FEATURE:
Do You Know What I Really Need?
Kate Bush’s Title Track, Hounds of Love, at Thirty-Nine
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I have written a lot…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush behind the camera whilst directing the video for Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
about this particular track. Every year on its anniversary, I like to return to it. As it is thirty-nine on 17th February, it is important to spend some time with the majestic and emotional Hounds of Love. New perspectives on the track. The third single from the album of the same name, it reached eighteen in the U.K. It seems outrageous that a song so iconic and genius barely cracked the top twenty! There are a few reasons why I want to write about this song once more. Apart from the anniversary angle, it is also considered by some to be Kate Bush’s finest songs. Always a tussle between this, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and maybe Wuthering Heights. I think this single also contained some of her most interesting B-sides. On the U.K. 7” was The Handsome Cabin Boy. A very different song to Hounds of Love, The Handsome Cabin Boy portrays a common sailor's dream that among the crew is a girl dressed as a boy. It is a traditional song Bush gave her spin to. Burning Bridge was the B-side of the U.S. 7”. Bush sees this song as positive and trivial, with superficial lyrics. She knew it was going to be the B-side of Cloudbusting (the second single from Hounds of Love), but I like the fact it reached the U.S. audience as the B-side for Hounds of Love. In terms of the musicians who played on Hounds of Love, it is percussion-heavy. Stuart Elliott and Charlie Morgan handling percussion duties. Kate Bush handling Fairlight CMI, Yamaha CS-80, with some stirring and beautiful cello from Jonathan Williams. Such an epic and big track that sounds like more people are on it. I would have loved to have been in the studio – her bespoke studio at East Wickham Farm – when this song was being recorded. Bush providing these simply incredible vocals. I will dive into the song in a second. In terms of its meaning, and when Bush sings about being chased by love’s hounds, it is not necessarily so they can attack her. Maybe just play with her. Her running away could be because she feels love will eat her and cause harm. Instead, she might be fearful of love in general, not realising it can be a good and positive thing.
It is perhaps no surprise Hounds of Love reached eighteen when the press reaction was quite muted. A song this good would get nothing but love today. However, in 1986, there was some ambiguity that was entirely underserved. A whiff of misogyny making their way through:
“All mock, muted orchestration and thumping mock-tribal drums, this is Kate simply being Kate, and whether that makes you want to roll around in sandpit is strictly up to you.
Jim Reid, Record Mirror, 22 February 1986
Bush has always strived to be different, but this quest has often led her astray – an olive stone in the ashtray of life. ‘Hounds of Love’ eschews the lentil nightmare as Bush reaches notes most groups never even dream of.
Ted Mico, Melody Maker, 22 February 1986”.
Before exploring Bush’s stunning title track, it is worth sourcing a couple of interview snippets where Kate Bush explored the background and meaning of Hounds of Love. A single that was unlike anything around it. Even though audiences heard it in 1985 when the Hounds of Love album was released, it gained new focus the following year:
“[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.
Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985
The ideas for ‘Hounds Of Love’, the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it’s very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive.
Because Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book about Hounds of Love came out recently, there is new perspective on Hounds of Love and its title track. I am going to utilise that for features about the album ahead of its fortieth anniversary in September. I am going to quote from the book. The song announces itself with a sample from Jacques Tourneur’s occult classic, Night of the Demon (1957). A favourite film for Kate Bush and her family, it was another case of Bush being inspired by films and T.V. for her music. I think it is a rare occasion when direct dialogue is in a song, rather than her quoting or paraphrasing. “It’s in the trees! It’s coming!” creates this mix of rush, terror and ambiguity. Is it birds that are in the trees? A dark spirit? A sense of fear and shadow that will engulf the heroine?
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Hounds of Love cover shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Whereas Hounds of Love does not follow the story of Night of the Demon or nods to it too much more, it is an inventive start. I am fascinated by the technical aspects of Hounds of Love’s title track. Its “thick layers of thudding, adrenaline-drenched beats (combined takes of double-stick drumming from both Elliott and Morgan) kick into gear”. Not only does Hounds of Love not feature any bass at all. In terms of its percussion, it does not rely on cymbals. It is more about the heaviness and punch. The toms and kick drums being utilised. With its “3 + 3 + 2 cross-rhythm loop”, you get this sense of a chase happening – the Bernard Herrmann-influenced cello stabs brings Alfred Hitchcock to mind (the video for the single, which Bush directed, was influenced by The 39 Steps (1935) – and the blood rushing. The percussion representing the hounds or the heartbeat of the heroine. The cello about the racing pulse or the terror of the hounds. Are hounds chasing Bush to kill her or are they only curious? I have not mentioned the video. The first that she directed solo, its colour palette and feel nods to classic films.
I am going to come back to Leah Kardos’s book in a second. First, this feature writes why Hounds of Love is one of the best music videos ever. It does seem like a scene from a film. It is beautifully shot and mixes dramatic chase and celebration. Dizzying and wonderful to see. It is one of my favourite Kate Bush videos:
“It’s a shot of pure adrenaline, that irrational rush of falling in love for the first time. Three whiplash minutes to express the insanity that throws into the atmosphere, leaving responsibility and real life below.
The forces of order try to capture the young lovers. A daring chase through the woods ends at a mysterious party, bursting with lights and color. The jig is up, but our heroine has a plan. Slapping handcuffs on her and her lover’s wrist, they take flight into the dark as the song spirals away.
The camerawork, the costumes, and the urgent sense of drama make this one of the best music videos of the 1980s, and all time as far as I’m concerned”.
There is a lot of tension and anxiety in the composition. The energy and pulse rate always kept high. Compared to other songs on the first side of Hounds of Love like Cloudbusting or The Big Sky, Hounds of Love has a different emotional spectrum and feel. Leah Kardos notes how a jumpiness is evident in the “lyrical prosody of the verse, which crams the line into a space of two beats (‘when-I-was-a child running-in the night’, ‘hiding-in-the dark, hiding-in-the street’”), echoing the shape and urgency of the similarly rushed ‘If-I-only could’ line from ‘Running Up That Hill”. Kate Bush did say that there was a definite masculine energy through Hounds of Love. 1982’s The Dreaming was big on percussion and a masculine sound, though it is presented and arranged in a different way. Different colours and emotions. The gated compression techniques that Kate Bush and Del Palmer (an engineer on Hounds of Love and her boyfriend at the time) learned with Hugh Padgham at the Townhouse sessions during The Dreaming. The microphones being set at a distance from the drums to pick up “an amount of indirect sound from the room, then according to Morgan, ‘compressing them like mad, really crunching the sound up … this ridiculous blanket of percussion”.
I love how Leah Kardos dissects the instrumentation and composition of Hounds of Love’s tracks. For the title cut, there is a continuous flow of Fairlight. There is a “Rage R’ looping chord sequence that differs slightly between verse (three chord, F – C/F - B♭/F) and chorus (four chords, Dm/F – F - B♭/F – C/F). The chords are bright, major, hyper-alert, with a layer of Fairlight strings pushing in the background with pin-sharp staccato. From the first chorus (at 0’40” with the words ‘Here I go’), the texture becomes pinned down by the unchanging root note, played by cellist Jonathan Williams. His rhythmic staccato obsessively saws away on the ragged edge of F, not quite a bass line and not quite a drone, but bringing in a useful amount of brusque, excitable Bernard Hermann-style horror core energy to the table”. Going deep with this track, it highlights Bush’s brilliance as a songwriter and producer. The lack of bass on Hounds of Love has been compared to Prince’s When Doves Cry – another hit without bass. The lack of low-frequency instruments “serves to highlight the elegance and power of its simple, intricately calibrated production”. Even though Hounds of Love seems terrifying and tense, there is playful energy and something lighter. The vocal inflections and lovely details Bush puts into the song – often in the background. The counterpart lines against the “THHROWW” of the shoes into the lake is hounds yelping. Bush that the yelping/yapping is the hounds of love. It is a charming and funny detail that adds some levity and humour to a film noir song! Leah Kardos commends the courage and affirmation of the lyrics. The upward inflections in some of the lyrics (“Do you know what I really need?”) is, as Kardos writes, “self-understanding”. The vocal frolicking “around the melodic space”. Details I had not noticed previously. How Bush twirls through the vocal outro. The affirmation and understanding that the hounds chasing her are there to play and are safe. Like a short film moving from a dramatic start and then ending on something positive, it is a wonderful experience! In terms of the time signature, role of percussion and cello, Bush’s vocal details and emotional palette. Such a rich sound. I often wonder what Hounds of Love would sound like with a bassline. Would it give the song more twang and a different energy? It was an inspired move by Bush as a producer to omit the bass.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Leah Kardos speculates how some of the lyrical imagery for Hounds of Love was taken from the Powell and Pressburger 1950 film, Gone to Earth. That film is based on a 1917 novel. It concerns a girl who adopts a fox and is soon pursued by a wealthy fox-hunting squire. Bush mentions a fox in the song. How she holds the fox in her hand. One that has been attacked (“I found a fox caught by dogs/He let me take him in my hands/His little heart, it beats so fast/And I'm ashamed of running away”). New depth and meaning to the lyrics. Kardos writes the following (about the novel Hounds of Love is partly influenced by: “The tragic story illustrates the dilemmas of female freedom, autonomy and entrapment within the confines of male desire”. The Hounds of Love video, as mentioned, influenced by Alfred Hitchcock. The cinema that is packed into Hounds of Love. Another song of Bush/the heroine being trapped by love. Her 1978 debut single, Wuthering Heights (from The Kick Inside). Oh to Be in Love (from the same album). Maybe even Babooshka (from 1980’s Never for Ever). If those earlier examples have a sense of teenage naivety and lack of experience, there is maturity and understanding on Hounds of Love that passion and love is complex. How we can “feel an instinct to run away from the thing we really need to face. It’s an exquisite anthem for the commitment-phobic that encapsulates something very honest about the ambivalence and intensity of romantic desire”. As it turns thirty-nine on 17th February – some sites say 24th February, 1986 but Gaffaweb says 17th February -, I wanted to revisit perhaps Kate Bush’s best song.
At that time, Bush also recorded the duet with Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up. She also abandons the plan to make a film version of The Ninth Wave side of the new album. Hounds of Love held in high esteem by critics. MOJO placing it number one last year:
“No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?” The uncertainty, however, is not reflected in the confidence – the perfect, dazzling completeness – of the song’s execution. On Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush is going at full pelt, chasing the horizon, running her vision to ground. Not really the hunted, but the hunter all along”.
The Guardian placed Hounds of Love fifth in 2018. Stereogum included in their top ten Kate Bush songs feature in 2022. Last year, Classic Pop ranked Hounds of Love eleventh in the top forty feature. In 2023, Prog included Hounds of Love in their top forty Kate Bush songs selection (“Sharon Den Adel, Within Temptation: “[This song is my favourite] vocally because Kate did things that no one had done before. It was out-of-the-ordinary, and that’s one of the key reasons that so many people fell in love with her music and her voice. And her stage presence of course, with the way she danced, was a new thing that people didn’t see much. She was free, very expressive in her movements”). In 2021, when deciding the twenty Kate Bush songs that demonstrate her brilliance, Dig! placed Hounds of Love third (“Is there a single song that captures the curious mix of anxiety and exhilaration that comes with falling in love quite as successfully as Hounds of Love? Drums thump, cellos saw incessantly and the vocals are every bit as dramatic and breathtaking as the song requires – the lyrics depict somebody who’s afraid of what falling in love might entail, and all too aware of how limiting that fear can be (“I’ve always been a coward/And I don’t know what’s good for me”), before throwing off those shackles and surrendering themselves to the “hounds”. Kate later embellished on her choice of imagery in a 1992 Radio 1 interview: “I thought Hounds Of Love and the whole idea of being chased by this love that actually gonna… when it gets you it’s just going to rip you to pieces, you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of… being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good”). It is good that The Futureheads covered Hounds of Love in 2005. That said, I do hate it and can’t see why anyone likes it, as it drains all the colour, meaning and tension from the song. None of the depth and brilliance of the original remains. The compositional details and techniques. The awesome and distinct production. The depth of Bush’s lyrics and how she brings so many emotions and conflicting thoughts to the fore. I know some fans like it. At the very least, it did means that the (vastly superior) original was discussed. A brilliant single (outrageously overlooked and under-bought) that arrived on 17th February, 1986; thirty-nine years later, we are still talking about…
THIS supreme masterpiece.