FEATURE:
Grab My Soul Away
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the video for Experiment IV (1986)
Ten Dark, Haunted, Ghostly or Scary Kate Bush Moments
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BECAUSE today is Hallowe’en…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980 for the single cover of Breathing (from Never for Ever)
I wanted to highlight ten moments where Kate Bush’s music or videos have got spooky. Whether it is about spirits, ghosts, ghouls, things that go bump in the night, or merely a brief or longer mention of a spirit or some possession, her catalogue is filled with it. I have covered it before. The spectral and otherworldly is right throughout her album. Think about her debut single, Wuthering Heights, and the ghostly Catherine Earnshaw. Hammer Horror, the first single from Lionheart, is another example. Hounds of Love has plenty of examples. In fact, on most of her studio albums, you can hear something that either provides a scare or talks about something not there. Bush always willing to open her mind to the unexplained. To honour Hallowe’en and the fact that tonight we will see people trick or treating and wearing costumes, I wanted to highlight ten of my favourite Kate Bush scary moments. Whether it is a brief nod in a video or a song dedicated to the paranormal or something else, one cannot deny that the spirits are present in Kate Bush’s world. Honourable mentions go to the performance of Them Heavy People (from The Kick Inside) for the De Efteling Special. This was a Dutch amusement park opened in 1978. Bush performed a few of her songs in this weird and wonderful T.V. special. In the chorus, Bush hugs and sings with these ghoulish puppets. Pretty cool and distinctly Kate Bush! I also love The Infant Kiss. A song from Never for Ever, it is inspired by the film, The Innocents. Kate Bush discussed the song (“This governess is supposed to look after these children, a little boy and a girl, and they are actually possessed by the spirits of the people who were in the house before. And they keep appearing to the children. It’s really scary – as scary on some levels as the idea of The Exorcist, and that terrified me”). There are more examples I could select. Instead, below are ten classic examples of, whether through lyrics or visuals, Kate Bush has given us some chills, scares. Summoning demons, ghosts, ghouls or anything that reminds of us of Hallowe’en…
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Wuthering Heights (1978)
Kate Bush’s debut single, when it was released in 1978, it created huge intrigue. Reaching number one, it definitely has a haunted core. Inspired by a 1967 BBC series of the Emily Brontë novel (though Graeme Thomson, in his Kate Bush biography, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music, says it was a 1970 film starring Timothy Dalton) we feel the scene of Catherine Earnshaw appearing to Heathcliff in the night. This departed anti-heroine who is trying to grab his soul away. Be let in from the cold. It is this evocative and haunted love song. In the white dress version for the track – the second video shot; the original sees Bush in a red dress on Baden's Clump at Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire -, we get this sense of the ghostliness Bush is singing. Right from the off, Bush was putting sprits and scares in her music. Here Kate Bush discussed the writing of Wuthering Heights and its inspiration:
“I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn’t seem to get out of the chorus – it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn’t link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I’d been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.
I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn’t relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.
It’s funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn’t know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with ‘Wuthering Heights’: I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.
PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
I’ve never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it’s supposed to be.
One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I’ve had from the song, though I’ve heard that the Bronte Society think it’s a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn’t know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I’m really happy about that.
There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV – it was about one in the morning – because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that’s all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence.
Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979”.
Hammer Horror (1978)
The lead single from her second studio album, Lionheart, this is a song less about ghouls and spirits. It is more to do with terror and scares. Inspired more by an actor playing the lead role in a film, rather then the classic Hammer Horror films that sort of faded away from the 1970s, this is Bush putting some personal fears and paranoia into the mix. An album where that was very much at the fore on a few numbers. One of her more underrated singles, it is definitely a wonderful song. Here is there Kate Bush explains how Hammer Horror came together:
“The song is not about, as many think, Hammer Horror films. It is about an actor and his friend. His friend is playing the lead in a production ofThe Hunchback of Notre Dame,a part he’s been reading all his life, waiting for the chance to play it. He’s finally got the big break he’s always wanted, and he is the star. After many rehearsals he dies accidentally, and the friend is asked to take the role over, which, because his own career is at stake, he does. The dead man comes back to haunt him because he doesn’t want him to have the part, believing he’s taken away the only chance he ever wanted in life. And the actor is saying, “Leave me alone, because it wasn’t my fault – I have to take this part, but I’m wondering if it’s the right thing to do because the ghost is not going to leave me alone and is really freaking me out. Every time I look round a corner he’s there, he never disappears.”
The song was inspired by seeing James Cagney playing the part of Lon Chaney playing the hunchback – he was an actor in an actor in an actor, rather like Chinese boxes, and that’s what I was trying to create.
Blow Away (For Bill) (1980)
Some might not consider this song to be spooky or scary. It is more about spirits in the sky. The departed. It has this spiritual and otherworldly vibe. A song inspired by the untimely passing of Bill Duffield. He was a lighting technician who died after the warm-up gig in Poole for 1979’s The Tour of Life. It was an event that rocked and shocked Kate Bush. She put Duffield in the magnificent Blow Away (For Bill). In this article we hear what Bush had to say about a gem from 1980’s Never for Ever:
“So there’s comfort for the guy in my band, as when he dies, he’ll go “Hi, Jimi!” It’s very tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a great thought that if a musician dies, his soul will join all the other musicians and a poet will join all the Dylan Thomases and all that.
None of those people [who have had near-death experiences] are frightened by death anymore. It’s almost something they’re looking forward to. All of us have such a deep fear of death. It’s the ultimate unknown, at the same time it’s our ultimate purpose. That’s what we’re here for. So I thought this thing about the death-fear. I like to think I’m coming to terms with it, and other people are too. The song was really written after someone very special died.
Although the song had been formulating before and had to be written as a comfort to those people who are afraid of dying, there was also this idea of the music, energies in us that aren’t physical: art, the love in people. It can’t die, because where does it go? It seems really that music could carry on in radio form, radio waves… There are people who swear they can pick up symphonies from Chopin, Schubert. We’re really transient, everything to do with us is transient, except for these non-physical things that we don’t even control…
Get Out of My House (1982)
A propulsive and raw track from The Dreaming, this was a moment where Kate Bush truly lost any inhabitations and created a song as shocking and scary as anything she ever wrote. Inspired by Stephen King’s The Shining (rather than the film version of the book), Get Out of My House is a possessed home. Kate Bush seemingly this spirit that is trying to ward off intruders. A very bracing and intense song that chills the blood and thrills the senses. As we read here, we get some insight into Get Out of My House and what influenced Kate Bush:
“‘The Shining’ is the only book I’ve read that has frightened me. While reading it I swamped around in its snowy imagery and avoided visiting certain floors of the big, cold hotel, empty for the winter. As in ‘Alien’, the central characters are isolated, miles (or light years) away from anyone or anything, but there is something in the place with them. They’re not sure what, but it isn’t very nice.
The setting for this song continues the theme – the house which is really a human being, has been shut up – locked and bolted, to stop any outside forces from entering. The person has been hurt and has decided to keep everybody out. They plant a ‘concierge’ at the front door to stop any determined callers from passing, but the thing has got into the house upstairs. It’s descending in the lift, and now it approaches the door of the room that you’re hiding in. You’re cornered, there’s no way out, so you turn into a bird and fly away, but the thing changes shape, too. You change, it changes; you can’t escape, so you turn around and face it, scare it away.
Hounds of Love (1985)
There are a few different occasions on Hounds of Love where the ghostly or frightening can be heard. The title track has this mood of Kate Bush being pursued by hounds. This fleeing from something baying for blood. There is a certain horror and urgency through Hounds of Love. Always inspired by literature and film, the intro features a quote from a line spoken in the film Night of the Demon by Maurice Denham. I love the mood and vibe of Hounds of Love. It is a song with an intensity that is hard to shake off. Before moving on, it is worth getting some words from Kate Bush about the title track from her most acclaimed studio album:
“[‘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.
Waking the Witch (1985)
The second of three Hounds of Love tracks that have a spooky or dark vibe is Waking the Witch. The title itself conjures up cackling and cauldrons. Something that projects this coven and smokiness. Fire and evil. Another song on The Ninth Wave, I do love the lyrics of Waking the Witch. All these voices trying to wake the doomed heroine. I love what about the track. Some interesting perspectives on one of the most arresting and well-produced tracks on Hounds of Love:
“These sort of visitors come to wake them up, to bring them out of this dream so that they don’t drown. My mother’s in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench – the guy that mixed the album with us – is in there, Del is in there, Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices. It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says “Wake up child, pay attention!”. (…) I couldn’t get a helicopter anywhere and in the end I asked permission to use the helicopter from The Wall from The Floyd, it was the best helicopter I’d heard for years for years [laughs].
I think it’s very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women’s power. In a way it’s very sexist behavior, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she’s committed no crime, and they’re trying to push her under the water to see if she’ll sink or float.
Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”.
Watching You Without Me (1985)
The third songs from Hounds of Love I want to bring in is Watching You Without Me. This song appears on The Ninth Wave at a time when the heroine is trying to stay afloat and awake but is struggling. You get the feeling of a family waiting for their daughter but her not being there. Instead, you feel her ghost standing alongside them. This vacuum or spirit that is lingering. The sheer horror of The Ninth Wave in general. It is this gothic and scary night of torment for someone trying to stay alive. No idea what is in the water beneath her. Here is Kate Bush discussing the brilliant Watching You Without Me:
“Now, this poor sod [laughs], has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they’re kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home. And, you know, watching the clock, and obviously very worried about where they are, maybe making phone calls and things. But there’s no way that you can actually communicate, because they can’t see you, they can’t you. And I find this really horrific, [laughs] these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song. And when we started putting the track together, I had the idea for these backing vocals, you know, [sings] “you can’t hear me”. And I thought that maybe to disguise them so that, you know, you couldn’t actually hear what the backing vocals were saying.
Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”.
Experiment IV (1986)
I wrote about this recently to mark its thirty-eight anniversary. Kate Bush released a greatest hits album, The Whole Story, in 1986. Experiment IV was a song especially written for the album. A single that accompanied songs that appeared of her studio albums prior to that point. There is so much scare and haunt through Experiment IV. The video is really frightening (Kate Bush directed it). Demons and ghostly chill. Darkness and horror. Its video was actually banned by Top of the Pops because it was deemed too scary. In 2019, Kate Bush discussed the brilliant and under-heard Experiment IV:
“This was written as an extra track for the compilation album The Whole Story and was released as the single. I was excited at the opportunity of directing the video and not having to appear in it other than in a minor role, especially as this song told a story that could be challenging to tell visually. I chose to film it in a very handsome old military hospital that was derelict at the time. It was a huge, labyrinthine hospital with incredibly long corridors, which was one reason for choosing it. Florence Nightingale had been involved in the design of the hospital. Not something she is well known for but she actually had a huge impact on hospital design that was pioneering and changed the way hospitals were designed from then on.
The video was an intense project and not a comfortable shoot, as you can imagine – a giant of a building, damp and full of shadows with no lighting or heating but it was like a dream to work with such a talented crew and cast with Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Peter Vaughn and Richard Vernon in the starring roles. It was a strange and eerie feeling bringing parts of the hospital to life again. Not long after our work there it was converted into luxury apartments. I can imagine that some of those glamorous rooms have uninvited soldiers and nurses dropping by for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.
We had to create a recording studio for the video, so tape machines and outboard gear were recruited from my recording studio and the mixing console was very kindly lent to us by Abbey Road Studios. It was the desk the Beatles had used – me too, when we’d made the album Never For Ever in Studio Two. It was such a characterful desk that would’ve looked right at home in any vintage aircraft. Although it was a tough shoot it was a lot of fun and everyone worked so hard for such long hours. I was really pleased with the result. (KateBush.com, February 2019)”.
King of the Mountain (2005)
This might not sound like a scary song. I think there is a lot of wind and weather through King of the Mountain. This is Kate Bush looking for Elvis Presley. The King of Rock and Roll on a mountain somewhere living this new life. Unseen and tucked away. Almost like a mythical figure. It is the mood of the song that seems to summon something ghostly, rather than the lyrics. I really love the imagery that Bush casts: “Elvis are you out there somewhere/Looking like a happy man?/In the snow with Rosebud/And king of the mountain”. Written about a decade before most of the songs on Aerial, Bush wonders whether Presley might still be out there. In an interview from November with BBC Four's Front Row Bush said: "I don't think human beings are really built to withstand that kind of fame”. I always see this as a tormented and haunted song. Maybe the spirit of Elvis Presley out there. Or his physical self, hiding from the world. It is scary and quite sad in a way. I always feel like there is something quite ghostly and windswept about the song.
Lake Tahoe (2011)
2011’s 50 Words for Snow is awash with winter, cold and snow. It is an album that is so rich with textures and different characters. Perhaps the most ghostly and haunting tracks on the album is Lake Tahoe. It is about a spirit who resides in the lake and emerges. It is a typically Kate Bush source of inspiration. Few other songwriters making songs like this! You can feel this real chill and fright through Lake Tahoe. Kate Bush discussed the origin of Lake Tahoe in a 2011 interview:
“It was because a friend told me about the story that goes with Lake Tahoe so it had to be set there. Apparently people occasionally see a woman who fell into the lake in the Victorian era who rises up and then disappears again. It is an incredibly cold lake so the idea, as I understand it, is that she fell in and is still kind of preserved. Do you know what I mean?
John Doran, ‘A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed’. The Quietus, 2011”
Many people might suggest other Kate Bush songs that are representative of Hallowe’en. Tracks that have ghosts, monsters, scares, darkness, killers or creep throughout. She is an absolute master of conjuring scares and chills. I didn’t even mention a song like Mother Stands for Comfort (from 1985’s Hounds of Love). To mark Hallowe’en, the ten songs above seem appropriate for the day. Tracks that have something about them that creates fear and projects this definite scare. 50 Words for Snow found Bush still staying in that slightly mythical and strange world. Let’s hope that we hear more songs along these lines…
IN the future.