FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Dreaming at Forty-Two
Technological Leaps and Invention
_________
I am looking forward to…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport
marking the forty-second anniversary of one of Kate Bush’s best albums. On 13th September, 1982, she released The Dreaming. Recorded between September 1980 and May 1982, this was Bush’s most intensely focused period of work to date. Her most ambitious, focused, layered and detailed album, it was her producing solo for the first time. As such, this was Bush’s most personal, committed and revealing album to that point. I love the fact that she had this desire to really put herself into the album. Discovering the Fairlight CMI during recording of Never for Ever, it was very much at the forefront of The Dreaming. Opened to its endless possibilities, I want to go more into this side of the album for the first of a couple of features to mark The Dreaming’s forty-second anniversary. I think that Peter Gabriel’s influence was a big reason why technology and the Fairlight CMI was a big focal point. There was another artist who really opened the floodgates and started the process of The Dreaming’s recording. I shall come to that. First, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia has collated interviews where Bush spoke about The Dreaming:
“Kate about ‘The Dreaming’
After the last album, ‘Never For Ever’, I started writing some new songs. They were very different from anything I’d ever written before – they were much more rhythmic, and in a way, a completely new side to my music. I was using different instruments, and everything was changing; and I felt that really the best thing to do would be to make this album a real departure – make it completely different. And the only way to achieve this was to sever all the links I had had with the older stuff. The main link was engineer Jon Kelly. Everytime I was in the studio Jon was there helping me, so I felt that in order to make the stuff different enough I would have to stop working with Jon. He really wanted to keep working with me, but we discussed it and realised that it was for the best.
‘The Dreaming’. Poppix (UK), Summer 1982
Yes, it’s very important for me to change. In fact, as soon as the songs began to be written, I knew that the album was going to be quite different. I’d hate it, especially now, if my albums became similar, because so much happens to me between each album – my views change quite drastically. What’s nice about this album is that it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. For instance, the Australian thing: well, I wanted to do that on the last album, but there was no time. There are quite a few ideas and things that I’ve had whizzing around in my head that just haven’t been put down. I’ve always wanted to use more traditional influences and instruments, especially the Irish ones. I suppose subconsciously I’ve wanted to do all this for quite some time, but I’ve never really had the time until now.
I can understand the impetus for Kate Bush to focus on a studio album following 1980’s Never for Ever. About four months passed between the release of Never for Ever and her starting work on The Dreaming. It was quite a tough time for Bush. Considering the fact she started working on Never for Ever not long after 1979’s The Tour of Life and the same short period of time between Never for Ever coming out and beginning her fourth album, there was not a huge amount of gas in the tank. That period after Never for Ever was quite empty and unusual. A sort of introverted depression, she would try and sit at the piano to write and nothing would come out. Buying a property in Eltham, London, after Never for Ever’s release, it was a cosy if not luxurious part of London not far from the family home at East Wickham Farm. That combination of being close to the comfort of home but in her own space, it was a sensible base. Her brother Paddy moved in next door. There was family and support around her. Thanks to Graeme Thomson and his book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, for being a guide and inspiration for this feature. Bush installed her own eight-track demo studio in her house. With equipment including a Yamaha CS-80 and piano around her, it was a creative hub. If ideas for Houidini and The Dreaming were developed using Never for Ever, it was Stevie Wonder who helped end a sort of temporary writer’s block. When Kate Bush and Del Palmer saw him perform in September 1980 at Wembley Arena, Bush was awed by his sheer energy and stamina. That electricity inspired her to write Sat in Your Lap.
The Fairlight CMI was pivotal when it came to The Dreaming’s palette. Hiring one from Syco Systems to start, she then invested in her own by the end of The Dreaming. She was not alone when it came to embracing that technology. In the early-1980s, there were a wave of Synth-Pop artists who were melding electronics and keyboards. Technology and synthesisers. This futuristic sound. Something new and exciting. Steve Lillywhite, Peter Gabriel’s producer at the time, and Hugh Padgham, who was an engineer on The Dreaming, knew that the friendship between Gabriel and Bush was strong. They connected and were pulled together during a benefit concert for Bill Duffield during The Tour of Life. Bush featured on Peter Gabriel’s third self-titled album in 1980. Inspired by working at his Townhouse studio space and seeing the technology play there, you can feel how that pushed her during The Dreaming. Bush and Gabriel did try and write a song together, Ibiza, but it was not satisfactory or finished. The consoles, drumming sounds, acoustics and sounds being created at Townhouse piqued Bush’s imagination and interest. It was her own creativity and curiosity that makes The Dreaming so immersive and original. Taking that initial seed and starting point and moving in all directions. It does seem like The Dreaming was an unhappy process. Pushing her music to limits and spending tireless hours searching for all sorts of rare and unusual sounds. If a longer break after The Tour of Life might have benefited her more in terms of energy and mental health, The Dreaming would have been a very different album.
I think it is such an accomplished and stunning album because of the commitment Kate Bush put in. Her songwriting was clearly in a different place. There was fantasy, escape and a sense of the ethereal on Never for Ever. Some harder-hitting songs though, for the most part, there is a lightness and airiness to many of the songs. A higher pitch. The Dreaming is a deeper, denser and harder-hitting album. Percussion very much at the core. Angrier, more propulsive and deeper, you get a sense of Kate Bush using technology to filter a combination of restlessness, post-tour comedown; the need to prove herself as a solo producer and show that she could not be easily defined. Shake off tags ands lazy criticism being levied at her. Showing that she was a serious artist. I do love how she was very much in tune with changes at the time. How the start of the 1980s beckoned in this new technology and sound. At her house in London, it was this moment where Bush was stepping away from home and that comfort and embracing multiple studios. The Dreaming was recorded at Advision, Odyssey, Abbey Road Studios and Townhouse. With the Yamaha CS-80 playing a big part of There Goes a Tenner and the Fairlight CMI being present on nearly every track - except Pull Out the Pin and Suspended in Gaffa -, this was a turning point. The Dreaming was that transition between her piano-based first two albums, the mix of piano and technology on Never for Ever, and pushing things to new heights on 1985’s Hounds of Love. A whole new world was opened up! Kate Bush’s music so radically different to anything she had produced before. If she felt The Dreaming was an album where it seemed like she went a bit mad, it was still a chart success and gained a lot of critical acclaim – even if its singles were not really successful. The biggest takeaway from The Dreaming is Bush excelling as a producer. In terms of what she created and how she embraced and personalised technology of the time. In terms of its layers, sounds, themes and extraordinary palette, I don’t think that The Dreaming has been equalled. Turning forty-two on 13th September, I wanted to celebrate Kate Bush’s…
MAGNIFICENT fourth studio album.