FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Two
IN THIS PHOTO: An outtake from the Army Dreamers video shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Give the Kid the Pick of Pips: The Extraordinary Army Dreamers
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THERE is a lot to talk about…
when it comes to Kate Bush’s Army Dreamers. The reason I am doing so is because the album it is from, Never for Ever, is forty-two on 8th September. Her third studio album, she produced it alongside Jon Kelly. This was the first album were Bush had that sort of production freedom and role. As such, her songwriting is broader and more ambitious. I think that, chronically, Army Dreamers is her first real political song. As the third single from the album (on 22nd September, 1980), it was sort of beaten to the punch by Breathing. Never for Ever’s epic finale, that is the first single. It concerns nuclear word as told from the perspective of a fetus. Army Dreamers is the track before Breathing. This incredible double ends Never for Ever on this potent, important, and thought-provoking note. Not that the album is dark or that serious. It has plenty of light touches, but I think Bush was more conscious of bringing something more social and political into her music. This was a moment that she could do that. Never for Ever has plenty of songs that could have been a single. I am glad she chose Army Dreamers as one, because it is a song that deserved wider release and scrutiny. Though some feel it is lightweight as a political track, I think that it is very effecting and impressive. Bush inhabits the character of a mother who sees her son go to war at such a young age. All the things he could have been, but his life is wasted doing something so futile.
The title of the song as well. Maybe this young man who thinks enrolling and fighting is a dream. The young man of the song was so young that he could not really have had much of an idea about career and his life’s path. Instead, he is thrust into this situation that is seemed to be ideal or his only option. Here, in the form of archived interviews, Kate Bush talked more about Army Dreamers:
“Army Dreamers' is about a grieving mother who through the death of her soldier boy, questions her motherhood. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)
It's the first song I've ever written in the studio. It's not specifically about Ireland, it's just putting the case of a mother in these circumstances, how incredibly sad it is for her. How she feels she should have been able to prevent it. If she'd bought him a guitar when he asked for one. (Colin Irwin, 'Paranoia And Passion Of The Kate Inside'. Melody Maker (UK), 10 October 1980)
The Irish accent was important because the treatment of the song is very traditional, and the Irish would always use their songs to tell stories, it's the traditional way. There's something about an Irish accent that's very vulnerable, very poetic, and so by singing it in an Irish accent it comes across in a different way. But the song was meant to cover areas like Germany, especially with the kids that get killed in manoeuvres, not even in action. It doesn't get brought out much, but it happens a lot. I'm not slagging off the Army, it's just so sad that there are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers, and it's not really what they want. That's what frightens me. (Kris Needs, 'Fire In The Bush'. ZigZag (UK), 1980)”.
I am going to come onto the video for Army Dreamers soon. There is a lot to love about the song. The vocal has this dreamy and almost balletic sound to it. Even though the lyrics carry so much weight, Bush’s voice waltzes and twirls. She adopts an Irish accent beautifully, giving Army Dreamers this feeling of the personal. Her own mother was Irish, so I sort of envisage Bush casting herself in the song. The lyrics are fascinating. My favourite verse is this: “Our little army boy/Is coming home from B.F.P.O../I've a bunch of purple flowers/To decorate a mammy's hero”. B.F.P.O. is British Forces Post Office. This is almost a mantra. Soldiers not able to come home. Instead, there are grave notes and lost letters being sent that tells of loss or false hope. The backing vocals are terrific. Featuring Brian Bath (who was part of the KT Bush Band early in Bush’s career), Paddy Bush (her brother) and Alan Murphy. Even if the lyrics are not as powerful as some that you might hear from other songwriters, Army Dreamers is Kate Bush addressing political themes and genuinely showing her distress towards young soldiers being sent to their deaths. I am going to turn to Wikipedia for sourcing information about the stunning video:
“The music video opens on a closeup of Kate Bush, dressed in dark green camouflage, holding a child. She blinks in synchronisation with the song's sampled gun cocks. The camera pulls out and shows that Bush has a white-haired child on her lap. The child walks off and returns in military combat uniform, and during the first pre-chorus, as Bush responds to her bandmates' comments, the child grows up into a 20-year-old. Bush and several soldiers (two of whom, Bush included, have "KT8" or "KTB" stencilled on the butt of their rifles: "KTB" was a monogram used by Bush early in her career) make their way through woodland, amid explosions. As the song progresses, Bush reaches out for the child soldier, but he disappears. Finally, Bush is blown up”
Bush has stated that this video is one of the few examples of her work that completely satisfies her:
For me that's the closest that I've got to a little bit of film. And it was very pleasing for me to watch the ideas I'd thought of actually working beautifully. Watching it on the screen. It really was a treat, that one. I think that's the first time ever with anything I've done I can actually sit back and say "I liked that". That's the only thing. Everything else I can sit there going "Oh look at that, that's out of place". So I'm very pleased with that one, artistically”.
I think that Army Dreamers is one of Kate Bush’s finest songs. Because its parent album, Never for Ever, is forty-two on 8th September, I wanted to spend time with one of its definite standouts. The final single released from the album in September 1980, it is interesting looking at the single releases. On previous and future albums, you’d get singles a few months down the line from the album release. Only a couple of weeks after Never for Ever came out, she put out its third and final single. I wonder whether a fourth single – maybe The Wedding List or Violin – could have come out at the very end of 1980 or start of 1981. In any case, Army Dreamers is a turning point for Bush in terms of lyrical angles and bringing something more political into her music (although, to be fair, she has always been fearless and bold when it came to subject matter, honesty and writing songs no other artist would!). If the soldiers Bush sings about on Army Dreamers are gone or part of a previous era, the song itself…
WILL never age.