FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five
An Album That Deserves Much Greater Respect and Retrospection
__________
EVEN though…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Walter—WireImage/Getty Images
I have covered this topic before, because Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside was completed in August 1977, I am using the opportunity to mark its forty-fifth anniversary. The subject I am referring to is the fact that Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album is underrated and sort of overlooked in favour of others. I will produce other features about the album but, if you have not heard The Kick Inside, then make sure that you do! I have been thinking why Bush might have felt a little disappointed by the album in years since its release. She would probably have preferred to choose her own band and have more of a say in how the songs were produced and performed. The sheer quality and originality of the songwriting makes it an essential listen. It is where it all started for one of the most remarkable artists the world has ever seen. I am going to bring in a couple of reviews for The Kick Inside, to try and get people who don’t like it much to rethink. When it comes to ranking Bush’s albums, whilst The Kick Inside is often placed high, I still think it does not get the credit it deserves. Before moving on, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia sourced interviews where Bush spoke about The Kick Inside. I have chosen a couple:
“Hello everyone. This is Kate Bush and I'm here with my new album The Kick Inside and I hope you enjoy it. The album is something that has not just suddenly happened. It's been years of work because since I was a kid, I've always been writing songs and it was really just collecting together all the best songs that I had and putting them on the album, really years of preparation and inspiration that got it together. As a girl, really, I've always been into words as a form of communication. And even at school I was really into poetry and English and it just seemed to turn into music with the lyrics, that you can make poetry go with music so well. That it can actually become something more than just words; it can become something special. (Self Portrait, 1978)
There are thirteen tracks on this album. When we were getting it together, one of the most important things that was on all our mind was, that because there were so many, we wanted to try and get as much variation as we could. To a certain extent, the actual songs allowed this because of the tempo changes, but there were certain songs that had to have a funky rhythm and there were others that had to be very subtle. I was very greatly helped by my producer and arranger Andrew Powell, who really is quite incredible at tuning in to my songs. We made sure that there was one of the tracks, just me and the piano, to, again, give the variation. We've got a rock 'n' roll number in there, which again was important. And all the others there are just really the moods of the songs set with instruments, which for me is the most important thing, because you can so often get a beautiful song, but the arrangements can completely spoil it - they have to really work together. (Self Portrait, 1978)
I think it was probably the least experimental of all the albums. I'd written, say, two hundred songs from which we chose the thirteen songs that went on that. And it was recorded very quickly, there was very little time for experimentation. It was something that had a lot of forethought gone into it. (Profile 6, 1985)”.
What doesn’t help is how the media perceived her back in 1978. People focused on her image and sexuality. Perhaps trying to define her by Wuthering Heights. The feeling that she was witch-like, high-pitched or someone trying to be strange. In truth, this was just a song and the way she needed to express it. Although this NME interview from March 1978 has a lot of positives, there is this fixation on her looks:
“On the posters it's a coy, soft-focused Kate showing enough breast to--well, at least titillate the passing passengers. Face to face Kate Bush is an impish hippy girl who belies her much touted nineteen years.
Her debut "Top of the Pops" appearance gave rise to Kate being described as "a dark-haired Lyndsay De Paul," but she is neither doll-like nor petite, though hardly tall. Her faded jeans are mostly concealed under a pair of sheepskin-lined thigh-high reddish suede boots, and are in marked contrast to her very feminine fringed top.
Without much time to scurry home to the South East London house she shares with her two brothers to wash her carefully dishevelled hair for an appearance on BBC's "Tonight," Kate's in a hurry. Still, she remains charming and unflustered.
For a girl still in her teens, she's exceptionally self-possessed--especially since in recent weeks she's shot from nowhere to becoming a household name, courtesy of "Wuthering Heights", her first single. The song was inspired by Emily Bronte's romantic novel of the same name and is sung in a voice not unlike that of a newly-neutered cat letting the world know of his predicament.
To compound her mercurial success, her first album "The Kick Inside" is also high on the chart. Kate is amazed at the way things gone. "If you think of it in terms of people and not the money--'cause that's not relevant--it makes me feel very humble," she squeaks in her sing-song voice.
She was signed to EMI three years ago, given a 3,000-Pound advance and a four-year contract with options after the second and third years; i.e., if EMI wanted to drop Kate after either two or three years they could. Last year they re-signed her and it seems certain the company will retain her throughout this year too.
Amongst the credits on "The Kick Inside" is the Floyd's guitarist Dave Gilmour. It was, she says, largely because of Gilmour that she got a record deal. Kate had played piano since she was eleven, starting to write her own songs shortly after. A friend of the Bushes had offered to take some home-made tapes she'd recorded during her early teens round the record companies, but his endeavours were abortive--until he contacted Gilmour, an old friend from Cambridge.
<Note: Each of these tapes are described by Peter FitzGerald-Morris as containing "thirty songs." The friend was Ricky Hopper.>
Gilmour liked what he heard and offered to finance the recording of some professional demo tapes. It was also Gilmour who introduced Kate to arranger Andrew Powell (known for his work with Alan Parsons), who subsequently produced "The Kick Inside". The Gilmour-sponsored tapes received a warm welcome at EMI's A&R department. <This was after an earlier (second) demo tape, recorded at Gilmour's house, was submitted to EMI without success.>
Things couldn't have worked out more perfectly for the sixteen-year-old doctor's daughter. Fresh out of school with an armful of O levels, 3,000 Pounds in her bin and with no immediate pressures from EMI, Kate was free to pursue her ambition to dance. She applied to an ad in London's "Time Out" magazine and enrolled at Lindsay Kemp's mime school.
So why did EMI keep you under covers for so long?
"They were worried about me not being able to cope with things. And I was worried 'cause I didn't feel capable of coping with it either."
So Kate spent her days at Kemp's school with barely an interruption from her record company. "Oh, it was great," chirps Kate."I really got into the discipline. I had so much time and I could use it. For an artist that's such a delightful situation to be in.
"I came in to EMI on a friendly basis and that was good for me, because it meant that I could meet people there as people, and not as a big vulture business where they're all coming in and pulling your arm out. Also, I could learn about the business, which is so important, because it *is* a business."
The daily lessons with Kemp--50p a throw--were very informal. "He taught me that you can express with your body--and when your body is awake so is your mind. He'd put you into emotional situations, some of them very heavy. Like he'd say, 'Right, you're all now going to become sailors drowning, and there are waves curling up around you.' And everyone would just start screaming.
"Or maybe he'd turn you into a little piece of flame..."
Waiting for EMI to click its fingers did have its drawbacks, though. "Artistically, I was getting so frustrated at not being able to get my art to people."
Kate says that EMI did have a go at image-building and at persuading her to write more commercial songs ("Not so heavy--more hook lines"), but when Kate finally went into the studio last summer with half of Pilot and half of Cockney Rebel as her backing band, it was on her own terms. "Wuthering Heights" was originally scheduled for release last November, but was shelved at the very last moment because of--according to her--delays with artwork. By the time everything was right, the Christmas rush was on so Kate's debut was stalled a second time.
EMI had, however, already mailed out some copies of the single, one of which reached Capital Radio's Tony Myatt. Despite EMI's requests to the contrary, Myatt played the record before it was actually on sale. Ironically, Kate feels that Capital's championing "Wuthering Heights" is the key reason for its success.
So is it natural to sing that high, Kate?
"Actually, it is. I've always enjoyed reaching notes that I can't quite reach. A week later you'll be on top of that note and trying to reach the one above it.
"I always feel that you can continually expand your senses if you try. The voice is like an instrument. The reason I sang that song so high is 'cause I felt it called for it. The book has a mood of mystery and I wanted the song to reflect that."
That she sings in different voices on her album is not, claims Kate, due to an identity crisis--to evoke each song's particular mood she has to alter her pitch.
Kate insists that she isn't exploiting her sexuality: "That's a very obvious image. I suppose the poster is reasonably sexy just 'cause you can see my tits, but I think the vibe from the face is there. The main thing about a picture is that it should create a vibe. Often you get pictures of females showing their legs with a very plastic face. I think that poster projects a mood”.
I don’t think The Kick Inside got the true respect and love it was due. It got to three in the U.K. and was a chart success around the world. Although America did not take to Kate Bush or understand her, I think that there was this split between fans and critics. The album was a success and made her a star. It seems a pity that Bush herself created some distance from The Kick Inside. That media perception of Bush did not change for many years. I feel, as such, many people know The Kick Inside for a couple of songs and nothing else. Forty-five years after the album was recorded, there needs to be this celebration. I want to source a couple of positive reviews. The Young Folks wrote this on the album’s fortieth anniversary (2018):
“That primitive quality to her music is foreshadowed in the first few seconds of the album, which feature a selection of whale song. The song that follows, “Moving,” is written in tribute to the emotion and freedom Bush felt through her interpretive dance and mime lessons with Lindsay Kemp. As Bush described in a 1980 Sounds magazine interview, Kemp “fills people up, you’re an empty glass and glug, glug, glug, he’s filled you with champagne.” In the same interview Bush explained her reasoning for including the whale song, claiming that whales “say everything about ‘moving’… [they] are pure movement and pure sound, calling for something, so lonely and sad.” The song works as a good introduction to the rest of her album, and to Bush as an artist that we’re getting to know on her debut album. Here her voice cuts above the surprisingly bold piano and drums, while moving in a way that feels flexible and rhythmic.
The follow-up track, “Saxophone Song,” is simple but in a way that indicates Bush knows how to efficiently communicate an idea without meandering unnecessarily. It’s a song from a fan of a musician – who plays the titular instrument –singing about how she is moved by his music. This track, as well as “Moving” and several others illustrate how Bush can write about things in her life, that are true to her young experience such as taking dance lessons, reading Brontë, and being an awed fan of a musician, and she can turn them into songs that feel adult and general enough to appeal to a listener of any age, as well as stand the test of time.
The next track “Strange Phenomena,” ponders the odd coincidences and synchronicities of life that make you feel connected to something larger and part of a powerful intuitive system. It’s an introduction to Bush’s tendency to write about relatively intellectual subjects, which comes up a few times on this album alone.
Bush’s most conventional tracks are “Kite” and “James and the Cold Gun.” They’re the most pop-rock and boisterous sounding of the 13 songs, and relatively conventional in their lyrics and delivery. Sandwiched between those two songs, however, are the first two singles and two of Bush’s biggest hits, “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” and “Wuthering Heights.” The former song was written by Bush at age 13, and recorded at age 16. The music on the track is straightforward, and Bush’s vocals are the most clear and unaffected here, allowing us to hear every word. The “child” in the title can simultaneously be applied to who the man is looking at and, as Bush has said, the “little boy within” most men. It’s an astonishingly mature song to imagine a 13-year-old writing, which adds a sort of haunted quality to it. The single made it to #6 in the UK, and won Bush the 1979 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding British Lyric.
“Wuthering Heights,” the album’s first single at Bush’s insistence, went to #1 on the UK charts, making it the first time a female singer-songwriter topped the charts with a self-penned song – and it remains Bush’s only number one single. The song was written at age 18 after Bush watched a mini-series adapted from the Emily Brontë novel of the same name. In the song she sings from the dead character Cathy’s perspective as a ghost, begging to be let inside and back into her love Heathcliff’s arms, perfectly capturing the wild and uncontainable emotions depicted in the novel. This song and its videos also brought to a wider audience Bush’s incorporation of movement to her performances. The UK video features Bush in a white dress surrounded by white mist and other dancing projections of herself. The more well-known video was made for the US and has Bush in a bright red dress, dancing among the woods and hills.
The second half of the album features a trilogy of songs about sex and sensuality – “Feel It,” “Oh to Be in Love” and “L’Amour Looks Something Like You.” They’re great examples of Bush’s ability to evoke mood and imagery through her voice, such as when her voice soars in the second half of the phrase “oh to be in love – and never get out again” to mimic the euphoric mindset the singer is in.
The final songs return to the more intellectual and metaphysical inspirations. “Them Heavy People” is about Bush enjoying the opportunity to learn as much as possible to expand her mind, extolling the pains and joys of pushing yourself and “opening doors you thought shut for good” to become the best version of yourself and find the “heaven inside.” “Room for Life,” is an appreciation of the power of women. Bush sings “like it or not, we keep bouncing back, because we’re woman.” The final track “The Kick Inside,” is similar to “Wuthering Heights,” in that it’s an adaptation of an existing work – in this case a “murder ballad” called Lizie Wan – and sung from the perspective of the female character. In this case, however, it’s a girl who is impregnated by her brother who then kills her because of it. It’s a bitterly ironic song to come after “Room for the Life,” which celebrates how woman has “room for a life… in your womb.” It’s a dark end to a strange album, but it’s a fitting end. It underlines that Bush is a fresh talent who is interested in plumbing the depths of human experience and psychology in her music and is not afraid of any source of inspiration”.
The BBC shared their thoughts about Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside in 2008. It does seem odd that The Kick Inside is not talked about more and ranked alongside Bush’s best work. Forty-five years later and it still sounds like nothing else in the world:
“The tale's been oft-told, but bears repeating: Discovered by a mutual friend of the Bush family as well as Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Bush was signed on Gilmour's advice to EMI at 16. Given a large advance and three years, The Kick Inside was her extraordinary debut. To this day (unless you count the less palatable warblings of Tori Amos) nothing sounds like it.
Using mainly session musicians, The Kick Inside was the result of a record company actually allowing a young talent to blossom. Some of these songs were written when she was 13! Helmed by Gilmour's friend, Andrew Powell, it's a lush blend of piano grandiosity, vaguely uncomfortable reggae and intricate, intelligent, wonderful songs. All delivered in a voice that had no precedents. Even so, EMI wanted the dullest, most conventional track, James And The Cold Gun as the lead single, but Kate was no push over. At 19 she knew that the startling whoops and Bronte-influenced narrative of Wuthering Heights would be her make or break moment. Luckily she was allowed her head.
Of course not only did Wuthering Heights give her the first self-written number one by a female artist in the UK, (a stereotype-busting fact of huge proportions, sadly undermined by EMI's subsequent decision to market Bush as lycra-clad cheesecake), but it represented a level of articulacy, or at least literacy, that was unknown to the charts up until then. In fact, the whole album reads like a the product of a young, liberally-educated mind, trying to cram as much esoterica in as possible. Them Heavy People, the album's second hit may be a bouncy, reggae-lite confection, but it still manages to mention new age philosopher and teacher G I Gurdjieff. In interviews she was already dropping names like Kafka and Joyce, while she peppered her act with dance moves taught by Linsdsay Kemp. Showaddywaddy, this was not.
And this isn't to mention the sexual content. Ignoring the album's title itself, we have the full on expression of erotic joy in Feel It and L'Amour Looks Something Like You. Only in France had 19-year olds got away with this kind of stuff. A true child of the 60s vanguard in feminism, Strange Phenomena even concerns menstruation: Another first. Of course such density was decidedly English and middle class. Only the mushy, orchestral Man With The Child In His Eyes, was to make a mark in the US, but like all true artists, you always felt that Bush didn't really care about the commercial rewards. She was soon to abandon touring completely and steer her own fabulous course into rock history”.
Forty-five years since it was recorded, I feel The Kick Inside has yet to find a massive audience. It resonated and was a success in 1978 but, in the years since, it has not gained the sort of traction as Hounds of Love (1985) or other albums from her. On the forty-fifth anniversary of its release in February, more people will be become aware of The Kick Inside. I hope that this month, some forty-five years since Kate Bush and her band completed recording of the album, that is talked about more. The Kick Inside is loved by many, but many others have not really embraced it. I hope that more exposure and attention of The Kick Inside…
RECTIFIES that.