FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the photoshoot for The Sensual World’s cover/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
this amazing and underrated Kate Bush track before. I am revisiting it, as it is relevant and related to the new Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer. With J. Robert Oppenheimer inspiring Bush’s Heads We’re Dancing, it is a good time to come back to an amazing, imaginative and compelling song I don’t think I have ever heard on the radio. Featuring on her 1989 album, The Sensual World, Heads We’re Dancing is a song that everyone should hear. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, we get Bush discussing the inspiration behind Heads We’re Dancing:
“That's a very dark song, not funny at all! (...) I wrote the song two years ago, and in lots of ways I wouldn't write a song like it now. I'd really hate it if people were offended by this...But it was all started by a family friend, years ago, who'd been to dinner and sat next to this guy who was really fascinating, so charming. They sat all night chatting and joking. And next day he found out it was Oppenheimer. And this friend was horrified because he really despised what the guy stood for. I understood the reaction, but I felt a bit sorry for Oppenheimer. He tried to live with what he'd done, and actually, I think, committed suicide. But I was so intrigued by this idea of my friend being so taken by this person until they knew who they were, and then it completely changing their attitude. So I was thinking, what if you met the Devil? The Ultimate One: charming, elegant, well spoken. Then it turned into this whole idea of a girl being at a dance and this guy coming up, cocky and charming, and she dances with him. Then a couple of days later she sees in the paper that it was Hitler. Complete horror: she was that close, perhaps could've changed history. Hitler was very attractive to women because he was such a powerful figure, yet such an evil guy. I'd hate to feel I was glorifying the situation, but I do know that whereas in a piece of film it would be quite acceptable, in a song it's a little bit sensitive. (Len Brown, 'In the Realm of the Senses'. NME (UK), 7 October 1989)
It's a very dark idea, but it's the idea of this girl who goes to a big ball; very expensive, romantic, exciting, and it's 1939, before the war starts. And this guy, very charming, very sweet-spoken, comes up and asks her to dance but he does it by throwing a coin and he says, ``If the coin lands with heads facing up, then we dance!'' Even that's a very attractive 'come on', isn't it? And the idea is that she enjoys his company and dances with him and, days later, she sees in the paper who it is, and she is hit with this absolute horror - absolute horror. What could be worse? To have been so close to the man... she could have tried to kill him... she could have tried to change history, had she known at that point what was actually happening. And I think Hitler is a person who fooled so many people. He fooled nations of people. And I don't think you can blame those people for being fooled, and maybe it's these very charming people... maybe evil is not always in the guise you expect it to be. (Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1, 14 October 1989)
Like Mick Karn's bass on 'Heads We're Dancing' puts such a different feel to the song. I was really impressed with Mick - his energy. He's very distinctive - so many people admire him because he stays in that unorthodox area, he doesn't come into the commercial world - he just does his thing. (Tony Horkins, 'What Katie Did Next'. International Musician, December 1989)”.
A song that ends the first side of The Sensual World, I wonder whether many Kate Bush fans know about Heads We’re Dancing. Because of its Oppenheimer links, I am curious whether Christopher Nolan knew about the song and would have used it on the soundtrack. In any case, it is one of those songs that only Kate Bush could have written! That idea of dancing with evil and not being aware of it. Rather than it being a historical fantasy (or nightmare), I have always felt it relates more to curt governments and regimes. The fact that you do almost blindly go into their arms and are then caught aware. With a beautiful composition featuring cello from Jonathan Williams, viola from Nigel Kennedy, and orchestral arrangement from Michael Kamen, we get something lush, sweeping and tender in equal measures. Whereas Bush based the song on an experience of someone dancing with J. Robert Oppenheimer and not knowing who he was, she used Adolf Hitler as the central figure in her masterful 1989 tracks. Some of the lyrics put you right in the song: “You talked me into the game of chance/It was '39, before the music started/When you walked up to me and you said/"Hey, heads we dance."/Well, I didn't know who you were/Until I saw the morning paper/There was a picture of you/A picture of you 'cross the front page/It looked just like you, just like you in every way/But it couldn't be true/It couldn't be true/You stepped out of a stranger”. A gorgeous track from the truly remarkable Kate Bush, I thoroughly recommend people check out this deep cut. It really does deserve to be…
KNOWN far and wide.