FEATURE:
Also Known as the Kangchenjunga Demon
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow
Kate Bush’s Wild Man at Thirteen
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ONE of Kate Bush’s most fascinating…
latter-day songs, there is something so significant about Wild Man. I shall get to the song in a minute. It is the lead single from 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. The only official single from the album. There is an animated video for Among Angels. Also, Bush wrote and directed a short, animated video to accompany Lake Tahoe, entitled Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe. That was released as a picture disc in in 2012 for Record Store Day. My final Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts will focus on Snowflake. The song opens 50 Words for Snow. Right in the middle of the seven tracks that appears on Bush’s current, tenth studio album is Wild Man. On an album featuring seven long songs, Wild Man is the second-shortest (behind Among Angels). Even so, it clocks in at over seven minutes. The language and lyrics of the song are fascinating! I think that all the tracks on 50 Words for Snow should have an animated video. Giving life to these amazing works. I would be fascinated to see ones for Snowed in at Wheeler Street, 50 Words for Snow and Snowflake. An interesting examination of Misty. However, Wild Man did get special treatment. As single, I guess it was considered one of the strongest cuts. Also, as one of the shortest tracks on the album, it was easy to cut down into a radio edit. I will come to some words from Kate Bush about the song before exploring it more. Released on 11th October, 2011, this was the first taste of a new album. In May 2011, Kate Bush released Director’s Cut. This was a selection of songs from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes that Bush re-recorded, as she was not completely happy with the originals. Something she had been wanting to do, it was a rare act of retrospection from Bush – in years since, she has grown more comfortable revisiting and repackaging her albums. Nobody thought we would get another album from her in 2011! One that is so different. She was clearing the way for new work with Director’s Cut. Almost clearing a path through a snowdrift to record an album all about the cold and snow. Among Angels is the only song on the album not about snow.
I love how many different dimensions there are to 50 Words for Snow. Bush explores being snowed in, fifty words for snow, a haunted cold lake, and a snowman coming to life and melting after a night of passion. Wild Man puts us away from a romantic street or a tryst and into the open. Into a forest or mountain. A hunt for an elusive creature that has been mythologised and given a black name. Something weird and dangerous, Bush adds life and sympathy to a wild man. Something seen as a beast by others, There was a short animation to accompany a segment from Wild Man. It was published on 16th November, 2011 as part of 50 Words for Snow’s promotion:
“Well, the first verse of the song is just quickly going through some of the terms that the Yeti is known by and one of those names is the Kangchenjunga Demon. He’s also known as Wild Man and Abominable Snowman. (…) I don’t refer to the Yeti as a man in the song. But it is meant to be an empathetic view of a creature of great mystery really. And I suppose it’s the idea really that mankind wants to grab hold of something [like the Yeti] and stick it in a cage or a box and make money out of it. And to go back to your question, I think we’re very arrogant in our separation from the animal kingdom and generally as a species we are enormously arrogant and aggressive. Look at the way we treat the planet and animals and it’s pretty terrible isn’t it?
John Doran, ‘A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed’. The Quietus, 2011”.
Stephen W. Taylor about ‘Wild Man (with remastered shimmer)’
It was something I worked on with Rupert [Hine]. I added layers of sound to it, but they’re almost inaudible, which was done with Kate’s approval. In fact, fans were pissed off because they felt it wasn’t any different to the original version. In fact, it’s completely different. It has a very different sonic approach. We asked Kate to name it and she said it should be “With Remastered Shimmer” so that’s what it was called. (Anil Prasad, Stephen W Tayler – Experiential evocation. Innerviews, 2020)”.
I love the combination of players on Wild Man. Kate Bush on keyboards and vocals. Danny McIntosh (her partner) on guitars. The great late Del Palmer (who engineered the album) on bells. Steve Gadd on drums. Andy Fairweather Low as a featured vocalist. John Giblin on bass duties. It is such a beautiful and evocative song. You immerse yourself in it! Hunting for this strange creature. Maybe an actual man or an animal that is hiding and trying to protect itself. I am going to end with a bit about Wild Man and how it ranks alongside Kate Bush’s other singles. First, I want to come to a couple of reviews. This is what Billboard wrote in their review for one of Kate Bush’s strongest singles:
“The weird and whimsical “Wild Man” serves as the first new single from British art-rock craftswoman Kate Bush in a whopping six years (not including the re-tooled tracks from this year’s “Director’s Cut”). A word of advice to first-time listeners: be sure to have an atlas and thesaurus handy. “From the Sherpas of Annapurna to the Rinpoche of Qinghai / Shepherds from Mount Kailash to Himachal Pradesh,” sings Bush in her breathy lisp, somehow sounding erotic while randomly referencing Indian provinces and Buddhist principles. For all of its impenetrable wordplay,”Wild Man” makes for a wicked headphone atmosphere, with Dan McIntosh’s expressionistic digital guitar curlicues wandering around a crisp Steve Gadd kit and John Giblin bass. As an announcement of Bush’s return, “Wild Man” is a tad off-kilter. But then again, when has the ever-singular Bush been anything but?”.
There was no denying that, thirty-three years after her debut single came out (1978’s Wuthering Heights), Kate Bush was proving she was a singular and truly distinct artist. I feel there is a shared mystery, darkness and chill to Wild Man and Wuthering Heights. Something gothic and intense. This intrigue and sense of the ghostly too. There was so much adulation for Wild Man upon its release. This is what NME observed in their review:
“Since she re-surfaced after her 12 year hiatus with 2005’s ‘Aerial’, Kate Bush’s output has been many things including gorgeously expansive and broad. But what it hasn’t been for many years is densely surreal, qualities which characterised the best of her early work. Until ‘Wild Man’ that is.
Pre- ‘The Red Shoes’ there was an unpredictability and the sense of being a passenger into the wiles of Bush’s uniquely bonkers brain. Since ‘Aerial’ it’s been more steady, calm waters. This sonic sparseness was echoed by her lyrical conceits, which shifted away from magic realism and fantasy to elemental themes of flora, fauna and , um, washing machines.
For those of us who have been secretly longing for a return to the unflinchingly bizarre and Bush’s ability to conjure up strange new worlds, ‘Wild Man’ is a deep joy.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow
Lyrically we’re in a literal wilderness, where the ‘Wild Man’ of the title is a revealed to be a Yeti-type figure roaming the wiles of the Himalayas. Bush’s whispered vocal delivery of the lyrics (which are full of geographical intrigue and century old myth) is full of the right balance of fear, intrigue and empathy towards the plight of the shadowy figure (“I can hear your cry/Echoing around the mountain side/You sound lonely,” she sings).
As for the the chorus, it bursts forth mid-eruption; a choir of strange voices; echoing the ‘Wild Man”s own explosion out of habitation into civilization in the narrative of the song. Bush tackles this by a multiple layering of voices, creating several personas and the atmosphere of a village set adrift by the sudden intrusion. It’s a style which recalls some of her most classic work.
Musically, we’ve moved on subtly from the pared down production of ‘Director’s Cut’, and on ‘Wild Man’ a guitar riff-plays pan-Asian and ponderous, but there’s also a layering of sounds in the chorus (tinkling percussion, a bedrock of organs), which suggests her 80s heyday.
Multiple listens on, the references just keep coming; there’s ‘Scary Monsters And Super Creeps’ era Bowie and some of the ‘Tusk’ era Fleetwood Mac and her own ‘Sensual World’ and ‘The Dreaming’.
After the domestic bliss of ‘Aerial’, it’s a deep joy to have Kate roam the narrative wiles of her imagination. The result is her strongest single for decades”.
Of the seven songs on 50 Words for Snow, Wild Man is the fourth most-streamed song on the album behind Snowflake, Lake Tahoe and 50 Words for Snow. I am going to nod to Wild Man again when I publish anniversary features for 50 Words for Snow next month. Even though it only reached number seventy-three in the U.K. – maybe because of its length and distinct and uncommercial sound -, Wild Man is one of Kate Bush’s best songs. Wild Man premiered on Monday, 10th October, 2011 on BBC Radio 2. The full version was premiered by Ken Bruce. The shorter radio edit was made available for streaming on Kate Bush's official YouTube channel after the radio premiere. The full-length Wild Man came out as a single and digital download on 11th October. It was not brought out as a C.D. single. Wild Man has never really been discussed or given a lot of examination. It did feature at number seventeen among Kate Bush’s best singles according to The Guardian. They were kind about the song “Seemingly released as a single to disabuse anyone who thought 50 Words for Snow might be a straightforward Christmas album, Wild Man deals with sightings of the yeti, features both Andy Fairweather-Low, pretending to be a Nepalese mountain-dweller, and an addictive, insistent guitar riff”. Earlier this year, What Hi-Fi? named Wild Man as one of the seventeen best Kate Bush songs to test your hi-fi to: “At seven songs and over 65 minutes, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow takes its sweet time – but the languorous nature of the record suits the richer tonality of the Bush singing voice. Wild Man is the most direct and immediate song on the album, and it’s weirdly moving in its use of the Yeti (or ‘wild man’) as a metaphor for mankind’s treatment of animals and the planet in general – her “run away, run away!” extortion is poignant in the extreme. As far as your set-up is concerned, there’s the staccato insistence of the instrumentation that requires careful management, the customarily conspiratorial, intimate vocal performance to be described, and a wide, tall canvas of a soundstage to be organised properly if the scope of the recording is going to be properly explained”. On 11th October, 2011, the world was gifted this incredible Kate Bush single. A month later, she released her tenth and most recent studio album. A stunning and immersive album you lose yourself in. Wild Man is one of the standout songs. Such a fascinating inspiration and compelling composition, make sure you give it a listen. It still sounds like nothing else…
THIRTEEN years later.