FEATURE:
Hammersmith: 26th August, 2014…
PHOTO CREDIT: Gavin Bush/Rex
Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Ten: That Opening Night
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I am going to publish…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on stage for Before the Dawn at the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith, on 26th August, 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX Photograph
a couple of additional features about Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn residency. That ran from August to October 2014. We look ahead to the tenth anniversary of a hugely important moment. I have already written about the day Kate Bush announced she would be back on stage for that run of dates. At the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, it was a return to the same venue she performed at during 1979’s The Tour of Life. The Hammersmith Odeon back in the day, it was significant that she set it here. Not only was it close to her home and meant she did not need to travel a lot and move between venues, she knew the space and how it would accommodate her concept. I want to discuss that first night very soon. It happened on 26th August, 2014. Across the twenty-two dates, Kate Bush played to about 80,000 people. After announcing it would happen on 21st March, 2014, there was this frenzy and excitement to get tickets. They sold out within fifteen minutes. A critically acclaimed residency, Kate Bush won the Editor's Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. She was also nominated for two Q Awards in 2014: Best Act in the World Today and Best Live Act. I don’t think there were any tremors or real signs that Bush was coming back to the stage. Now, you would get someone leaking it or there might be teasers. That March announcement took us by surprise. Less than three years after 50 Words for Snow was released, we got a concert residency. Those who were there have said how incredible it was. I still maintain a concert film of Before the Dawn for its tenth anniversary would be welcomed and make a lot of sense.
I am going to get to a couple of reviews for that first evening performance. If you want to know more about the set-list and details of Before the Dawn, then you can find them here. What I love and thing is very important is the band. Including Omar Hakim on drums and John Giblin on bass, there were some extraordinary players around her. I think the choice of band is as important as the set. It all interlinks. There would have been a lot of rehearsals and planning. Prior to 1979’s The Tour of Life, Bush was drilling her band and did a rehearsal/run-through at a small theatre not long before that tour opened. In 2014, fewer details are known about the rehearsal process and what was involved. I am fascinated by that period between Kate Bush deciding to go back to the stage and that opening night. We will come to that soon. A couple of reviews too. The fact The Guardian did a breakdown of important events and happenings on that night. Looking on some Internet message boards, it sounds like the setlist was one thing that went through changes. She wanted to bring the suite form Hounds of Love (The Ninth Wave) and Aerial (A Sky of Honey) together. Deciding which others songs featured was tough. There had to be a limit! There were some obvious choices that fans would have demanded (Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). It is fascinating seeing that Act 1 selection. Prior to going into The Ninth Wave, Bush needed to set the mood and put together a cohesive and varied series of songs. She said in an interview how Lily was the song to start. That she wanted to welcome people in with this sort of prayer and call. I love how Aerial’s Joanni and The Red Shoes’ Top of the City are in there. Deeper cuts that were brave but brilliant choices. 50 Words for Snow’s Among Angels features in the encore.
In all, there are songs from four Kate Bush albums. It is impossible to please everyone. There was never going to be anything from The Kick Inside and Lionheart, as Bush performed songs from those albums in 1979. Maybe 1980’s Never for Ever would have been too far back. That does leave The Dreaming (1982) and The Sensual World (1989). Fans might have wanted The Sensual World, This Woman’s Work and perhaps Sat in Your Lap to feature. Reading message boards, apparently Sat in Your Lap was considered at one stage! Never Be Mine is included in the live album (released in 2016) as a rehearsal, though it was not in the show. I think the problem with Sat in Your Lap would be sound quality. Maybe it is hard to choregraph. Perhaps her vocal range as it was in 2014 might mean it is very different to what we hear on The Dreaming. People have said it was considered for an opening track but was cut. Wuthering Heights was also rumoured to have been on the setlist at one point. That would have been magnificent. In fact, looking at this interview with David Rhodes, he said that Top of the City was chosen over Sat in Your Lap. The Big Sky was run through with the band, though Cloudbusting was selected as a better choice. There are also another few songs that Kate Bush considered included but that secret has not got to the press. That selection process is fascinating! Imagine Bush performing Sat in Your Lap on stage. It is obvious that there was a lot of thought and discussion about the dynamics and how the tracks sat together. Getting that flow and structure just so was crucial. The sets for The Tour of Life were quite spectacular. One of the issues was transporting it around. For Before the Dawn, there was this stable location that offered more freedom. In terms of the visuals and designs, perhaps The Ninth Wave was the most intense and spectacular. I love how there is a mixture of dancers/actors on the stage, including her son, Bertie, and things projected on a screen. It would have taken so much planning and time, when the setlist was confirmed, how it would all coalesce.
It is what makes the opening night so extraordinary. Few would have known about the rehearsals and deciding the setlist. Those discussions about everything from the hospitality packages, merchandise, set details, lighting, the band, right through to the poster design and the audience experience. Set aside the fact Bush was back doing a major live commitment thirty-five years since her first. As someone properly established, maybe there was extra expectation and pressure. In any regard, that first night performance was so charged. The Guardian followed all the major happenings. Well-known faces such as Lauren Laverne sharing their thoughts. A wonderful array of different celebrities there, mixing alongside all her other fans. It would have been so intense waiting for her to come onto the stage. Even if Bush and her team knew the set and were confident, I think about what Bush was doing minutes before going to the stage. The thoughts running around her head knowing, in mere minutes, she would sing Lily and be greeted by applause and rapture from thousands of fans! Not only did fans, for the first time, get to see Kate Bush perform The Ninth Wave in full. There was also a mix of songs that covered twenty-six years or so. There was no doubt critics would love the set. Kate Bush would have been incapable of disappointing or doing anything less than extraordinary. Considering how Aerial (2005), Director’s Cut (2011) and 50 Words for Snow (2011) got hugely positive reviews, she was going to nail Before the Dawn. Even so, a sense of expectation and the reality was not guaranteed to have everyone singing quite from the same hymn sheet. This is what The Guardian observed in their review:
“Over the course of nearly three hours, Kate Bush's first gig for 35 years variously features dancers in lifejackets attacking the stage with axes and chainsaws; a giant machine that hovers above the auditorium, belching out dry ice and shining spotlights on the audience; giant paper aeroplanes; a surprisingly lengthy rumination on sausages, vast billowing sheets manipulated to represent waves, Bush's 16-year-old son Bertie - clad as a 19th-century artist – telling a wooden mannequin to "piss off" and the singer herself being borne through the audience by dancers clad in costumes based on fish skeletons.
The concert-goer who desires a stripped down rock and roll experience, devoid of theatrical folderol, is thus advised that Before the Dawn is probably not the show for them, but it is perhaps worth noting that even before Bush takes the stage with her dancers and props, a curious sense of unreality hangs over the crowd. It's an atmosphere noticeably different than at any other concert, but then again, this is a gig unlike any other, and not merely because the very idea of Bush returning to live performance was pretty unimaginable 12 months ago.
There have been a lot of improbable returns to the stage by mythic artists over the last few years, from Led Zeppelin to Leonard Cohen, but at least the crowd who bought tickets to see them knew roughly what songs to expect. Tonight, almost uniquely in rock history, the vast majority of the audience has virtually no idea what's going to happen before it does.
The solitary information that has leaked out from rehearsals is that Bush will perform The Ninth Wave, her 1985 song cycle about a woman drowning at sea – which indeed she does, replete with staging of a complexity that hasn't been seen during a rock gig since Pink Floyd's heyday – and that she isn't terribly keen on people filming the show on their phones.
The rest is pure speculation, of varying degrees of madness. A rumour suggests that puppets will be involved, hence the aforementioned mannequin, manipulated by a man in black and regularly hugged by Bush during her performance of another song cycle, A Sky of Honey, from 2005's Aerial.
The satirical website the Daily Mash claimed that, at the gig's conclusion, Bush would "lead the audience out of the venue, along the fairy-tale Hammersmith Flyover and finally to a mountain where they would be sealed inside, listening to Hounds of Love for all eternity".
In fairness, this was no more demented than the thoughts of the august broadsheet rock hack, apparently filing his report direct from the 1870s, who predicted that Bush would not take part in any choreographed routines because dancing in public is "unbecoming for a woman of a certain age".
As it turns out, the august broadsheet rock hack could not have been more wrong: for huge sections of the performance, Bush's movements look heavily choreographed: she moves with a lithe grace, clearly still drawing on the mime training she underwent as a teenager forty years on. Her voice too is in remarkable condition: she's note-perfect throughout.
Backed by a band of musicians capable of navigating the endless twists and turns of her songwriting – from funk to folk to pastoral prog rock - the performances of Running Up That Hill and King of the Mountain sound almost identical to their recorded versions - but letting rip during a version of Top of the City, she sounds flatly incredible.
You suspect that even if she hadn't, the audience would have lapped it up. Audibly delighted to be in the same room as her, they spend the first part of the show clapping everything she does: no gesture is too insignificant to warrant a round of applause. It would be cloying, but for the fact that Bush genuinely gives them something to cheer about.
For someone who's spent the vast majority of her career shunning the stage, she's a hugely engaging live performer, confident enough to shun the hits that made her famous in the first place: she plays nothing from her first four albums.
The staging might look excessive on paper, but onstage it works to astonishing effect, bolstering rather than overwhelming the emotional impact of the songs. The Ninth Wave is disturbing, funny and so immersive that the crowd temporarily forget to applaud everything Bush does. As each scene bleeds into another, they seem genuinely rapt: at the show's interval, people look a little stunned. A Sky of Honey is less obviously dramatic – nothing much happens over the course of its nine tracks – but the live performance underlines how beautiful the actual music is.
Already widely acclaimed as the most influential and respected British female artist of the past 40 years, shrouded in the kind of endlessly intriguing mystique that is almost impossible to conjure in an internet age, Bush theoretically had a lot to lose by returning to the stage. Clearly, given how tightly she has controlled her own career since the early 80s, she would only have bothered because she felt she had something spectacular to offer. She was right: Before The Dawn is another remarkable achievement”.
I am going to round up in a minute. Before that, DIY were among those who attended the opening night – on 26th August, 2014 – and were keen to share their opinions on a stage return of one of the finest live performers ever. There is no doubt that those at the Eventim Apollo were blown away. I am gutted I was not fortunate enough to get a ticket. It makes me either determined to imagine a concert film will come on day:
“While you try to catch your breath and reorganise your sense of reality after three hours of an astonishing, immersive and utterly singular show, the one thing that instantly becomes apparent through the mist is that Kate Bush is not one to cede to your run-of-the-mill expectations.
The whole night feels unreal and unravels in a dreamlike fashion – even attempting to put it into words here it seems to dissolve on the screen. That’s not just because of the feverish speculation that came before the show or the fact that Bush hasn’t performed in concert since 1979, but also because whatever your hopes or anticipations for this show – one of the most eagerly awaited pop performances in history – Bush turns them on their head and pours them away in an avalanche of artistic contrariness and outlandish theatre which sees the stage filled with a wooden mannequin, fish skeletons, sheets billowing like waves, a preacher, a giant machine that hovers above the audience pounding like a helicopter as well as lighthouses and living rooms, axes and chainsaws.
Yet through all the theatrics and artistry one thing remains constant, and it’s the thing that shines through the most: the rush of humanity that ties all the ideas together; the one thing that takes Bush to that other place. It’s the innate heart that pulses through all this theatre and all these ideas: the simple truths of love, hope and family life that hold all her ideas together.
‘I feel your warmth,’ she says appreciatively as the crowd passionately cheer and clap her every move and gesture. And it’s her shy but generous smile at the response from the crowd which shows exactly what this means to her.
This is the weight of 35 years being lifted – thrown off with the skilfulness and heart that shows Kate Bush is no ‘mythic’ artist but a very real, supremely talented original. Tonight is an unequivocal demonstration that she’s a one-off: only she has the ambition, nerve and imagination to pull off the ideas that had filled her mind.
Yet at first it seems she’s going to play it pretty straight. Barefoot and dressed in elegant black, she strolls around the stage gently, occasionally twirling. It begins with ‘Lily’ as she leads a small group of backing singers that includes her son Bertie (who, she says, has given her the "courage" to return to the stage). The band that line up behind her are as tight as you would imagine. They play ‘Hounds Of Love’ and ‘Running Up That Hill’. They sound huge, they sound brilliant. If there’s one thing you notice most it’s that her voice is remarkably powerful and it’s brilliant on ‘King Of The Mountain’ which brings the opening ‘scene’ to a close, heralding a storm as a bullroarer fills the air and cannons fill the theatre with confetti.
It's now time for the drama of 'The Ninth Wave', the second half of 'Hounds of Love'. Here we see a story of resignation and resurrection played out in the most theatrical of ways. We see Bush in a lifejacket floating in water, looking up at the camera as if waiting to be rescued (she’s reported to have spent three days in a flotation tank at Pinewood Studios to create the special effects). At one point fish skeletons dance across the waves, at another a helicopter searches the crowd, before a living room (yes, a living room) floats across the stage in which a son and his father – played by Bertie and Bush's husband Danny McIntosh – talk at length about sausages.
It’s hard to comprehend exactly what’s happening but the band skilfully navigate the pastoral prog and Celtic rock. Even when the music isn’t captivating, the sheer sense of spectacle means you can’t avert your eyes for a second. As the ‘The Morning Fog’ brings the performance to a close with another standing ovation.
After a twenty minute interval – during which time the bars buzz with delirium – the third act sees her play out ‘Sky of Honey’, the entire second half of 'Aerial'. It’s so intricately detailed that you get the feeling Bush had always planned to perform these two scenes live.
‘Honey’ is a grandiose daydream moving through a summer's day. Again the scope of her vision is immense – even when the songs don’t enthral the enormous paper planes and human birds do, as we see a wooden mannequin finding himself lost and alone. Bertie plays a major part throughout dressed as a 19th-century artist – and at one point telling the mannequin to "piss off". It ends, as only it could, with Bush gaining wings and flying.
She returns to earth to perform a solo version of ‘Among Angels’ on the piano, before the band return to help close the show with a joyful ‘Cloudbusting’. "I just know that something good is going to happen", she sings as a now even more euphoric crowd jump to their feet.
Then she’s gone. You’re left with the image of a singer who has managed to retain her mystery and surprise. An enigma, the mythic artist who is intensely human. It’s overblown and preposterous and brilliant. All its startling achievements, magical highs and am dram faults – its relentless ambition and human imperfections – make it the only document you could possibly have asked for from such a unique artist. Before the Dawn is everything you would expect but couldn’t imagine”.
Perhaps one of the most important dates in live music history, the opening show for Before the Dawn occurred in Hammersmith on 26th August, 2014. There really does need to be some form of celebration or commemoration on its tenth anniversary! I know there will be magazine spreads that take us inside the residency. Get reaction from people who were there. Maybe we will see the footage come to light one day. I hope so! I am going to do a few more Before the Dawn features before the anniversary date. It is no understatement to say that those who were in the Eventim Apollo on 26th August, 2014…
HAD their lives changed.