FEATURE:
Houdini’s Great Escape
PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
Imagining Five Great ‘Lost’ Kate Bush Videos
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I have touched on this subject before…
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
but I want to go into more detail and depth. Kate Bush released so many great singles. She is someone who is responsible for some of the most distinct and memorable videos ever. From her 1978 debut, Wuthering Heights, to the videos for Breathing, Cloudbusting and The Sensual World, there have been some truly remarkable and original examples! I have named my favourite Kate Bush videos. It is always a case with any great artist. You ask the question: What other songs could have been released from an album and, as such, been given a music video? In a way, I guess they are ‘lost’ music videos, though it is subjective with regards which songs deserve music videos. It is the case that Kate Bush had single-worthy tracks on all albums that were never released. I think the greatest opportunities for releasing singles were 1980’s Never for Ever and 1982’s The Dreaming. I think 2005’s Aerial and even 1978’s Lionheart had a few songs never released as singles. I am not going to mention those that do not feature here which should have been singles. I am interested in the potential video. Kate Bush always said how important videos were to her. The five songs I am going to mention are terrific tracks in their own right. They could have been successful singles, either here in the U.K. or abroad, and would have been accompanied by magnificent and distinct music videos. I know it does no good speculating and hypotheticals. It is fun to think about the songs that you would have wanted as singles from Kate Bush. These potential ‘lost’ videos that fans imagine. What images and storylines would play out? Below are five songs that I feel would have been good singles with awesome music videos.
PHOTO CREDIT: Kent Gavin/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix
The Kick Inside from The Kick Inside (1978)
This was a song that Kate Bush performed for 1979’s The Tour of Life. There was this staged version of the song. She also performed the song away from the stage. One such occasion was during the De Effeling Special of May 1978. On 12th May, 1978, the Dutch broadcaster TROS broadcast a twenty-minute Kate Bush television special, recorded at the Dutch amusement park, Efteling. On 10th May, 1978, Efteling was ready to open the Haunted Castle, the most expensive attraction it had ever constructed. And they wanted to promote it as much as they could. It is a great video. Bush’s hair is white/blonde in the video and she is appears under a waterfall and lying down in a boat. Almost this funereal end. It is hard to explore the meaning and lyrics of the song at an amusement park a limited and distinct setting. Inspired by The Ballad of Lucy Wan (alternatively Lizie Wan or Fair Lucy), Bush’s title track ends her debut album. The song refers to a sister who is having her brother’s baby and fears it will bring shame upon her family. She takes her own life and leaves a suicide note. It is worth reading this feature for more detail and analysis. I think that this track should have been a single. It is remarkably mature. It would have been a good follow-up to the second U.K. single, The Man with the Child in His Eyes.
If critics felt Bush was immature, wild or this inaccessible and strange singer, the vocal at least on The Kick Inside could have changed minds. A stunning video full of drama and cinematic touches would have made it a wonderful video. Maybe a budget would not have stretched for that, yet I think Bush could have played the sister. We have an actor playing her brother. Maybe there could have been this split screen. Bush, as the heroine, struggling to deal with an unwanted and taboo pregnancy. The brother reading her suicide note or suspecting something is wrong. Maybe angry and regretful of the situation. It would have stretched Kate Bush’s acting muscles and could have had this incredible video. Whereas Wuthering Heights and The Man with the Child in His Eyes are quite low-budget and basic – but extraordinary and distinct -, this could have been an opportunity for something more ambitious. As one of the more underrated songs from her debut album, I would love to have seen this song come to life through a video. Scenes that switch between intensity, wistfulness, tension and heartache. There are some many amazing possibilities. A song that is so epic and tender in equal measures, I sort of feel like Kate Bush wrote the song with visuals in mind. Never realised and executed as a proper music video, the live performances we can see are tantalising at least.
Houdini from The Dreaming (1982)
Skipping through a couple of albums. There are songs from 1978’s Lionheart and 1980’s Never for Ever that could have had music videos. I feel Lionheart’s Symphony in Blue and Coffee Homeground could have had amazing and spellbinding videos. Never for Ever has All We Ever Look For. I think that The Dreaming was never intended as a singles album. Bush is an artist who has been told by EMI that her album did contain any singles. She said that is because she didn’t write any. Maybe Hounds of Love (1985) was more of an effort to redress that. In fact, The Dreaming is the one with no real singles in mind. Bush writing it as a body of work and not for radio play and singles. That said, singles were released – they had to be! Apart from Sat in Your Lap (the first single), there was not any notable chart success. Including international releases, songs such as There Goes a Tenner and Night of the Swallow were released. One might argue that there are no songs that would make for popular and accessible singles. I will suggest two tracks from The Dreaming that would have been more successful singles – that The Dreaming and There Goes a Tenner -, and they would have had music videos that would have been featured and helped chart performance. These tracks are the final two tracks. The first is my favourite Kate Bush song: the beguiling and sublime Houdini. Think about the song and how it spotlights the famous escapologist, Harry Houdini. This is what Kate Bush said about Houdini:
“Kate about ‘Houdini’
The side most people know of Houdini is that of the escapologist, but he spent many years of his life exposing mediums and seances as frauds. His mother had died, and in trying to make contact through such spiritual people, he realized how much pain was being inflicted on people already in sorrow, people who would part with money just for the chance of a few words from a past loved one. I feel he must have believed in the possibility of contact after death, and perhaps in his own way, by weeding out the frauds, he hoped to find just one that could not be proven to be a fake. He and his wife made a decision that if one of them should die and try to make contact, the other would know it was truly them through a code that only the two of them knew.
His wife would often help him with his escapes. Before he was bound up and sealed away inside a tank or some dark box, she would give him a parting kiss, and as their lips met, she would pass him the key which he would later use to unlock the padlocks that chained him. After he died, Mrs. Houdini did visit many mediums, and tried to make contact for years, with no luck – until one day a medium called Mr. Ford informed her that Houdini had come through. She visited him and he told her that he had a message for her from Houdini, and he spoke the only words that meant for her the proof of her husband’s presence. She was so convinced that she released an official statement to the fact that he had made contact with her through the medium, Ford.
It is such a beautiful and strange story that I thought I had very little to do, other than tell it like it was. But in fact it proved to be the most difficult lyric of all the songs and the most emotionally demanding. I was so aware of trying to do justice to the beauty of the subject, and trying to understand what it must have been like to have been in love with such an extraordinary man, and to have been loved by him. I worked for two or three nights just to find one line that was right. There were so many alternatives, but only a few were right for the song. Gradually it grew and began to piece together, and I found myself wrapped up in the feelings of the song – almost pining for Houdini. Singing the lead vocal was a matter of conjuring up that feeling again and as the clock whirrs and the song flashes back in time to when she watched him through the glass, he’s on the other side under water, and she hangs on to his every breath. We both wait.
KATE BUSH CLUB NEWSLETTER, OCTOBER 1982”.
I would have loved to have seen the great late Del Palmer play Houdini. Maybe this escape being planned and start. Kate Bush, as his wife, watching on. She slips him the key via a kiss. There is this look between them. An audience watching the trick and attempted escape. Maybe there is this unhappy end. It would be this really amazing video. I am not sure whether Houduni was ever considered as a single. I feel it could have charted well and would also suggest one Kate Bush’s best music videos.
Get Out of My House from The Dreaming (1982)
The intense and hugely powerful finale of The Dreaming, Get Out of My House screams for a music video! Inspired by Stephen King’s The Shining (rather than the Stanley Kubrick film of the book), this idea of a haunted and possessed house. Someone in it being driven mad. Again, I want to bring in Kate Bush’s words about one of her very best songs:
“Kate about ‘Get Out Of My House’
‘The Shining’ is the only book I’ve read that has frightened me. While reading it I swamped around in its snowy imagery and avoided visiting certain floors of the big, cold hotel, empty for the winter. As in ‘Alien’, the central characters are isolated, miles (or light years) away from anyone or anything, but there is something in the place with them. They’re not sure what, but it isn’t very nice.
The setting for this song continues the theme – the house which is really a human being, has been shut up – locked and bolted, to stop any outside forces from entering. The person has been hurt and has decided to keep everybody out. They plant a ‘concierge’ at the front door to stop any determined callers from passing, but the thing has got into the house upstairs. It’s descending in the lift, and now it approaches the door of the room that you’re hiding in. You’re cornered, there’s no way out, so you turn into a bird and fly away, but the thing changes shape, too. You change, it changes; you can’t escape, so you turn around and face it, scare it away.
KATE BUSH CLUB NEWSLETTER, OCTOBER 1982
The song is called ‘Get Out Of My House’, and it’s all about the human as a house. The idea is that as more experiences actually get to you, you start learning how to defend yourself from them. The human can be seen as a house where you start putting up shutters at the windows and locking the doors – not letting in certain things. I think a lot of people are like this – they don’t hear what they don’t want to hear, don’t see what they don’t want to see. It is like a house, where the windows are the eyes and the ears, and you don’t let people in. That’s sad because as they grow older people should open up more. But they do the opposite because, I suppose, theydoget bruised and cluttered. Which brings me back to myself; yes, I have had to decide what I will let in and what I’ll have to exclude.
ROSIE BOYCOTT, ‘THE DISCREET CHARM OF KATE BUSH’. COMPANY (UK), 1982”.
It would have been magnificent seeing Bush as this possessed woman in a gothic house. Maybe some would draw comparisons to Wuthering Heights and feel Bush was repeating herself or she was trying to reference that song and maybe distance herself. In terms of the visuals and set, just think what would have come about! Flickering lights and a really committed and eccentric performance from Bush. Spirits, shadows and slamming doors. The section of the song where Bush brays like a donkey – which is a reference to Pinocchio – could be especially evocative! There are various vocal sections that suggest particular visuals. This might be one of the greatest ‘lost’ videos/singles. A song whose video would have been a true spectacle! Maybe it is less accessible than other tracks so might not have made a huge chart dent. I feel it is potent and bracing enough it would have sold well in 1982.
The Fog from The Sensual World (1989)
Many people may not know about The Fog. It is an underrated song from The Sensual World. Whereas Kate Bush’s mother has been seen in a music video, The Dreaming’s Suspended in Gaffa, it would have been nice to see her father in a bigger role. Hannah was seen embracing Kate for Suspended in Gaffa. Robert’s voice is heard on The Fog. It would be amazing to have seen him in a video for the song! The track could have worked on Hounds of Love. Maybe on its second side, The Ninth Wave. It has that quality and importance, it is such a shame that it was not a single. I guess more obvious choices like This Woman’s Work and The Sensual World won the day because they are more instantly singles. They have that depth and gravitas. That said, one could well envisage something stunning. It is whispered, dreamy, grand, growing, strange, wonderful and interesting. A song that has such visual possibilities. I want to bring in some words from Bush about The Fog:
“Again, it’s quite a complex song, where it’s very watery. It’s meant to be the idea of a big expanse of water, and being in a relationship now and flashing back to being a child being taught how to swim, and using these two situations as the idea of learning to let go. When I was a child, my father used to take me out into the water, and he’d hold me by my hands and then let go and say “OK, now come on, you swim to me.” As he’d say this, he’d be walking backwards so the gap would be getting bigger and bigger, and then I’d go [Splutters].
I thought that was such an interesting situation where you’re scared because you think you’re going to drown, but you know you won’t because your father won’t let you drown, and the same for him, he’s kind of letting go, he’s letting the child be alone in this situation. Everyone’s learning and hopefully growing and the idea that the relationship is to be in this again, back there swimming and being taught to swim, but not by your father but by your partner, and the idea that it’s OK because you are grown up now so you don’t have to be frightened, because all you have to do is put your feet down and the bottom’s there, the water isn’t so deep that you’ll drown. You put your feet down, you can stand up and it’s only waist height. Look! What’s the problem, what are you worried about?
ROGER SCOTT, BBC RADIO 1 (UK), 14 OCTOBER 1989”.
The strings on the track are so stirring and moving. Listen to the song and it seems like this track that could be on a film soundtrack. One that could be on the big screen. It has that ambition. Maybe leaving it to the imagination gives it this power and promise. I do think that a staggering video could have come. As Bush was directing her own videos by this point, maybe she would have helmed it. She was still using other directors, so there were possibilities. A larger budget that for her early albums and those singles. Maybe Bush in Ireland. Walking the coastline or in the water. Something that is windswept, slow motion in places. All wind and weather.
Mrs. Bartolozzi from Aerial (2005)
I can appreciate that Kate Bush, when Aerial arrived in 2005, was probably not too keen on singles. She had to release one. King of the Mountain was the last to feature her in a physical and filmed role. She kept asking director Jimmy Murakami is she looked okay. He had to reassure Bush that she looked fantastic. I feel there was reluctance, twelve years after The Red Shoes, to be on screen. As a mother by then, her life had changed. After King of the Mountain, Kate Bush was still putting out singles, though they were featuring other people/animated. She never appeared on a new T.V. interview from Aerial on. It was a period from then until now where she has mostly conducted interviews at her home or via phone. The odd public appearance here and there. Not the same artist who was filming videos and seemingly everywhere for years. I think fans would have welcomed a second single from Aerial, even if Bush was not in it. Mrs. Bartolozzi is the song I am thinking of. It could have been animated. That idea of domesticity and the fantastical. The clothes spinning and entwining in the machine. This almost sexual tango. The clothes on the line perhaps reminding her of a lover or lost figure.
“Is it about a washing machine? I think it’s a song about Mrs. Bartolozzi. She’s this lady in the song who…does a lot of washing (laughs). It’s not me, but I wouldn’t have written the song if I didn’t spend a lot of time doing washing. But, um, it’s fictitious. I suppose, as soon as you have a child, the washing suddenly increases. And uh, what I like too is that a lot of people think it’s funny. I think that’s great, because I think that actually, it’s one of the heaviest songs I’ve ever written! (laughs)
Clothes are…very interesting things, aren’t they? Because they say such an enormous amount about the person that wears them. They have a little bit of that person all over them, little bits of skin cells and…what you wear says a lot about who you are, and who you think you are…
So I think clothes, in themselves are very interesting. And then it was the idea of this woman, who’s kind of sitting there looking at all the washing going around, and she’s got this new washing machine, and the idea of these clothes, sort of tumbling around in the water, and then the water becomes the sea and the clothes…and the sea…and the washing machine and the kitchen… I just thought it was an interesting idea to play with.
What I wanted to get was the sense of this journey, where you’re sitting in front of this washing machine, and then almost as if in a daydream, you’re suddenly standing in the sea.
KEN BRUCE SHOW, BBC RADIO 2, 1 NOVEMBER 2005”.
This is a definite single. So many fans would have been intrigued by a video. Mrs. Bartolozzi would also have been a chart success. It is a wonderful song that could have got a lot of airplay. A video that takes us inside a house. The washing machine and the garden as the rain pours. Maybe pairing images of the home and domestic chores with the landscape and ocean. Above are five songs not released as singles that could have been. Those that could have also had epic music videos. These are my choices. I wonder if anyone has their views and songs. The fact that everyone will have different views shows how cinematic-worthy and filmic her songs are.