FEATURE:
Is This the Right Thing to Do?
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978 in a Lionheart album outtake (different expression), shot by Gered Mankowitz at his photo studio on Great Windmill Street in Soho, London around September/October
Inside Kate Bush’s Hammer Horror
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I have been doing quite a few features…
around three Kate Bush albums: Never for Ever, The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. All celebrating anniversaries this month, it has been important to write about them. When thinking about Never for Ever and how it pushed Bush’s music and ambitions on from her first two albums, The Kick Inside (1978) and Lionheart (1978), it got me thinking about one of the songs from the latter. I have mentioned Hammer Horror in other features, but I have not spotlighted it and dug deep at all. One reason for this is that it has often been viewed as one of her weaker tracks. Maybe a lesser song from an album that is not among the essential releases. I have almost had to defend Lionheart on many occasions! Far from it being this disappointing follow-up to The Kick Inside, it is a fantastic album with many highlights. Wonderful songs like Wow and Symphony in Blue show what a mature, varied, and exceptional songwriter and creative mind Bush was. There are a couple of unusual things associated with Hammer Horror. For a start, it did not stand out as a lead-off single. One would think Wow was a more obvious choice. That song is the third on Lionheart. Hammer Horror is at the very end. Also, in terms of its sound and energy, maybe it would have been better as a second or third single. I am surprised only two singles were released from the album.
Sure, Symphony in Blue was put out in Canada and Japan, but I think it could have been put out in the U.K. and the rest of the world. Also, Kashka from Baghdad suggests itself as a single. EMI pushed a second album so soon after The Kick Inside (Lionheart came out nine months later), so why only two singles? That was the same story with the debut but, trying to increase Bush’s profile and keep momentum rolling, a third single would have been possible. Hammer Horror got to number forty-four in the U.K., but it did reach seventeen in Australia, ten in Ireland and twenty-five in Netherlands. It is quite cruel how some reacted to the first single from Bush’s second studio album. The Kate Bush Encyclopedia unites some of the less kind opinions about Hammer Horror:
“On Radio 1's Round Table on October 27, 1978 the single was reviewed by DJ's John Peel ("I didn't like the album at all and I'm not too enthused with this either") and Paul Gambaccini ("It doesn't grab me immediately as The Man With The Child In His Eyes"). Record Mirror's Ronnie Gurr opined: "Kate keeps up the formula and doesn't upset the fans... sounds like Joni Mitchell popping tabs with the LSO." In NME, Tony Parsons wrote: "Ominous post ELO orchestration with the unrequited lust of a broken affair viewed as living dead love-bites-back as in classic 50's British celluloid, a real nail biter, hypnotic and disconcerting”.
IMAGE CREDIT: iniminiemoo
I really like Hammer Horror. It is a song I was not always hot about. It came out as a single on 27th October, 1978. The more I have written about Lionheart and its worth, the more I like it final track. In terms of themes, this was not new territory for Kate Bush:
“The song is not about, as many think, Hammer Horror films. It is about an actor and his friend. His friend is playing the lead in a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a part he's been reading all his life, waiting for the chance to play it. He's finally got the big break he's always wanted, and he is the star. After many rehearsals he dies accidentally, and the friend is asked to take the role over, which, because his own career is at stake, he does. The dead man comes back to haunt him because he doesn't want him to have the part, believing he's taken away the only chance he ever wanted in life. And the actor is saying, "Leave me alone, because it wasn't my fault - I have to take this part, but I'm wondering if it's the right thing to do because the ghost is not going to leave me alone and is really freaking me out. Every time I look round a corner he's there, he never disappears."
The song was inspired by seeing James Cagney playing the part of Lon Chaney playing the hunchback - he was an actor in an actor in an actor, rather like Chinese boxes, and that's what I was trying to create. (Kate Bush Club Newsletter, November 1979)”.
Wow is about actors and the stage. The themes of horror and suspense carried on through Bush’s career. There was enough of it through Lionheart. Think about songs like Coffee Homeground (Hammer Horror’s B-side), and Full House. There is anxiety and something eerie in those songs. I do like the fact Bush performed Hammer Horror live a before it featured during 1979’s The Tour of Life (along with most of the songs from The Kick Inside and Lionheart). Bush performed Hammer Horror in various places all over the world. She performed it on Countdown in Australia on 12th October, 1978 (for its world premiere), and at the San Remo festival in Italy in 1979. This was an old song of hers that dates back to its demo in 1977.
I like the fact that, in terms of its rhythms and sounds, it is different to anything on The Kick Inside. Even as soon as Lionheart, Bush was looking to keep fresh and move forward. I love Bush’s performance on Hammer Horror. I also love the lyrics. Right from the off, you know this track could not come from anyone else: “You stood in the belltower/But now you're gone/So who knows all the sights/Of Notre Dame?”. Some of my favourite lyrics from Lionheart can be found on Hammer Horror. This is a particularly pleasing and interesting passage: “Rehearsing in your things/I feel guilty/And retracing all the scenes/Of your big hit/Oh, God, you needed the leading role/It wasn't me who made you go, though/Now all I want to do is forget/You, friend”. Features like this one not only rank Hammer Horror quite low when it comes to her best singles. It also reveals that she was not a great fan of Lionheart and making it. Maybe feeling too rushed and unable to have much say and time to make the music she wanted to, it is a shame. Last year, Classic Pop did rank it fairly high up their list. I think that Lionheart should be reappraised and re-released with any extras and demos available. Not many of Bush’s lesser-heard singles get airplay. I feel Hammer Horror is worthy of a lot more respect than it received. Much more than a weaker single or something that it not up there with her best work, I think Hammer Horror is…
A great song.