version much because it should be quite loose, you know: it's a very human song. And I think, in fact, every time I do it, it gets even looser. I've danced and sung that song so many times now, but it's still like a hymn to me when I sing it. I do sometimes get bored with the actual words I'm singing, but the meaning I put into them is still a comfort. It's like a prayer, and it reminds me of direction. And it can't help but help me when I'm singing those words. Subconsciously they must go in. (Kate Bush Club newsletter number 3, November 1979)”.
Despite the fact the album version was never released in the U.K., a live version to promote On Stage did see Them Heavy People get to number-ten. I really think that Them Heavy People is among Bush’s top-twenty tracks - and there has been a lot of love from fans and the media through the years. With a song that dealt with themes like philosophy and Dervishes, it was going too get parodied by comics of the day – Pamela Stephenson did so on Not the Nine O'Clock News in a song called Oh England - My Leotard. I think it is a complex and original song from a teenager, and the fact Them Heavy People was so different to anything of the time, perhaps, attributed to why some lampooned it. If you have not heard this Kate Bush classic then do have a listen to the song as it is one that gets stuck in the head and, at the same time, it provides something quite deep and unexpected. Listening to Bush’s albums, and she has never really written many straight or conventional songs one might have heard from chart acts of the day. I think that is one reason why her music is so special and has resonated with so many people! From its refrain of “Rolling the ball…” to the exceptional vocal performance, I have been in love with Them Heavy People since I was about six or seven. It is a truly wonderful song that I am…
HAPPY to play over and over.