FEATURE:
In At the Deep End
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on stage during The Tour of Life (a.k.a. The Lionheart Tour) in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Rex
Kate Bush’s The Tour of Life at Forty-Five: 2nd April, 1979: A Bittersweet Warm-Up at the Arts Centre, Poole
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I realise that…
Kate Bush’s 1979 extravaganza was not originally called The Tour of Life. It was The Lionheart Tour or The Kate Bush Tour. It weas later named The Tour of Life. Its first date, a warm-up show at Arts Centre, Poole, took place on 2nd April, 1979. I am looking ahead to the forty-fifth anniversary of the first night from one of the most important tours ever. I am going to write another feature about The Tour of Life closer to the forty-fifth anniversary. Focusing more on the reception and how Bush travelled through the U.K. and Europe. There are a few details about the tour in general I want to get to before concentrating on that opening night. The Tour of Life ran from 2nd April to 14th May, 1979. Bush had to reduce her set on 24th, 26th, 28th and 29th April due to a cold/sore throat. There was a 12th May benefit concert that relates to the warm-up date on 2nd April. Taking in songs from her first two albums – 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart – and some new material, this was Bush embarking on a first tour many would have assumed was going to be a fairly regular occurrence. There were talks at various points in her career. In the 1990s, there was consideration of a tour/live event at Wembley I think. The strain and time consumption of recording albums was taking up her time, so it was not really possible to mount a tour and dedicate that time to that. I really do feel like the fact she produced these amazing albums was more important than tours. She would return to the stage in 2014 for Before the Dawn. That was based in Hammersmith and did not see her tour it. Of course, there were live performances on T.V. and stage between 1979 and 2014. The Tour of Life was hugely impactful and adoringly received.
After two albums in which Bush felt she was more of a spectator and did not have as much production say as she’d like, maybe there was frustration and the need to do something solo. After relentlessly promoting her albums and spending most of 1978 travelling and with very little free time, it is amazing that Bush managed to conceive and help bring together such a huge and multi-layered live show in a few months. Rather than have to work with a producer and put out albums according to demands from EMI, this was a tour where Bush could have more input and finally get her material out to the people. In the end, in spite of the huge reviews and adoring crowds, Bush was exhausted and has spent so much of her own money bringing The Tour of Life to…well, life. She lost quite a bit of money. Even so, she did like touring and was very appreciative of the love that she got. I am keen to get to that first night. First, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia gives some background about The Tour of Life’s preparation and band:
“The Tour of Life, also known as the Lionheart Tour or even the Kate Bush Tour, was Kate Bush’s first, and until recently only, series of live concerts. The name, ‘Tour of Life’, was not coined until after its completion, with all promotional material referring to it simply as the Kate Bush Tour.
Consisting of 24 performances from Bush’s first two studio albums The Kick Inside and Lionheart, it was acclaimed for its incorporation of mime, magic, and readings during costume changes. The simple staging also involved rear-screen projection and the accompaniment of two male dancers. The tour was a critical and commercial success, with most dates selling out and additional shows being added due to high demand. Members of the Kate Bush Club were provided with a guaranteed ticket.
Rehearsals
The tour was to become not only a concert, but also incorporating dance, poetry, mime, burlesque, magic and theatre. The dance element was co-ordinated by Bush in conjunction with Anthony Van Laast – who later choreographed the Mamma Mia! movie and several West End smashes – and two young dancers, Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst. They held morning rehearsals for the tour at The Place in Euston, after which Bush spent afternoons in Greenwich drilling her band. Off stage, she was calling the shots on everything from the set design to the programme art.
Band
The band playing with Kate Bush on stage consisted of Preston Heyman (drums), Paddy Bush (mandolin. various strange instruments and vocal harmonies), Del Palmer (bass), Brian Bath (electric guitar, acoustic mandolin and vocal harmonies), Kevin McAlea (piano, keyboards, saxophone, 12 string guitar), Ben Barson (synthesizer and acoustic guitar), Al Murphy (electric guitar and whistles) and backing vocalists Liz Pearson and Glenys Groves”.
I am going to refer to this feature from 2020 when discussing The Tour of Life in more depth. It is amazing to think that, on 3rd April, 1979, this amazing spectacle officially started. In Liverpool, Bush was met with this intrigue and warmth. A documentary was aired and there was this jubilation and incredible performance from Bush. After what was experienced the night before, it makes the show on 3rd April all the more impressive and notable:
“Kate Bush has long cornered the market in reclusive, media-averse mystique, but it wasn’t always that way. On April 3, 1979, early evening news show Nationwide dedicated a show to the 20-year-old singer.
The event on which the 25-minute special was hung was the opening night of Bush’s first – and to date – only tour. “Most live artists make their mistakes either in private or in front of a very small audience,” intoned the moustachioed reporter. “Tonight, Kate Bush starts at the top, in front of several thousand. She can’t afford to fail.”
But then Bush was big news. Her star had been arcing across the firmament ever since she first appeared on Top Of The Pops just over a year earlier. That memorable performance, playing her first single, Wuthering Heights, had introduced her as an utterly new and fresh talent. There had been an instant clamour for her to play live, though it would be 14 months before she did.
Looking at Nationwide from the vantage point of 2014, it’s amazing how much unguarded access she granted the filmmakers over a six-month build-up. Footage of early production meetings where people are crammed onto chairs and sofas in a tiny dressing room is followed by a clip of a leotard-and-leggings-clad Bush being worked hard by choreographer Anthony Van Laast during three initial weeks of “gruelling exertion” just to prepare her for several weeks of even more intense choreography.
Remarkably, the camera was allowed into Wood Wharf Studio in Greenwich, south London, where the singer was drilling her eight-piece band through Kite and Wow. Here, it’s possible to get a real sense of the pub gigs she’d started out playing just a couple of years before (“I think the main reason they listen to me is because I’m paying their wages,” she says of the rest of the band, her girlish, sing-song voice cut with chewy south London vocals)”.
Not only did Bush and her entire crew and set have to travel from Poole in Dorset up to Liverpool. That alone must have been quite tiring before she even had to step on the stage for an intense and exhaustive set. She had performed a warm-up show and was now ready to do the ‘first date’. Those in attendance in Liverpool were rapturous and overwhelmed by such a stunning show. How many knew what happened the night before in Poole? Poole’s Art Centre was opened in 1978. It was a new venue. Compared to the other spaces Bush would perform in, there was something more modern and cutting-edge about Poole’s Art Centre. In many ways, she started at the deep end. In terms of venues and location, I guess there was this clash of a more obscure part of the country with a new venue. Not a major city, this was a part of the country I guess ideal to test out the show. Seen as a warm-up, I can see why a new venue was chosen. Somewhere modern and exciting, everything was set. The show itself was a success. Rather than cast a light on a tragic event, I very much want to celebrate forty-five years of The Tour of Life. Many think about 3rd April, 1979 and the success of that opening night. The day before, Bush had come off stage from a magnificent and exciting show in Poole. This 2010 article from The Guardian discussed the reaction to The Tour of Life. Things started in such a hard and devastating way:
“As the tour rolled out around the UK the reviews were euphoric: Melody Maker called the Birmingham show "the most magnificent spectacle ever encountered in the world of rock", and most critics broadly concurred. Only NME remained sceptical, dismissing Bush as "condescending" and, with the kind of proud and rather wonderful perversity that once defined the British rock press, praising only the magician.
However, the mood of the tour had been struck a terrible blow early on, after a low-key warm-up concert on 2 April at Poole Arts Centre in Dorset. While scouring the darkened venue to ensure nothing had been forgotten, the lighting engineer Bill Duffield fell 20 feet through a cavity to his death. He was just 21. Bush was shattered, and contemplated cancelling the tour. "It was terrible for her," says Brian Bath. "Kate knew everyone by name, right down to the cleaner, she was so like that, she'd speak to everyone. It's something you wouldn't forget, but we just carried through it”.
Bill Duffield had been drafted in to help with the tour. A young man starting on this big team led by Kate Bush, he was a much-needed pair of hands to help with a tour that was perhaps larger and a bit more intensive than first thought. Even though there was quite a big crew, Bush felt everyone was family. Duffield would have been embraced and already seen as a friend. On the first night that should have been a run of many for Duffield, he kindly volunteered to do an ‘idiot check’ – looking around a venue to ensure no goods or bits were left over that needed collecting. With a panel left open in the floor and there being no lighting or markers on the stairs/seats to show that there was a gap, Duffield fell seventeen feet. Tripping and falling on a concrete floor under the stage, Duffield died in hospital a week later.
There was discussion as to whether the tour would end but, having put so much into it and there being all these logistical and financial concerns with pulling the plug, the show went on. Duffield would have wanted things to continue. Bush, upon hearing the news of Bill Duffield’s fall, was devastated and crushed. Having already bonded with him and locked him into her tour family, it was like losing someone dear. She knew that she had to perform in Liverpool the following night. What should have been a celebratory mood after the warm-up show success was suddenly interpreted by that blow. A tribute concert took place at the Hammersmith Odeon on 12th May, 1979. It was a star-studded event that paid tribute to someone whose loss was deeply upsetting.
I often think about that 2nd April, 1979 gig. How it must have felt later that night. Looking to the following day and the commitment to open The Tour of Life in Liverpool. Having to recover from an awful tragedy, travel almost the length of the country and then deliver something seamless and taxing. It is credit to Kate Bush and her crew that they pulled off the impossible! In spite of the terrible accident that took a young and loved Bill Duffield, that warm-up gig in Poole was the start of one of the most important tours ever. The audience who were there on 2nd April, 1979 got to witness something majestic. I wonder whether there are recordings of tracks from that night. Hearing the electricity and freshness of these first full live performance from Kate Bush. It is important to focus on the positives. After touring further up the country and coming down to London’s Palladium for shows between 16th and 20th April, Bush then headed to Sweden. It was a dizzying time for her (aside from the main photo at the top of this feature, the rest are courtesy of NME). There would have been a mix of excitement and nerves before she stepped onto the Poole stage on 2nd April, 1979. Forty-five years later, we can look at Pop concerts that have followed and draw a line to Kate Bush. From Madonna – whose iconic head mic was actually invented by Bush’s sound engineer Martin Fisher – to Michael Jackson and even tours from the past few years, you can see how this mix of theatre, mime and music was influenced by Kate Bush and what she achieved in 1979. It was a triumph that ended back in London. Stating out in the newly-finished Arts Centre in Poole, that warm-up date on 2nd April, 1979 was…
THE start of something extraordinary!