FEATURE:
And Feel Your Arms Around Me
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 2011’s Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
A Truly Original Visionary: My Five Favourite Kate Bush-Directed Videos
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I have been thinking about…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush directing the Hounds of Love video/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Hounds of Love, as the album was featured in the latest edition of MOJO. They explored its creation and importance because so many new fans have discovered it. That is no small part because of Stranger Things’ use of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). After that single and video was released, Kate Bush started to direct her music videos. I suspect that she was keen to direct during The Dreaming. I know she was quite involved when it came to the concept and look of the title track’s video. Hounds of Love’s title track came out on 24th February, 1986. That was the first video that Bush directed solo. She directed two further videos in 1986: one for The Big Sky (from Hounds of Love) and one for Experiment IV (from the greatest hits collection, The Whole Story). Bush has directed videos on and off after that. The latest one she directed was Kate Bush: Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe. Alongside videos, she also directed the 1993 short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. I think she is a very accomplished and visionary director with her own style. Although she is influenced by directors like Alfred Hitchcock (which you can definitely see in Hounds of Love’s video), I really admire her concepts, colour palettes and ideas. To celebrate that, I wanted to present the five videos that Kate Bush directed. In previous features, I have selected my five favourite music videos of hers. This one is specifically about the videos she directed. It is a hard decision ranking them, as she has directed some incredible videos! Maybe you have different opinions, or there are great videos that I have missed out. Regardless, this is my ranking of the best five music videos…
THAT Kate Bush directed.
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1: The Big Sky
Single Release Date: 28th April, 1986
Producer: Kate Bush
From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)
Background:
“The Big Sky' was a song that changed a lot between the first version of it on the demo and the end product on the master tapes. As I mentioned in the earlier magazine, the demos are the masters, in that we now work straight in the 24-track studio when I'm writing the songs; but the structure of this song changed quite a lot. I wanted to steam along, and with the help of musicians such as Alan Murphy on guitar and Youth on bass, we accomplished quite a rock-and-roll feel for the track. Although this song did undergo two different drafts and the aforementioned players changed their arrangements dramatically, this is unusual in the case of most of the songs. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)
'The Big Sky' gave me terrible trouble, really, just as a song. I mean, you definitely do have relationships with some songs, and we had a lot of trouble getting on together and it was just one of those songs that kept changing - at one point every week - and, um...It was just a matter of trying to pin it down. Because it's not often that I've written a song like that: when you come up with something that can literally take you to so many different tangents, so many different forms of the same song, that you just end up not knowing where you are with it. And, um...I just had to pin it down eventually, and that was a very strange beast. (Tony Myatt Interview, November 1985)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia
2: Experiment IV
Single Release Date: 27th October, 1986
Producer: Kate Bush
From the Album: The Whole Story (1986)
Background:
“This was written as an extra track for the compilation album The Whole Story and was released as the single. I was excited at the opportunity of directing the video and not having to appear in it other than in a minor role, especially as this song told a story that could be challenging to tell visually. I chose to film it in a very handsome old military hospital that was derelict at the time. It was a huge, labyrinthine hospital with incredibly long corridors, which was one reason for choosing it. Florence Nightingale had been involved in the design of the hospital. Not something she is well known for but she actually had a huge impact on hospital design that was pioneering and changed the way hospitals were designed from then on.
The video was an intense project and not a comfortable shoot, as you can imagine - a giant of a building, damp and full of shadows with no lighting or heating but it was like a dream to work with such a talented crew and cast with Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Peter Vaughn and Richard Vernon in the starring roles. It was a strange and eerie feeling bringing parts of the hospital to life again. Not long after our work there it was converted into luxury apartments. I can imagine that some of those glamorous rooms have uninvited soldiers and nurses dropping by for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.
We had to create a recording studio for the video, so tape machines and outboard gear were recruited from my recording studio and the mixing console was very kindly lent to us by Abbey Road Studios. It was the desk the Beatles had used - me too, when we’d made the album Never For Ever in Studio Two. It was such a characterful desk that would’ve looked right at home in any vintage aircraft. Although it was a tough shoot it was a lot of fun and everyone worked so hard for such long hours. I was really pleased with the result. (KateBush.com, February 2019)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia
3: Hounds of Love
Single Release Date: 24th February, 1986
Producer: Kate Bush
From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)
Background:
“When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought 'Hounds Of Love' and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna... when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of... being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)
In the song 'Hounds Of Love', what do you mean by the line 'I'll be two steps on the water', other than a way of throwing off the scent of hounds, or whatever, by running through water. But why 'two' steps?
Because two steps is a progression. One step could possibly mean you go forward and then you come back again. I think "two steps" suggests that you intend to go forward.
But why not "three steps"?
It could have been three steps - it could have been ten, but "two steps" sounds better, I thought, when I wrote the song. Okay. (Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia
4: Rocket Man
Single Release Date: 2nd December, 1991
Producer: Kate Bush
From the Album: Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin (1991)
Background:
“I was really knocked out to be asked to be involved with this project, because I was such a big fan of Elton's when I was little. I really loved his stuff. It's like he's my biggest hero, really. And when I was just starting to write songs, he was the only songwriter I knew of that played the piano and sang and wrote songs. So he was very much my idol, and one of my favourite songs of his was 'Rocket Man'. Now, if I had known then that I would have been asked to be involved in this project, I would have just died… They basically said, 'Would we like to be involved?' I could choose which track I wanted… 'Rocket Man' was my favourite. And I hoped it hadn't gone, actually – I hoped no one else was going to do it… I actually haven't heard the original for a very long time. 'A long, long time' (laughs). It was just that I wanted to do it differently. I do think that if you cover records, you should try and make them different. It's like remaking movies: you've got to try and give it something that makes it worth re-releasing. And the reggae treatment just seemed to happen, really. I just tried to put the chords together on the piano, and it just seemed to want to take off in the choruses. So we gave it the reggae treatment. It's even more extraordinary (that the song was a hit) because we actually recorded the track over two years ago. Probably just after my last telly appearance. We were quite astounded when they wanted to release it as a single just recently. (BBC Radio 1 interview, 14 December 1991)
I remember buying this when it came out as a single by Elton John. I couldn’t stop playing it - I loved it so much. Most artists in the mid seventies played guitar but Elton played piano and I dreamed of being able to play like him. Years later in 1989, Elton and Bernie Taupin were putting together an album called Two Rooms, which was a collection of cover versions of their songs, each featuring a different singer. To my delight they asked me to be involved and I chose Rocket Man. They gave me complete creative control and although it was a bit daunting to be let loose on one of my favourite tracks ever, it was really exciting. I wanted to make it different from the original and thought it could be fun to turn it into a reggae version. It meant a great deal to me that they chose it to be the first single release from the album.
That meant I also had the chance to direct the video which I loved doing - making it a performance video, shot on black and white film, featuring all the musicians and... the Moon!
Alan Murphy played guitars on the track. He was a truly special musician and a very dear friend. Tragically, he died just before we made the video so he wasn’t able to be there with us but you’ll see his guitar was placed on an empty chair to show he was there in spirit. (KateBush.com, February 2019)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia
5: The Sensual World (with Peter Richardson)
Single Release Date: 18th September, 1989
Producer: Kate Bush
From the Album: The Sensual World (1989)
Background:
“Because I couldn't get permission to use a piece of Joyce it gradually turned into the song about Molly Bloom the character stepping out of the book, into the real world and the impressions of sensuality. Rather than being in this two-dimensional world, she's free, let loose to touch things, feel the ground under her feet, the sunsets, just how incredibly sensual a world it is. (...) In the original piece, it's just 'Yes' - a very interesting way of leading you in. It pulls you into the piece by the continual acceptance of all these sensual things: 'Ooh wonderful!' I was thinking I'd never write anything as obviously sensual as the original piece, but when I had to rewrite the words, I was trapped. How could you recreate that mood without going into that level of sensuality? So there I was writing stuff that months before I'd said I'd never write. I have to think of it in terms of pastiche, and not that it's me so much. (Len Brown, 'In The Realm Of The Senses'. NME (UK), 7 October 1989)
The song is about someone from a book who steps out from this very black and white 2-D world into the real world. The immediate impressions was the sensuality of this world - the fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual - you know... the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand - the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that's an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. But I'm sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing. (...) I love the sound of church bells. I think they are extraordinary - such a sound of celebration. The bells were put there because originally the lyrics of the song were taken from the book Ulysses by James Joyce, the words at the end of the book by Molly Bloom, but we couldn't get permission to use the words. I tried for a long time - probably about a year - and they wouldn't let me use them, so I had to create something that sounded like those original word, had the same rhythm, the same kind of feel but obviously not being able to use them. It all kind of turned in to a pastiche of it and that's why the book character, Molly Bloom, then steps out into the real world and becomes one of us. (Roger Scott, Interview. Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia