FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Mondadori/Getty Images
Blow Away (For Bill)
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AN album I have mentioned…
a few times when it comes to this feature, I wanted to revisit 1980’s Never for Ever. Kate Bush’s third album, I think that many people listen to it for its singles – Babooshka, Army Dreamers and Breathing. There is not a lot of investigation regarding its non-singles. I think that some of her most intriguing songs are on this album. All We Ever Look For, The Infant Kiss and Delius (Song of Summer) are among those I would urge people to listen to and seek out. A song that many people would not include in their favourite songs from Never for Ever, I do feel that Blow Away (For Bill) is a treasure that should be appreciated more. The song also inspired a Scottish fanzine, Blowaway. It was short-lived, and it was issued three times in 1985 and early-1986. During its short run, it included a two-part exclusive interview with Michael Hervieu. It is a shame that this song was not exposed and performed more. The title refers to Bill Duffield. He was a lightning assistant/engineer who tragically died after the warm-up gig for The Tour of Life in 1979. Kate Bush, hard hit by his death, immortalised her friend through song. I think that Blow Away (For Bill) is underrated and gets short shrift. Alongside Violin and Egypt, Blow Away (For Bill) is the least-appreciated and played. I don’t know if I have ever heard this played on the radio. Given the fact that it was important to Bush and she wanted to pay tribute to a young man that was lost too soon, this track deserves more respect Before going on, and thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, we get some interview perspective and interpretation around a song that I really love:
“‘Blow Away’ is a comfort for the fear of dying and for those of us who believe that music is perhaps an exception to the ‘Never For Ever’ rule.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Phillips
So there’s comfort for the guy in my band, as when he dies, he’ll go “Hi, Jimi!” It’s very tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a great thought that if a musician dies, his soul will join all the other musicians and a poet will join all the Dylan Thomases and all that.
None of those people [who have had near-death experiences] are frightened by death anymore. It’s almost something they’re looking forward to. All of us have such a deep fear of death. It’s the ultimate unknown, at the same time it’s our ultimate purpose. That’s what we’re here for. So I thought this thing about the death-fear. I like to think I’m coming to terms with it, and other people are too. The song was really written after someone very special died.
Although the song had been formulating before and had to be written as a comfort to those people who are afraid of dying, there was also this idea of the music, energies in us that aren’t physical: art, the love in people. It can’t die, because where does it go? It seems really that music could carry on in radio form, radio waves… There are people who swear they can pick up symphonies from Chopin, Schubert. We’re really transient, everything to do with us is transient, except for these non-physical things that we don’t even control…
Blow Away (For Bill) is an interesting song. A demo version of it appeared on YouTube back in 2010 (though I can’t locate it or the 1979 lone live performance). The phrase, “Put out the Light, then put out the light” is from Shakespeare’s Othello. One of the most interesting aspects of the track is the name of departed artists. We hear name-checked Minnie Riperton, Keith Moon, Sid Vicious, Buddy Holly and Sandy Denny. There are songs that Kate Bush never played live. You do wonder what they would have sounded like on the stage. Blow Away (For Bill) was only performed once live. Kate Bush debuted the song on 18th November, 1979 during a performance at the Royal Albert Hall during an event celebrating seventy-five years of the London Symphony Orchestra. There is not a whole lot of positivity in the media for the song. It is a shame. Any reviews I read around Never for Ever call the track inessential, meandering, unfocused, average or something else. There has been very little love for it. When MOJO named Kate Bush’s best fifty songs earlier this year, they placed Blow Away (For Bill) at forty-two:
“Blow Away
(From Never For Ever, 1980)
KB fears the tug of that stupid club.
The jazz tow of the bass and crisp piano-guitar counterpoints suggest Steely Dan’s sophisto-rock. But it’s unlikely that Donald Fagen ever expressed the looming, tantalising proximity of non-being so viscerally, if he ever felt it. Where does music go when we die? wonders Bush. Is it part of our souls? With the recent loss of Tour Of Life lighting engineer Bill Duffield, these were live issues for the ever-sensitive singer, and fed this track’s haunting, dissociative feel”.
I would love to see an animated video for Blow Away (For Bill). Seeing these lines comes to life: “Our engineer had a different idea/From people who nearly died but survived/Feeling no fear of leaving their bodies here/And went to a room that was soon full of visitors”; “Put out the light, then, put out the light/Vibes in the sky invite you to dine/Dust to dust/Blow to blow/Bolan and Moony are heading the show tonight”. As I say. Nearly everything written about Blow Away (For Bill) is half-hearted, or feels that the lyrics are lazy and do not coalesce. That it is a nice idea for a song, though it doesn’t really have impact or real depth. I would argue against this. It is a gem from Never for Ever. Five years ago, this feature explored the fascinating Blow Away (For Bill):
“While we’re dealing with mortality, we have to deal with the jaw-dropping fact that Bush quotes Othello in this song. “Put out the light/then put out the light” is her Shakespeare line of choice. In the context of the song, the quote is the opener for the meandering third verse. The lines that follow never quite cohere into a strong verse (“dust to dust/blow to blow”), but it’s worth thinking about why Bush copped this Othello quote. The line comes from Othello’s ending, in which Othello is preparing to murder his wife Desdemona in her sleep, falsely believing her to be an adultress. The line is a Shakespearean double-entendre, referring both to snuffing out Desdemona’s life and to her pale skin (the race politics in Othello are among the most fascinating and analyzed in all of literature). The actual meaning of this line is, of course, lost when deprived on context. Yet it’s an interesting line for Bush to lean on. It frames the deaths of these popular stars — and Sid Vicious — as classical tragedies, the downfall of great artistic figures. It risks being hagiographic, but at the same time there’s something compelling about the strangeness of this framing.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing during the London Symphony Orchestra's seventy-fifth anniversary concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 18th November, 1979
The use of Buddy Holly as a poster child for rock tragedy harkens back to another Seventies songs featuring his death, Don McLean’s “American Pie.” That paean to the fifties which has caused many boomers to explode phallic blood vessels is more grossly nostalgic than “Blow Away.” Tom Ewing has a great write-up of Madonna’s “American Pie” cover on Popular (which you frankly should read instead of wasting time on this blog), so I won’t discuss it in too much depth here, but suffice it to say that the song is a veritable tome of song references by a songwriter who can’t get over the music of his youth (Ewing hilariously mocks McLean’s unsubstle “Eight Miles High” namedrop). Ewing describes “American Pie” as “a theological dispute between Buddy Holly and Mick Jagger.” Holly is an ideological ploy for McLean’s rockist sectarianism. Little insight is offered into the workings of Fifties music. What McLean gives the listener is a nostalgia package: memory is what he trades on. In McLean’s mind, Altamont didn’t strike the killing blow to the Sixties dream: it was dead when it started. Mick Jagger ever getting on stage was the cardinal sin for “American Pie.” McLean’s use of “The Day the Music Died” isn’t a simple metaphor for the deaths of a few rock ‘n’ roll singers. In McLean’s view, it’s the point an entire tradition is co-opted and desecrated by these Lennon-McCartney whippersnappers.
Bush, of course, isn’t writing a song about the careers of Buddy Holly and the other deceased either. But “Blow Away” where differs from “American Pie” isn’t especially nostalgic — its points of sentiment were largely contemporary deaths. When Keith Moon overdosed, one of the biggest quartets in rock was partially dissolved. Punk discovered new proverbial dangers in Sid Vicious’ death. When the Seventies ended, a lot of assurance about how musicians lived and worked died with them. “Blow Away” can be read as a testament to this, chronicling the way popular music responds to the deaths of its idols. Framing the song as she does around a room where one can meet Minnie Riperton and Marc Bolan, she places deceased musicians in a paradise of their own. Certainly she’s lionizing these figures — which is maybe not a great move in a song namedropping alleged murderer Sid Vicious — but she’s engaging in ideas beyond “my generation of music is cooler than yours.” Think Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll,” but for people who still get laid.
There are reasons for this. Unlike McLean, Bush is going to keep writing songs people care about. She’s still paving the way for the music of the Eighties. While “Blow Away” is one of the less synthy tracks on Never for Ever, it’s more ambient than some of the songs on Bush’s first two albums. The Martin Ford Orchestra’s strings gives the song space, and Bush’s piano playing often has moments of silence which let the song breathe. The actual rhythm of the song is minimal, lacking the urgency of more rock-inflected music. It’s almost New Age, but in a genuinely spiritual way.
So what does “Blow Away” think of the afterlife? Well, it clearly thinks there is one. The dead have souls in Bush’s music. Her universe is populated by spectres — “The Kick Inside” and “Hammer Horror” demonstrate that. “Blow Away” fills their slot on Never for Ever — the song for those beyond the grave. Yet “Blow Away” is more optimistic about their chances of a happy eternity. Consciousness may thrive after death, but Bush has finally liberated her deceased characters of their mortal woes. Part of this is a matter of taste: everyone knows Keith Moon is in hell, but in 1980 it wouldn’t have been politic to say it in a song. Yes, there’s reverence for these musicians in this song, but the nostalgia is alleviated by the thoughtful weirdness of the song. It’s not the most radical song on the album, but it’s assuring that Bush’s optimism for the power of artistic imagination extends beyond the grave.
Performed live on 18 November 1979 at Royal Albert Hall. Recorded September 1979 at London AIR Studios. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, piano. Preston Heyman — drums, percussion. Max Middleton — Fender Rhodes, string arrangement. Brian Bath — acoustic guitar. Martin Ford Orchestra — strings”.
In September, it will be forty-five year since Kate Bush started recording Never for Ever. A short time after the completion of The Tour of Life, she produced this wonderful album alongside Jon Kelly. One of her most underrated works, there are so many great songs that do not get focus. I feel that Blow Away (For Bill) is among them. So much apathy among those who write about it. It is a beautiful and heartfelt cut that stemmed from a place of loss. Bush wanted to include in title – though it is often shortened to Blow Away – the name of someone who she knew for a brief time but meant a lot to her. For that reason alone, the third track on her third studio album is…
A wonderful tribute.