FEATURE:
A Magical Nocturn…
LIVE PHOTO CREDITS: Ken McKay/REX
Marking Seven Years of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn
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ON this day…
seven years ago, Kate Bush took to the stage for her first of twenty-two nights in Hammersmith for her Before the Dawn residency. On 26th August, 2014, the iconic artist undertook her most intensive live performances since 1979’s The Tour of Life. Engrossing and enrapturing crowds at the Eventim Apollo, the residency ran until 1st October. I have written quite a few features around Before the Dawn. I have talked about its impact and importance; how it is not available on streaming services, whether Kate Bush will follow it up with another residency or live event in the future, in addition to why one needs to buy it on vinyl. I am going to drop in a review of the live album and an interview Kate Bush conducted when promoting the live album of Before the Dawn – maybe I have sourced these before but, on its seventh anniversary, it is worth returning. As much as anything, it is the sense of wonder and scale that amazes me! Whilst I was not in the audience for any of the twenty-two dates – a fact that still rankles me greatly! -, I get a sense that Before the Dawn was this magical experience. That is what Bush created with her live shows: a sense of wonder and beguilement. Rather than her trotting out the hits – which people will still flock to see in their droves -, she is much more concerned with the experience rather than the brand recognition.
An artist, alongside her team and band, crafting something that is so rich and astonishing. After 1979, of course people always asked whether Bush would return to the stage in any big way. She performed live fairly steadily after that. Mainly for T.V. appearances, I think that her performing And So Is Love (from 1993’s The Red Shoes) on Top of the Pops in 1994 might have been one of the last T.V. slots. The more I think of it, the less likely it is we will see Kate Bush return to the stage. She would do a big production that would take a while to come together. That would take so much energy! I feel, when we do hear from her again, it is much more likely to be an album. Whilst the individual layers and technical aspects of Before the Dawn are amazing, it is the overall spectacle and sensation that made it such a success! This is what The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis noted in his review of Before the Dawn:
“The concert-goer who desires a stripped down rock and roll experience, devoid of theatrical folderol, is thus advised that Before the Dawn is probably not the show for them, but it is perhaps worth noting that even before Bush takes the stage with her dancers and props, a curious sense of unreality hangs over the crowd. It's an atmosphere noticeably different than at any other concert, but then again, this is a gig unlike any other, and not merely because the very idea of Bush returning to live performance was pretty unimaginable 12 months ago.
The staging might look excessive on paper, but onstage it works to astonishing effect, bolstering rather than overwhelming the emotional impact of the songs. The Ninth Wave is disturbing, funny and so immersive that the crowd temporarily forget to applaud everything Bush does. As each scene bleeds into another, they seem genuinely rapt: at the show's interval, people look a little stunned. A Sky of Honey is less obviously dramatic – nothing much happens over the course of its nine tracks – but the live performance underlines how beautiful the actual music is”.
It boggles the mind to think how much time and effort it took, not only to imagine what Before the Dawn would look like, but see it come to life so expertly! The beauty and power of the staging and set must have given Bush energy and this new lease. Bush, to me, has always seemed like an actor. Someone who could have had a parallel life as an actor or director. In some ways, Before the Dawn is a film. If she seemed confident and calm through her residency, perhaps that was not the reality of what she was actually feeling! When she spoke with FADER in 2016, she was asked about that very thing:
“There has always seemed to be such confidence in your performances. Is that true to how you're feeling inside?
Well, thank you! I'm very pleased that it comes across that way, because I don't think I do feel confident all the time. That's obviously how I want it to feel. When you watch a performer you want to feel that it’s comfortable [for them], and you're not seeing any sense of the technique behind it. Hopefully you just feel [the emotion]. It's very important to me to try and get a sense of emotion to come through the performance.
It might be a great compliment for performers to look as if they’re making it up as they go along, whereas as in fact it’s meticulously rehearsed.
I think that's true of great dancers, isn't it? It's the gift where they've trained extensively to get to that point, but what you see is this wonderful fluidity. I'm not saying that that's how it is with myself [laughs], but ideally as a performer, that's what you're trying to achieve. Obviously work has gone into what you're doing, but hopefully it feels very spontaneous.
Who to you is the greatest music performer?
I think probably the best stage entrance I ever saw was Tina Turner. I saw her a long time ago at some open air gig that she was doing. She was just fantastic, the way she burst on stage. She appeared at the top of a flight of stairs, shimmied the whole way down these steps, came straight to the front of stage, and went straight into the song. It was so exciting”.
It is strange to think that, seven years ago today, the first audience were nervously and excitedly waiting for Kate Bush to take to the stage. They had no idea of what to expect and what she would deliver! Unlike some artists, who might preview their show or give extensive details, few would have quite expected what they witnessed! A marvel for all the senses, a very happy seventh anniversary to Before the Dawn! That residency was the last original project Bush has put out. Since, she has released remastered versions of her studio albums - we are not sure whether new material will come in the near-future. Before closing up, I want to highlight Spectrum Culture’s review of the Before the Dawn album. Although it would have been impossible to replicate the live show on the album – there is, maybe, a sensation one can only get from watching the performances -, it is a phenomenal album that gives you tingles! This is what they noted:
“The expansiveness of the live shows makes Concord’s three-CD set an inevitably incomplete document of these shows. Though Bush filmed two shows for a video release, she decided to shelve the tapes indefinitely, meaning that Adrian Noble’s art direction, Jon Driscoll’s 3D projections, as well as a host of dancers, puppeteers and even an illusionist are lost to those of us who couldn’t make it to London. It’s a frustrating development, albeit one that does play into Bush’s long-running prioritization of the music over her carefully parceled-out image. If that was the plan, it worked: by tossing out the chance to see her, Bush forces you to consider her talent beyond whatever pithy or even subconscious judgments may be made about her age. Instead, you only get her voice, which long ago shed the occasionally wayward pitch shifts and wails and instead has developed into the kind of rich, thoroughly controlled instrument that can do whatever Bush wants. Even from the opening number, her voice is so fulsome that it makes one wish she recorded more often, not merely for the chance to hear more of her genius but to simply hear what she can do. No one this side of Bruce Dickinson has had their vocal cords age so majestically.
Divided into three acts, the show begins with a loose assembly of songs culled from Bush’s career. Opening with “Lily” from The Red Shoes, a prayer morphs into funky keyboard lines and lurching basslines before Bush kicks it all into the stratosphere. She brings the same energy straight through to “Hounds of Love,” which loses the claustrophobic erotic fear of the studio version as Bush’s voice and her rock orchestra bursts out of any containment. “Top of the City,” also off The Red Shoes, squares the circle of that album’s disparate pull between pure pop and obscure experimentation, producing a pop gospel number that threatens to evoke actual soul from this most arch of artists. The best of the first act may be not an extended version of “Running Up that Hill” but a rendition of Aerial cut “King of the Mountain.” Its stuttering guitar line occasionally opens up to bird’s eye views of the globe before divebombing into squealing riffs before floating back up on Bush’s rising vocals.
The subsequent two acts tackle Bush’s side-length suites, Hounds of Love’s “The Ninth Wave” and Aerial’s “A Taste of Honey.” Here is where the limitations of the audio-only format begin to weigh down the album. “The Ninth Wave,” about a drowning woman whose total displacement of space and time renders fear and hope through an almost Joycean fusion of the concrete and symbolic, is tailor-made for the stage. Unfortunately, the only thing that remains on CD is David Mitchell’s howlingly bad dialogue to script scenes of the character’s family back on shore, fretting over their missing wife and mother. Bush’s own son plays the woman’s child, and, whatever charm that would hold to see, hearing his stiff, functional delivery of one-sided telephone calls and too-contained domestic panic has no impact on disc. Thankfully, most of these scenes are divided out into their own tracks and can be helpfully sequenced out of existence.
But the music, oh, the music. For an artist so renowned for her thorough, perfectionist control over her work, Bush admirably hands off a great deal of time and attention to her backing band, which resembles something akin to Van Morrison’s classic Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Like that group, they fuse Celtic flourishes with fuzzy rock and blue-eyed, brassy soul. Anxious strings bring out the despair of “Under Ice,” while “Watching You Without Me” warms chilled bones with a rubbery, lethargic bassline, even as Bush’s voice recedes into the background as her disembodied spirit regards her family back home. “Jig of Life” reaches its fullest potential, the smorgasbord of Celtic folk tunes swirling into a driving push to live. “Hello Earth” retroactively becomes one of the best and most baffling power ballads of the ‘80s with this group, the constant escalations that suddenly, bracingly drop into Gregorian chants.
This esprit de corps carries over into the less dynamic, more elegant “A Taste of Honey.” “Prologue” is mostly just Bush and piano, but the ambient textures around her gain something for their live, not programmed, production. Omar Hakim’s skittering, gently polyrhythmic drumming on “An Architect’s Dream” suffuses jazzy tension into the legato guitar patterns and Bush’s unhurried vocals. The movements of this section are less distinctive, but when placed right after “The Ninth Wave,” the suite’s warmth and contentment gain additional power, clarifying it as a loose bookend for that earlier composition”.
Sven years after the first date of Before the Dawn, and we are still talking about the amazing twenty-two date residency. It is testament to Kate Bush’s enduring popularity and her undeniable gifts as a performer that means Before the Dawn will be dissected and remembered decades from now.
There are many reviews for Before the Dawn. I want, actually, to end with a review that I have sourced before: Pete Paphides’ excellent and deep impressions of a mind-blowing show:
“Few musicians are more adept at conveying a sense that something good is going to happen than Kate Bush. We know what Nocturn sounds like on record, so a certain sense of expectation is unavoidable. On either side of the stage, we see arrows fired from bows into the firmament, where they turn into birds. For reasons I couldn’t honestly fathom, we see the painter’s model sacrificing a seagull to no discernible end. Over a rising funk that defies physical resistance, Bush makes a break for transcendence and effectively brings us with her: “We stand in the Atlantic/We become panoramic,” she sings, with arms aloft. Like the rest of the band, guitarist David Rhodes has donned bird mask. As Bush is presented with vast black wings, she and Rhodes circle elegantly around each other, before finally, briefly, she takes flight.
Just two songs by way of an encore — which, after what has preceded them, seems generous: Among Angels from 2011’s Fifty Words For Snow is performed solo at the piano, before the entire band return for Cloudbusting. Once again, we’re reminded that, almost uniquely among her peers, Kate Bush goes to extraordinary lengths in search of subjects that hold up that magic of living up to the light for just long enough to think that we can reach it. But, like the beaming 56 year-old mother singing, “The sun’s coming out”, that too dissipates into memory. And, after another 19 performances, what will happen? In another 35 years, Kate Bush will be 91. Even if she’s still here, we might not be. Perhaps that’s why tonight, she gave us everything she had. And somehow, either in spite or because of that, we still didn’t want to let her go”.
Whilst it is very unlikely Kate Bush will repeat Before the Dawn, those who were lucky enough to have seen her back in 2014 will never forgot what they saw. Perhaps Before the Dawn is the perfect way to sign off her live career! Whilst I am upset that I did not get to see any of the shows, I love reading about Before the Dawn and hearing from people who were there. They are still buzzing and recalling the highlights…
AFTER seven years!