FEATURE:
Inside Kate Bush’s The Dreaming at Forty
Track One: Sat in Your Lap
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IN September…
Kate Bush’s fourth studio album, The Dreaming, turns forty. It is a way away, but I wanted to spend time investigating various aspects of the album. In the first instance, I wanted to look at all ten tracks from The Dreaming. Going more into detail with each, it is a chance to highlight their individual originality and brilliance. Starting at the top, it is time to look at Sat in Your Lap. The first single from The Dreaming, it was released in June 1981. Over a year until the album came out, I wonder what people thought when they heard the song! Faster and most percussive-heavy than any single Bush had put out before, it was a definite change of direction. Struggling to write, Bush’s writer’s block was unlocked when she went to see Stevie Wonder play in concert at Wembley. Although Sat in Your Lap does not share too much DNA with Wonder (there is more of Bowie in the mix), the fact that am exhilarating performance stirred something inside of Bush resulted in one of her greatest singles. One of the things that will become clear about the singles from The Dreaming is that they did not chart as well as the singles from her follow-up album, Hounds of Love. Sat in Your Lap was the most successful from the album, though it only got to eleven in the U.K.. That is a pretty good position, though I think Sat in Your Lap is worthy of a top ten place. Not a commercial and easily accessible album, The Dreaming’s strengths lie in the fascinating layers and sounds. Relying more on texture and depth rather than instant hooks and catchy choruses, The Dreaming is an album that demands a proper listen and consideration.
Sat in Your Lap is the perfect opening song. It opens the album with so much propulsion and physicality. Not exactly commercial, it is one of the more accessible songs on The Dreaming. With its video filmed at Abbey Road Studios across two days, the editing was a long and difficult job. Even though it sounds like the video was a lot of work, the result was unlike any other Kate Bush video. A nod to the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia who are going to prove invaluable when it comes to getting more detail about the brilliant ten tracks on The Dreaming. Here is what Kate Bush said about the incredible Sat in Your Lap:
“I already had the piano patterns, but they didn't turn into a song until the night after I'd been to see a Stevie Wonder gig. Inspired by the feeling of his music, I set a rhythm on the Roland and worked in the piano riff to the high-hat and snare. I now had a verse and a tune to go over it but only a few lyrics like "I see the people working", "I want to be a lawyer,'' and "I want to be a scholar,'' so the rest of the lyrics became "na-na-na"' or words that happened to come into my head. I had some chords for the chorus with the idea of a vocal being ad-libbed later. The rhythm box and piano were put down, and then we recorded the backing vocals. "Some say that knowledge is...'' Next we put down the lead vocal in the verses and spent a few minutes getting some lines worked out before recording the chorus voice. I saw this vocal being sung from high on a hill on a windy day. The fool on the hill, the king of the castle... "I must admit, just when I think I'm king."
The idea of the demos was to try and put everything down as quickly as possible. Next came the brass. The CS80 is still my favourite synthesizer next to the Fairlight, and as it was all that was available at the time, I started to find a brass sound. In minutes I found a brass section starting to happen, and I worked out an arrangement. We put the brass down and we were ready to mix the demo.
I was never to get that CS80 brass to sound the same again - it's always the way. At The Townhouse the same approach was taken to record the master of the track. We put down a track of the rhythm box to be replaced by drums, recording the piano at the same time. As I was producing, I would ask the engineer to put the piano sound on tape so I could refer to that for required changes. This was the quickest of all the tracks to be completed, and was also one of the few songs to remain contained on one twenty-four track tape instead of two! (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982)”.
There is so much to unravel and investigate when it comes to Kate Bush’s The Dreaming. I will discuss Bush producing the album, a lot of the sounds and instruments used throughout, in addition to the way The Dreaming was received and influences people today. A lot of people either do not know about The Dreaming, or they pick a few tracks. In this ten-part feature that looks at each song individually, I am starting out with the lead single. Anyone who felt they have Kate Bush pegged before 1981 would have been in for a surprise when Sat in Your Lap was released. A year later, the extraordinary The Dreaming highlighted the fact that her music would…
NEVER be the same again.