FEATURE:
Too Long I Roam in the Night
PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at Forty-Four
___________
DESPITE the fact there have been…
a few covers of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, nothing beats the magic and sheer oddity of the originally. Bush’s debut single was officially released on 20th January, 1978 (though it was leaked the year before and played on radio). I wanted to mark forty-four years of one of the greatest debut singles ever. Reaching number one in the U.K., few people would have expected a song like Wuthering Heights would do so well at a time when Punk was still a huge force. Taking ABBA’s Take a Chance on Me off of the top spot, actually, the records that topped the U.K. chart in early-1978 are eclectic. With songs from The Bee Gees, Boney M, and The Commodores ending up as huge hits, maybe there was this appetite for music that was more interesting and different to what was being offered elsewhere. Even so, Wuthering Heights is a song one cannot compare to anything else. From her debut album, The Kick Inside, it was Bush herself that fought EMI to get the song released as her first single (they wanted the more conventional and commercial James and the Cold Gun). It is a sign that Bush wanted to not only have a bigger say in how her music was released; she also wanted to stand out and present songs that were not immediately familiar or accessible. I am not surprised Wuthering Heights has endured and remains one of the most-loved songs ever.
The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia gives us details and facts behind the extraordinary, mesmeric and timeless masterpiece that is Wuthering Heights:
“Song written by Kate Bush, released as her debut single in January 1978. She wrote the song after seeing the last ten minutes of the 1967 BBC mini-series based on the book ‘Wuthering Heights’, written by Emily Brontë. Reportedly, she wrote the song within the space of just a few hours late at night. The actual date of writing is estimated to be March 5, 1977.
Lyrically, "Wuthering Heights" uses several quotations from Catherine Earnshaw, most notably in the chorus - "Let me in! I'm so cold!" - as well as in the verses, with Catherine's confession to her servant of "bad dreams in the night." It is sung from Catherine's point of view, as she pleads at Heathcliff's window to be allowed in. This romantic scene takes a sinister turn if one has read Chapter 3 of the original book, as Catherine is in fact a ghost, calling lovingly to Heathcliff from beyond the grave. Catherine's "icy" ghost grabs the hand of the Narrator, Mr Lockwood, through the bedroom window, asking him to let her in, so she can be forgiven by her lover Heathcliff, and freed from her own personal purgatory.
The song was recorded with Andrew Powell producing. According to him, the vocal performance was done in one take, "a complete performance" with no overdubs. "There was no compiling," engineer Kelly said. “We started the mix at around midnight and Kate was there the whole time, encouraging us… we got on with the job and finished at about five or six that morning." The guitar solo that fades away with the track in the outro was recorded by Edinburgh musician Ian Bairnson, a session guitarist.
Originally, record company EMI's Bob Mercer had chosen another track, James And The Cold Gun as the lead single, but Kate Bush was determined that ‘Wuthering Heights’ would be her first release. She won out eventually in a surprising show of determination for a young musician against a major record company, and this would not be the only time she took a stand against them to control her career.
The release date for the single was initially scheduled to be 4 November 1977. However, Bush was unhappy with the picture being used for the single's cover and insisted it be replaced. Some copies of the single had already been sent out to radio stations, but EMI relented and put back the single's launch until the New Year. Ultimately, this proved to be a wise choice, as the earlier release would have had to compete with Wings' latest release, ‘Mull of Kintyre’, which became the biggest-selling single in UK history up to this point in December 1977.
‘Wuthering Heights’ was finally released on 20 January 1978, was immediately playlisted by Capital Radio and entered their chart at no. 39 on 27 January. It crept into the national Top 50 in week ending 11 February at No.42. The following week it rose to No.27 and Bush made her first appearance on Top of the Pops ("It was like watching myself die", recalls Bush), The song was finally added to Radio One's playlist the following week and became one of the most played records on radio. When the song reached number 1, it was the first UK number 1 written and performed by a female artist.
I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn't seem to get out of the chorus - it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn't link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I'd been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.
I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn't relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.
It's funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn't know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with 'Wuthering Heights': I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.
I've never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it's supposed to be.
One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I've had from the song, though I've heard that the Bronte Society think it's a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn't know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I'm really happy about that.
There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV - it was about one in the morning - because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that's all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence.
Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in January 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
It is fascinating reading about Wuthering Heights and how it cane about. I can imagine Bush sitting at her piano and looking up at the moon as she wrote the song on that fabulous night. I have been meaning to have lyrics from Wuthering Heights tattooed on my arm. Containing some of Bush’s finest lyrics, one can imagine themselves in the scene; in the song, as we see the ghostly Catherine at the window of Heathcliff. With an incredible performance by the band (drums: Stuart Elliott, bass, celeste: Andrew Powell, acoustic guitars: David Paton, electric guitar: Ian Bairnson, organ: Duncan Mackay, percussion: Morris Pert), it must have been so satisfying hearing Wuthering Heights back after the recording! Among the stunning lyrics, this is perhaps my favourite passage: “Ooh, it gets dark! It gets lonely/On the other side from you./I pine a lot. I find the lot/Falls through without you./I'm coming back, love/Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream/My only master”. Although Wuthering Heights is one of Kate Bush’s most recognised songs, it is not played on the radio a whole lot (compared with some of the songs from Hounds of Love, certainly). I am going to finish off with another article about the song. One cannot overstate how groundbreaking Wuthering Heights and Kate Bush was in 1978:
“A phenom for her time, Kate Bush debuted her first album The Kick Inside in 1978, when she was just 19 years old. This year marks the 40th anniversary of its release and our introduction to one of the most wildly unique performers of our time.
Bush was not only one of the first British singer-songwriters to blend performance art and choreographed dance together (now categorized as “art rock”), but she was also the first female artist to reach #1 on the UK charts for her single “Wuthering Heights.” The track remains perhaps one of the most haunting musical tributes to a piece of literature ever.
Listening to Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” for the first time is a spiritual experience—appropriate for a song that is also about a spiritual experience. The verb “wuther” fits the bill for this dual mystical experience. As in, “I laid on the ground in someone’s off-campus college housing, I burned Nag Champa, and Kate Bush completely wuthered me.” Okay, so that is an example from my real life. Yes, the first time I heard “Wuthering Heights,” it was in that very environment and on repeat for hours. Even in the heyday of cassette tapes, it was worth every manual rewind to have Bush's otherworldly voice sing me into oblivion.
The song is richly layered with piano, electric guitar, and an amazing bass line. Bush sings in the voice of Catherine, Emily Brontë’s deceased character, who has returned to haunt her first love, Heathcliff.
The famous lines of the chorus, which soar in Kate’s ethereal tone, are: Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy / I’ve come home now / so cold / Let me in through your window...
The chorus is liable to get stuck in your head for days, if not months. Brilliantly, Kate places the listener of the song in the position of Heathcliff, the character who broods over the loss of his first love Catherine throughout the entirety of the Brontë novel. As a result, listeners are indirectly led to contemplate our own experiences with lost love, and Kate (as “Cathy”) embodies the hope of its return. No wonder we still love her so much.
If you’re a visual learner, and prefer YouTube over iTunes, a few videos were released in the late 70s to promote her debut single. A 2006 biography of Kate Bush by Rob Jovanovic, however, states that these videos “pushed her further into the sex-object category...and detracted from her initial efforts to be considered a serious artist.” One could argue the same fear of not being taken seriously also applied to Emily Brontë when she decided to publish her novel under a male pseudonym”.
I am going to finish off in a minute. I will do another feature about The Kick Inside close to its forty-fourth anniverssary in February. There has not been another song like Wuthering Heights since its release. Such a beguiling track – and the video of Bush in the white dress helps add to that mystique and beauty -, we will be talking about it for decades to come. From the wind, the wild and the turbulence of loss and love at the beginning (“Out on the wiley, windy moors/We'd roll and fall in green/You had a temper like my jealousy/Too hot, too greedy/How could you leave me/When I needed to possess you?/I hated you. I loved you, too”), through to the spellbinding chorus (“Heathcliff, it's me—Cathy/Come home. I'm so cold!/Let me in-a-your window/Heathcliff, it's me—Cathy/Come home. I'm so cold!”), Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite songs. I like the fact that it reached number one in Australia (a country that supported Kate Bush since the start); I love the fact that Bush had to perform it quite a few times on Top of the Pops - and, despite a horrible experience first time around, she grew more comfortable. Above all, I respect how Bush fought to have the song released as a single, in spite of the fact that it was not the first choice of EMI. As it was, Wuthering Heights was released as her debut single on 20th January, 1978. As they famously say…
THE rest is history.