FEATURE:
Kate Bush, Accentuating the Positives
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982
Returning to The Dreaming’s Divisive Title Track
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I have written about…
The Dreaming in a feature where I also spotlighted There Goes a Tenner. These are two singles from 1982’s The Dreaming that did not fare well in the charts. Whilst the title track got to number forty-eight, There Goes a Tenner was Bush’s worst commercial performance for a single to that point. The Dreaming’s first single, Sat in Your Lap, reached eleven and was a good achievement. There would have been decisions and choices as to which single could be next. I can understand why the title track was selected. There are interviews of Bush promoting the song where there is this concern (from the interviewer) that, perhaps, it is not the most commercial/conventional single. I have had a difficult relationship with the song, where I have sort of overlooked it and not really given it time. The more I listen to, the stronger it gets. I can understand that some felt that the Australian twang is a little strong and, perhaps, a little bit dominant. Some saw Bush’s accent as cultural appropriation. Today, maybe people would see a song about the destruction of Aboriginal homelands by white Australians as virtue signalling. By 1980’s Never for Ever, political and social issues were a much bigger part of Bush’s work. She had come a long way since we heard the mostly romance/love-based songs of her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart – though, even in 1978, she was pushing boundaries!
The accent, from Bush’s perspective, I guess would cast her in the role of the villains (“Many an Aborigine's mistaken for a tree/'Til you near him on the motorway/And the tree begin to breathe”). I actually like her choice. It gives an authenticity to the song – even if some would say the accuracy of the accent is not quite there. It was a bold move from an artist who did not merely want to narrate a song. She wanted to embody it! The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia published an article about the song, where we get Bush’s story and background to her fourth studio album’s title track:
“We started with the drums, working to a basic Linn drum machine pattern, making them sound as tribal and deep as possible. This song had to try and convey the wide open bush, the Aborigines - it had to roll around in mud and dirt, try to become a part of the earth. "Earthy" was the word used most to explain the sounds. There was a flood of imagery sitting waiting to be painted into the song. The Aborigines move away as the digging machines move in, mining for ore and plutonium. Their sacred grounds are destroyed and their beliefs in Dreamtime grow blurred through the influence of civilization and alcohol. Beautiful people from a most ancient race are found lying in the roads and gutters. Thank God the young Australians can see what's happening.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for The Dreaming/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
The piano plays sparse chords, just to mark every few bars and the chord changes. With the help of one of Nick Launay's magic sounds, the piano became wide and deep, effected to the point of becoming voices in a choir. The wide open space is painted on the tape, and it's time to paint the sound that connects the humans to the earth, the dijeridu. The dijeridu took the place of the bass guitar and formed a constant drone, a hypnotic sound that seems to travel in circles.
None of us had met Rolf (Harris) before and we were very excited at the idea of working with him. He arrived with his daughter, a friend and an armful of dijeridus. He is a very warm man, full of smiles and interesting stories. I explained the subject matter of the song and we sat down and listened to the basic track a couple of times to get the feel. He picked up a dijeridu, placing one end of it right next to my ear and the other at his lips, and began to play.
I've never experienced a sound quite like it before. It was like a swarm of tiny velvet bees circling down the shaft of the dijeridu and dancing around in my ear. It made me laugh, but there was something very strange about it, something of an age a long, long time ago.
Women are never supposed to play a dijeridu, according to Aboriginal laws; in fact there is a dijeridu used for special ceremonies, and if this was ever looked upon by a woman before the ceremony could take place, she was taken away and killed, so it's not surprising that the laws were rarely disobeyed. After the ceremony, the instrument became worthless, its purpose over. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982)”.
In my view, The Dreaming (album) contains some of Bush’s most evocative and original lyrics. She has always been a phenomenal lyricist - through the images she provokes on The Dreaming’s title track are amazing. How many people have looked at the lyrics and the wordplay?! Another terrific section comes when she sings the following: “The civilised keep alive/The territorial war/"See the light ram through the gaps in the land."/Erase the race that claim the place/And say we dig for ore/Or dangle devils in a bottle/And push them from the/Pull of the bush”. The video had quite a cinematic feel, in the sense it was a wide shot that did not have a lot of quick cuts and constant camera movement. Not that this was the reason why the single did not fare too well. Perhaps The Dreaming is not the most commercial song she could have released. It is one of these songs that would work best as a deeper cut that people come to and spend time with – as the album’s title track, maybe she felt that it just had to be released as a single (though she did not release The Kick Inside’s title track as a single). Bush definitely had a concern for the Aboriginals. She saw their plight and did not want to remain silent. One wonders how else she could have delivered the track. By inhabiting an Australian accent, she embodies those who are causing this destruction, as opposed someone merely watching it from afar.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at a record signing at Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street in London for The Dreaming on 14th September, 1982
The vocal work throughout the song is busy and interesting. Her production work is amazing. Perhaps there are songs on The Dreaming that sound fresher today or are easy to enjoy. So many people have dismissed the track or placed it low in their rankings of her best singles. Although not on the same level as Wuthering Heights, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) or Babooshka, The Dreaming is a song that warrants new inspection. With dense and immersive lyrics that are so unusual and interesting, I do wonder how much of an impact it made in Australia. It got to number ninety-one in the charts, compared with the number two position that Babooshka (Never for Ever) achieved a couple of years previous. Sat in Your Lap only got to ninety-three in Australia…so they preferred the title track slightly more! Although it is not a deep cut – as it is a single -, The Dreaming is one of the under-appreciated Kate Bush tracks that people should check out. It is one that I have not given too much time too. I like the direction of the video. Paul Henry directed it. His work is quite impactful and great-looking. EMI did not like the video themselves and ordered something more traditional and marketable for There Goes a Tenner (Henry returned to direct, but he definitely was told to keep things simpler!). The animal noises by the late Percy Edwards are brilliant! Rather than use sample or library sounds, Edwards gives the sounds a more human element.
With sound effects and a great composition, there is a lot to enjoy about The Dreaming. The only stain comes when we consider how Rolf Harris played the didgeridoo. Bush removed his parts from Aerial following his conviction for sexual assaults. Harris performed spoken parts for Aerial, so it is different when it comes to The Dreaming. Bush cannot remove the didgeridoo (as it is so pivotal); she could get someone else to play it and re-release the song - but I don’t think that many people know about Rolf Harris’ involvement. That cannot detract from a song that is really impressive. I also like how the title came to her:
“The title actually came last. It always does. It's the most difficult thing to do. I tried to get a title that would somehow say what was in there. It was really bad. Then I found this book [Hands me huge tome on australian lore]. I'd written a song and hadn't really given it a proper name. I knew all about this time they call Dreamtime, when animals and humans take the same form. It's this big religious time when all these incredible things happen. The other word for it is The Dreaming. I looked at that written down and thought, ``Yeah!'' (Kris Needs, 'Dream Time In The Bush'. ZigZag (UK), 1982)”.
Bush put out the song, Dreamtime, as the B-side to The Dreaming – another song that people should hear. To me, The Dreaming is a far stronger and more interesting song than people have given it credit for. I have a lot of love for the album as a whole. I would urge people to buy Laura Shenton’s recent book about The Dreaming. One gets a sense of this growing and increasingly ambitious artist producing solo for the first time, creating these magnificent songs. A lot of the album does not get too much attention. The amazing title track certainly deserves…
NEW focus and respect.