FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Nine
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin
After The Dreaming’s Release, a Chance for Refresh and Rest
_________
ONE has to sympathise with Kate Bush…
as the majority of her career – well, up until 1993’s The Red Shoes – was defined by a work schedule that would burn most people out! Even between 1985’s Hounds of Love and 1989’s The Sensual World, she was packing a lot into that time. I want to focus on Hounds of Love, as it turns thirty-nine on 16th September. I have written about this before, but the period between Kate Bush completing 1982’s The Dreaming and starting work on Hounds of Love was one where she got back a sense of calm and stability. Of course, she was working for some of this time. The Dreaming was released in September 1982. Three years later, she would release her next album. The Dreaming was a hard album to make in a lot of ways. Such an intense period of creativity and production, Bush was clearly burned out an exhausted once it was completed. There was not a tonne of promotion, though she did keep busy during 1982 and there was a lot of travel and energy expended. The period after that was quite pivotal in regards how she approached her next album. Before getting to that, this website lays out what Kate Bush’s 1982 was like:
“March 1982
Kate finishes the overdubs and goes into the final mixing of the album. This session lasts two months.
April 1982
Kate's projected book Leaving My Tracks is shelved until early 1983.
The album's release date is put back to September for marketing reasons.
May 1982
The Dreaming album is completed, after a combined work period of more than sixteen months. Kate goes off to Jamaica for a holiday.
June 1982
Kate does some session work for Zaine Griff, who with her had attended Lindsay Kemp's mime classes back in 1976. She does backing vocals on a track dedicated to Kemp, called Flowers.
The release of the single The Dreaming is delayed.
The first issue of Homeground is prepared. 25 copies are run off on an office photocopier.
July 21, 1982
At 48 hours' notice Kate is asked to take David Bowie's place in a Royal Rock Gala before HRH The Prince of Wales in aid of The Prince's Trust. She performs Wedding List live, backed by Pete Townsend and Midge Ure on guitars, Mick Karn on bass, Gary Brooker on keyboards and Phil Collins on drums.
"The best moment by far was Kate Bush's number, a storming success..." (Sunie, Record Mirror)
July 27, 1982
The single The Dreaming is finally released, to excellent music press reviews saluting Kate's creative courage. The single is stifled, however, by the radio producers and presenters, particularly on BBC Radio 1, who will not play it. The plans for a twelve-inch version are aborted.
August 1982
Despite no daytime airplay on Radio 1, The Dreaming enters the singles chart, but peaks at number 48.
September 10, 1982
Kate appears live at a special Radio 1 Roadshow from Covent Garden Piazza to be interviewed briefly about her new album.
September 13, 1982
The album The Dreaming is released. Written, arranged and produced by Kate around the rhythm box and the Fairlight CMI. The radio programmers and most of the British reviewers are mystified. The album demands more of them than they can give.
September 14, 1982
Kate makes a personal appearance at the Virgin Megastore in London's Oxford Street. The queue again exceeds 100 yards in length.
Kate proceeds by train to Manchester, using a specially cleared goods car to rehearse for a video for the next single. In Manchester Kate records an interview for the BBC TV programme The Old Grey Whistle Test for use on the 17th, when the video for The Dreaming single is shown for the first time on British TV.
September 21, 1982
Kate makes an appearance on the commercial TV programme Razzmatazz, performing There Goes a Tenner, which is to be the next single.
The album enters the charts at number 3.
Kate goes on to Europe to promote the new album. In Munich she performs The Dreaming single [on Na Sowas -- the so-called "giant iguana" version] and is presented with a Gold Record for German sales of Never For Ever during the same television appearance.
The next stop is Milan, where Kate gives the first of four performances of The Dreaming single [on the Italian television programmes Happy Magic, Zim Zum Zam, Riva del Garda, and Disco-Ring.
[She may also have visited Spain during this trip, but I have no confirmation.]
October 1, 1982
Kate appears on the BBC TV programme Saturday Superstore to be interviewed about the new album.
Kate makes personal appearances in Glasgow, Newcastle and Birmingham. The album goes Gold.
October 8, 1982
While in Birmingham, Kate records an appearance on the BBC TV programme Pebble Mill at One, being interviewed by Paul Gambaccini about the new album. The interview is screened on October 29th, and part of the video for There Goes a Tenner is shown; the only time that this video is aired on British TV.
Kate is off again to France for more TV promotion of the album [including a lip-synch performance of Suspended in Gaffa, which is released as a single in Europe; and an in-depth interview for French TV station France-Inter]
November 1982
Kate is in Germany promoting album and single. [She gives a lip-synch performance of Suspended in Gaffa, known as the "puppets" or "marionettes" version]”.
You can see that it was a very busy time! Not a lot of time for rest and any form of recovery. After putting everything into The Dreaming, something had to change. One of the reasons why Hounds of Love is such a grand, ambitious, warm and accomplished album is because Kate Bush had time to recharge. Not to overstate and be too dramatic. Kate Bush was focused and this incredible producer in the studio. Outside of it, one wonders whether she had any sort of life at all. During The Dreaming, she would exist on takeaways for months. Not spending time to cook and relax, her time was spent getting quick meals in and not spending enough time unwinding. So professional and focused in the studio, it would have been so hard for her to relax and shift after a long day (and night) of recording. When she visited Jamaica in 1982, she found the silence and peace there deafening! That was in June. This verdant paradise, it was a real culture shock. In a relationship with Del Palmer, I can only imagine how difficult it was at times. They were with each other all of the time, so there would have been moments of tension and fallout. Supporting one another, I guess their relationship at that time was more professional than it was romantic. Bush not allowing herself much time for enjoying a physical relationship. Bush really did go all-out with promotion. She was becoming so involved with music videos too. Conceiving and co-directing The Dreaming’s title track video – her first solo direction was for Hounds of Love’s title track -, she balanced all this with interviews around the world. I will come to Hounds of Love very soon. It is worth noting how there was this speculation around Kate Bush. Rumours of weight gain and a drug habit in the press. If an artist was out of the public eye for a short time, there was this rumour mill! Kate Bush was not immune.
It is important to look at the lead-up to Hounds of Love’s recording and what was happening in Kate Bush’s life. 1982 and 1983 were crucial. The move to the countryside and her childhood home meant that she could return to the past. A simpler period. She knew that something had to change. Not only did she need a healthy period of creativity and recording. Recording out of different studios around London was expensive and gruelling. Financially able to build her own studio at her family home, Bush had this incredible period where she was writing, dancing and singing. A healthier diet, the influence and benefit of her family and a rural backdrop worked wonders. Bush wrote to her fan club in the summer of 1983 and noted how the year was like 1976. Aged seventeen/eighteen, that would have been when Bush was recording demos and only a year from entering the studio to record her debut studio album, The Kick Inside. 1983 was a year where she returned to East Wickham Farm and would write all night. There was, as Graeme Thomson notes in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, similarities between Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. He built his own studio at Ashcombe House. He and Bush worked on their fifth studio albums at more or less the same time. The year Hounds of Love was released was when Gabriel was working on So. Both masterpieces and career highs. It is no coincidence that autonomy and a bespoke studio was responsible for this amazing creativity and feeling of freedom! In the barn at the farm at East Wickham, Bush was returning to a place where she played the organ after school and would later work through Lionheart (her second studio album released in 1978) with the KT Bush Band. Designing the studio and with a blueprint in mind her father, Dr. Bush, also assisted with various parts of the studio. A hands-on approach that would have been a thrill. I don’t know if any photos exist of the studio being built!
One of the most shocking results of The Dreaming’s recording and release is that EMI almost returned it. There is a clause in many record contracts that a label can turn an album away or refuse to release it. They were close to doing that with The Dreaming! It is great that there was such a quick return and new lease of inspiration for Kate Bush. Bush played new tracks to Paul Hardiman (engineer) on 6th October, 1983. He engineered the first stages of the album. Impressed by what Kate Bush had created and what she and Del Palmer were putting together. From November 1983, sessions began for Hounds of Love. That whole year was a really important one. The building of the home studio and the way Bush was writing in a new way. A familiar environment gave her the strength and comfort to create in a far less stressful and constrained way. In terms of the recording for Hounds of Love, there were not the pressures of studio bills. Everything being judged on cost rather than merit. The fact Bush might have felt stressed trying to do so much in a short time so that she did not go too far over budget. Thirty-nine years ago, Bush’s most successful album came out. I will discuss the songs and the brilliance of the album in the next feature. What I did want to start with is talking about the background. How she was working on The Dreaming and promoted it quite a bit. Maybe less intense than years past, but she was working hard to put The Dreaming out there. The impact that this had on her. 1983 was a year where so much personal development occurred. In terms of her diet, working practice and routine. It was a much more warm and safe space. A different process that resulted in a very different album. I guess there was some concession to EMI and their need for something more commercial or accessible. Little did the label know what she was working on in 1983 and soon…
WHAT she would put into the world.