FEATURE:
The Boy from Greenwich
Remembering the Great Del Palmer
_________
ON 5th January, 2024…
PHOTO CREDIT: Syra Larkin on Facebook
the Kate Bush community was rocked to its core. We have had to hear news of people who Kate Bush has worked with pass. From dancers to musicians who played with her, the losses are always tragic. However, when we think of that inner circle and those closest to her, we have not had to endure that kind of shock. Her two brothers Paddy and John are still wish us (and hopefully will be for a very long time). Bush lost her parents years ago and Bush herself has been in good health. It is that stability that and comfort that we hope will not shift for a very long time. However, arguably someone who counts as a member of the Bush family was Del Palmer (born in Greenwich on 3rd November, 1952). In terms of his significance and closeness to Kate Bush. The two dated for decades and were very close. Palmer played on most of Bush’s albums. They were part of the KT Bush Band in 1977. Palmer was part of The Tour of Life in 1979 and was a close friend of the Bush family. Someone who brought so much to Kate Bush’s life, his honesty and directness was valuable to her. When so many people said everything she did was great and were afraid of hurting her, Del Palmer could cut through that. It was an invaluable sounding board. A terrific bass player who was a key part of the mix for her studio albums, Palmer initially started off being part of Bush’s band and entourage. He started to eventually engineer her albums and was the sole engineer for her most recent album, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. You could hear Palmer’s expertise and influence on albums such as The Dreaming (1982) and Hounds of Love (1985). As he and Kate Bush were in a relationship, he would often be by her side and there for gruelling recording sessions. The person that she confided in and would be this crucial collaborator, even though they broke up, Del Palmer remained in her life. One of the only people she could trust with her music, Palmer’s death on 5th January last year was a massive shock.
I had no idea Palmer was ill at all. I know he had stepped away from his Facebook page for a bit and was less active, though I assumed that was because he and Kate Bush were working on an album together. It was obviously because he was ill. It was a massive blow to learn of his death at the age of seventy-one. Like a family member to Bush, this is what she posted on 10th January last year:
“It’s hard to know what to say… He was a big part of my life and my work for many years.
It’s going to take a long time to come to terms with him not being here with us.
He was incredibly creative – talented in lots of different ways. He was a brilliant musician, bass player, a great artist – he was always drawing. Once he covered a whole recording consul in cartoons. It took him days and it looked absolutely stunning.
He taught himself to be a recording engineer, engineering several of my albums and later releasing his own.
I’m going to miss him terribly.
Kate”.
Being such a personal loss, Bush kept it brief but expressed her huge shock. It would have been news that devastated her. Many wondered what Del Palmer’s death would mean for future Kate Bush music. As her engineer, would she want to work with someone else? Bush intimated recently that she was keen to work on new material, though it will be strange that Del Palmer is not there anymore! Whether it is his distinct bass work or his incredible engineering, there will be this bittersweet quality to Bush’s as-yet-unannounced eleventh studio album.
I wanted to commemorate Del Palmer ahead of the first anniversary of his death. Bring in some interview with him from the archives. I have been reading biographies of Kate Bush and moved by the way Del Palmer was still very close to Kate Bush after they broke. In 1993, when there was promotion for the short film Bush wrote, directed and starred in, The Line, the Cross and the Curve, Palmer accompanied her on promotional duties. Like the Hounds of Love premiere in 1985, Palmer was by Bush’s side in 1993 and 1994 when she was promoting her film. That film premiere was in November 1993. When Bush jetted to New York, Palmer was with her. In 1994, at a fan convention, Del Palmer was there and helped with the auction. Even though they ended a fifteen-year romance, Palmer and Bush were close. He even moved to Reading and was close to where Bush lived. People would observe Bush’s new partner Danny McIntosh working in the house with Del Palmer in the studio. It was like an extended family!
IN THIS PHOTO: Del Palmer and Kate Bush at the premiere for Hounds of Love on 9th September, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
This undying friendship that remained to the end. Palmer was there for the hardest times. When Bush’s mother died in 1992, Palmer no doubt would have provided a comforting shoulder and that reliability. Being a good friend who cared for her very much. In 1994 when she was in New York and looked visibly exhausted and drained. He was there at the start of her career to give her moral and musical support. Right by her side when making the masterpiece, Hounds of Love. Even though there were arguments and frequent disagreements, there was a great deal of love and mutual respect. Del Palmer in awe of Kate Bush’s talent, to the extent that he could not work with anyone else. It is important to remember the great man a year after his death. Last year starting tragically when we lost someone so loved by Kate Bush fans around the world. One can listen to songs on The Red Shoes such as You’re the One and link them to Del Palmer. It is still hard to believe that he is no longer here!
I will move to two interview with him and then wrap up. Del Palmer spoke with Future Music in November 1993 about working on The Red Shoes. There was also a track-by-track guide to this exciting new album. I have edited it a bit, but I would urge people to read the whole thing:
“After a four-year silence, Kate Bush is back with a new album. Mark Jenkins quizzes producer Del Palmer on the ins and outs of her opus The Red Shoes.
KATE BUSH. One of the most original songwriters/musicians in the popular music world, and certainly the most distinctive British female star around. It's been four years since her last album The Sensual World - only Kraftwerk and Peter Gabriel seem quite as tardy in coming up with new material. Despite a few collaborations with The Comic Strip, Kate hardly seems to have been busy during this time. What has she been up to?
One reason for the silence has been a complete changeover in the set-up at her impressive personal recording studio, at which she started work on The Red Shoes using 48-track analogue techniques, but changed midway to digital recording - along with all the advanced editing possibilities that implies.
At the time of writing, Kate is busy working on videos for the new album, but FM has tracked down Del Palmer. He's worked on all of Kate's albums and engineered and produced Tbe Red Shoes.
He's undoubtedly the best man to supply us with background on the inspiration behind Kate's latest work, the recording techniques involved and to offer a blow-by-blow account of the genesis of each of the album's 12 tracks.
The Red Shoes is set for release on EMI Records on November 1.
Del tells what Katie Did
"ODDLY ENOUGH, the idea of this album," explains Del, "was to get it recorded quickly and get out on to the road with it." Kate's only previously played one short tour. "It didn't work out that way, but the idea did influence the way the album was put together. Because I wanted to concentrate on engineering and didn't want to be in the live band, I didn't play much bass on the album, and we used the same drummer and bassist - Stuart Elliott and John Giblin - almost throughout. A lot of the time we got them to play together live to create a consistent backing for a song, even if we had to go back and change that as the song developed.
Now, with plans for live performances of The Red Shoes shelved, listeners are left with an album which has a preponderance of tight, live-sounding tracks. Some of these will be aired in a 50-minute film which, like the album itself, is influenced by the tale of The Red Shoes filmed by Michael Powell in the 1950s. The film will feature Kate herself in an acting role as well as Miranda Richardson, choreography from Lindsay Kemp and work from Terry (Monty Python) Gilliam's animation studio.
Let's take a track-by-track look at how The Red Shoes came together.
Rubberband Girl
Chosen as first single from the album, Rubberband Girl is up-tempo and infectiously melodic. Originally, the first single was intended to be Eat The Music. but during the production of the film to accompany the album, Rubberband Girl seemed to be catching everyone's imagination, and has proved to be a substantial chart success.
Although the song has a relatively straightforward pop/rock feel, the vocals are multi-tracked and some of them seem incredibly low-pitched. "This song and And So Is Love are typical of the live band feel," explains Del. "We were trying to create a very accessible, live sound and the fastest way to record was to have at least two or three people playing together initially.
"On Rubberband Girl the bass, drums and basic keyboards were all done together, but we did change the whole track afterwards in the sense of editing it digitally rather than re-doing tracks. The bass and drum sound was important because we wanted to have them consistent throughout the album."
Although Stuart Elliot and John Giblin's performances tended to go on to tape 'live' at an early stage, this didn't avoid the need for subsequent changes. "When you put later tracks down, the earlier ones sometimes have to change because the whole feel of the piece changes. Sometimes we had to do the bass and drums three or four times, not because we were unhappy with the original performances, but because the feel of the song had altered as new tracks were added. Rubberband Girl is one of the few that worked first time - it just has a basic rock feel with a riffing guitar, the backing vocals went down first and then we tried various lyrics and lead vocal ideas.
"In most songs the lyrics change a lot during the recording process, although a basic seed remains solid. It often gets to the point of struggling over just one word which has to be returned to many times -there's never any pressure to write a song to fill a particular function, like acting as a single or being a very slow ballad, so the whole feel can often change,"
And So Is Love
Del says this is his favouritc track on album. "This one seems to have the most effective band sound to me; we had Gary Brooker (from Procul Harum) on Hammond organ and Eric Clapton on guitar, and that was just a couple of months after his son died. I admired him for doing that - he'd promised to do it and he wanted to stick to his commitment. Eric only really plays in one style, but he's a genius at what he does, so that was a highlight for me.
The track's original backing is a sequenced 4-bar Fairlight pattern which was played to the musicians to give them a feel for the piece.
"Usually we keep more of the Fairlight sound", says del, "but in this case it got scrubbed apart from the toms so it could all stay in strict tempo, so it could all be played live."
Kate's Series III Fairlight is pretty obsolete now, and most of its capabilities could be reproduced by a computer and a couple of Akai S1000s. However, she's got used to the machine over the years and has a lot of favourite sounds on it. "On this track there's a little flute/reed sound, but the Fender piano sound is a real one and the drums are Sl000 samples. We only have a very small room for acoustic recording and the sound of the room tends to get on to drum recordings, so we used a lot of S1000 drum samples triggered from Simmons pads plus real cymbals. Stuart Elliott knows that our drum recorcling can be a long and arduous process and he might get called back four or five times - not because we're unhappy with what he's done, but because the track changes as it develops."
The Song of Solomon
Just as Kate used a section from .James Joyce's Ulysses on The Sensual World album, Song of Solomon uses biblical texts almost verbatim. "This is one of the first tracks we mixed and it's very simple. The sampled harp sound on the Fairlight alternates with the piano - the toms were originally played, but the final sounds are sampled from an Emu percussion unit but with a boomy bottom end added - the originals were more like tablas and they sounded too lightweight along with the ethereal harp and piano. The original tom sound is gated so that it just produces a short click, and the click is used to trigger the Fairlight. We had to advance the track on the digital multi-track to get the timing right, then move it back again with a digital delay so you've got a mixture of toms where some are on the beat and some are slightly off it. The good thing about the Fairlight is that it's stereo so you can sample a whole drum kit in one go."
The Red Shoes
The album's title track seems to have an Irish folk music influence, with a big bass drum sound and an unusual legato bass part, but again this stems from the music of Madagascar. "It's fascinating how music from different parts of the world can have these similarities. All the mandarins and mandolas are played by Paddy, who has really gone into this sort of music, and he also plays all the various whistles and flutes on the track".
Big Stripey Lie
This track is fascinating in that the bass and guitar sounds which seem typical of dub specialist Jah Wobble and quirky American indie rock bands are in fact all played by Kate herself, who picked up a guitar during the recording sessions and within a couple of weeks was asking for Marshall valve guitar amps to be delivered so she could create screaming guitar solos. "It's a sort of stocking-filler track, the last one to be written, and has a sort of Captain Beefheart impersonation on the bass and guitar."
The bass sound is intentionally overdriven on the mixing desk, but also partly results from Kate's style of playing it - her energetic style overloads the compression on the desk without actually creating distortion due to high volume. Chirpy keyboard sounds on a Yamaha DX7 and an unexpected violin part combine to make this one of the most absorbing tracks on the album, despite the fact that it's untypical in its overall recording method - "this one was done quite quickly by the old method of putting down one track ata time, so it's not representative of the band-orientated approach on the rest of the album."
Why Should I Love You
This one actually was recorded in collaboration with Prince - Kate went to see him at a gig and was flattered to be asked to meet him after the show, when they discussed a collaboration. Unable to physically get together in the same room, they swapped multi-track tapes, with a slave reel returning from Prince's Paisley Park studio covered in vocals, guitar solos and keyboards. "The problem then was to put the track back together into something resembling its original form while retaining the best of what Prince had done. He hadn't added one of the vocal parts which would have been particularly good for him, so it basically took two years to put it back together. What's left is his lead guitar, some digital synths and some chorus vocals. Then Lenny Henry came in to do a vocal on the end - he's really got a great voice and ought to be doing a serious record of his own."
You're The One
Again featuring Hammond organ and Fender piano, this track also includes a rare synthesizer melody line and features Jeff Beck on guitar. "His style is completely different from Eric Clapton's - they're both great players but with very different aproaches.Jeff came in a couple of times to fix things up because he wasn't completely happy with them, and the end result is like classic '70's and 80's rock, with the Hammond from Gary Brooker again."
If you're deeply committed to pop of a particular persuasion, listening to The Red Shoes can be a very unsettling experience. Kate Bush has little regard for fashion, transitory musical tastes or transparently obvious lyrics.
If you're in the mood for a sonic experience which stretches the limits of style, vocal technique and compositional mixing and matching, this could be the album for you - and if initial response to the single release of Rubberband Girl is anything to go by, it seems abundantly clear that Kate Bush is back in a big way”.
The final interview is another around The Red Shoes. In December 1993, Sound on Sound spent time with Del Palmer, where we got insight into the sound and sights of Bush’s seventh studio album. It is wonderful reading these words and picturing Palmer and Bush putting the album together. Even if they were separated and now friends, he was clearly proud of working with her:
“[Sidebar] There's been a lot of publicity about Kate Bush's new album, The Red Shoes ; RICHARD BUSKIN goes behind the scenes with engineer/producer Del Palmer to discover exactly how the album was recorded, and how pop's most enigmatic lady really works.
Kate Bush's private studio was initially set up to record demos for Lionheart ; Del Palmer was the only band member interested in operating the tape machine! Fifteen years on, Del is Kate's main man with the faders, and what was once a demo studio has evolved into a sophisticated private recording facility.
Located in barns adjacent to the Bush country home, today's studio is equipped with a 48-channel SSL 4000E console with G-series computer, two Sony 3324A digital machines, a Studer A80 half-inch, and a couple of U-Matic video recorders.
Del takes up the story: "During early 1990, Kate said `I want to do something, I want to go in the studio and work.' During the early stages I can set up a sound for her, set up some keyboards, show what to do on the console, and leave her to it. She'll work for days until she's got something, then we'll get the musicians in and carry on from there."
As both producer and artist, Kate Bush is extremely focused and knows exactly what she wants. So when Del comes up with a particular sound, she wastes no time in telling him whether or not it's what she's looking for.
"There have been lots of times when I've had quite heated arguments with her--I'd say something wouldn't work, to which her response has been, `Indulge me...Just do it.' For example, on the Hounds of Love album there's a part that goes `Help me, baby, help me, baby,' which cuts in and out very quickly, which she wanted to do by turning the tape over and cutting in and out with the records switch. I said it would just be a mess, but she said, `Look, just do it, will you?' So I did it and of course it worked, and I had to eat humble pie. I've eaten so much humble pie over the years that I'm putting on weight!"
Kate is apparently not averse to placing her own fingers on the faders, especially in relation to the vocals as well as much of the instrumentation. "I was able to just set her up with a sound, and she'd take care of it herself," explains Palmer. "She'd record all the vocals, then phone me up and say, `Let's put it all together'."
These days, Kate Bush tends to write about 90% of her material as part of the overall recording process in the studio, largely because of the difficulty of trying to recreate the spontaneity and the feel of the demos.
"We just couldn't do it," says Palmer, "so we decided to use the demos as the basis for the albums. We started off by taking the demos, transferring them, then working on top--then it struck us that we should just do away with that whole process, develop the home studio and record absolutely everything right onto the multitracks and keep everything that was done. Now, a lot of the stuff that we start with doesn't make it right through to the end, but at least the flavour of it does.
"There's no fixed method to how Kate works, but generally speaking she will say, `Can you get me a drum pattern that sounds like this?' She'll sing me something and I'll program the Fairlight with a simple eight-bar loop, never any more than that, and then she'll program a sound in the Fairlight and get a tune going. Then she'll say, `I've got something, can I put a vocal down?' Something that may only amount to `la-la-la-ing`, but almost every time there'll be a specific little bit of lyric that will give her an idea, which in turn becomes the basis for the song. So we put it down, and that becomes the basic demo that we're going to work with; an eight-bar drum pattern, a keyboard and a very rough guide vocal. From that she can tell whether it's worth pursuing an idea or not. Some get discarded at this point, while others progress a little bit further before it becomes obvious that they too are not going to work."
Until the Red Shoes project, it was traditional to bring in the musicians one at a time to record their parts. Firstly--and, from Kate Bush's point of view, most importantly--the drummer, followed by the bass player (often Del Palmer himself); this would then allow her to review how each song was progressing and to make any necessary alterations prior to the guitarists and other musicians entering the fray. This time around, however, it was decided from the outset to record quickly and to aim for more of a band feel, so most of the tracks were recorded with a least bass, drums and, in several cases, keyboards being played together.
Palmer, wishing to concentrate on his role as engineer, didn't play the bass guitar; the same bass player and drummer worked over the course of ten separate days to fuel the group atmosphere, though guide guitars weren't deemed necessary. However, `Rubberband Girl' does feature a keyboard pattern performed by Kate with an acoustic guitar sample.
"On the track `Big Stripey Lie', Kate played electric guitar as well," points out Palmer. "She said to the guitarist we were using, `I'm really into the guitar. I'd really like to be able to play it,' and he said, `Oh, here, play this one (a Fender Stratocaster) for a bit.' So, he showed her a few chords, and--this is no kidding--a week later she was in front of this Marshall stack in the studio giving it her all! I've never seen anything like it. She's a natural--she was playing lead guitar and no one would know it wasn't an experienced guitarist."
THAT VOCAL SOUND
The trademark Kate Bush sound that has been developed over the course of the last four albums owes a lot not only to the pulsating, highly atmospheric, slightly discordant noises that seem to emanate from every direction, but also her own unique vocal style, with its breathy delivery and haunting presence.
"I can't take any credit for Kate's vocal sound," admits Palmer, "because it was originally shown to me by an engineer called Paul Arden who taught me so much. He would explain anything that I asked him about. One day he couldn't make a session, so he said, `Why don't you do it?' So I did, and he showed me how to get the sound which they had started using on The Dreaming. Kate loved it, and ever since then we've been using it.
"Basically, it's all down to an overdose of compression, and the fact that she really knows how to work with it. We set her up with a [Neumann] U47 in the live part of the studio--brick floor and stone walls--so it's very, very live--and then there's loads and loads of compression on the mic. The SSL desk's compression is very violent and works very well for this. So, what's happening is that every time she breathes in, you can hear it, so she has to be very specific in the way that she deals with this. She's backing off from the microphone all the time, really working it. We use a small amount of gating so you'll get the sound of the room and then it cuts off--a bit like the Phil Collins drum sound.
"If Kate's singing really loud she backs off from the mike and then she comes right in close for the quiet stuff, but when she breathes in, she does this to the side. I have to say that from a purely technical standpoint, it's really badly done, there's just so much compression on everything. But I'm not interested in being technical, I just want it to sound good, and if it does, then what's the point of changing it?
"When it comes to the mix you don't have to push the vocal up as high as you might imagine, because with that sound you're getting so much high frequency. It's real borderline stuff. Sometimes you can go too far, and it'll break up or distort, or it'll really blow your ears off, but if you get it just right, you're getting so much high frequency that you can just push the voice right down and it will still cut through everything."
On average, Kate performs four or five vocal passes for each part, and while compiling does take place, there is normally a clear contender for the master take. This is invariably deduced by way of Kate's own vocal chart, on which she makes notes while listening to the various takes. "Usually, Kate will record a complete section of her vocal and it'll work, then I'll just have to patch up a few bits."
When dealing with problems, Palmer tends to steer clear of the old cliche, `we'll sort it out in the mix.' For one thing, as Palmer is quick to point out, you have to be very sure that you *can* sort it out in the mix, so and Kate try to get things right as they put them down on tape. When it came to mixing the album, it was simply a matter of pacing, creating space and giving everything its moment. There were, however, a few exceptions”.
Last summer, there was an auction held of Del Palmer’s estate. Instruments and some of his paintings were sold. There were tributes from newspapers and music magazines. Kate Bush News paid tribute to him. Fans of Kate Bush shared their sorrow, but also the happy memories. How instrumental Palmer was in terms of Kate Bush’s career. He was so loved and cherished. His work lives on. We can hear his incredible musicianship through Bush’s albums. His engineering work. Videos of him being interviewed and appearing next to Bush. He will not be forgotten. On 5th January, it will be a year since his death - and I really hope that there will be remembrance. This incredible person who was in Kate Bush’s life since the 1970s, few meant more to her than him! For that, a year after we lost him, we offer eternal thanks and love…
TO the irreplaceable Del Palmer.