FEATURE:
The Big Blue Sky
The Summer of ’83 and Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love
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THE October edition…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the studio in October 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Alamy
of MOJO takes a deep dive into Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. Because of Stranger Things putting the album back in the spotlight, they have taken a closer look at the recording and legacy of the album. I would strongly recommend that everyone grabs a hold of MOJO if you have even a passing interest in Kate Bush ad Hounds of Love. Before coming to a particular time around the recording of the album, I want to come to some quotes from Bush about Hounds of Love. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for their resources:
“Many hours were spent on tiny vocal ideas that perhaps only last half a minute. Many hours went on writing lyrics - one of the most difficult parts in the process for me, in that it's so time-consuming and so frustrating, and it just always seems to take far too long for something that seems as though it should come so naturally. One of the difficult things about the lyrics is that when I initially write the song, perhaps half of the lyrics come with it but it's almost more difficult fitting in the other half to make it match than it would be perhaps to start from scratch, where, for instance, you might have just hummed the tune; or where, in some cases, I wrote them as instrumentals, and then the tunes were written over the top of this. Many times I ring up Paddy and ask him to come over to the studio immediately, to bring in that string-driven thing - to hit that note and let it float.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin
One of the most positive things is now having our own recording studio where we can experiment freely, and it's definitely one of the best decisions I've made since I've been recording albums. We've put a lot of hard work into this album, so we've been waiting for it to be finished and ready, and I know you've been waiting. I hope that after this time, and after all the snippets of information we've been giving you, you don't find it disappointing, but that you enjoy it, and that you enjoy listening to it in different ways again and again.
This album could never have happened without some very special people. Many thanks to Julian Mendelsohn, and especially Haydn Bendall and Brian Tench, who put a lot of hard work into this project, to all the musicians, who are a constant inspiration, to Ma who helps with every little thing, to Paddy and Jay for all their inspiration and influences, and again to Del for all those moments we've captured on tape together. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)
On this album I wanted to get away from the energy of the last one - at the time I was very unhappy, I felt that mankind was really screwing things up. Having expressed all that, I wanted this album to be different - a positive album, just as personal but more about the good things. A lot depends on how you feel at any given time - it all comes out in the music. (James Marck, 'Kate Bush Breaks Out: Bush's Bridges'. Now - Toronto Weekly, 28 November 1985)
The first in my own studio. Another step closer to getting the work as direct as possible. You cut all the crap, don't have all these people around and don't have expensive studio time mounting up. A clean way of working. ('Love, Trust and Hitler'. Tracks (UK), November 1989)
I never was so pleased to finish anything if my life. There were times I never thought it would be finished. It was just such a lot of work, all of it was so much work, you know, the lyrics, trying to piece the thing together. But I did love it, I did enjoy it and everyone that worked on the album was wonderful. And it was really, in some ways, I think, the happiest I've been when I'd been writing and making an album. And I know there's a big theory that goes 'round that you must suffer for your art, you know, ``it's not real art unless you suffer.'' And I don't believe this, because I think in some ways this is the most complete work that I've done, in some ways it is the best and I was the happiest that I'd been compared to making other albums. ('Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love, with Richard Skinner. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)”.
Things started to happen in the summer of 1983. After spending so long recording and perfecting 1982’s The Dreaming, Bush was wiped out. With so much promotion too, she was due a rest! I think she previously liked working at various studios (as she did on The Dreaming), but things had to change. Moving away from the tight and confined spaces and endless days she was working before, she needed more countryside, family, and space. She did record at Windmill Lane (Dublin) and Abbey Road (London), but most of the album was completed at Wickham Farm Home Studio (Welling, England). Five years after her debut album, The Kick Inside, was released, Bush returned home. I think the previous years were pretty intense. I am not sure how long after The Dreaming Bush had the idea for Hounds of Love and its sound. You can hear so much of the landscape and home in the album, from the water and wild of its conceptual suite, The Ninth Wave, to The Big Sky, Cloudbusting and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Despite some tenser and darker moments, Hounds of Love is a warmer album compared to The Dreaming. It was not a case of jumping straight into building a home studio and getting right down the work. After suffering stress and nervous exhaustion because of The Dreaming, Bush did take some time to go to the cinema, hang out with her boyfriend, so some gardening and just be normal. Whilst she was having the studio built to her specifications, preliminary work did start on Hounds of Love. Rather than re-record music, Bush took original recordings and built upon them during the sessions. That started in November 1983.
Before carrying on, this brilliant article from 2020 tells the story of Hounds of Love. It does include a section about the summer of 1983 and what Bush was working on. It may sound expensive but, compared to the financial pressure associated with The Dreaming – long hours and a lot of busy days mixing and getting the album to sound just right -, building a home-built studio eased pressures and also gave Bush freedom in terms of time constraints and schedule:
“In 1983 Kate Bush was in need of a change in her personal and professional life. Her last album, The Dreaming, released in September the previous year, took a heavy toll and considerable amounts of energy to complete. Ensconced within the confines of a recording studio for hours on end during the many months it took to complete the record, the result was what many saw as an experimental and difficult album. Bush said of that album: “It was very dark and about pain and negativity and the way people treat each other badly. It was a sort of cry really.” While the album climbed to #3 in the UK album charts, it did not do that well in sales numbers, and the singles it produced did not fare well either. A change was in order, and it took a three-pronged approach: new house, new studio, new dance teacher. All three contributed to her next album in varied ways, and the result was the classic, fantastic and timeless album Hounds of Love.
Kate Bush experienced a period of deep fatigue after the release of The Dreaming: “I was just a complete wreck, physically and mentally. I’d wake up in the morning and find I couldn’t move.” Taking a U turn from the hustle and bustle of promotion activities, photo shoots, interviews and life in the media, she purchased a house in Kent and retired to domestic bliss in the country. Song writing became a very different experience: “The stimulus of the countryside is fantastic. I sit at my piano and watch skies moving and trees blowing and that’s far more exciting than buildings and roads and millions of people.”
Musically, the most important contribution of the new house on her next album was a newly built recording studio. Her style of work, ever experimental and in seek of unique ways of expression, was tough on the wallet when using commercial studios. At £90, the going rate for one hour of recording at Abbey Road, The Dreaming cost her and EMI an arm and a leg. Her wish to self-produce her albums and control her artistic destiny with no compromise was another reason for the new studio. In an interview at the time she talked enthusiastically and quite proficiently about her new recording space: “We have a Soundcraft mixing deck, a Studer A-80 tape machine, lots of outboard gear, and Q-lock. We normally use 48 tracks now, even if it’s for a vocal idea or something. 24 tracks doesn’t seem to go anywhere with me. And the Fairlight, of course. We have a room simulator called a Quantec, which is my favorite. It would be lovely to be able to draw the sort of room you wanted your voice to be in. I think that’s the next step.”
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Eberhard Weber (who played double bass on Mother Stands for Comfort and Hello Earth)
That Fairlight she mentioned was possibly the most important piece of gear in that studio. Developed in Sydney, Australia, the Fairlight CMI was an innovative synthesizer, sampler and a digital audio workstation that once released in 1979 was famously adopted by Peter Gabriel. Bush first used it on the album Never for Ever, making it world-famous with the sound of breaking glass on the single Babooshka. During the work on The Dreaming she used the instrument a lot more, and by 1983 she decided to purchase one of her own and make it her go-to tool for music writing: “Most of the songs were written on Fairlight and synths and not piano, which was moving away really from the earlier albums, where all my material was written on piano. And there is something about the character of a sound – you hear a sound and it has a whole quality of its own, that it can be sad or happy or… And that immediately conjures up images, which can of course help you to think of ideas that lead you on to a song.”
One of the first songs Kate Bush worked on in her studio was Deal With God, the title she intended to give that song. The lyrics propose the idea of a man and a woman swapping roles in a relationship, the result a greater understanding between them: “And really the only way I could think it could be done was either… you know, I thought a deal with the devil, you know. And I thought, ‘well, no, why not a deal with God!'” But a deal with God proved to be too daring a title, God forbid: “We were told that if we kept this title that it wouldn’t be played in any of the religious countries, Italy wouldn’t play it, France wouldn’t play it, and Australia wouldn’t play it! Ireland wouldn’t play it.” The compromise was to release it as Running Up That Hill in the single version, and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) on the album”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Hounds of Love cover session/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
We talk about Hounds of Love in terms of its reception, resurgence, and legacy. Many of the songs are well-known and help define who Kate Bush is as an artist. I don’t think we go back to the roots. MOJO do in their latest edition. It was nice to trace the timeline back to when Bush had impetus for a new album, but she knew that she could not carry on as she did before. I can appreciate why Bush worked the way she did for The Dreaming. Because of the eclectic and varied themes, sounds and production styles, she needed to use various studios. She liked that method, and I think it was conducive to creativity and a useful learning experience. Because she was producing solo, she did drive herself hard and did not have a lot of free time. Knowing that she had to work in a different way, moving home and building her own studio was a great idea. You can feel that environment and setting infuse the album and affect and influence every track. It accounts for how freer Bush sounds. A more relaxed and inspired artist, she had that room and warmth around her to make something truly special. I love The Dreaming to death, but one does worry about Bush and sympathise with how tired and stressed she was at times. Of course, there were difficult moments during Hounds of Love. Certain songs and sections came together slowly. There were long days and some disagreements, but things were a lot different to The Dreaming’s recording.
I was born in May 1983, and I like the idea of being so small when, not that far away from where I lived at the time, Kate Bush was putting together the blueprints and beginning the foundations for Hounds of Love. Many people are not aware of summer 1983 and that this is when she started work on the album. I know she would have written songs and ideas before then but, as she was constructing a home studio, sketches and basic versions of tracks came together. Sessions then started in November 1983; the final touches for this album were put in place in June 1985. It was a fairly long process but, when you consider the quality and ambition that goes into the album, that isn’t long at all. I guess EMI might have been a bit concerned that Hounds of Love would cost too much. They were not sure what to expect after The Dreaming. The album did well, but it was not as big a commercial success as was hoped. Bush’s instinct to relocate and create her own studio helped her realise a follow-up album that nobody could have predicted. It is fascinating studying the shift in her music and personal life between 1982 and 1985. That short period between The Dreaming coming out on 13th September, 1982 and Bush beginning the bones of Hounds of Love the following summer is such a revival and wonderful resurrection! I don’t know of many artists who have managed to make such two very different albums back-to-back. In the summer of 1983, something wonderful was starting to happen. Did Bush and the outside world realise that two years later, this album we are talking about to this day…
WOULD launch into the world!?