FEATURE:
In Search of Peter Pan: A Delightful Song and Rarity in Her Catalogue
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Kate Bush’s Lionheart at Forty-Four
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FOR this penultimate feature…
on Kate Bush’s Lionheart, I wanted to highlight a song that not many people talk about or really know about. Turning forty-four on 13th November, there is a particular track I have written about before, but I wanted to explore from a different angle. Not only is Lionheart and underrated album that many people pass by, the ten individual songs are brilliant. All very different, it showcases the range and variation of Kate Bush’s songwriting. So utterly imaginative and spectacular, I love her vocals, compositions and lyrics throughout her second studio album. Before getting to a song from Lionheart that has a particularly interesting aspect to it, here is a 1978 interview snippet where Bush discussed the 1978 album:
“Maybe I'm a bit too close to it at the moment, but I find it much more adventurous than the last one. I'm much more happier with the songs and the arrangements and the backing tracks. I was getting a bit worried about labels from that last album; everything being in the high register, everything being soft, and airy-fairy. That was great for the time but it's not really what I want to do now, or what I want to do, say, in the next year. I guess I want to get basically heavier in the sound sense... and I think that's on the way, which makes me really happy.
I don't really think there are any songs on the album that are as close to Wuthering Heights as there were on the last one. I mean, there's lots of songs people could draw comparisons with. I want the first single that comes out from this album to be reasonably up-tempo. That's the first thing I'm concerned with, because I want to break away from what has previously gone. I'm not pleased with being associated with such soft, romantic vibes, not for the first single anyway. If that happens again, that's what I will be to everyone. (Harry Doherty, Kate: Enigma Variations. Melody Maker, November 1978)”.
The song in question is the second on the album. In Search of Peter Pan is a track that is going to be new to many people. Not one of the singles from the album, it is an older song that was used for Lionheart. Bush wrote three new songs from the album, but she had to bring in older songs because of the short gap between the release of The Kick Inside in February 1978 and the release of Lionheart on 13th November. There are a few reasons why I love In Search of Peter Pan. For one, it is another case of Bush being compelled and moved by literature. Throughout her career, Bush took from books, films and T.V. shows. There is magic, childlike wonder and beauty on this song. As it follows the more sophisticated and perhaps more mature and deeper opening track, Symphony in Blue, it acts as a nice contrast and different palette. Throughout Lionheart, there are so many moods and different sounds working alongside one another. This is what Bush said about the majestic In Search of Peter Pan:
“There's a song on [Lionheart] called 'In Search Of Peter Pan' and it's sorta about childhood. And the book itself is an absolutely amazing observation on paternal attitudes and the relationships between the parents - how it's reflected on the children. And I think it's a really heavy subject, you know, how a young innocence mind can be just controlled, manipulated, and they don't necessarily want it to happen that way. And it's really just a song about that. (Lionheart promo cassette, EMI Canada, 1978)”.
One of the songs that Bush performed live during The Tour of Life, even though the title might suggest something whimsical and innocent, there is actually darkness and serious tones on the song. Bush’s description of the proves that. The lyrics, as you would expect, are extraordinary. One of music’s best and most original lyricists, the lines draw you into the song: “Running into her arms/At the school gates/She whispers that I'm a poor kid/And Granny takes me on her knee/She tells me I'm too sensitive/She makes me sad/She makes me feel like an old man/She makes me feel like an old man”. My favourite verse actually comes a bit later in the song: “He's got a photo/Of his hero/He keeps it under his pillow/But I've got a pin-up/From a newspaper/Of Peter Pan/I found it in a locket/I hide it in my pocket”. Aside from some arrangements and expected assistance with compositions and input from her musicians, Bush wrote and composed every track on her ten studio albums. Some might say this is no big deal. Think about artists in general and certainly the most popular ones of all time. There are very few examples of one artist writing all the songs without co-credit and collaborators. Bush is a singular talent who did not want or need others in the mix. In Search of Peter Pan is a rare example of other people’s words briefly coming into one of her songs.
One cannot really say that In Search of Peter Pan is a co-write. Bush uses some famous lines from Pinocchio’s When You Wish Upon a Star at the very end: “When you wish upon a star/Makes no difference who you are/When you wish upon a star/Your dreams come true". Although there are only a few lines in there, it is this incidence of Bush sprinkling in words from someone else/another source. I think it adds a lovely and fantastical wonder to the end of the song. Actually, I think the only case where there is a proper co-writing credit for a song is Flower of the Mountain from Director’s Cut (2011). Originally The Sensual World from the 1989 album of the same name, Bush reworked the song and included words from James Joyce’s Ulysses for Flower of the Mountain. She wanted to use Molly Bloom’s stunning soliloquy for The Sensual World but could not get permission. When she was granted access by the Joyce estate – I think any limitations or restrictions had expired by then anyway! -, the words were included in the song. Can you even call that a co-write!? There is definitely another writer on Lionheart’s under-heard gem. A song written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington and first recorded in 1939, it appeared in Pinocchio in 1940. I love the fact that Bush used some of the immortal lines for this song that has Peter Pan at its heart! Peter Pan was made into an animated Disney film in 1953, so there are further examples of Bush being influenced by film once more! As the stunning Lionheart album is forty-four on 13th November, I wanted to use this final feature about it to highlight one of its best tracks. Following Symphony in Blue and leading into Wow, here was a tremendous opening trio of songs that were very different to the opening three songs – Moving, The Saxophone Song and Strange Phenomena – of The Kick inside. Taking its lead from J.M. Barrie’s novel and inspired by how a young innocence mind can be just controlled and manipulated, In Search of Peter Pan is…
A beautiful and striking song.