FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at Forty-Six
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Is the Classic Debut Single Still Underrated?
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THIS is my second…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
feature that marks forty-six years of Wuthering Heights. Released on 20th January, it is Kate Bush’s debut single. I have been thinking about its importance and impact. Getting to number one, it is was the first time a British female artist got to the top spot with a self-written song. Quite a feat considering Bush wrote the song when she was a teenager. In the final anniversary feature for Wuthering Heights, I want to explore it in terms of its popularity. No doubt a big favourite and song that almost defines Bush, I think that Wuthering Heights remains underrated. Still seen as weird by some, there is an element of its being this eccentricity that is not as accessible and play-worthy as, say, Hounds of Love’s singles – especially Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). I will go into the song and some features around it before asking whether more needs to be written and said around the song. Even if The Guardian rated Wuthering Heights the fourteenth-best U.K. single ever back in 2020, you do not hear Wuthering Heights covered more. Maybe one of the more technically distinct songs in Bush’s canon, it is a unique song in terms of the vocal and vibe. That said, among the cover versions, there has not been much radical interpretation – and there have not been many cover versions released in the past few years. Given that it relates to the classic novel of the same name and there is this opportunity to take the lyrics in new directions, artists do not come to it much. Also, look at modern music, and how many other artists have written songs around novels?! I don’t think it happens as much as it should.
I will talk about the legacy and importance of Wuthering Heights. Radio stations are partly to blame, as they still favour other tracks. Hounds of Love gets so much airplay in terms of the obvious singles. I also think that there is chance for podcasts and documentaries about Wuthering Heights and its legacy. Before that, I came across an article from 2004. Sound on Sound highlighted Wuthering Heights as a classic track. Jon Kelly was the engineer on the single – Wuthering Heights was taken from Kate Bush’s first album, The Kick Inside – and recalled his memories of that recording session:
“Kate Bush's smash hit debut single was also the first major project Jon Kelly had recorded. It proved to be a dream start for both artist and engineer, and a perfect illustration of the benefits of working with talented session musicians.
The 1977 sessions for The Kick Inside marked the debut not only of a new artist named Kathy Bush, but also of Jon Kelly as a fully fledged engineer. He had spent the previous couple of years as a tape-op and assistant engineer at the original AIR Studios facility on central London's Oxford Street, during which time he'd assisted the already-legendary Geoff Emerick on recordings by Gino Vannelli, Robin Trower and Gallagher & Lyle. He also "did as many jingles as I could, because I knew that would teach me to be quick", and had worked on several smaller projects with producer Andrew Powell before the two of them joined forces for The Kick Inside. Thereafter, Kelly would engineer Kate Bush's second album Lionheart, co-produce Never For Ever with her, go on to produce and/or engineer for the likes of Paul McCartney, Chris Rea, Tori Amos, the Damned, Deacon Blue, New Model Army and Prefab Sprout, and form a notable relationship with the Beautiful South which has so far yielded nine albums.
A beautifully tender yet haunting musical setting of Emily Bronte's classic love story, 'Wuthering Heights' wrapped swelling keyboards, strings and guitars around a lead vocal delivered in a sustained, almost child-like soprano by the song's 18-year-old composer, Kate Bush.
Mentored by Pink Floyd lead guitarist Dave Gilmour, Bush had been signed to EMI at the age of 16 on the strength of 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes' and 'Berlin' (later retitled 'The Saxophone Song') — both recordings, engineered during an 'artist test' by Geoff Emerick, would be included on her first album, The Kick Inside. Thereafter, she had been allowed to study dance, mime and voice while developing her self-evident keyboard and writing talents, and by early 1977 she'd penned 'Wuthering Heights' and numerous other numbers and was ready to enter the studio to record The Kick Inside. This was achieved with producer Andrew Powell and engineer Jon Kelly behind the 24-channel Neve console in AIR's spacious Studio Two, which also housed Tannoy monitors and a 3M M79 two-inch 24-track tape machine, as well as the similar equipment in Studio One, whose vast live area was utilised for the string sessions.
"As a Geoff Emerick protegé, my early miking choices basically mirrored his," says Jon Kelly. "For instance, on drums he loved the Coles 4038s for overheads, as I still do now, and at that time his snare mic was an AKG D19 — he liked that punchy dynamic on the snare, and the D19 provided that kind of definition while the overheads captured most of the size. His tom mics varied between D19s, Sennheisers and Shures; and bass drum mics were usually D12s, D20s and sometimes a [Neumann] FET 47. I can't remember ever putting up any ambients or room mics with Geoff, because during the mid-'70s everything was pretty dry. It was always that Westlake/Eastlake sound, with people taping up cymbals so they didn't ring too much.
"Geoff took immense care positioning the mics. He used to say 'The microphone is like a camera lens. Imagine it's taking a picture.' Having assisted a number of engineers at AIR, the difference I noticed with Geoff was that he always used the cheapest dynamic mics on the drums, whereas others like Bill Price used things such as KM86s on the snare, 84s and 87s as overheads — much more classy condenser microphones. Geoff would use the old dynamics and then bring the sound out with EQ."
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
All of this served as Kelly's starting point for the very first Kate Bush session, during which he was "learning as I went along and dreadfully insecure. I give full credit to Andrew [Powell] and the great musicians, who were very supportive, while Kate herself was just fantastic. Looking back, she was incredible and such an inspiration, even though when she first walked in I probably thought she was just another new artist. Her openness, her enthusiasm, her obvious talent — I remember finishing that first day, having recording two or three backing tracks, and thinking 'My God, that's it. I've peaked!'"
The live rhythm section that Jon Kelly recorded for 'Wuthering Heights' consisted of Kate Bush playing a Bösendorfer grand piano, Stuart Elliott on drums, Andrew Powell on bass and Ian Bairnson on a six-string acoustic. And in terms of the miking, Kelly adhered pretty closely to Geoff Emerick's favoured choices while adding some of his own.
"For the drums I used a D19 on the snare, Sennheiser 421s on the toms, a D12 on the bass drum and a [Neumann] KM84 on the hi-hat," Kelly recalls. "The bass was DI'd and amped — at the time I was very keen on the Susan Blue DI box, while a Marshall cabinet and Marshall head were miked with an FET 47. Ian Bairnson's acoustic was recorded with a Neumann U87, as were Kate's piano and vocal — I was a big 87 fan, I used to use them on everything. I still think it's a really under-rated microphone. When people listen to one on its own they often think it's a bit hard and doesn't have such a huge sound as some of the valve or softer-focus mics, but it's so efficient once you place it within the mix.
"Kate always recorded live vocals, and they were fantastic, but then she'd want to redo them later. In the case of 'Wuthering Heights', she was imitating this witch, the mad lady from the Yorkshire Moors, and she was very theatrical about it. She was such a mesmerising performer — she threw her heart and soul into everything she did — that it was difficult to ever fault her or say 'You could do better.'"
David Paton, who was the bass man on the other songs, overdubbed 12-string acoustic guitar on 'Wuthering Heights', and after Ian Bairnson redid his six-string part, Jon Kelly double-tracked them and tweaked the Varispeed on the machine to provide some breadth together with a chorusy feel. Then Andrew Powell hired a celeste and played the chime-like arpeggios that double with the piano motif during the song's intro and the sections preceding the chorus... all of which was virgin territory for the fledgling recording engineer.
"There was a fair bit of fun involved in working with instruments like that," Kelly recalls. "Kate would certainly get involved, poking her head all around to see where it sounded nice. There was a good feeling of camaraderie, so I never felt nervous... just insecure! I recorded the celeste with a Coles ribbon mic positioned on the soundboard at the back, and that worked out fine.
"You couldn't keep Kate away from he sessions even if you had wild dogs and bazookas. She was just drinking it all up, learning everything that went on. The first moment she walked into the control room, I could tell that's where she wanted to be, in control of her own records. She was so astute and intelligent, and she was also phenomenally easy to work with. An absolute joy. I can't remember any bad moments at all."
Next to overdub some parts was percussionist Morris Pert, who spent an entire day working on songs for The Kick Inside. "The only things he played on 'Wuthering Heights' were crotals, which are like disc-shaped glockenspiels," Kelly explains. "Again, these were doubled with the piano motif throughout the song."
Then came the strings recorded in AIR's Studio One — eight first violins, six second violins, six violas and six cellos — as well as three French horns. These comprised the section that was used on 'Wuthering Heights', whereas a smaller section was used for some of the other songs — the parts for a couple of numbers were recorded in each three-hour session.
"That was a huge room, twice as big as the live area in Studio Two," Kelly remembers. "It could accommodate between 60 to 70 musicians, and had high ceilings and a lovely, bright sound. Everything sounded great in there. I miked the first violins with a couple of 87s, as I did for the second violins, the violas, the French horns and as overheads — back then you could have called me Mr. 87. At least there were FET 47s on the cellos. I'd try to use as few mics as posssible in Studio One because the room sounded so good and there was this phase thing going on — the more mics you used, you could fool yourself into thinking it sounded better, but things would cancel one another out and you'd lose the vibrancy.
"Nothing was slaved, everything was kept 24-track on this album, and that was fortunate because slaving was a really laborious process in those days — before Q-lock enabled us to efficiently run two machines together, we'd have to physically get two tapes in the right position to start a song. Tracks one through five were hi-hat, bass drum, overhead left, overhead right and snare — hi-hat would always be the first casualty if we needed an extra track — and tracks seven and eight were the tom-toms. Track six was missed out because you couldn't pan between odd and even on the Neve desks in AIR, while some of the groups had faders on them and some weren't normalised. You had to be careful about getting groups caught between the two, because there were cancellation problems. Meanwhile, the strings were mixed to two tracks and the French horns went to just one track."
Ian Bairnson's electric guitar solo, which winds its way through the closing stages of 'Wuthering Heights', was played in the Studio Two control room, his Les Paul going through a Marshall head and Marshall 4 x 12, miked with... yes, a pair of 87s, one close, the other about four feet away.
"Ian warmed up and developed that solo while I got the monitoring right, and there was one take that was just great," says Kelly. "Being in the control room, he missed the feedback from the amp, and I can remember telling him to get close to the speakers, expecting this to do the same. You can tell I was pretty naïve..."
Kate Bush, meanwhile, re-recorded her 'Wuthering Heights' vocal late one night, miked with a Neumann U67. "I liked the clarity of the 67," Kelly explains. "For me, the top end was a little better suited to vocals than the 87, helping with diction, and to that I added some [Urei] 1176 compression. At that point, there was only one track left, and Kate did just two or three passes, and that was that. There was no comping, it was a complete performance."
Even if Kate Bush might not recall too much from the recording and that period, it is clear that Wuthering Heights is important! She fought for it to be the first single release against the will of EMI (who favoured the more conventional James and the Cold Gun). A song that she performed dozens of times – across T.V. and 1979’s The Tour of Life -, it was once her defining and most popular song. I think it has been slightly buried in recent years by the Stranger Things/Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) success. I have asked before whether, in the same way, Wuthering Heights, is due its big T.V. moment. A song I actually feel outranks Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in terms of quality and importance, what of the magnificent and strangely enticing debut single?! In 2018, Kate Bush honoured the memory of Wuthering Heights’ author, Emily Brontë, for a Yorkshire monument:
“Kate Bush will pay tribute to the Brontë sisters in a new memorial on the Yorkshire Moors, on the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth and 40 years after Bush’s haunting, chart-topping “Wuthering Heights”, inspired by the enduring novel of the same name.
The singer has written an inscription for a stone that will be placed on a seven mile trail between the Brontë’s family home in Haworth and the sisters’ birthplace in Thornton. A stone for her sister Charlotte will be placed at the family house while the Anne stone will be in a meadow in Haworth at the dedicated museum.
“I am delighted to be involved in this project” Bush said in a statement. “Each sister being remembered by stone in the enigmatic landscape where they lived and worked is a striking idea. Emily only wrote the one novel – an extraordinary work of art that has truly left its mark. To be asked to write a piece for Emily's stone is an honour and, in a way, a chance to say thank you to her”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978
This article talks about the strangeness of Wuthering Heights. It got to number one in 1978 but, were it released today, I don’t think it would be a massive success. In an age of TikTok-driven Pop and less fascinating sounds, could the buying public embrace Wuthering Heights?! I feel the song is still misunderstood and under-played. More exposure of this iconic track would definitely make it more familiar – and, therefore, less unusual. More artists adding their stamp to it. I recorded a podcast about the song to mark its forty-fifth anniversary last year. I was surprised how few others there were out there. Not many recent articles about this song. In terms of radio play, it gets included now and then, though there is still that lazy dependence on Hounds of Love. With nearly two hundred million streams on Spotify, it is the second-most streamed song of hers on the platform (behind Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). One might say that means it cannot be seen as underrated. That said, the visibility and exposure of the song wider afield is slender. Not too much modern evaluation of the track. Perhaps some see it still as took kooky. I think it is one of Pop music’s most important and seismic moments! A song that broke a record and introduced one of the most distinct artists ever, we need to discuss Wuthering Heights more than we do. It is forty-six on 20th January. I hope people play it and really do some background reading. Listen to interviews Bush gave about the song. I hope more magazine articles, books, podcasts and bits are produced that celebrate a phenomenal song. That they do not leave a beautiful and entrancing song up on those…
WILEY and windy moors.