FEATURE:
Kate Bush Hounds of Love at Thirty-Eight
ART CREDIT: Sarah Trafford
Revisiting Her Most Potent and Powerful Title Track
_________
THAT be a major claim….
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 1985 during the Hounds of Love video shoot (which she directed)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
but, even though The Sensual World has an incredible aura and power to it, I don’t think that there has been a title track as memorable as Hounds of Love’s. As the album turns thirty-eight on 16th September, I wanted to use this feature to explore its phenomenal title song. Most of the time, when you look at rankings of the best Kate Bush songs/singles, Hounds of Love is in the top ten – in cases like this, this, and this, they are comfortably in the top ten - for the most part. I shall come to details and background of the song in a minute. Released as a single on 24th February, 1986, it reached eighteen in the U.K. that year (it got to eight when it was re-released in 2005). It always staggered me to think that the British public felt there were seventeen better songs out there in 1986! Undoubtably one of Kate Bush’s greatest moments, many prefer Hounds of Love over the album’s most-famous and streamed song, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). The video for the song was Kate Bush’s first time directing solo. She put her individual stamp and influences on it. It remains one of her most beautiful and memorable videos. One of the most wonderful things about Hounds of Love is it rawness and emotion. Bush could have put this song first on the album – it is the second track -, but she wanted to open with the more uplifting and less intense Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). No sooner have you regained your breath from that listening experience, before you are running away from baying and determined hounds of love!
In June, when MOJO named Kate Bush’s best fifty songs, they put Hounds of Love at the top. This is what they had to say about a cinematic, epic, personal, and yet universal song:
“No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?” The uncertainty, however, is not reflected in the confidence – the perfect, dazzling completeness – of the song’s execution. On Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush is going at full pelt, chasing the horizon, running her vision to ground. Not really the hunted, but the hunter all along”.
With various B-sides - The Handsome Cabin Boy, Jig of Life, Burning Bridge, and My Lagan Love – depending on the country, Hounds of Love is one of Kate Bush’s finest singles. One that deserved to do much better. Although The Futureheads covered the song in 2005, it could not get anywhere near to the original: just over three minutes of musical perfection! It is the shortest of the four songs on the first side of Hounds of Love, and yet it seems to pack so much in! In addition to Bush’s remarkable input, it is the cello of Jonathan Williams that makes a big difference. It gives Hounds of Love that drama and grandeur that it requires. Hounds of Love resonates, inspires and endures, as it is a song we can all appreciate and relate to. Bush felt that she was being chased by love or this fear. Rather than literal hounds, this was something dark and maybe internal that was causing anxiety. As we see in these interviews, Bush had this very vivid and universal picture of what the majestic title track would be:
“['Hounds Of Love'] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn't as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being - perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)
The ideas for 'Hounds Of Love', the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it's very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you've got to run away from it or you won't survive. (Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985)
When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought 'Hounds Of Love' and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna... when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of... being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)”.
Hounds of Love has inspired so many people. As a single piece of work, it is almost unsurpassable! On an embarrassment of riches like the Hounds of Love album, it nicely follows from the epic and now number one single, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), and then we get the joy and child-like jubilance of The Big Sky. Perfectly placed in the pack, this timeless song will be influencing artists for years to come. I found a radio feature from 2018, where Greta Gerwig – who was promoting her directorial debut, Lady Bird – discussed songs that she is obsessed by. This is what she said of Hounds of Love:
“AB: What did you bring today?
GG: Well, I brought in a variety of songs. They all qualify as songs that I have listened to obsessively.
If I love a song, I listen to it over and over and over again. Until I feel like I can never hear it again and then I won’t listen to it for six months and then I will rediscover it. So the first song is "Hounds of Love" by Kate Bush. I find her lyrics mysterious and evocative - almost like poetry -- and there is a real spaciousness to her music that feels cinematic to me. But specifically with this song, "Hounds of Love", I had really been obsessed with it for a long time. But then I did a play - it was called “The Village Bike" -- and in the play a women is taken over by irrepressible, destructive lust and there was something about this song that really tapped into that for me.
I'm a person who lives with very vivid emotions that feel like they often can only be expressed in heightened states of either music or poetry or films or theater and I think that she makes the kind of music that feels like she is always at a 10, emotionally. That level of just sheer emotion and excitement, and it taps me into probably the reason why I make art.
AB: That's great. So up first we have "Hounds of Love" by KCRW favorite Kate Bush”.
Before I sum up, there is an interview I want to get to. In it, the title song from Hounds of Love is mentioned. Hot Press conducted the interview and published it in November 1985. It is interesting how the song was viewed (by the anonymous male journalist). Bush, as you can reads, is always eager and assertive when it comes to people misreading a song or over-analysing:
“In a funny way, there's quite a strange kind of sexuality that comes across through all your photography. For example, the second album, where you are in the lion's costume.
"Yes, it didn't occur to me again--it really didn't-- until people started saying 'Oooh!' And I couldn't see it."
I suppose it's--On an entirely crude level with Hounds of Love, the implication is of consorting with animals...
"Yes, I see, Hounds of Love, definitely. It's fascinating, I think, the idea of humans becoming animals. Like the guy in An American Werewolf in London -- It's really the first time it's been done well, isn't it, the idea of a man actually transferring into an animal. It's got a wonderful, very primeval, magical sense about it. And I suppose that dividing line--We are animals but we are different, we are much more intelligent--There is a separation but there isn't. It can be really disturbing, I think, really scary. Interesting."
When you see an image, you automatically read meanings into it. There are certain connotations that are unavoidable, and implicit. The latest sleeve: I would have thought lying with two dogs asleep, entitled The Hounds of Love [sic], connecting the two you have created quite a definitive...
"Yes. I think Hounds of Love is very obvious--quite a lot of people have suggested that. But when you think of it in terms of the song it's completely different. It's the sense of the 'hounds' of love: the hound symbolically representing that force. You're terrified of it so you run, but it keeps coming after you, and you're terrified that when it catches you, it's going to hurt you."
But if you interpret that on a subconscious level, what does it mean?
"On a subconscious level! What are we getting into, Freud?"
Well, why not?
"I haven't gone that far. It was an image, the idea of being scared. Instead of this force of man, it was a pack of hounds."
But what are people afraid of? People are afraid of sex. People are fascinated by it, but it does also have the quality of inspiring fear. And particularly if it's with somebody or something which isn't an accepted part of everyday situations. So it's to do with temptation, and once you commit the sin, everything is actually fine--because that's what people experience in relation to sexuality. [Huh?]
"I suppose you're right. I suppose the fear of relationships is what it's about, but obviously it's dealing with a man and woman, and that does have to do with sexual energy”.
Actually before I wrap up, it is worth looking back: the origins of the album and how it got started. I think it is important to consider the mindset, mentality and position Bush was in writing Hounds of Love (album). She was in inspired mood. Creating something like the title track, I think, requires a certain backdrop and network of people around you. As we see from this interview with Fachblatt Musikmagazin, the title song really does define the album. It is the biggest statement:
“FACHBLATT: And why is the album called "Hounds Of Love"? These seem to be two contradicting terms.
KATE: No, these are the hounds who chase - symbolically of course - those who fear love, who is frightened to be "trapped" by it. But they aren't really bad hounds, you can see on the cover how gently and nice the "Hounds Of Love" are.
FACHBLATT: Do you rather think of it as an advantage or a disadvantage that there's so much time between your albums?
KATE: I cannot answer this question this way, since it simply is as it is. I never said: I need two or three years to make an album. I just began. Whereever this leads - as long as it's positive and productive I continue to do it. If you do your work honestly and with your whole heart It will tell you what to do...
FACHBLATT: But outside there's nobody who tells you if you are on the right way. Someone who brings out a single every second month experiences very fast how the course is at the moment.
KATE: That is a frustrating aspect of my method of working. Besides I also like to busy myself with other ideas and projects. But I cannot run away from the things I have to do at the moment. That takes my complete energy. I just have to bring such sacrifies, and with me it lasts longer as with others.
FACHBLATT: When did you start with "Hounds Of Love"?
KATE: 1983 the studio was built and set up, and in the beginning of 1984 I started with the album, all in all 18 months of work.
FACHBLATT: In such a long time many things can change. Wherefrom do you take the safety that in the end you find those things you recorded in the beginning as good and important?
KATE: Well, if something does not work at all, because you did get off course, you just have to have the courage to stop there, even when you already did invest a lot of time and work. But this happens very seldom with me, and except those two or three pieces with heavy changes that I did mention earlier the founding structures did not change. Changes did mostly occur only in the fine parts, when we for example exchanged Fairlight violins by real strings. I wanted to replace many Fairlight passages by real instruments from the beginning”.
The masterpiece that is Hounds of Love is thirty-eight on 16th September. I had to take a moment to recognise and salute its celebrated and faultless title song. Even if Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) gets most of the attention when it comes to the album’s singles, I think that the title track is the most important. From that opening sample of “It's in the trees/ It's coming!" – a quote from Night of the Demon by Maurice Denham -, to the impassioned and almost heartbreaking “Do you know what I really need?/Do you know what I really need?/I need love love love love love, yeah!”, Hounds of Love is astonishing! Revered by so many people, I wanted to use one of the Hounds of Love anniversary features highlighting its incredible title track. If Bush sings in the song “I've always been a coward”, it is clear that, with the title cut from Hounds of Love, she created such…
A brave and incredibly strong confession.