FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Lionheart at Forty-Six
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Lionheart cover shoot in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Why Those Unsure of the Album Need to Buy the Reissued Vinyl
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IF I had to recommend…
anyone new to Kate Bush to buy one of her albums on vinyl, I would be torn between head and heart. My head would say 1985’s Hounds of Love, though my heart would always suggest The Kick Inside (1978). However, its follow-up, Lionheart, is one I feel the most sympathy for. An album that got some mixed reviews and has never really been talked about. Seriously. People don’t write about the album or celebrate it! I think that it is great shame. Released on 10th November, 1978, I want to mark its forty-sixth anniversary. I am also going to bring in a bit of information about its singles and what Kate Bush was doing through August-November 1978. In such a chaotic year – where she released two albums and promoted her music around the world -, it is a minor miracle she managed to put out a second album! Let alone one that has so many strong moments. The angle of this feature is recommending people invest in a vinyl copy of Lionheart. Recently, Kate Bush reissued her studio albums with these induvial designs. Each vinyl getting their own colour and mood. They all look brilliant! Even though they are all fabulous, I think the best-looking and most pleasing vinyl is for Lionheart. It is described as ‘Dirty Pink’. I love those words! It suggests a cocktail or a potentially huge song. So many different suggestions and possibilities. The biggest problem is that the vinyl reissue is only available in the U.S. I guess my biggest argument then is why the album should be widely available here (though, as I state later in the feature, it is available via Rough Trade UK). It is a beautiful new design. Because it is such an underrated album, we need to make it more available. Sure, you can buy it on vinyl around the world, though I love the new design and think it should be more widely shared. I love the fact that Bush brought the Lionheart Tour (or The Kate Bush Tour/The Tour of Life) around the U.K. and Europe. Her second studio album being a big focus. Her only tour being off the back of Lionheart. On her website, where you can order the vinyl (if you are in the U.S.), there is a quote from Bush around the revolutionary wireless/head microphone that transformed and re-shaped the live experience: “The live shows followed shortly off the back of this album. Because I wanted to sing and dance, I needed a mic that didn’t have to be held. Together with the live sound engineer, we invented the first headset. I suggested that we patent it, but he said, ‘How do we patent an old coat hanger bent into shape?’”.
As I said in the previous anniversary feature for Lionheart, Bush’s attitude to the album changed. In 1978, she was talking it up and it seemed like recording in France – she was situated and camped at Super Bear Studios (Berre-les-Alpes, France) during a hot summer – and being over there. Even if there were some downsides (she could not play with the band of her choosing and did not get too much say in the production; Andrew Powell making most of the decisions), I argue Lionheart is hugely underrated. So why invest in the vinyl copy?! Whether the new reissue or one she reissued a few years back, everyone needs to check it out. I will try and sell that argument by going inside the two singles from the album, Hammer Horror and Wow. Symphony in Blue was released in Japan in 1979. Before getting to the songs, here we get some words from Kate Bush. How she perceived Lionheart around the time of its release:
“[Recording in France] was an amazing experience. I mean it’s the first time I’ve ever recorded out of the country. And the environment was really quite phenomenal, I mean it was just so beautiful, it was so unlike anything I’d seen for a long while. And I think there was so many advantages to it, but there were a couple of disadvantages – the fact that it was so beautiful, you couldn’t help but keep drifting off to the sun out there, you know, that sort of thing. But you just didn’t feel like you needed a break, because the vibes and the weather and everyone around was just so good, you know, you didn’t feel like you were working. It was really, really fun.
Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978
It was a difficult situation because there was very little time around and I felt very squashed in by the lack of time and that’s what I don’t like, especially if it’s concerning something as important for me as my songs are, they’re really important to me. But it all seemed to come together and it was really nicely guided by something, it just happened great. And there were quite a few old songs that I managed to get the time to re-write. It’s a much lighter level of work when you re-write a song because the basic inspiration is there, you just perfect upon it and that’s great. And they’re about four new songs so they all came together, it was great. In fact, we ended up with more then we needed again, which is fantastic.
I will end by making some arguments as to why people need to get Lionheart on vinyl. I cannot bear the thought of it being unheard, overlooked and un-bought! First, let’s spend some time with the album’s first single, Hammer Horror (released on 27th October, 1978) . Before some insight into the song, here are some reviews of the first single from Kate Bush after The Kick Inside. There were a lot of eyes on her:
“On Radio 1’s Round Table on October 27, 1978 the single was reviewed by DJ’s John Peel (“I didn’t like the album at all and I’m not too enthused with this either”) and Paul Gambaccini (“It doesn’t grab me immediately as The Man With The Child In His Eyes“). There were also reviews in the written press.
Kate keeps up the formula and doesn’t upset the fans… sounds like Joni Mitchell popping tabs with the LSO. Offbeat, quirky and all that stuff…
Ronnie Gurr, Record Mirror, 11 November 1978
The non-thinking man’s Joni Mitchell… Her approach is fresh and distinctive enough, but when you go a little deeper you find that unlike Joni Mitchell there isn’t much there…
Alan Lewis, Sounds, 11 November 1978
Ominous post ELO orchestration with the unrequited lust of a broken affair viewed as living dead love-bites-back as in classic 50’s British celluloid, a real nail biter, hypnotic and disconcerting.
Tony Parsons, NME, 11 November 1978
Kate about ‘Hammer Horror’
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.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Aris
I will come to the three singles. I will end with some thoughts and retrospection. People see Lionheart as a rushed follow-up to The Kick Inside that added nothing new and had few standout moments. If you actually dive deep into the ten songs, it shows just how fascinating and extraordinary they truly are! I could write several additional features about Lionheart and approach it from different angles. I will end with the timeline of 1978 and how Bush pulling together an accomplished second studio album was a major achievement. Someone who has gone deep into the songs of Kate Bush is the Dreams of Orgonon blog. I will illustrate their beautiful and insightful words that bring out the layers of three amazing songs. Starting off with Hammer Horror:
“There’s lots to unpack here apart from the macabre humor of pissed off thespian ghosts. There’s of course a strain of theatrical anxiety in here — Bush is talking about stage fright. Digging further, this play on performance has plenty to say about the anxiety of imitation and legacy. Since Aristotle human beings have known that storytelling is at its base an act of imitation, casting shadows on the wall (“shadow” was indeed once understood to mean “performer”). These shadows are often our ghosts — in the words of Doctor Who, “stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.” In “Hammer Horror”, Bush looks at the shadows and sees memories coming to haunt her. But these aren’t the shadows of strict monsters. It’s a man playing multiple monster roles at once: the one he never got to play onstage, the Hamletian spectre crying out from the afterlife, and the legacy of the Great Man himself demanding history pay him his dues.
So the conflict of the song is inherently masculine. There’s the frail actor falling apart under the weight of his friend’s legacy, and there’s the ghost of his friend beating him down with the club of established superiority. The ghost howls in rage while the living man cowers in fear and guilt (“the first time in my life/I leave the lights on to ease my soul,” “rehearsing in your things/I feel guilty”). A possibly once strong relationship has been broken, and Bush’s black humor ties in well with her taste for tragedy. The story of the song is shot through with manpain. But instead of committing to the manpain, Bush repurposes it for feminine camp.
There’s also an element of musical gender play at work in “Hammer Horror.” Bush chooses a male story with a masculine narrator and tells it through a feminine perspective with dashes of camp. This is where her “actor in an actor” fascination comes in. She’s telling someone’s story and embellishing it in radical ways. If Mick Jagger sang this track, it’d be him spitting autobiographically at Keith Richards, who would reply with some vicious chords in open D. Bush plays the actor as a frightened damsel, terrified of the stranger in the dark. She begins the song with a trembling “yooooouuu stoooood,” moving down her vocal range for a more playful “they’ve got the stars for the gallant hearts” (the most innocent confession of pissing oneself ever put on record), howl-belting out “HAMMER HOR-ROR” for the chorus, and lapsing into a more classically Bushian “are we really sure about this” in the post-chorus. It’s the most daring Bush vocal we’ve heard on this blog so far. No male artist would go this far in 1978.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in August 1978 from the back cover series of photos for Lionheart/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Bushianism and Goth are also more invested in femininity than previous forms of rock. Early Gothic literature had no shortage of femininity, from Mary Shelley to Emile Bronte to Carmilla. Post-punk music had a number of largely women bands, including The Raincoats and The Slits. Lots of women were involved in early punk, but the more famous faces of the movement were largely young men. Goth’s inherent ambivalence in its identity allowed for crossing over of gender. Women assimilated into the subculture and rose to the forefront of it, allowing someone like Siouxsie Sioux to maintain a presence in the singles charts and alternative music. Eccentric spaces allow women and minorities to thrive more than the mainstream does, and that’s far from incompatible with Kate Bush.
There’s also of course the visual similarity between Bush and the Gothic, with dark clothing and dark make-up cast against white faces (Bush and Goth both have complex relationships with race). But the two paths leads to different conclusions. Goth rock artists were interested in abjection, descending into the gutter. Bush, for all her winking at the camera, imitates her Gothic subject in a way that preserves reverence for it. These approaches aren’t diametrically opposed — they form an intersection instead of a metro running over a motorway. Bush just stumbled on some fresh cultural ideas at the same time as some other dramatically minded young musicians. She navigates her way out of the Gothic avenue into another street altogether — she resolves the tension of influence and anxiety by doing something weirder.
Demoed at 44 Wickham Road, Brockley in 1976. Recorded at Super Bear Studios in Berres-les-Alpes, France between July and September 1978. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, piano, production. Andrew Powell — production, harmonium. Jon Kelly — engineering. Stuart Elliot — drums, percussion. Del Palmer — bass. Ian Bairnson — electric and acoustic guitar. Duncan Mackay — synthesizer. David Katz — orchestra contractor. Performed live on the Tour of Life in 1979. Images: from the cover of Andi Harriman and Marloes Bontje’s Some Wear Leather Some Wear Laces; Lon Chaney and Patsy Ruth Miller in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923, dir. Wallace Worsley); The Gurning Queen; Siouxsie and the Banshees”.
A huge thanks to Dreams of Orgonon for adding weight to the fact that Lionheart, whilst not her best album, is definitely worthy of greater discussion and investigation. Forty-six years after its release, I still don’t think it has been properly represented and unpacked! This feature on Wow gives new perspectives on the second single (the last in the U.K.) from Bush’s second studio album:
“The elation of the chorus is belied by the knowing facetiousness of the verses, with the shit-eating grin they flash at showbiz. Bush’s sweet-natured delivery of “we think you’re amazing!” efficiently hides the fact those lines are probably written with gritted teeth. It’s not that “Wow” is bitter, but it’s taking a few potshots as it falls through showbiz. The first verse is rife with tension, laden as it is with the song’s intro, acting as something of a rehearsal for the chorus. There’s a clash of the rehearsed tendencies of the song with Bush’s more communal ones. To her, creativity is a collaborative act, where the audience and artist unite to move each other. “We’re all alone on the stage tonight” sounds like Bush’s invitation to the audience, as if the stage is an arena for both player and spectator. She has a number of songs about music itself. In something like “Saxophone Song,” music is a way of tapping into the beauty of the universe. Back at the beginning of her pirated discography, Bush ascribes musicality to a beautiful figure in “Something Like a Song.” To her, music is a sixth sense, something humans do in the same way we breathe. It’s like John Cage’s mantra “everything we do is music,” except it makes music both catalyst and end result.
The first verse treats spectatorship as a kind of prepared act in itself: “we know all our lines so well/we’ve said them so many times/time and time again.” The star is one half of the act, how their work is received is another. The character of the audience is as rehearsed as Bush is herself. In a theatrical act, both player and spectator are expected to demonstrate certain behaviors. The spectator is supposed to laugh at the right moments, break into applause at the end of the show, and tell their friends to go do the same. Verse two shows what happens when this process breaks down, with the actor onstage failing to reach his goals. He “dies too soon/to fast to save himself.” It’s not a great outcome for him. As Bush raises fingerguns to her head, she delivers the killing blow: “we’d give you a part, my love/but you’d have to play the fool.”
Overall, this is just a fun song. More than on any other song here, Bush is having a ball. She pulls off horror, Britishness (“he’ll never make the Sweeney”), and more importantly, naughtiness. “He’s too busy hitting the Vaseline” accentuated by Bush tapping her bum is a shoe-in for the best moment in any Kate Bush video ever. There are nice little details to the song, such as Paddy Bush’s mandolins in the chorus, and the ecstatic return of the KT Bush Band in guitarist Brian Bath and rhythm section Del Palmer and Charlie Morgan. Was there ever such an honest and thoughtful reunion on record? It’s hard to think of many.
Recorded July-September 1978 at Super Bear Studios in Nice. Released on Lionheart 12 November 1978 and as a single on 9 March, 1979. Performed on the Tour of Life. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, piano. Charlie Morgan — drums. Brian Bath — guitars. Del Palmer — bass. Ian Bairnson — electric guitars. Paddy Bush — mandolin. Duncan Mackay — synthesizer. Andrew Powell — production”.
A single in Japan but not the rest of the world, Symphony in Blue is a song I have written about a lot. Including the latest Lionheart feature. I want to return to it as it is very special. One of the new songs written for the album, it goes to show the more we listen and write about the songs on Lionheart, the harder we fight towards giving it overdue credit. How an artist barely out of her teens released something so spectacular. The psychology and sophistication of a song like Symphony in Blue:
“To Bush, blue is “the color of my room and my mood.” It’s a ubiquitous color for her, present on the walls, in the sky, “out of my mouth” (a possible pun), and “the sort of blue in those eyes you get hung up about,” perhaps an allusion to the ever-growing canon of songs about blue eyes. Bush is making a world of blue, one where external hue, metaphor, and internal state collide in a musical act of mise-en-scène. “Symphony in Blue” is a dive into introspection wherein the act of introspection becomes the entirety of Bush’s world. Bush’s fixation on blue largely rises from dissatisfaction, remaining in a state where all you can grasp is the banal details of your immediate environment.
The second half of the first verse fixates on the thoughts that arise when “that feeling of meaninglessness sets in,” ones that pertain to “blowing my mind on God.” This part of the verse is mostly a list of idioms describing God, from the basically metaphorical (“the light in the dark”) to the scriptural (“the meek He seeks/the beast He calms”) to the bureaucratic (“the head of the good soul department”). Bush’s God always occupies the role of the enigmatic man in Bush’s songs, more an amalgam of resonances and qualities than an identifiable person. He is a presence, but a largely offstage one used by Bush to hurl her anxieties at.
In its second verse, “Symphony” explores red, a more fatal, dramatic, and alarming color than blue. “I associate love with red/the color of my heart when she’s dead.” Bush invokes a sense of viscera, with thoughts of death coming to mind as she ruminates in her room. For a second it looks like she might not survive the song. The rest of the verse is more straightforwardly physical, with Bush delivering the astonishing line “the more I think about sex, the better it gets.” As the song navigates its way out of emotional traps by listing potentials ways out, sex is inevitably going to come up.
The best way for Bush to articulate her ennui is visually: she will compare her mood to something visible. Blue is of course the color of many songs — in many ways, it’s the most musical color. One of the foundational genres of popular music is the blues. Blue is used as a synonym for sadness, a catalyst for innumerable amounts of music. Lord knows there’s no shortage of songs about blue — an even slightly comprehensive list would take up several blog posts. “Symphony in Blue” obviously apes its title from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” yet kicks things up a notch by moving the color up from a mere rhapsody to a whole symphony.
Perhaps the most relevant song to “Symphony in Blue” for our purposes is David Bowie’s contemporaneous and relatively similar “Sound and Vision.” From its title to its repetition of “blue, blue, electric blue,” the songs are similar in a way that’s difficult to nail down as a total coincidence (although it is entirely possible Bowie’s influence on Bush in this case was subconscious). Both use the surroundings of blue rooms as reflections of internal dissatisfaction. Crucially, both songs unify sight and sound into a single phenomenon. Bush’s chorus begins with “I see myself suddenly on the piano as a melody,” wherein melody is both a reflection of self and a visual reflection. Bush’s favorite theme of music’s tangibility has reached its apotheosis. Lionheart is paying off a debt to The Kick Inside via one of its fullest realizations of its ideas.
Musically, “Symphony in Blue” references more artists than just 20th century ones such as Gershwin and Bowie. The song deliberately gestures at 19th century French composer Erik Satie’s most famous piano compositions, the Gymnopédies. Like “Symphony in Blue,” Gymnopédie No. 1 is in ¾ and begins with a G major 7th chord. Both pieces are airy and chromatic (a trend in 19th century music to be found in the work of, for example, Debussy, another favorite composer of Bush’s), and Bush’s drifts slowly through G major, often falling onto 7th chords or flattening 6ths. There’s a jazz-influenced airiness to “Symphony” which is also inherited from the Gymnopédies and is clearly evidenced by its use of F7sus4, a true mind-fuck of a chord. The resemblance is intentional — “Symphony in Blue” is a pop song, as its reliance on Iain Bairnson’s electric guitar demonstrates, but it’s outright smuggling classical music into the charts. In Bush’s Christmas special, she begins “Symphony in Blue” by playing Gymnopédie No. 1, dutifully playing the song in G before pivoting on a D minor chord to “Symphony.” Bush is playing the cultural creator, collecting influences and displaying them for posterity. When she draws on tradition, it’s not merely to recreate visions of the past, but to find new directions for preexisting ideas. Bush spends a lot of her time looking at blue, so there was no chance she’d blue it.
Recorded July-September 1978 at Super Bear Studios in Nice. Released as lead track of Lionheart on 12 November 1978; released as third single of said album on 1 June 1979. Played live on Tour of Life. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, piano. Stuart Elliott — drums. Iain Bairnson — electric guitars. David Paton — bass. Duncan Mackay — Fender Rhodes”.
This site gives us the timeline of Kate Bush’s summer and early-autumn. I was under the impression Lionheart was released on 13th November, 1978, though they say 10th November. It is a bit of a split depending on which site or streaming platform you go to. It seems like the international release was 10th November. Just to show how amazing Lionheart is considering how quickly it was recorded and out out, we also need to salute Bush and what she achieved in the months and days leading up Lionheart’s release:
“August, 1978
It takes ten weeks at Superbear to record twelve tracks, of which ten are used for the new album. [These two unreleased tracks have never been identified.] Kate has definite aims for this album. She sees her first album as having affected the senses. Lionheart is to be aimed at the guts. In this she comes into some conflict with Andrew Powell, who is again acting as producer. She is allowed more of her own way in the studio, and after applying some pressure, she is able to bring the KT Bush Band in to play on some of the tracks. Kate is credited as assistant producer, but Lionheart is the end of the road for the Bush-Powell partnership.
September 5, 1978
Kate debuts one of the tracks from Lionheart on a U.K. children's television programme, Ask Aspel. She later explains that she wanted to sing In the Warm Room, but felt that it was too risque for a children's show. She sings Kashka From Baghdad, a song about two gay lovers, instead.
As the album takes longer than expected, Kate is recalled to London by EMI to do some prior promotion. At her own request, Kate is interviewed by a diverse collection of publications ranging from The Sun, to Vegetarian and Vogue (the last featuring Kate in photographs by David Bailey).
October 11, 1978
From completing the final mix of the album, Kate is straight on a plane for Australia, where she is to preside with that month's teen pop sensation Leif Garrett over the Tenth annual TV Week King of Pop Awards before a live audience of 1,000 in a circus tent, and a television audience of two million on the Nine Network.
The next day Kate also performs live on the television programme Countdown, debuting the routine for Hammer Horror, devised in her hotel room. Hammer Horror is planned as the first single from the new album.
October 17, 1978
Kate moves on to New Zealand, specifically Christchurch, for a television special. There she again performs Hammer Horror.
The live tour is put back to February 1979
November, 1978
Julie Covington, who has known Kate and her family for many years, releases an album including her own cover version of The Kick Inside.
Kate promotes Lionheart in the Netherlands, German and France [although I have no record of any television appearances dating from the trip].
November 7, 1978
Hammer Horror enters the British singles chart at the unexpectedly low place of number 73. [Contrary to usual record-company theory, saturation of the market place with new, rushed product nearly immediately after the success of a debut album is more often than not a poor business move, and usually does as much damage as good to the artist's budding popularity. The commercially mediocre sales of Lionheart should not have surprised anyone.]
Lionheart has its international launch at the 14th-century Ammersoyen Castel, two hours' drive from Amsterdam. 120 guests, from EMI Europe, Canada and the UK, and including disk jockeys Tony Myatt and Kenny Everett, as well as Dr. and Mrs. Bush, attend the reception. After dinner, in the grounds of the castle, Leo Bouderwijas, the President of the Association of Dutch Phonographical Industries, presents Kate with the prestigious Edison Award for the best single of 1978. Kate is also presented with a platinum disc for sales of the album in Holland.
November 8, 1978
Kate flies back to the U.K. for a private buffet at The Venue for the presentation of the Melody Maker 1978 Poll Awards. In the first year of her public career Kate has been voted Best Female Vocalist and Brightest Hope of 1978”.
Even if the imported vinyl of Lionheart is expensive, I would recommend people buy it. It is such an important release. Following on from the success of The Kick Inside, Bush managed to compile songs that have elements of her debut but also transition into new territories. She would soon head on tour. You could feel Bush wanted to produce her second studio album. She got that opportunity with 1980’s Never for Ever. If you spend time with Lionheart and think about everything written above, it makes for a stronger listening experience. How deep the tracks are! What Bush created with the singles. How she was promoting The Kick Inside but also working on Lionheart – or at least about to step into a new studio and country to record. It is an amazing feat! The Tour of Life brought songs from the album to life. More and more people should write about Lionheart. On 10th November (tomorrow), we mark forty-six years of this stunning album. I always write about it in defensive tones. I feel I have to, as it does get attacked…or merely ignored. It is much grander and more worthy than that! Spend thirty-seven minutes of your life immersing yourself…
IN this incredible album.