FEATURE:
You Could Smell the Child
PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Arrowsmith
Re-Exploring Kate Bush’s Pull Out the Pin
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DESPITE the fact I have…
written about Kate Bush’s Pull Out the Pin before, it is a song I keep coming back to. From her fourth studio album, The Dreaming (1982), it is a track that does not get talked about. I think I have only heard it played on the radio once. An album that is not covered much on the airwaves, it is a shame more people do not go deep with an incredible release. To me, Pull Out the Pin contains some of Bush’s most vivid and striking lyrics: “You learn to ride the Earth/When you're living on your belly and the enemy are city-births/Who need radar?/We use scent/They stink of the west, stink of sweat/Stink of cologne and baccy, and all their Yankee hash”. Because The Dreaming is not the most commercial Kate Bush album, one does not really hear too many of the songs given a lot of play. I think that should change. Coming to the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, we get some quotes from Bush herself about writing Pull Out the Pin:
“I saw this incredible documentary by this Australian cameraman who went on the front line in Vietnam, filming from the Vietnamese point of view, so it was very biased against the Americans. He said it really changed him, because until you live on their level like that, when it's complete survival, you don't know what it's about. He's never been the same since, because it's so devastating, people dying all the time.
The way he portrayed the Vietnamese was as this really crafted, beautiful race. The Americans were these big, fat, pink, smelly things who the Vietnamese could smell coming for miles because of the tobacco and cologne. It was devastating, because you got the impression that the Americans were so heavy and awkward, and the Vietnamese were so beautiful and all getting wiped out. They wore a little silver Buddha on a chain around their neck and when they went into action they'd pop it into their mouth, so if they died they'd have Buddha on their lips. I wanted to write a song that could somehow convey the whole thing, so we set it in the jungle and had helicopters, crickets and little Balinese frogs. (Kris Needs, 'Dream Time In The Bush'. Zigzag (UK), November 1982)
I saw a programme with a camera man on the front line in Vietnam. The Vietnamese were portrayed as being very craftful people who treated their fighting as an art. They could literally smell the Americans coming through the jungle. Their culture of Coke cans and ice creams actually made them smell. Anyway, I learnt that before the Vietnamese went into action they popped a little silver Buddha in their mouths. I thought that was quite beautiful. Grotesque beauty attracts me. Negative images are often so interesting. (Robin Smith, 'Getting Down Under With Kate Bush', 1982)”.
Those who felt Bush was not a political songwriter or too concerned with deeper subjects should hear songs like Pull Out the Pin. She did nod to political subjects with Army Dreamers and Breathing from 1980’s Never for Ever. I feel that those songs are great, though they are not quite as edgy and experimental as Pull Out the Pin. It is a song that I wanted to come back to, as it is such a remarkable, complex and affecting piece. One of Bush’s most underrated and greatest works, it is one (of many) songs that deserves a lot more focus. If you are someone who has not heard Pull Out the Pin, then go and investigate it. Recorded at a moment when Kate Bush was pushing her music forward and, as a producer, mixing new sounds and ideas, there is something utterly exhilarating and exhausting about Pull Out the Pin. It is quite scary and dark, yet there is this strange energy and magic. On The Dreaming, you can hear more of Bush’s guttural voice (we also hear it on Get Out of My House and Houdini). At the end of Pull Out the Pin, she delivers this gutsy and pained vocal: “Just one thing in it:/Me or him/And I love life!/Just one thing in it:/Me or him/And I love life!/Just one thing in it:/Me or him/And I love life!/I love life!/I love life!”. The more you listen to Pull Out the Pin, the more you realise that it is…
A mesmeric track.