FEATURE:
The Residency of Life
Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Ten: A Life-Changing Experience
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I must make it clear at the start…
I was not at any of the twenty-two dates of Before the Dawn. It is the one question asked most of me when I say that I write about Kate Bush: “Were you at Before the Dawn?”. I always mournfully have to answer ‘no’. It is one of those big regrets. No matter. I live in hope that, one day, she will release footage from the residency. Apart from the video for And Dream of Sheep, nothing from that residency has been released. We have the live album yet, for all its wonder and importance, nothing more. Bush was insistent that people did not film the shows on their phone or spoil things. It seemed like an experience reserved solely to those who were at the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith in August, September and October of 2014. As the opening night was 26th August, I am doing a run of tenth anniversary features. I know that the one thing everyone who was there says is how life-changing it was. One of the most emotionally-charged moments of their life. Everyone who was there sharing this feeling they were witnessing something inexplicably magic and transcendent. It makes the regrets of missing out even sharper. There is little reason now why the footage from Before the Dawn should be kept private. Enough time has passed so that it should be shared more widely. Maybe Kate Bush will never let that happen. It would be a shame. Whilst one could never get the same experience watching a DVD/stream of the concert compared to being there, it would be amazing to see what happened on that stage ten years ago. You can read more about the residency here.
Because there is no doubting how electric and transformative Before the Dawn was, I want to bring in specific examples. People writing about their impressions of being there. The excitement and anxiety of being among the crowd, not knowing what is going to happen. Many would not have seen Kate Bush perform in the flesh before. Some were around when she performed her only tour in 1979. The Tour of Life. The sensation and almost hushed awe of the seconds before she came to the stage. The rapture and wonder of seeing her standing there to perform Lily (the opening number). Right through to the emotion of seeing Bush smiling and humbled by the audience. To have been there! I am going to come to a review I have sourced before. It is from journalist, broadcaster and author Pete Paphides. Beautifully articulating what it was like for him and so many other fans. Because those twenty-two dates saw a mix of celebrities and regular fans, people from all around the globe, of all ages and backgrounds, their experiences were all different. I don’t think there was anyone who left any of the dates disappointed. It was such a moving and life-affirming experience for everyone. In 2014, The Guardian published a feature where they collected together reactions Before the Dawn. How fans tried to put into words what they say:
“Shortly after the show began, the writer Caitlin Moran tweeted: "Kate bush, in black, barefoot, hounds of love, running up that hill, king of the mountain. JESUS."
Bush continued the set with the songs Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill before the performance moved into the lavish theatrical affair that had been rumoured, based around The Ninth Wave – a seven-track concept piece from the Hounds of Love album – about a woman drifting alone in the sea.
Songs were interspersed with theatrical pieces based on the tale of being lost at sea, with the set including a rescue helicopter flying overhead, a full portable living room and sea monsters.
Giving her reaction after the show, fan Iwona Boesche said: "I've been a fan of Kate Bush from the beginning. It was the best concert or show that I've ever seen and that I will ever see.
"She has just as good a voice as ever, maybe even deeper than before – it's very warm, velvety and expressive as always.
"She's so dynamic and she didn't hold back at all. I cried and everybody around me cried. It was amazing in every respect and she sang all the songs I was hoping [for]."
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features
She added: "When she was doing The Ninth Wave, you felt the cold of the water, you could see it, you could hear it.
"The sea monsters were really very scary. But mostly what she managed to convey was the coldness, the darkness, the solitude of being alone at sea.
"And another thing about the concert was that I was sitting next to people I've never met before but we all held hands throughout, she just created this warm, intimate atmosphere."
Bush's desire for her 22-night residency to be without the sea of phones, cameras and tablets to ensure she could have "contact" with her audience was also strictly adhered to, with a pre-show announcement requesting everyone turn off their mobiles and security guards patrolling throughout the performance.
Fans were said to be respectful of Bush's wishes, with Ben McMullen saying: "I didn't see a single phone, everyone was so respectful of it. It felt like it would be like taking your phone out in church."
Bush's 16-year-old son, Bertie, was also a constant presence during the show, singing in the backing choir always on stage, taking part in several of the acting scenes and even singing his own solo.
Bush paid tribute to him early on in the performance and, writing in the programme, said: "Without my son Bertie this would never have happened.
"Without his encouragement and enthusiasm, particularly in the early stages when I was very frightened to commit to pushing the 'go' button, I'm sure I would have backed out. Throughout he has been my chief consultant, my editor, my confidant."
Rob Hunter said this intimate family connection on the stage had elevated Bush's performance further.
He said: "I found it very touching that she had her son on stage from the point of view that this woman in the eyes of the world has been so inaccessible.
"But having her child on the stage beside her and the way they interacted, she suddenly seemed exposed and very accessible and it felt like a very warm-hearted moment.
"And that connection came across on the stage. And she seemed spellbound by how people responded to her and how many people love her."
Fans from as far away as the US and Australia flocked to attend the opening concert.
Chad Siwek, who flew from Los Angeles, described standing at the venue on Tuesday night as "like a dream. Kate Bush just means everything to me, she cares more about her work and pleasing her fans than the commercial value or just making money off it."
He paused as his voice broke with emotion, before adding: "I'm sorry, I'm getting choked up but it's just my whole life I've been a huge Kate Bush fan."
Daren Taylor, drummer for band The Airborne Toxic Event, had taken a similar journey to make it to the opening night.
"I've flown in from Los Angeles today just to see Kate Bush," he said.
"It's not easy to express what Kate Bush means to me. Her music touches me, and I'm sure everybody here, in very unique ways. I don't think any two people will tell you the same thing that her music means to them."
For Patrick Bastow, the show was "unlike anything else I have seen. It was a mixture of a West End show and a rock concert.
"The attention to detail that she put in was phenomenal – the lighting, the sound is like nothing I've seen.
"I thought she looked a little nervous to begin with but by the end she looked like she was loving it. The audience didn't really know how to take it. She sang beautifully, she moved gracefully."
He added: "All the theatrics of The Ninth Wave part of the show really brought the songs to life. And then just seeing her on the piano, which I had been hoping for, that was a wonderful moment.
"Interestingly, she did do some new things and she did re-interpret the songs and put new music into the show. Maybe that's why she didn't want photographs and camera phones because she's done something so different.
"I didn't see one person lift a phone. They say 35 years ago that Kate Bush moved rock concerts on, well she's done it again I think”.
Whether you were a regular fan, journalist, musician or anyone else, you were there for the same reason as everyone else: to show love and appreciation for an artist who has made a big impact on your life. That sense of community and congregation. The unexpectedness of Kate Bush announcing the residency in the first place. How people did not know what to expect going in. They did not know she would mount The Ninth Wave (from 1985’s Hounds of Love) in such an epic way. That we would get to see her son Bertie take to the stage. How it would feel when you were at the venue. I am not going to include the whole piece. Perhaps some of the most accurate, potent and illuminating words written about the Before the Dawn experience, it seemed that Pete Paphides’ experiences and emotions chimed with everyone else who was there:
“In the foyer of the Hammersmith Odeon before the third of Kate Bush’s first shows in 35 years, it’s hard to make generalisations. But I’ll allow myself this one about the guy next to me who, despite never having met me, keeps passing his binoculars to me so I can see what he’s seeing. And the male twentysomething fan who will brave the tube home dressed in a white cotton tunic, black tights, face painted in white and silver, his hair wreathed by leaves and twigs. And the woman who has gone to the trouble of having a dress made just like the one festooned with clouds on the sleeve of Never For Ever. And the woman who rushes from her seat during the encore of Cloudbusting to hand a bouquet of lilies to Bush (who, in turn, receives it between bows). “Too much” is why we came. There’s nothing more antithetical to Kate Bush’s music than sensory temperance. For three hours, it’s like finding out there was a Dolby switch pressed on your consciousness. The moment that Bush, draped in black and barefoot, marches in a soft, shuffling procession, flanked by her five backing singers, you turn it off. You might need it for the journey to work on Monday, but it’s of no use to you now.
She smiles beatifically throughout Lily — the invocation to guardian angels which originally appeared on The Red Shoes and, in 2011, The Director’s Cut — apart from when attacking the top notes, which she does with the phlegm-rattling zeal of a seasoned soul singer. The love in the room is unlike anything I’ve seen at a live show. Given free rein, it would surely result in an instant surge to the stage, but it’s tempered by a deference which extends to uniform acceptance of Bush’s stated no-cameras request. As a consequence, the first three songs are bookended by a total of six standing ovations. Hounds Of Love is exactly what it should be given the passage of three decades: drummer Omar Hakim and perma-grining percussion talisman Mino Cinelu hold back the rhythmic landslide, creating space for a vocal pitched closer to resignation than combativeness. Eighteen months ago, when Bush’s son Bertie McIntosh (then 15) finally persuaded her to return to live performance, the first two people she pencilled in for the project were the lighting designer Mark Henderson and Hakim. Within the opening section, it isn’t hard to see why Bush wanted to assemble her band around Hakim. Running Up That Hill is every bit as unyielding and startling as it was the very first time you heard it: doubly so for the incoming storm whipped up from the back of the stage. On King Of The Mountain, he reprises the freestyling pyrotechnics of his turn on Daft Punk’s Giorgio By Moroder. Everything about King Of The Mountain, in fact, is astonishing. Bush navigates her way around the song’s rising sense of portent with a mixture of fear and fascination that puts you in mind of professional storm chasers. When they’re not singing, her backing vocalists dance as if goading some unholy denouement into action, before finally Cinelu steps into a misty spotlight. On the end of a rope which he demonically twirls ever faster is some sort of primitive wooden cyclone simulator.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is that this — King Of The Mountain and the preceding songs — is a preamble to the first act. In 1985, as Hounds Of Love was being readied for release, Kate Bush sketched out a putative film script for The Ninth Wave — the 30 minute suite of songs, which shared its title with Ivan Aivanovsky’s 1850 painting of a group castaways clinging to floating debris as dawn approaches. But, as she writes in the programme, “In many ways, it lends itself better to the medium of stage.” She’s referring to the conceit at the heart of The Ninth Wave and, yes, she’s right. What would have been impossibly confusing on film is only occasionally confusing when played out on stage. On a screen, we see the stranded protagonist in her lifejacket in palpable distress, relying on scenes from her past and future to keep her from slipping under. On stage we see those feverish visions played out before us. If Bush’s distress looks unsettlingly convincing on the screen, that might be because the 20ft deep tank at Pinewood Studios in which she had to be immersed for several hours pushed her to method actor extremes: singing live whilst gradually succumbing to a fever which was later diagnosed by her GP as “mild hypothermia.”
With the stage bathed in low blue light, Bush cuts a disembodied presence on screen, singing And Dream Of Sheep, all but unreachable to the singers who impassively assume the role of Greek chorus to her plight. What ensues is heartbreaking, frightening and funny, often at the same time. There’s the seismic din of a helicopter provided some huge piece of cuboid god-knows-what machinery which glides over the audience with searchlights blazing (the voice of its pilot supplied by Bush’s brother Paddy). There’s a blizzard of tissue-thin pieces of ochre paper bearing the excerpt from Tennyson’s The Holy Grail which is also featured on the sleeve of Hounds Of Love. There’s a deliberately mundane sitting-room exchange between her husband (Bob Harms) and son (McIntosh) about a burnt toad-in-the-hole to which she can only bear witness in ghost form (Waatching You Watching Me). Then, of course, there are the fish people: skeletal fish-headed creatures that lurk elegantly around the action. That, in 2011, Bush called her record label Fish People — predating the first meetings about these shows by two years — suggests that these guys were probably present on Bush’s very first sketches for The Ninth Wave 30 years ago.
At times you imagine every prog-rock star who reluctantly had their wings clipped by punk feeling a sense of unalloyed vindication at the scenes being played out here. After the release of 2011’s 50 Words For Snow, I interviewed Kate Bush and asked her about recent musical inspirations. I figured that someone must surely have played her Joanna Newsom’s Ys whilst exclaiming, “Look! A kindred spirit!” (they hadn’t) But actually, she probably has no need of new input. It’s increasingly apparent that Bush’s musical hard drive was full by the time she made her first record. As Watching You Without Me modulates into Jig Of Life, I try and pin the musical sense of deja vu to an actual memory. Finally it comes to me. This sort of spectral somnambulant ceilidh was precisely the sort of thing which arty stoners in the early 70s — arty stoners such as Bush’s older brothers — would have sought out in the albums of Harvest Records outliers Third Ear Band. Except, of course, the one thing that Third Ear Band lacked was a cosmically attuned sensualist to act as a smiling Trojan horse to her own avant-garde sensibilities. And so, here we are. A generation of pop fans suckered by Wuthering Heights, Wow and Babooshka. And we’re watching four people in fish heads wheel in a floating bit of rig illuminated by red flares. In a moment, she will climb aboard before the fish people claim her, carrying her aloft away from the sea, and among us through the aisle before, finally, The Morning Fog. This is perhaps as beautiful as anything we have seen up to this point. Dancers and singers take their partners. and, bathed in golden light, Bush exchanges glances with her fellow players. Everything you have seen in the preceding hour is the result of more than a year of drilled, deliberate meticulous planning. And yet, on the back of such vertiginous terrain, Bush gazes at her fellow performers with the relieved air of a trainee pilot who had to land a Boeing Airbus after the rest of the cabin crew had passed out.
It could end there. It really could. That was a whole show, right there. But on the other side of the intermission, it’s all change once again. Comprising the second half of 2005’s Aerial, A Sky Of Honey emerged from Bush’s fascination with the connection between light and birdsong and then, as she puts it: “Us, observing nature. Us, being there.” Without realising it, with those last three words, Bush may have propelled us to the essence of our connection with much of her most affecting music (The Sensual World, Breathing, Snowflake). The Ninth Wave is really about the miraculous, ungraspable nature of human consciousness. And, if the subtext — intended or otherwise — of that piece is that only we humans can reflect upon what it means to die, then the subtext of A Sky Of Honey is that only we humans can reflect upon what a gazillion-to-one miracle it is to be alive. Us, observing nature. Us, being there.
Up on stage, it’s left to Bush’s son — playing the part of the painter, a role assumed on the album recording by Rolf Harris) — to be that observer. But before all of that, it’s just Bush at the piano for the first time, encircled on the left hand of the stage by her band, with the right side left empty for the ensuing action. Controlled by its puppeteer, a black-clad Ben Thompson, a wooden artist’s model — perhaps the size of a ten year-old child — walks inquisitively around the stage during Prologue until finally it alights upon the singer. As Bush sings “What a lovely afternoon” and the drums come in, it appears startled. All the time, the backdrop shows birds in slow-motion, while the backing singers (increasingly, given what they have to do, “backing singers” doesn’t begin to cover what they have to do, but “chorus” is unhelpfully ambiguous) move gingerly around each other in painters’ garb. A slowly moving sky descends to fill the space on the right. The palette-wielding McIntosh dabs at the canvas with a brush, attracting the curiosity of the wooden model. “Piss off! I’m trying to work here,” he exclaims, while his mum — dressed in an Indian-style black and gold outfit — moves around him in slow motion.
If it’s surprising to see McIntosh rise to the challenges set before him so fearlessly — “A kind of ‘Pan’ figure” — it’s worth keeping in mind that he’s already the same age that his mum was when she started recording her first album. In a voice at least two octaves deeper than the one he used for Snowflake on 50 Words For Snow, Bush’s son bemoans his rain-splattered work on The Painter’s Link (“It’s raining/What has become of my painting?/All the colours are running”). But here, as on the record, there are no mistakes, just serendipity. The colours run and dusk magically materialises; the redemptive downpour brings all the musicians to the front for almost Balearic, flamenco-flecked stampede of Sunset. As a succession of joyous falsetto “Prrrrrraaah!!”s attest, the moments that see Bush at her most unguarded are the ones where she gets to commune with the twenty-odd players around her.
From hereon in, the Aerial segment of the show — co-directed, as is The Ninth Wave, by former RSC honcho Adrian Noble — is an object lesson in sustained rapture. No less a highlight than it is on the record, Somewhere In Between sees its creator transported by the power of her own song and, in doing so, transports you to the fleeting magic-hour reverie it celebrates. There is also a new song, Tawny Moon, for which McIntosh confidently takes centre stage and climaxes by effectively acting as ringmaster to the huge full moon rising from the back of the stage.
Few musicians are more adept at conveying a sense that something good is going to happen than Kate Bush. We know what Nocturn sounds like on record, so a certain sense of expectation is unavoidable. On either side of the stage, we see arrows fired from bows into the firmament, where they turn into birds. For reasons I couldn’t honestly fathom, we see the painter’s model sacrificing a seagull to no discernible end. Over a rising funk that defies physical resistance, Bush makes a break for transcendence and effectively brings us with her: “We stand in the Atlantic/We become panoramic,” she sings, with arms aloft. Like the rest of the band, guitarist David Rhodes has donned bird mask. As Bush is presented with vast black wings, she and Rhodes circle elegantly around each other, before finally, briefly, she takes flight.
Just two songs by way of an encore — which, after what has preceded them, seems generous: Among Angels from 2011’s Fifty Words For Snow is performed solo at the piano, before the entire band return for Cloudbusting. Once again, we’re reminded that, almost uniquely among her peers, Kate Bush goes to extraordinary lengths in search of subjects that hold up that magic of living up to the light for just long enough to think that we can reach it. But, like the beaming 56 year-old mother singing, “The sun’s coming out”, that too dissipates into memory. And, after another 19 performances, what will happen? In another 35 years, Kate Bush will be 91. Even if she’s still here, we might not be. Perhaps that’s why tonight, she gave us everything she had. And somehow, either in spite or because of that, we still didn’t want to let her go”.
There are some reviews for Before the Dawn. Getting new perspective and insight. Super Deluxe Edition predicted Kate Bush would release the Blu-Ray/DVD of the concert footage as her next project (in 2015). That sadly has not materialised. Bush revealed the terror she felt when she stepped onto that stage. She needn’t have worried! The hope among fans is that Before the Dawn is not the last time we will see Kate Bush on the stage – though it may well be. It is clear that the fans’ reaction to Before the Dawn moved Kate Bush:
“She continued: "It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I loved the whole process. Particularly putting the band, the Chorus and the team together and watching it all evolve. It really was the ultimate combination of talent and artists, both from the music business and the theatre world. I never expected everyone in the team to be so lovely and we all grew very close. We became a family and I really miss them all terribly."
Despite a rabid fanbase rapturously awaiting the performances after all these years, with the "Before the Dawn" experience marking the first proper shows from the singer since her 1979 "Tour of Life," Bush was surprised at the response she got from the audiences at the Hammersmith Apollo.
"I was really delighted that the shows were received so positively and so warmly but the really unexpected part of it all was the audiences. Audiences that you could only ever dream of," she wrote
"One of the main reasons for wanting to perform live again was to have contact with that audience. They took my breath away. Every single night they were so behind us. You could feel their support from the minute we walked on stage. I just never imagined it would be possible to connect with an audience on such a powerful and intimate level; to feel such, well quite frankly, love. It was like this at every single show”.
It is not too big a statement to say that Before the Dawn was life-changing. Whether you were a fan from the very start in the 1970s or were fairly new to her by 2014, everyone was bonded and stunned by what they saw! I will finish with a from some of the well-known faces who were at Before the Dawn:
“The 56-year-old announced that she would be performing 22-dates at the iconic London venue, and when the tickets went on sale, they sold out within 15 minutes.
Lily Allen and Gemma Arterton were all there for the opening night, while it was also rumoured that Madonna, Bjork and David Bowie were also in attendance.
The Hard Out Here hitmaker posted a tweet ahead of the concert, writing: "K8 [bush symbol] @ Eventim Apollo."
While writer Caitlin Moran, who was joined by her pal Lauren Laverne, tweeted: "Hammersmith, 15 minutes before Kate Bush comes on . Mood: Christmas like hysteria."
Poor Culture Club star Boy George couldn’t make the show tonight, as he sadly tweeted: "Had to miss Kate Bush tonight but hopefully I will catch one of the shows."
While Great British Bake Off host Sue Perkins tweeted: “Ooh, yeah, you're amazing! We think you're incredible..' Kate Bush, I love you. Good luck tonight xxx”
On 26th August, we celebrate ten years of one of the greatest opening nights in any residency or tour. It came with such hype and expectation. Kate Bush did not disappoint. She could never disappoint. She exceeded everyone’s expectations. Many hope that Before the Dawn would lead to more live work. I think that Before the Dawn was an ending. We might never see something like it…
EVER again.