FEATURE:
The Magnificent Watching You Without Me
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the cover shoot for Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Six
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AHEAD of the thirty-sixth anniversary…
of Kate Bush Hounds of Love on 16th September, I wanted to do another song-specific piece. I have spotlighted most of the songs from the other. Recently, I looked at a song from the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave, in the form of Jig of Life. Now, I am looking at the tremendous Watching You Without Me. It occurs at a crucial moment on The Ninth Wave. In fact, it comes just before Jig of Life. That song is like an awakening; almost a call from the skies for the heroine – who, in the suite, is stranded at sea and trying to keep afloat/san. Before Watching You Without Me is Waking the Witch. This is a terrifying song where one can sense the protagonist slipping away or letting her nightmares take over. Before the spirited kick of Jig of Life and the rush of that comes a sort of ‘bridge’. Watching You Without Me arrives in the middle of, arguably, two of the most energetic and intense songs on The Ninth Wave. All of the songs on Hounds of Love are great. There is particular respect for The Ninth Wave, as it is such an ingenious and huge series of songs that takes the listener into the record. It still sounds so moving and staggering after all of these years. I will spend some time concentrating on a song that I have not heard played a lot on the radio. And Dream of Sheep gets played now and then - through one does not hear Watching You Without Me much.
I think it is important to get some song information; what motivated Bush to write it. There is something desperately sad about Watching You Without Me. This feeling that the heroine should be at home and people might not know what has become of her. When breaking down The Ninth Wave with Richard Skinner in 1992, Bush explained what the song is about:
“Now, this poor sod [laughs], has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they're kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home. And, you know, watching the clock, and obviously very worried about where they are, maybe making phone calls and things. But there's no way that you can actually communicate, because they can't see you, they can't you. And I find this really horrific, [laughs] these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song. And when we started putting the track together, I had the idea for these backing vocals, you know, [sings] "you can't hear me". And I thought that maybe to disguise them so that, you know, you couldn't actually hear what the backing vocals were saying. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)”.
The thought of a parent or loved one waiting for someone to return, unaware of their situation, is something many have experienced. The way Bush delivers the lyrics adds so much pain and loss: “You watch the clock/Move the slow hand/I should have been home/Hours ago,/But I'm not here/But I'm not here”. It is the lack of musicians on the song that makes it so impactful and emotional. Danny Thompson plays double bass. Stuart Elliott is on percussion. Deceptively beautiful and sensual, Watching You Without Me is sparser than Waking the Witch and Jig of Life. It is like this calm refrain between the songs. She takes us away from the ocean and her varying thoughts to a house. Not as devastating and tear-jerking as And Dream of Sheep, one is still affected and taken aback by the idea of this protagonist as a spirit, almost accepting death; the chance of seeing her loved one slipping away as it goes dark at sea and chances of rescue fading. It is just as well that we get Jig of Life. It is almost like the natural response to someone who is near rock bottom. On every song from Hounds of Love, there are lines that are among Kate Bush’s best. On Watching You Without Me, she sings “You won't hear me leaving” at the end. Before that, she says that they (her family/lover) won’t hear her come in. It adds to that sense of loss and the spiritual. Such a beautiful and image-heavy track that takes the breath!
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
I do love the songs on Hounds of Love’s first side. I think there is something special and different about The Ninth Wave. It is such a fascinating story and work that is being poured over thirty-six years after people first heard it. I was keen to dive into Watching You Without Me and spend some time with it. The triumphant and genius throughout The Ninth Wave cemented Bush as one of the greatest artists of her time – and she remains one of the very best. I will end by quoting a passage from a Pitchfork review. They revisited Hounds of Love in 2016:
“As her sailor drifts in and out of consciousness, Bush floats between abstract composition and precise songcraft. Her character’s nebulous condition gives her melodies permission to unmoor from pop’s constrictions; her verses don’t necessarily return to catchy choruses, not until the relative normality of “The Morning Fog,” one of her sweetest songs. Instead, she’s free to exploit her Fairlight’s capacity for musique concrete. Spoken voices, Gregorian chant, Irish jigs, oceanic waves of digitized droning, and the culminating twittering of birds all collide in Bush’s synth-folk symphony. Like most of her lyrics, “The Ninth Wave” isn’t autobiographical, although its sink-or-swim scenario can be read as an extended metaphor for Hounds of Love’s protracted creation: Will she rise to deliver the masterstroke that guaranteed artistic autonomy for the rest of her long career and enabled her to live a happy home life with zero participation in the outside world for years on end, or will she drown under the weight of her colossal ambition?
By the time I became one of the few American journalists to have interviewed her in person in 1985, Bush had clinched her victory. She’d flown to New York to plug Hounds of Love, engaging in the kind of promotion she’d rarely do again. Because she thoroughly rejected the pop treadmill, the media had already begun to marginalize her as a space case, and have since painted her as a tragic, reclusive figure. Yet despite her mystical persona, she was disarmingly down-to-earth: That hammy public Kate was clearly this soft-spoken individual’s invention; an ever-changing role she played like Bowie in an era when even icons like Stevie Nicks and Donna Summer had a Lindsey Buckingham or a Giorgio Moroder calling many of the shots.
It was a response, perhaps, to the age-old quandary of commanding respect as a woman in an overwhelmingly masculine field. Bush's navigation of this minefield was as natural as it was ingenious: She became the most musically serious and yet outwardly whimsical star of her time. She held onto her bucolic childhood and sustained her family’s support, feeding the wonder that’s never left her. Her subsequent records couldn’t surpass Hounds of Love’s perfect marriage of technique and exploration, but never has she made a false one. She’s like the glissando of “Hello Earth” that rises up and plummets down almost simultaneously: Bush retained the strength to ride fame’s waves because she’s always known exactly what she was—simply, and quite complicatedly, herself”.
I shall leave it there. Ahead of the thirty-sixth anniversary of Hounds of Love on 16th September, I wanted to highlight one of the very best tracks. Watching You Without Me is Kate Bush’s imagined heroine wrestling with the water, fatigue and the possibility that she may not be rescued – although, at the end, she is. It is another magical and unique song, from an artist who…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Watching You Without Me during her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn
HAS no equals.