FEATURE:
We Paint the Penguins Pink
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pierre Terrasson
Kate Bush’s Production Doubts and Her Role as a Visual Auteur
_________
I am…
combining a couple of subjects relating to Kate Bush but also circling back to a topic that I recently covered, in addition to leaving the door open to expand more on the subject of Kate Bush’s videos. I don’t think I can quite cover it in this feature. I am struck to write about her production doubts and her growing role as a music video visionary. How they sort of coincided. I am returning to Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. There is a section that takes us back to 1982’s The Dreaming. There is a nice little detail I was not aware of that is a slight tangent to start on. How one of the songs, Leave It Open, left some fans guessing. As to what Kate Bush sings at the end of the song. It was a bit of a competition. Bush set the challenge. She went with a commonly held theory that it “we paint the penguins pink”. She had to reveal that the actual words were “we let the weirdness in”. She signed off one of her fan newsletters with those words, thus letting fans know of the exact wording. It is relevant to discuss The Dreaming. There was this dynamic. EMI not sure Kate Bush was ready to helm her own album. Even though she co-produced 1980’s Never for Ever and it went to number one, there was not this great confidence in her production skills. Bush was adamant that she was going to produce her fourth studio album. Another step towards the autonomy that she wanted from the start of her career. The start of recording was quite fraught. In the close and overcast summer of 1981, Bush was holed in the studio. Riots were breaking out up and down the country, fuelled by the controversial stop-and-search policy from the Metropolitan Police. Bush acknowledged the un-summer-like weather and wrote to her fans hoping that everyone was okay. Recognising how things were changing, that was very much the case with regards her career.
I have tackled this subject before but will come at it from a different angle. How doubts around Bush’s production prowess happened at a time when she was broadening her scope and vision. Her videos becoming more cinematic. Her music going deeper. If EMI wanted something fairly commercial that would sell and keep her in the critics’ good books, Bush was thinking of taking her work somewhere else. Rather than it being a kick against expectations and what people wanted, instead this was someone who was working in a less rigid way than before. This meant various studios were used. Her sound more layered and complex. It was not only record label people asking if Bush should be producing her work. Even people she had worked with for years were doubting her and trying to put caution in her mind. It meant that Bush was doubting herself. Something that would be realised and at its apex for 1985’s Hounds of Love, that combination of Bush’s role as a producer and making her music more visual. Like very short films and less like ordinary and simple Pop songs. It is understandable there was some reservation and hesitation from the label and those close to Kate Bush. However, for all the care and hope she was not being set up for a fall, Bush did push ahead. She let the weirdness in! Even if there were doubts in Bush’s mind, she committed a lot of money to making The Dreaming an album that stood out from anything else she did previously. Investing thousands of pounds buying her own Fairlight CMI, she was also in awe of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s 1981 album, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. I’d like to think that the fact the album had the word ‘Bush’ in it spoke to her in a personal way! That album, featured ‘found sounds’ vocals including a talk show host, a preacher and a radio D.J. You can feel the influence run through The Dreaming. How different vocal sounds and characters are woven through the songs. Bush, as a producer, approach sound and dynamics in a new way.
Bush had also learned a lot working with Peter Gabriel on his third solo studio album from 1980. Taking notes about the studio and technology. It was a strange new way of working. Without anyone producing alongside her, everything was on Kate Bush. At all times, there must have been niggles and doubts. How those words from people were bouncing around her head. When you think about Kate Bush, do we really talk about her role as a producer?! It is something I want to keep exploring and highlight. Although Bush did have some reservations and perhaps there was some retroactive ‘vindication’ from those who felt she was maybe out of her depth – The Dreaming came two years after her previous albums, the singles did not place high and the album sales much lower than for The Kick Inside -, she was opening her horizons and was not far from her acclaimed masterpiece, Hounds of Love. It must have been a challenging time for Bush producing alone. That thing about bouncing ideas off of someone else. Though Del Palmer (who was her boyfriend at the time and played on the album) was alongside her, she was very much in control. What is notable is how Bush as producer was very much thinking in this more ambitious, detail-focused way. Thinking of how to add to a song without overloading things. One example was a happy accident. Bush arriving home one day and pressing ‘play’ on her answer phone. It had broken so that only the end of messages were being played, so what we got was a lot of ‘byes’ and variations. Bush used these at the end of All the Love. It is haunting and moving at the same time. I wanted to keep the focus on The Dreaming. I will explore other albums in future pieces. Perhaps the doubts about her experience as a producer spurred her on. Bush was paying a lot of her own money so it is understandable that she wanted control. Bush was working between multiple studios. At one time, used all three studios at Abbey Road to get the effects she was looking for. The results were incredible. I keep tussling about my top-three Kate Bush albums. The Kick Inside is always first and Hounds of Love second. I sort of think Never for Ever should be third but the more I hear The Dreaming, the more it blows me away! Think of songs like Get Out of My House and listen to the production. How idiosyncratic and effecting the song is.
If the singles from The Dreaming did not fare well, Bush was getting more invested in directing. She had assisted with video direction to this point, though it would not be long until she directed her videos. Hounds of Love’s title track was the first video she directed solo. She was very involved with the look and feel of the visuals for The Dreaming’s videos. Paul Henry directed the video for The Dreaming. Bush and her dancers performing on a floor covered over with builders’ sand. There were polystyrene rocks and a sun and moon made of carboard. Bush in a silver-white jumpsuit. The scale and visual arrest of the videos matching Bush’s details and production. How much she put into the songs. It called for videos that were more widescreen and akin to short films. Even if The Dreaming’s video was a day’s shoot, it is affecting. Some of the shots have not dated well, though the use of long shots and not the usual quick cuts and close-up that you get from Pop videos was forward-thinking and bold. Something that was a mixed blessing. The fact the single did not do well can’t really be attributed to the video. However, some affects used were quite futuristic. Bush and dancers pulling on a rope that was actually a green laser. Bush also summoning birds to fly with her hands. It was quite a smooth shoot. The was a bit more rigorous and problematic. Bush favouring long shots and not keen on close-ups. She was told to reign it in for the next video. That was for There Goes a Tenner. The Dreaming’s video had a grubby look so, to nod to that for the next video, Bush put dirt on her face. Like it was a continuation of that video. Perhaps weaving stories together to try and form a bigger whole. The budget had increased so the video could be more ambitious. One of the biggest regrets is that the videos were not seen that widely as the singles were not big hits. However, what was clear is there was this connection between the videos and album production. Bush wanted to be more involved and was thinking big. Bush also had a vision of what her album covers had to look. This idea of her as a visual auteur quite deserved. Bush was also directing whilst on the set of There Goes a Tenner. Passing instructions around that often clashed with Paul Henry’s vision.
One reason why she stopped working with director Keith MacMillan (Keef) was that he could be quite awkward to work with. I also think Bush wanted to widen her field and go in a different direction. Not that Paul Henry was difficult to work with. Though it is telling that the next video for The Dreaming, Suspended in Gaffa, used all of Paul Henry’s crew expect him! This takes me back to initial doubts. Those thinking Bush maybe should not produce. Considering the look of her videos and how the album was successful and sounds amazing, were these justified?! There would have been some cause for more caution when Bush made it clear she would continue to produce alone. Nobody could predict Hounds of Love and its genius! One thing that stands out is that detail coming in. How her music was getting more complex. More technology at her fingers meant she was moving away from the sounds of The Kick Inside and Lionheart (both released in 1978). I am going to return to The Dreaming for another feature soon. One that talks about the promotion Bush undertook for that. However, after that, I am going to look at her career more generally and look at her early career and also return to Hounds of Love. The Dreaming was Kate Bush trying to assert more control. Silence those doubting her. There is no denying the influence of The Dreaming, even though it is not discussed much. In 2012, when writing about The Dreaming on its thirtieth anniversary, The Quietus highlighted the brilliance and impact of her 1982 album:
“By the ‘Hounds Of Love’ promo she was directing herself. Another area the "shyest megalomaniac" wrestled control of. ‘The Ninth Wave’ was another tribute to her imaginative powers, the song suite being the sexy, acceptable face of prog rock. She even had a hit in America. Although she had to change the name from ‘A Deal With God’ to ‘Running Up That Hill’.
But it was The Dreaming that lay the groundwork. It ignited US critical interest in her (including the hard-assed Robert Christgau and the burgeoning college radio scene finally gave Bush an outlet there. Hounds Of Love, remains the acme of this singular talent’s achievements. It uses ethnic instrumentation while sounding nothing like the world music that would be popularized through the 80s. It is a record largely constructed with cutting edge technology that eschews the showroom dummy bleeps associated with synth-pop. At the time, she talked of using technology to apply "the future to nostalgia", an interesting reverse of Bowie’s nostalgic Berlin soundtrack for a future that never came. Like Low, The Dreaming is Bush’s own "new music night and day" a brave volte face from a mainstream artist. It remains a startlingly modern record too, the organic hybridization, the use of digital and analogue techniques, its use of modern wizadry to access atavistic states (oddly, Rob Young’s fine portrait of the singer in Electric Eden only mentions this album in passing).
For such an extreme album, its influence has been far-reaching. ABC, then in their Lexicon Of Love prime, named it as one of their favourites, as did Bjork whose similar use of electronics to convey the pantheistic seems directly descended from The Dreaming. Even The Cure’s Disintegration duplicates the track arrangement on the sleeve and the request that ‘this album was mixed to be played loud’. ‘Leave It Open’‘s vari-speed vocals even prefigure the art-damaged munchkins of The Knife vocal arsenal. Field Music/The Week That Was arrayed themselves with sonics that seem heavily indebted to Bush’s work here. Graphic novelist Neil Gaiman even had a character sing lyrics from the title track in his The Sandman series. John Balance of post-industrialists Coil confessed that the album’s songs were all ideas that he later tried to write. But Bush got there first. And The Dreaming remains a testament to the exhilarating joy of "letting the weirdness in”.
I am fascinated by that pre-The Dreaming period. When Bush was being asked whether she should produce alone. How that then led her to different studios and there was this expansion of her sound. Her incredible vision as a producer resulted in a masterpiece. Alongside this, Bush was becoming more visually involved. Wanting to direct her own videos. Whether trying to provide a point to herself, others or this was a natural development, it laid the foundation for Hounds of Love. The Dreaming should not be seen as a lesser Hounds of Love. Although album was expensive to make and was not a huge commercial success, it is one of her richest and most important albums. Even if Kate Bush let the weirdness in, it proved to be…
THE right decision.