FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Alamy/ABACAPRESS.COM
Where the Magic Begun…
_________
I did a run of features…
about The Kick Inside last year. The album was recorded over the summer of 1977, so I marked forty-five years of its completion. The official release date for Kate Bush’s stunning debut album is 17th February, 1978. I wanted to acknowledge the approaching forty-fifth anniversary by having a look an album peaked at number three in the U.K. album charts and has been certified Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry. It is my favourite album ever – as I have said many times -, and whilst it is not Bush’s most experimental or ambitious album, I think it is her most beautiful. In terms of the themes she was addressing, it was a lot more daring and original than most other albums around in 1978. A teenager who came onto the scene with the spectacular and unusual Wuthering Heights, The Kick Inside explores love and passion, philosophy and menstruation, death and incest, and a lot more besides! Never a conventional or predictable album, Bush worked alongside experienced musicians like Duncan MacKay, David Paton and Ian Bairnson and producer Andrew Powell. For those who adore her 1985 album, Hounds of Love, need to go back to the start and see where Bush came from. This remarkable and hugely gifted songwriter, I don’t share the opinion The Kick Inside was great but it was not Bush’s true voice and talent coming to the fore. Her debut album is as arresting and spectacular as any in her catalogue!
If it is not as weird and wild as The Dreaming (1982) or as ambitious and accomplished as Hounds of Love, it has different qualities and an alternate purpose. It is beautiful and hugely feminine. It has a potency and nuance that means songs unfurl new layers with each level. It is the documentation of a young and eager artist who was realising a dream. I wonder whether Bush, on 17th February, will think about The Kick Inside, forty-five years after it was released into the world. Before moving on, there are a couple of interview snippets from the archives I want to include where Bush discusses The Kick Inside:
“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)”.
As far as I know, it was mainly Andrew Powell who chose the musicians, he'd worked with them before and they were all sort of tied in with Alan Parsons. There was Stuart Elliot on drums, Ian Bairnson on guitar, David Paton on bass, and Duncan Mackay on electric keyboards. And, on that first album, I had no say, so I was very lucky really to be given such good musicians to start with. And they were lovely, 'cause they were all very concerned about what I thought of the treatment of each of the songs. And if I was unhappy with anything, they were more than willing to re-do their parts. So they were very concerned about what I thought, which was very nice. And they were really nice guys, eager to know what the songs were about and all that sort of thing. I don't honestly see how anyone can play with feeling unless you know what the song is about. You know, you might be feeling this really positive vibe, yet the song might be something weird and heavy and sad. So I think that's always been very important for me, to sit down and tell the musicians what the song is about. (Musician, 1985)”.
I think The Kick Inside is one of the most important and impactful debut albums ever. It was released at a time when Punk and Disco were popular. Not really fitting into any scene or sound, the fact that it was a chart success around the world and saw two huge U.K. singles released shows that it is a wonderful record! There was a lot of positivity around The Kick Inside when it was released, but many others were confused by the lyrics and this unconventional artist. Maybe expecting something basic and similar to Pop albums of the time, that is not what you get with The Kick Inside. It is such a deep and compelling album that is heightened and made classic by Kate Bush’s stunning voice and musicianship. She would bring more instruments, angles and experiments into her music when she started to produce (for 1980’s Never for Ever), but her 1978 debut is one I would recommend to everyone. The Skinny provided a fortieth anniversary retrospective in 2018, where they made some interesting observations:
“The song that gets the most attention on The Kick Inside is, of course, Wuthering Heights. Now a bona fide classic, endlessly gushed over as an exemplar of 70s art pop (against the grain of the then-ubiquitous disco and punk). It's also destined to be forever remembered for its equally famous visual of Bush dancing in a white dress with cheesy post-production effects (or the 'red dress' American version, with equally theatrical dancing on some real-life moors), still a few years before MTV would make the music video a mainstream creative medium.
Wuthering Heights was the first self-penned number one for a female artist in the UK, written when Bush was 18 (released a year later). Bizarrely, EMI had decided that James and the Cold Gun would be the first single from the album, but Bush was determined that Wuthering Heights should be the first release and – amazingly for a young woman in the music industry in the 70s – she got her way. This imperturbable drive towards her own creative vision is something that Bush would continually exhibit throughout her career.
Lyrically, the song deals with the ghost of Catherine (Cathy) Earnshaw – from Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights – pleading to be released from her purgatory and let back in from her post-death wandering on the moors. Despite the novel's ambiguity when it comes to Cathy's affections (for either Heathcliff or Edgar), Bush asserts that Cathy longs for Heathcliff, 'I'm coming back to his side to put it right / I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering, wuthering heights' – i.e. the wild, passionate side of her character that she supressed during her lifetime. As a mission statement for an artist unmoored from conformity, social mores or traditional expectations, it's more or less perfect.
The Kick Inside was unafraid to dip its toe into more experimental waters. While it held sure-fire hits like The Man with the Child in His Eyes and Wuthering Heights, it also dealt frankly with sexuality and eroticism (Feel It, L'Amour Looks Something Like You), throws in a little reggae on Kite and doubles down on the gothic occultism that peppers the album on Strange Phenonema (a song once described by The Guardian as a “frank paean to menstruation”).
Listing all those who've been influenced by Kate Bush is a near-impossible task and her impact on contemporary music is impossible to deny. The most obvious current touchstone is Lorde, another artist who came to prominence as a teenager writing pop music that veers away from the norm, similarly fearless in her imaginative musicality (not to mention a predilection for interpretative dance moves). But her influence can also be glimpsed in the avant-garde compositions of Jenny Hval, the eclectic experimentation of Charli XCX and the bombastic future-pop of St. Vincent.
40 years ago, The Kick Inside began a musical journey that continues (hopefully) to this day. Kate Bush did not arrive fully formed – she has used constant renewal and rebirth as the tenets of her artistic evolution – but her auspicious debut album did showcase an artist with enough conviction, confidence and creativity to more than warrant her position as a once-in-a-generation musician”.
In future features (I will another couple), I want to explore different sides, songs and aspects of The Kick Inside. I wanted to use this feature to highlight how brilliant, bold and original this magnificent 1978 debut is. I know that Bush’s music has connected with a new generation thanks to Stranger Things, and I do hope that people are listening to The Kick Inside and not limiting themselves to Hounds of Love. I wasn’t alive when The Kick Inside was released, but I did hear it at a young age and I was transfixed by how gorgeous and different the album was. It introduced me to the fact music was able to transform you and take you to different places. It had this instantly transfixing quality. I was moved and seduced by The Kick Inside when I first heard it – and I am every time I play it. Once Bush’s debut was released, she began this whirlwind of promotion that took he through most of 1978. It was an exciting (if exhausting) time for this artist who almost instantly became this star. Someone who was unlike anyone around her. The power and transcendence of her debut is still being felt to this day! It was the start of a career that has now lasted more than forty-five years. From the beautiful and spellbinding whale song that opens the album (and Moving) to the lingering and haunting final words of The Kick Inside’s title track, Kate Bush’s debut is full of magic and mystique. Released on 17th February, 1978, this amazing album is…
WHERE it all began.