FEATURE:
With a New Decade…
Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Four
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ONE is of Kate Bush’s…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
best albums turns forty-four on 8th September. The wonderful Never for Ever might be known to many because of its three singles. There was Breathing, Babooshka and Army Dreamers. It was, in some ways, an album of transition for Kate Bush. If it was not quite a full move into the sort of layered and experimental production we would see from The Dreaming (1982) onwards, there was this bridge between the sort of sound and material that was present on her first two albums – 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart – and what would come. Rather than it being unsatisfactory, it was a big step from her first two albums. Kate Bush was unhappy about working again with Andrew Powell (who produced the first two album) so worked with Jon Kelly. However, come The Dreaming, he would be let go. This being Kate Bush, she would cut ties in the nicest and most polite way possible! After 1979’s The Tour of Life, there was new energy and ambitious to be explored in the studio. For a usual and comprehensive guide, I am going to refer to Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, as there are some great pages written about Never for Ever. As it is forty-four on 8th September, it is important to discuss the album. Although AIR was still a studio in the mix, this was the first time Bush was recording at Abbey Road Studios. It was a fresh environment. This new decade meant that there was almost a new phase. Everything starting again. Though not quite. EMI were keen for Kate Bush to write four new songs before Christmas 1979. Rather than dip into her older songs, this was the first album where we were getting fresh songs. Bush writing new tracks and not dipping into her archive.
I guess there could have been a few songs where there were early sketches and this was them being built on, though Never for Ever is marked by this sense of a new chapter. Bush did not have a huge amount of time, though there was opportunity to write new material. The album’s title is a reference to conflicting emotions, good and bad, which pass. Bush stated that "we must tell our hearts that it is 'never for ever', and be happy that it's like that”. There was an interesting first revelation that is Babooshka. That song being written and shown to Jon Kelly. I shall come back to that. First, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia collated interviews where Bush spoke about Never for Ever. I have chosen some to highlight:
“Now, after all this waiting it is here. It’s strange when I think back to the first album. I thought it would never feel as new or as special again. This one has proved me wrong. It’s been the most exciting. Its name is Never For Ever, and I’ve called it this because I’ve tried to make it reflective of all that happens to you and me. Life, love, hate, we are all transient. All things pass, neither good [n]or evil lasts. So we must tell our hearts that it is “never for ever”, and be happy that it’s like that!
The album cover has been beautifully created by Nick Price (you may remember that he designed the front of the Tour programme). On the cover of Never For Ever Nick takes us on an intricate journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people and things with our desires and problems. These black and white thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it’s for you to bring them to life.
Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980
Each song has a very different personality, and so much of the production was allowing the songs to speak with their own voices – not for them to be used purely as objects to decorate with “buttons and bows”. Choosing sounds is so like trying to be psychic, seeing into the future, looking in the “crystal ball of arrangements”, “scattering a little bit of stardust”, to quote the immortal words of the Troggs. Every time a musical vision comes true, it’s like having my feet tickled. When it works, it helps me to feel a bit braver. Of course, it doesn’t always work, but experiments and ideas in a studio are never wasted; they will always find a place sometime.
I never really felt like a producer, I just felt closer to my loves – felt good, free, although a little raw, and sometimes paranoia would pop up. But when working with emotion, which is what music is, really, it can be so unpredictable – the human element, that fire. But all my friends, the Jons, and now you will make all the pieces of the Never For Ever jigsaw slot together, and It will be born and It will begin Breathing.
Going back to the early sketches and ideas for Never for Ever. Just after Christmas 1979, Jon Kelly was invited to Kate Bush’s flat where she played him Babooshka. The first demo of the song dates back to that time. It is Kate Bush at a piano with her voice. A lead vocal and a harmony vocal. Quite Blues-like and (Bob) Dylan-esque, she would then add an electronic drum. Seeing that song in its infancy would have been fascinating. Jon Kelly heard the piano motif and knew that Babooshka was going to be a hit. That it has this potential. There was a bit of a conflict with this song. The fact it was a natural hit meant she might have to do Top of the Pops. Having endured it rather than enjoyed it when Wuthering Heights was top of the charts and she never really had a good experience, together with promotion and interviews, there was this fear. Recording at Abbey Road’s Studio 2 in January 1980, they spent days in there. Jon Kelly and Kate Bush, as producers, hunting for that perfect sound. Different bass players used. The first album where Bush was casting players and the production was different. Rather than someone saying that the sound was right and sticking with the one player, Bush was not in control and she wanted her songs to sound like she had imagined. Not sit back and let someone else shape then. I am going to explore other sides of Never for Ever in another feature.
However, this is a more general look at a really important and brilliant album. Richard Burgess, who was a player on Never for Ever, explained that Bush and Kelly would experiment and try ideas. Sometimes it did not work, but there was this sense of seeing where something would go. The Fairlight CMI, introduced to Kate Bush by Peter Gabriel, was used on Never for Ever. It was not the most user-friendly piece of kit. Although there were limitations and Bush would have liked to have used it more – a lot of the noises and affects were ‘flown in’ by Jon Kelly using a tape recorder -, it was a process where everyone took turns and used the Fairlight CMI. The noise of doors opening and closing. Vocal effects. It was brought into Abbey Road Studios on four occasions. Although a bit bruised in transportation, this fascinating portal of creativity opened Kate Bush’s mind. Bush could now add anything. Putting the future into nostalgia, to paraphrase her words. No longer having to manipulate her voice to her piano to get an effect, there was now this arsenal of options for her to explore. In the second feature for Never for Ever, I will look at some of the songs and the chart success the album enjoyed. One thing is notable about Never for Ever arriving in 1980. It was a time when many artists were brining politics into their music. Although Bush wrote Army Dreamers and Breathing – the former about a young man senselessly being killed in a war and this sense of it being so futile; the latter a foetus’s perspective of nuclear war incoming and that feeling of doom and maybe being protected in the womb -, Never for Ever was not a reactionary album. Danny Baker interviewed Bush in 1979 and there was this condescending attitude. Why she was not writing about politics. His take on her music was that it was hippy-dippy and insignificant.
Rather than react by filing the album with political themes and almost having this unnatural and knee-jerk reaction, Bush was busy working on what she wanted to write. When race riots happening during Margaret Thatcher’s rule of Britain, Bush was ensconced in the studio. Not that she was oblivious to the troubles. She was concerned, but she was not an artist looking out at the struggles – the Miners’ Strike and the Falklands War – and was putting all of that into the music. Her heart and imagination were still at the controls. Music that was much richer and more fascinating that a lot of the dead-ahead and straighter songs from 1980. That is what makes Never for Ever so special and unique As opposed to it being Bush cause-hopping or this being an album about what was happening in Britain at the time, which would have made it sound dated now, this was Bush doing what she wanted to do. As Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, Bush was a “metaphysical poet in a roomful of hollering three-chord revolutionaries”. The songs on Never for Ever are open and unguarded. They are different and at odds with what was around then. As such, Bush found herself open to press ridicule or some rather sniffy encounters. This got to her. The frustration of dealing with the press. The first album where Bush’s songs were for the whole world and not just for herself.
Never for Ever turns forty-four on 8th September. There is so much to explore and discuss. It is clear that this was a new step and move towards more of where Kate Bush wanted to go. Not quite a complete metamorphism, this was a shedding of the old way of working. Writing at the end of the 1970s and releasing the album in the first year of the 1980s, it could have been a failure. Some critics dismissed the albums and felt it was insignificant in the modern times. Never for Ever did get to number one and gained some amazing reviews. However, I still think that it has remained underrated and misunderstood. Not seen as important and substantial by many, we need to show Never for Ever some love. What I wanted to explore in this feature is how Bush had this new start. A new studio and technology. How it was a chance for her to take the reigns and make her work more personal and true. Not having to ally with a producer that shared a different vision. Forty-four years after its release, Never for Ever remains so impactful and fascinating. You can really hear the differences and evolution. Bush was still twenty-one when she started recording Never for Ever. It is amazing to hear her confidence and ambition! Abbey Road Studios and the Fairlight EMI had helped open up all worlds of possibilities for Kate Bush. Her third studio album changed how she worked. Her mind was now open. From 1980’s masterpiece onwards, there really was…
NO turning back.