FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Tour of Life
IN THIS PHOOT: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Why Did the Icon Dismiss Her Earliest Work?
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AS I am spending some time…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in December 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Alamy
looking at Kate Bush’s first couple of albums…or more specifically her dazzling debut, The Kick Inside (1978), I was thinking about her attitude towards her earliest work. I know a lot of artists sort of distance themselves from their early work. Feeling that it is not representative of them. I wonder if Kate Bush has softened her position when it comes to her first album or two. In fact, I feel she has suggested her first three or four albums are not up to her best. She embraces 1985’s Hounds of Love and I guess there is that sense of respect for The Dreaming (1982). If she was worn out at the time and pushed herself hard for that album, I feel she is kinder towards it than she is her debut and remarkable follow-up. I suppose the press image and perception didn’t help. Kate Bush often ridiculed and belittled. Maybe by pushing away her early albums, it is partly because of things attached to the promotion. How she worked so hard and often had to face sexist, misogynist and disrespectful interviewers. It was a hard time in many ways. Perhaps she was looking objectively and could see how her music evolved. Maybe not in control as much when it came to the process and production. Less of the driving force. It wasn’t really until Hounds of Love when she found that perfect balance. Truly happy making an album. I don’t think that she has anything to be sorry about in terms of the material! The Kick Inside is my favourite album ever. I think that her demos pre-The Kick Inside are phenomenal. I also really love Lionheart and Never for Ever. Some of the best music of her entire career. Think about how fame had engulfed Bush’s life. Andrew Powell – who produced The Kick Inside and Lionheart – said how Bush would offer to do a sandwich run when people in the studio were hungry. She offered to go out but had to be accompanied by someone as she would get mobbed!
That would have been quite a deflating and scary thought. Also, ‘assisting’ Andrew Powell with production on Lionheart. She wanted more say and credit, so I can appreciate how Bush has this difficult relationship with her first couple of albums especially. It was a very busy time for Kate Bush in 1978. If she had been given more distance and time, would she feel differently about her first two albums?! Maybe it was unavoidable. Wuthering Heights’ chart success meant that there was instant demand for a follow-up to The Kick Inside. Most artists would release an album a year or so after their debut. Bush put out her second studio album nine months after her debut. In between all of this was promotion around the world. One can view her opinions towards each of her first two albums differently. The Kick Inside was a happy recording and she had plenty of choices for songs. Perhaps not being able to produce or input as much as she hoped led to some disappointment. Wanting to be more of the architect and guiding voice. She maybe saw herself as the singer whereas others, especially Andrew Powell, called the shots. For Lionheart, it was all rushed. With time to only write four or so new songs, she had to include songs on Lionheart that were not deemed right for The Kick Inside. Bush almost forgot she wrote the masterpiece, Symphony in Blue. The opening song on Lionheart, she remember the title but was not sure what she was thinking when she wrote it. This kind of brushing off of a wonderful song! Similarly, Bush dismissed Oh England My Lionheart. In some interviews she did say it was her favourite on the album bur she soon came to almost resent it. Feeling it was embarrassing or a weak track.
Bush was always hankering to produce. She didn’t like being produced by someone else. She picked up enough of what happened in studios from two albums to have the confidence to produce Never for Ever, which she did alongside Jon Kelly. 1980 was a fresh start. Her third studio album arrived just over nine months into the new decade. Even so, and with more control over the output, Bush has not really spoken much about Never for Ever. Perhaps she felt it was her best album at the time. Less rushed and with time to include new songs, it did seem like a new chapter. By all accounts, life in the studio with Kate Bush was a very happy and familial one for Never for Ever. It reached number one in the U.K. and spawned successful singles like Babooshka. However, one gets the feeling Bush was still not happy. Still finding her voice. The bridge between her first two albums and their defined sound and the more experimental and confident sound of her fourth and fifth albums. Her third album was neither a compromise or misstep. Maybe Bush did feel that she was still evolving and was not quite where she needed to be. The fact that she has dismissed Lionheart and had some unhappy retrospective comments about The Kick Inside should have been corrected with Never for Ever. However, was she truly satisfied until Hounds of Love arrived?! Bush dismissed the early part of her career as light and bland, lacking that edginess of her Punk contemporaries. If she was a true original of the late-1970s and early-1980s, perhaps she felt like she was undervalued or not being taken seriously. The Dreaming was a tougher and darker album but it took too much out of Bush. Hounds of Love has quite a masculine energy with a lot of percussive punch. However, it seemed to be the album where everything coalesced for Bush. Sounding future-looking yet contemporary, she produced music that had edge as well as beauty. Producing solo and seeing her album soar the charts around the world, did she really feel her career started in 1985 rather than peaking?!
It is not to say Kate Bush dislikes her third and fourth albums and feels her first two are worth writing off or not representative of who she would become. I think it is unfair to write off The Kick Inside and Lionheart as light or lesser to what was being released around it. Yet, Bush has not given much retrospective nod to these albums. 2011’s Director’s Cut took songs from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes. Even if her first couple of albums were covered during 1979’s The Tour of Life, Bush didn’t include any songs from those albums for 2014’s Before the Dawn. Never for Ever and The Dreaming unrepresented either. Bush taking songs from Hounds of Love forward. It is such a shame that two entire studio albums are largely untouched when it comes to live work. Bush has reissued her studio albums more than once. She wants people to appreciate The Kick Inside, hear Lionheart and buy Never for Ever and The Dreaming. If Bush ever does archive again and unearths and performs once more, is there any chance her earliest albums will feature?! It seems unlikely. I don’t know if she wants to think back to 1978. One can understand it was a while ago and she has moved on, though I think it runs deeper than that. Her attitudes towards the music impacted by the lack of control over the albums and the way she was promoting endlessly. How the media perceived her and how Bush was unable to commit to writing many new songs for her second album. For that reason, I do feel that fans should give love to her first four albums. Particularly 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart. They are tremendous albums that I hope do get some spotlight in the future! Maybe live work is a long shot, yet one hopes songs from the albums appear in films and on T.V. That Bush is asked about the album and has fonder memories. That she no longer sees them as inessential or throwaway. Far from it. Her earliest work is perhaps her most revealing and interesting. An artist growing but already fully-formed. This icon should never…
SELL herself short!