FEATURE:
Stepping Out of the Page…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for The Sensual World’s single cover/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Four
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PERHAPS the standout track from Kate Bush’s…
The Sensual World is its gorgeous title track. The lead single from the album, it was released on 18th September, 1989, where it reached twelve in the U.K. Even though the album got to number two, a number twelve singles chart placing is pretty impressive. Maybe there was that momentum following 1985’s Hounds of Love. A certain expectation and desire Bush had released material post-1985, yet this was the first taste of a new album (I would encourage people to see this video of Bush discussing working with the Trio Bulgarka). Different to anything she had released to that point, The Sensual World remains one of her most enduring and popular songs. This is one of these singles with an interesting track record. Bush would re-record the song and re-title it Flower of the Mountain for 2011’s Director’s Cut. Bush was inspired to write The Sensual World after hearing actress Siobhan McKenna read the closing soliloquy from James Joyce's Ulysses. Molly Bloom recalls her earliest sexual experience with husband-to-be Leopold Bloom. Bush often found influence from T.V., film and literature. Rather than rehash features I have written before about The Sensual World, I will approach It from a different angle. Before then, a bit of history and personal insight from Kate Bush. Ulysses was published in 1922. Bush believed the book was out of public domain – in the sense she could lift parts of the book and use it in the song. It would be almost ninety years after the book was published until Bush got permission from the James Joyce estate to use text from the book – an agonising twenty-two years after The Sensual World was released. Bush approached director Jimmy Murakami – who directed her 2005 single, King of the Mountain (from Aerial) - to shoot a video. He was dubious, as felt James Joyce's grandson Stephen James Joyce had the rights to the book. Bush could have been in for quite an unpleasant lawsuit had she not checked!
It is a shame that, like songs, there are tight laws and restrictions as to what you can use without permission. It seems especially hard when it comes to using text from literature in a song. I think that Ulysses had fallen into the public domain by 2011 anyone, though Bush asked the estate and they granted her permission anyway. Perhaps an irrelevant gesture, at least she was gifted license to rework The Sensual World with text from Ulysses. I think I always prefer the ‘original’. Bush evoking the spirit of Molly Bloom in one of her most charged and sensual songs. I am going to move on in a second. I want to return to a source that I have used in previous features about The Sensual World. This is what Kate Buh said about the 1989 title track in various interviews:
“Because I couldn't get permission to use a piece of Joyce it gradually turned into the song about Molly Bloom the character stepping out of the book, into the real world and the impressions of sensuality. Rather than being in this two-dimensional world, she's free, let loose to touch things, feel the ground under her feet, the sunsets, just how incredibly sensual a world it is. (...) In the original piece, it's just 'Yes' - a very interesting way of leading you in. It pulls you into the piece by the continual acceptance of all these sensual things: 'Ooh wonderful!' I was thinking I'd never write anything as obviously sensual as the original piece, but when I had to rewrite the words, I was trapped. How could you recreate that mood without going into that level of sensuality? So there I was writing stuff that months before I'd said I'd never write. I have to think of it in terms of pastiche, and not that it's me so much. (Len Brown, 'In The Realm Of The Senses'. NME (UK), 7 October 1989)
The song is about someone from a book who steps out from this very black and white 2-D world into the real world. The immediate impressions was the sensuality of this world - the fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual - you know... the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand - the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that's an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. But I'm sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing. (...) I love the sound of church bells. I think they are extraordinary - such a sound of celebration. The bells were put there because originally the lyrics of the song were taken from the book Ulysses by James Joyce, the words at the end of the book by Molly Bloom, but we couldn't get permission to use the words. I tried for a long time - probably about a year - and they wouldn't let me use them, so I had to create something that sounded like those original word, had the same rhythm, the same kind of feel but obviously not being able to use them. It all kind of turned in to a pastiche of it and that's why the book character, Molly Bloom, then steps out into the real world and becomes one of us. (Roger Scott, Interview. Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989)
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
There's a few songs that have been difficult to write. I think the most frustrating and difficult to write was the song, 'The Sensual World'. Uh, you've probably heard some of the story, that originally it was written to the lyrics at the end of 'Ulysses', and uh, I just couldn't believe how the whole thing came together, it was so... It was just like it was meant to be. We had this sort of instrumental piece, and uh, I had this idea for like a rhythmic melody, and I just thought of the book, and went and got it, and the words fitted - they just fitted, the whole thing fitted, it was ridiculous. You know the song was saying, 'Yes! Yes!'. And when I asked for permission, you know, they said, 'No! No!' That was one of the hardest things for me to swallow. I can't tell you how annoyed I was that, um, I wasn't allowed to have access to this great piece of work that I thought was public. And in fact I really didn't think you had to get permission but that you would just pay a royalty. So I was really, really frustrated about it. And, um... kind of rewrote the words, trying to keep the same - same rhythm and sounds. And, um, eventually, through rewriting the words we also changed the piece of music that now happens in the choruses, so if they hadn't obstructed the song, it would have been a very different song. So, to look at it positively, although it was very difficult, in the end, I think it was, it was probably worth all the trouble. Thank you very much. (Kate Bush Con, 1990)”.
I love the poetry of the lyrics. Bush has always been a tremendous and original lyricist. On The Sensual World, it is almost like she is writing classical literature or an epic love poem! Consider lines like these: “To where the water and the earth caress/And the down of a peach says mmh, yes/Do I look for those millionaires/Like a Machiavellian girl would/When I could wear a sunset? Mmh, yes”. I wanted to explore literature and whether songwriters derive inspiration more from real life and their own experiences, compared to fiction and other areas of the arts. I know there are songs that have been writing about books or inspired by them, though you do not hear it often. Especially in a modern mainstream. Kate Bush, as an undeniable mainstream artists in 1989, was so different to contemporaries like Madonna, Prince or even David Bowie. At a time when all of these artists were having mixed fortunes – Madonna was ruling the Pop world -, Bush was creating music like nobody else. Few of her peers had the same originality and daring when it came to finding inspiration. Of course, The Sensual World album had plenty of personal perspective. It was one of Bush’s most personal albums. Yet, as songs such as Heads We’re Dancing and Deeper Understanding show, she was still pulling inspiration from areas that other songwriters were definitely not. I do like the fact that The Sensual World, influenced by a book from an Irish author, fared well in Ireland. The single actually reached number six there! Among her ‘Irish’ oeuvre – Bush was half-Irish (her mother was born there) -, The Sensual World is among her most affecting and accomplished (heart also Jig of Life and Night of the Swallow). With gorgeous uillean pipe work from Davy Spillane, some bouzouki: from Donal Lunny, and fiddler from John Sheahan (Sheahan and Lunny (who was a player on The Dreaming’s Night of the Swallow) feature on Hounds of Love’s Jig of Life), the track is given this romance, sense of the wild and free. I digress…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the cover shoot for The Sensual World (album)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
A shame Bush didn’t perform The Sensual World as part of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn! Her literary and poetic lyrics, coupled with her stunning vocal performance and incredible production makes this song one of her very best. At a time ()1989) when so many artists were staying away from the obvious/personal and talking about deeper things, Kate Bush still stood out. If some criticised her songs for not tackling the wider world and focusing on ‘important issues’, Her gift has been writing these songs that are extraordinarily original and different. She has always been concerned by political events and fascinated by people - but she never saw herself as a Pop artist or someone who was Punk or fitted into those scenes. I actually think that Bush’s songs are more enduring than others who were recording in the 1970s and 1980s. Her lyrics rarely sound dated. I do wonder why literature did not play a bigger part in the music of the past. It doesn’t really come into modern music. As you can feel in Kate Bush songs like The Sensual World and Get Out of My House (the 1982 song was inspired by Stephen King’s The Shining), there is something stirring and striking bringing the written word to music. Translating and interpreting great literature. I think I have discussed Bush and literature before. When thinking about the upcoming thirty-fourth anniversary of The Sensual World’s majestic title cut, I consider Ulysses and what a fantastic starting point that was. In the same way as Bush was influenced by Wuthering Heights via T.V. show and read the novel later, The Sensual World had that same impact. The power of hearing and seeing the book on screen then compelled her to write a song about it – and, in the process, engage with the original source material.
I may need to do a Kate Bush playlist that features songs of hers inspired by literature, film and T.V. Such a beautiful and captivating song, I am not sure any songwriter – even Kate Bush – could have summoned a song as gorgeous and vivid if she pulled from her own life. The power of Joyce’s words seeped into Bush’s lyrics. Such incredible songwriting. The opening verse is so rich with imagery: “Then I'd taken the kiss of seedcake back from his mouth/Going deep South, go down, mmh, yes/Took six big wheels and rolled our bodies/Off of Howth Head and into the flesh, mmh, yes”. Lines in the chorus – “Stepping out of the page into the sensual world/Stepping out, off the page, into the sensual world” – seems to be about Bush’s relationship with the song. Taking that feeling and world of Ulysess and Molly Bloom and making it more real and physical. I am going to wrap up soon. The video for The Sensual World – co-directed by Bush alongside Peter Richardson – shows her dancing through a forest. Almost Bush translating the Ulysses text through a song and then reimagining it in a different visual light. An updated or alternative take on the novel; perhaps an impression of Ulysses. It is really interesting. I did not know this (and thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia) that “Musically, one of the main hooks in the chorus of The Sensual World was inspired by a traditional Macedonian piece of music called 'Nevestinsko Oro' ('Bride's Dance'). A recording of this piece of music was sent to Kate by Jan Libbenga”. On 18th September, it will be thirty-four years since Kate Bush released the title track of her sixth studio album. Signalling a new direction and era (she turned thirty in 1988), this remarkable song not only feels like a novel or poem as it is sung. I think it actually encourages people to read Ulysses and discover that origin. Songwriters who can lead people to great literature or film should be commended – and Bush did that a lot through her career. Because Bush could not use words from Ulyesses, she took Molly Bloom out of the book and into the real world. And, when you see Bush’s words, that a beautiful world…
THAT is.