FEATURE: Heavy People and Helpful Friends: Why Kate Bush’s 1978 Must Rival The Beatles’ 1967 in Terms of Workload

FEATURE:

 

 

Heavy People and Helpful Friends

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush promoting The Kick Inside in Holland on 4th April, 1978

Why Kate Bush’s 1978 Must Rival The Beatles’ 1967 in Terms of Workload

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I might have covered this before…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1967

but it is amazing thinking what Kate Bush achieved in 1978. As we are at the start of a new year, I wanted to think back forty-seven years. On 20th January, 1978, Kate Bush released her debut single, Wuthering Heights. Things did not begin there. Even before the single came out, Bush was pretty busy. I am going to drop in a timeline of her activities in 1978. I think back to The Beatles. A band Kate Bush adored, I think she especially loved their output in 1967. A year when they released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour, it was a year where they released albums, singles and a film. That film, Magical Mystery Tour, would have been packed into their schedule. The quartet had an amazingly busy 1967! Maybe 1964 was more hectic and strange for The Beatles. In terms of relentless touring and output. However, I think that 1967 is their busiest year. Two albums and a film together with the usual promotional circuit. Spending weeks in the studio creating some of their finest work. The band were starting to fray in 1967. By 1968, it was clear they were pulling apart. One can say that it was nobody’s fault. It was this non-stop touring and promoting. The band being in close quarters for years. I can only imagine how The Beatles got through 1967. You can read more about the band’s activity from 1967. I know that Kate Bush, consciously or not, followed The Beatles’ example and ethos. When it came to spending time in the studio and pushing technology to the limits. Influenced by their music and their experimental nature, you could tell that she admired their prolificacy and workmate. Perhaps not the extremes of touring. How they dedicated so much time in the studio and stopped touring after 1966. Maybe that was a reason Bush only did one tour. She looked at a band like The Beatles and could see the downsides of touring. Too much time away from the studio. The strain it had on relationships. Even though she was flying solo for the most part, she still had musicians and crew around her.

It was only natural there would be certain demands around Kate Bush in 1978. She released The Kick Inside in February. The success of Wuthering Heights changed everything. In terms of the countries she visited. That alone was exhausting. Visiting, the U.S., Australia and Europe, she was pulled back and forth. In an age where artists had no Internet or convenient way to promote their music, travel a big part of promotion. Appearing in magazines and T.V. shows around the world. However, few artists had such a hectic and busy time as Kate Bush (with only one album out). Wuthering Heights reached number one. There were so many T.V. appearances to promote the song. Multiple slots on Top of the Pops. Promotion in nations such as Germany and Ireland. A tonne of print and radio interviews. A second studio album, Lionheart, released in the November. Bush writing and recording more or less whilst she was still promoting The Kick Inside! Even though The Beatles’ path and lives were different to that of Kate Bush, I compare their 1967 to Kate Bush’s 1978. Different projects on the go. Barely a time to rest. Whereas The Beatles ended 1967 more fractured than before and knew that they were heading in different directions, Kate Bush was just starting out. No albums were released in 1979. Instead, she knew that she could not have another year like 1978. Two albums where she wasn’t producing and did not feel in control of her music. Too much promotion and travel! The Tour of Life did involve travel but it was a way for Bush to regain some control and do a project that was more in her vision. The last bits of Lionheart promotion were finished. Just think about all the different photos taken of Kate Bush in 1978. Becoming one of the most photographed and seen artists in the world.

I am not sure whether there was a big conversation between Kate Bush and EMI at the end of 1978. They probably would have asked for a third studio album or more singles. Even though they also wanted her to tour, it would have been more profitable for them to have her release an album. If she had another year like 1978 then I think Bush would have had to step away. It would have done a lot of damage. Granted, she did fit a lot in to 1979. Beyond The Tour of Life, there were photoshoots and music released. Wow was released in March 1979. She began recording for her third studio album, Never for Ever. However, one feels 1979 was a happier one. She co-produced that album with Jon Kelly and made sure her tour had her visions and concepts at the fore. Still a teenager when 1978 begun, she grew up in public incredible fast. Whilst many loved Wuthering Heights, there were many who did not. Kate Bush parodied and ridiculed. I shall come back to The Beatles at the end. Let’s take a look at Kate Bush’s 1978 and the key events. Thanks to Gaffaweb for their tireless chronicling of Kate Bush’s career. All the events, interviews and bits of news:

“January 1978

At a three-day sales conference for EMI International delegates, Kate sings live [song or songs unidentified], and Bob Mercer predicts that she will be one of the major talents of the future.

January 20, 1978

Wuthering Heights is finally released. Kate does her first live radio interview on Tony Myatt's Late Show.

Airplay for the single rapidly builds on British commercial radio, on Radio Luxemburg, and on BBC Radio 1.

February 7, 1978

Wuthering Heights enters the "official" BMRB chart at number 42.

That declaration from EMI at the start of 1978. Predicting that Kate Bush would be a massive success! Wuthering Heights came out, reached number one and already set her on that path. January, February and March 1978 were about Wuthering Heights climbing the chart and the impact that this had. It was a really intense period. Whilst Kate Bush would have been excited to see her debut single do so well, she could not have predicted how her life would change and the demands put upon her. Someone whose aim was to make an album and not be famous, there was this tussle and conflict between her dream and the realities of being a popular artist.

February and March 1978 were possibly the two busiest months of that year. Her debut album released and Wuthering Heights reaching number one. The explosion and instant success of that single and a debut album that was the recipient of huge critical acclaim, Still nineteen, this success and chart glory naturally was met with a demand for her to travel and perform live:

February 9, 1978

Kate makes her first-ever television appearance in a disused tram depot in West Germany, for the famous Bio's Bahnhof on WDR-TV. She sings Kite live, backed effectively by the KT Bush Band, and Wuthering Heights to a backing tape. The backdrop, which is supposed to represent the Yorkshire moors, includes a volcano. Following her performance the host, Dr. Alfred Biolek, carries on an entirely one-sided onstage conversation with Kate--in German.

February 14, 1978

The single moves up to number 27. Having cracked the magic "top forty", the gates open and Kate appears on...

February 16, 1978

Top of the Pops. She performs in high heels and slacks. Kate says later, "It was like watching myself die...a bloody awful performance."

February 17, 1978

Kate's first album, The Kick Inside, is released, and a huge promotional campaign is unleashed.

February 21, 1978

The single moves up to number 13.

February 25, 1978

Kate performs live on BBC TV's Saturday Nights at the Mill, singing Moving and Them Heavy People and giving a brief interview. She also appears on the programme Magpie.

The first major interviews appear in the music press, and Kate is the subject of intense media attention. She begins preparing for a live tour, projected for mid-year.

February 28, 1978

The single moves up to number 5. Kate is said to be the most photographed woman in the U.K.

March 2, 1978

The Keith ("Keef") MacMillan-directed video for Wuthering Heights is shown on Top of the Pops. It is the second video for the song. The first, made by Rockflix in an [unidentified] outdoor setting, is rejected for British promotional use, although it is used in other territories.

March 7, 1978

Wuthering Heights is number 1 on the British singles chart, displacing Abba. The press turn it into a nationalistic celebration. EMI celebrate with a champagne reception for Kate, and dinner in Paris. She celebrates by buying a 7,000-Pound Steinway piano. The single celebrates by going silver in the U.K. (250,000 sales).

The single remains at number 1 for four weeks.

March 16, 1978

On the same evening as her second "number 1" appearance on Top of the Pops, Kate is interviewed on the BBC TV current-affairs programme, Tonight.

Mickie Most asks Kate to appear in the pilot edition of his new pop-rock television programme Revolver. She is introduced by Peter Cook and sings Them Heavy People (which EMI want to release as the follow-up single) live. The programme is screened on May 20, 1978. [This is not the performance included in the video compilation The Single File.]

March 25, 1978

Kate starts a four-day promotional trip to Eire, appearing on the top show in the Irish ratings, The Late Late Show.

[The Kick Inside is released in the U.S.A., unchanged except for an inappropriate U.S.- and Canada-only front-cover design, not authorized by Kate. This is sometimes known as the "mirror" cover. To this day the cover continues to be used by Harvest, EMI's distributor for Kate's recordings in Canada, but it was discontinued in the U.S. in July 1978 when Kate's contract was transferred to the newly launched EMI-America label.]

The album's reception in the U.S. is somewhat quieter than in Europe and England. [To put it mildly!] Capitol-EMI wait for FM radio-play to determine a likely single.

April and May were pretty intense too. Now that Wuthering Heights was a sensation, Bush was promoting relentlessly! Her album was a success too, yet you feel EMI were looking to album two already. It would not be long until Bush was dispatched to France to record Lionheart. So much promotion in 1978. How could she possibly concentrate and focus on new material at the same time as promoting her debut album?! It was a mad time:

April 4, 1978

Wuthering Heights moves down to number 3. The Kick Inside reaches its chart peak at number 3.

Kate is off to Europe to promote single and album in the Netherlands, West Germany (a second time) and France. In The Netherlands, Kate makes a 25-minute promotional film of six tracks [Peter inexplicably writes "seven", though only six tracks were filmed] at De Efteling is in Kaatsheuvel, a gothic horror theme-park. Her visit is commemorated by a new gravestone. She performs on the Voor De Vuist Weg television programme. In Germany Kate appears on the television programmes Scene '78 and Top Pop, performing Wuthering Heights on both shows. Other guests on the former programme include Dr. Feelgood and The Boomtown Rats.

During this month Kate also makes a brief trip to the United States for promotional purposes, arriving back in the U.K. by April 21st.

Tour plans are put back to the end of the year.

May, 1978

Kate makes her first promotional trip to the U.S.A. and Canada (although she gives no performances and makes no U.S. television appearances), and then takes a short holiday. [This must be the same trip which is mentioned immediately above, for April. The U.S.-made interview album Self Portrait may have been cut during this trip.]

Wuthering Heights goes gold in the U.K. (500,000 sales). Kate presents the disk to Tony Myatt. For four years it hangs in the foyer of Capitol Radio's London base.

The fact that there were tour plans for 1978. No time or space to do that in a year when she was promoting her debut album around the world. In the U.S. and Canada in May, Kate Bush headed to Japan in June. It was a brutal start to the summer! Full marks for Bush’s professionalism throughout that year. You get the impression her enthusiasm was starting to wane by June. She would have wanted to work on a tour or spend proper time writing new music. Instead, Bush was this international success whose wellbeing was probably not at the forefront.

EMI allow Kate to have her way over the choice of the follow-up single in the U.K. It is to be The Man With the Child in His Eyes, which Kate had always wanted to be a single, as she felt it showcased her real songwriting talent. It is less of a novelty, and more of a standard. Dave Gilmour (executive producer on the track, which actually dates from the June, 1975 demo-sessions) is also pleased. In Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere the follow-up later in the year will be EMI's first choice, Them Heavy People.

May 28, 1978

The second single is released in the U.K. Airplay and sales are very good.

June, 1978

Kate goes to Japan to participate in the 7th Tokyo Song Festival. On June 18 she performs Moving (which is the debut single in Japan) live before an audience of 11,000 at the Nippon Budokan. The television audience is nearer 35 million. The single is boosted on its way to number 1 in the Japanese chart. Kate wins the Silver Prize jointly with American group The Emotions [!].

During her visit, on June 23, Kate performs abridged versions of two Beatles songs, The Long and Winding Road and She's Leaving Home, on the Japanese television programme Sound in S, taped at Tokyo's TBS G Studio.

Also during her visit to Japan Kate makes her only television advertisement, and her only endorsement for a commercial product--a spot for Seiko watches.

On her return to Britain Kate has under four weeks to get material together for her second album. She does not like being under such pressure. In the time available, three new songs are written, and a number of old ones are revamped. These songs, making up the basic material for Lionheart, are demoed in a studio designed by Paddy Bush and built out of the royalties from Wuthering Heights.

From that strange whirlwind trip to Japan where she was hocking watches and performing in front of thousands, Bush was given that impossibly short deadline. Artists today would not be given a month to write and album’s worth of material! EMI should have given Bush until 1979 to write new material. She wrote those three new songs but had to rely on revisiting her archives. Something she did for The Kick Inside, the hope would have been for a fresh start. Lionheart could have been this big step and new sound. Instead, there is an awkward tangle. Some new musical and lyrical touches but many similarities with The Kick Inside.

July 1978

Kate is the best selling female albums artist in the U.K. for the first quarter of 1978. Wuthering Heights has been number 1 in the Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand (five weeks), and Australia; and "top-ten" in Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

July 4, 1978

The Man With the Child in His Eyes reaches its chart peak in the U.K. at number 6.

The Kick Inside is re-released in the U.S.A. on a new label--EMI-America [and with a different but equally inappropriate cover, now sometimes referred to as the "country-western" or "Tammy Wynette" cover.] Wuthering Heights is finally released as a single in the U.S. There are some good notices, but Kate is considered by radio programmers to be "too bizarre" for the American market.

July 7, 1978

Kate travels to Superbear Studios in Nice, France to record her second album. She had had good reports of this studio from Dave Gilmour, who recorded his first solo album there. The recording is a much-needed break for Kate. In the sunshine and the mountain air she recovers from almost six months of solid promotion, and pursues her real vocation, making music.

August, 1978

It takes ten weeks at Superbear to record twelve tracks, of which ten are used for the new album. [These two unreleased tracks have never been identified.] Kate has definite aims for this album. She sees her first album as having affected the senses. Lionheart is to be aimed at the guts. In this she comes into some conflict with Andrew Powell, who is again acting as producer. She is allowed more of her own way in the studio, and after applying some pressure, she is able to bring the KT Bush Band in to play on some of the tracks. Kate is credited as assistant producer, but Lionheart is the end of the road for the Bush-Powell partnership

That tension in the studio. Bush’s band playing on a few tracks but Andrew Powell’s players performing on most of the tracks. It was a very stressful and upsetting time for such a new artist. I think one of those two new tracks was Never For Ever. The title song for her third studio album that was never included. I would love to know what that other track was. The Kick Inside had thirteen tracks and Bush had so many song choices. Things were more rushed and difficult for Lionheart. Going through the autumn, there was this crossover between The Kick inside and Lionheart. No real break or distinction between the albums!

September 5, 1978

Kate debuts one of the tracks from Lionheart on a U.K. children's television programme, Ask Aspel. She later explains that she wanted to sing In the Warm Room, but felt that it was too risque for a children's show. She sings Kashka From Baghdad, a song about two gay lovers, instead.

As the album takes longer than expected, Kate is recalled to London by EMI to do some prior promotion. At her own request, Kate is interviewed by a diverse collection of publications ranging from The Sun, to Vegetarian and Vogue (the last featuring Kate in photographs by David Bailey).

October 11, 1978

From completing the final mix of the album, Kate is straight on a plane for Australia, where she is to preside with that month's teen pop sensation Leif Garrett over the Tenth annual TV Week King of Pop Awards before a live audience of 1,000 in a circus tent, and a television audience of two million on the Nine Network.

The next day Kate also performs live on the television programme Countdown, debuting the routine for Hammer Horror, devised in her hotel room. Hammer Horror is planned as the first single from the new album.

October 17, 1978

Kate moves on to New Zealand, specifically Christchurch, for a television special. There she again performs Hammer Horror.

The live tour is put back to February 1979.

November, 1978

Julie Covington, who has known Kate and her family for many years, releases an album including her own cover version of The Kick Inside.

Kate promotes Lionheart in the Netherlands, German and France [although I have no record of any television appearances dating from the trip].

Even before Lionheart is released, Bush is sent over to Australia to promote it! It was a case of EMI doing whatever they could to ensure that her music stayed in people’s mind. The impact that this had. If Bush was hoping for a quieter end to the year then she was not afforded one! Her diary was pretty full until December. With her second album released on 10th November, 1978, Bush knew she could not relax or find any time for reflection. She did have a busy final two months of the year.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

November 7, 1978

Hammer Horror enters the British singles chart at the unexpectedly low place of number 73. [Contrary to usual record-company theory, saturation of the market place with new, rushed product nearly immediately after the success of a debut album is more often than not a poor business move, and usually does as much damage as good to the artist's budding popularity. The commercially mediocre sales of Lionheart should not have surprised anyone.]

Lionheart has its international launch at the 14th-century Ammersoyen Castel, two hours' drive from Amsterdam. 120 guests, from EMI Europe, Canada and the UK, and including disk jockeys Tony Myatt and Kenny Everett, as well as Dr. and Mrs. Bush, attend the reception. After dinner, in the grounds of the castle, Leo Bouderwijas, the President of the Association of Dutch Phonographical Industries, presents Kate with the prestigious Edison Award for the best single of 1978. Kate is also presented with a platinum disc for sales of the album in Holland.

November 8, 1978

Kate flies back to the U.K. for a private buffet at The Venue for the presentation of the Melody Maker 1978 Poll Awards. In the first year of her public career Kate has been voted Best Female Vocalist and Brightest Hope of 1978.

November 10, 1978

The international release of Lionheart.

November 17, 1978

Kate performs Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake on The Leo Sayer Show, on BBC TV. She is off on a personal appearance tour of British record shops.

November 21, 1978

Hammer Horror reaches its chart peak, number 44. Lionheart enters the album chart at number 36.

December, 1978

Kate is off to promote in the U.S.A. for the release there of The Man With the Child in His Eyes.

Kate Bush promoting The Kick Inside and Lionheart at the same time. Though her U.S. T.V. debut (and sole appearance on U.S. T.V.) was big, you get the impression it was all a bit too much. Barely rested after coming back from Australia, Bush was put on a plane again! It was such an intense and scary year. Bush had not had any experience of this level of promotion and travel. I am not sure whether she had another year as big and busy as 1978.

December 9, 1978

Most importantly, she performs two songs on the U.S. NBC-TV programme, Saturday Night Live. [This is the only live entertainment programme on U.S. television, and is the most influential programme for the pop music market, as well the most important American showcase for "alternative" music. Kate performs The Man With the Child in His Eyes, seated on a piano, to the accompaniment of veteran rock keyboardist Paul Shaffer; and Them Heavy People, in a raincoat and Fedora hat. Nothing remotely like it has ever been seen on American television before.]

She is invited by Eric Idle, who is host of that edition; and she is visited by Mick Jagger. Paul Simon drops in to watch her performance.

Kate does press and radio promotion and moves on to Canada for more of the same. She is known to have made no other North American television appearances during this trip, however.

Back in England the Kate Bush Club, the official fan club, is formed”.

It is nice that the Kate Bush Club was formed at the end of the year. From, in January, EMI proclaiming that Kate Bush would be a big success to her fan club being set up in the December, so much was covered. Traveling to the U.S., Australia, Japan and Europe. Releasing several singles and two albums. Countless chats and interviews. T.V. exposure and chart success. Some new songs written, though not as many as she would have liked! Who knows what Kate Bush was thinking during Christmas 1978. She had a lot to reflect on and be happy with. She must have feared another year of travel and promotion. However, in 1979, things did change. Her tour was the big event. Even if there was a lot of travel, it was around the U.K. and Europe. Bush able to perform her music using her own concepts. Not chatting to journalists or appearing on T.V. shows. Bush would have busy years after 1978, though I don’t think any matches the effort and time she spent traveling in her first professional year.

People say how busy The Beatles were. I think 1967 was a good example. The fact that there were two albums out and a film. Singles and lots of interviews. Whilst they stopped touring the year before and wanted to spend more time in the studio, Bush started touring the year after 1978 and also wanted to spend more time in the studio. The band had support and each other to fall back on, but there was also that inter-band fraying and the tension of four artists spending so much time together. For Bush, she had to shoulder so much of the energy and burden. Rather than crumble or retire or suffer any huge setbacks, instead she made some decisions. She knew she did not want to work with another producer. Well, not Andrew Powell! She needed to be more in charge of her music. Not wanting to have so little time to create another album, The Tour of Life was a way of creating this gap. She was eager to get back into the studio when the tour was over. Forty-seven years ago, EMI heralded this exciting young artist. From there, this was this insane trip around the world. It is almost impossible to believe how much she was asked to do in 1978. I think of The Beatles. Maybe their 1964. But 1967 was one where they had this superhuman push! If The Beatles’ relationships and career did take a hit after 1967. For Bush, there were positives that came after 1978 closed. Her first tour. A new album being started. Some big changes in terms of who she had in the studio and how her music would be produced and directed. When Kate Bush woke up on 1st January, 1979 she would begin…

THE next (exciting) phase of her career.

FEATURE: Saturday Night Live at Fifty: Selections from the Best Musical Guests

FEATURE:

 

 

Saturday Night Live at Fifty

Selections from the Best Musical Guests

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ONE of the…

 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Matthew Cooley, Images in illustration by Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images, 3; Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal, 3

longest-running shows in T.V. history is celebrating fifty years. Saturday Night Live is hosted by a celebrity guest and features sketches and musical numbers. With nearly a thousand episodes broadcast since it first aired on 11th October, 1975, there has been a lot of celebration around this terrific series. There is also a new documentary coming up that shines a spotlight on the music guests. Before getting to that, here is some background and history of the iconic Saturday Night Live:

“Saturday Night Live (SNL) is an American late-night live sketch comedy variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Michaels and Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC. The show's premiere was hosted by George Carlin on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title NBC's Saturday Night. The show's comedy sketches, which often parody contemporary American culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers the opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast, with featured performances by a musical guest. An episode normally begins with a cold open sketch that is usually based on political events and ends with someone breaking character and proclaiming, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!", properly beginning the show”.

It is not only about the musical guests. However, Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music does have a particular focus on those great musical spots. I am really interested to see what comes from it. Billboard reported on an upcoming documentary that fans of Saturday Night Live and those who are casual viewers will enjoy:

“Saturday Night Live is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the festivities continue with a brand new documentary NBC announced on Thursday (Dec. 19).

Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music will feature interviews with artists, cast members, writers and producers who have contributed to SNL‘s iconic legacy. The three-hour documentary will also “feature untold stories behind the culture-defining, groundbreaking and newsmaking musical performances, sketches and cameos of the past 50 years,” per a press release description.

The broadcast is directed by Questlove and Oz Rodriguez, and produced by Two One Five Entertainment, RadicalMedia and Broadway Video. Questlove also serves as executive producer alongside Lorne Michaels, Zarah Zohlman, Erin David, Dave Sirulnick, Jon Kamen, Meredith Bennett, Alexander H. Browne, Shawn Gee and Tariq Trotter. Rodriguez serves as producer. 

Bad Bunny, DJ Breakout, Elvis Costello, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish and Finneas, Dave Grohl, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, Mick Jagger, Dua Lipa, Darryl DMC McDaniels, Tom Morello, Kacey Musgraves, Olivia Rodrigo, MC Sha-Rack, Paul Simon, Chris Stapleton, Justin Timberlake, Lee Ving and Jack White are all the musicians set to appear in the documentary. The show will also feature cast members including Jimmy Fallon, Bowen Yang, Fred Armisen, Conan O’Brien, Bill Hader, Eddie Murphy, Andy Samberg, Kenan Thompson, Maya Rudolph and many more.

“Everyone knows the most famous SNL appearances, whether it’s Elvis Costello, Prince or the Beastie Boys, but they’re the tip of a huge iceberg,” Questlove said in a press statement. “The process of going back through the incredible archival footage was like being in a time machine, DeLorean or other. I’m so happy I went on the trip and now get to share it with everyone.”

Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music will premiere Jan. 27 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC and stream the next day on Peacock. The documentary is part of a collection of celebratory programming, including a four-part SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night Peacock docuseries on Jan. 16 and a live primetime special on Feb. 16 on NBC and Peacock”.

In November, Rolling Stone ranked the fifty-best musical performances on SNL. There is some tough competition! From Radiohead through to Taylor Swift and a great combination of George Harrison and Paul Simon, there have been some wonderful and scene-stealing performances from a variety of artists. Even though Saturday Night Live is a comedy show, the musicians add something different to the mix. Based on Rolling Stone’s top fifty ranking, I have selected artists from that list. Songs that they performed on Saturday Night Live. I have chosen the versions that were on the original studio albums. This is a musical guests mix to celebrate…

AN American institution at fifty.

FEATURE: Keep the Customer Satisfied: Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water at Fifty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Keep the Customer Satisfied

Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water at Fifty-Five

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THERE are a couple of…

good reasons to talk about Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth and final studio album, Bridge Over Trouble Water. Released on 26th January, 1970, it followed the duo’s soundtrack for The Graduate. Whilst Art Garfunkel was acting and had a role in Catch-22, Paul Simon wrote the soundtrack songs for The Graduate. Alongside producer Roy Halee, a masterpiece was released in 1970 with Bridge Over Troubled Water. Following similar musical ground to Bookends (1968), there were different genres and musical elements added. If the duo were more Folk/Folk Rock on previous albums, they introduced Rock, Pop, R&B and Gospel into their final album together. As it is coming up to its fifty-fifth anniversary, I wanted to spend some time with Bridge Over Troubled Water. With the title track, Cecilia,  So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, The Boxer and The Only Living Boy in New York, this was a magnificent swansong for the duo. Paul Simon wrote all tracks bar Bye Bye Love (the best-known version is from the Everly Brothers). After the album came out, both artists took a more independent route. Art Garfunkel continued acting whilst Paul Simon continued songwriting. His 1972 eponymous album was the first solo release after Bridge Over Troubled Water. I will come to a feature that highlights the impact and political roots of Bridge Over Trouble Water’s title track. This feature is also worth reading. I want to start with a feature from Consequence from 2020. They write why it is one of the most poetic music farewells ever. A perfect way to sign off their recorded partnership:

“By the time Bridge Over Troubled Water arrived on January 26, 1970, Simon & Garfunkel had cemented themselves as arguably the supreme pairing in American popular music. After all, their prior four studio albums contained a multitude of enduring pieces — “A Hazy Shade of Winter”, “Bookends Theme”, “The Sounds of Silence”, “Mrs. Robinson”, and one of the chief compositions of the last century, “Scarborough Fair/Canticle “, among them —that demonstrated virtually unmatched songwriting, singing, social consciousness, and eclectic instrumentation. Although they’ve undoubtedly inspired countless proteges in their wake, there has never been and will never be another Simon & Garfunkel, and their last studio effort together is perhaps the greatest goodbye they could’ve delivered.

To be fair, they didn’t go into the studio with producer Roy Halee knowing that it’d be there swan song; still, it seemed the inevitable outcome considering how tense their partnership had become since 1968’s Bookends. A primary catalyst was Garfunkel’s role in Mike Nicholas’ adaptation of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, which took longer to film than expected. As the making-of-documentary The Harmony Game reveals, Simon was a bit frustrated by that — especially since he was supposed to be in it, too — and with other creative frustrations mounting behind the scenes, it was almost inevitable that they’d break up by 1971.  Nevertheless, Bridge Over Troubled Water, like many other finales from influential artists (namely, The Beatles’ Let It Be), symbolized the end of both the group and a large part of the cultural and political zeitgeists they represented.

As usual, Simon & Garfunkel enlisted plenty of noteworthy Wrecking Crew musicians to flesh out the LP, including bassist Joe Osborn, guitarist Fred Carter, Jr., drummer Hal Blaine, and keyboardist Larry Knechtel. In addition, Los Incas provided Peruvian instruments, Charlie McCoy added bass harmonica, Buddy Harman filled in other percussive roles, and Jon Faddis, Randy Brecker, Lew Soloff, and Alan Rubin bolstered some brass. Thus, Simon & Garfunkel had possibly their largest and most diverse arsenal of musicians yet to complement their already exquisite voices, complex guitar playing (at least from Simon), and internal sense of melody and structure. Together, they created an immensely varied sequence in terms of both arrangements and tonal shifts, infusing their folk-rock base with many other styles.

Honestly, there’s not much to say about the creation of Peter Powell’s front and back photos. However, there’s plenty to analyze when they’re taken in context and retrospection. Whereas the prior Simon & Garfunkel records featured the duo looking straight at the camera — and thus, at the listener — in various degrees of whimsical welcoming, Bridge Over Trouble Water finds them more world weary and disconnected. Specifically, Simon no longer looks boyish and innocent; instead, he seems more matured, unkempt, and disinterested, looking past the camera to imply that he’s already prepared to carry on with other ventures. While Garfunkel remains focused on the viewer, it’s only his eyes that convey any expression, and frankly, he looks deadly serious, if not a bit sullen. As for the imagery on the back, it’s an interesting parallel to the front of Sounds of Silence in that both feature them walking somewhere. Yet, they seem united and eager on Sounds of Silence, inviting us to tag along on their journey. On the other hand, Simon is literally slumped and pushing Garfunkel out of frame on the blue back of Bridge Over Troubled Water, perhaps implying that they’re both already “over it.”

In any case, the album was a critical and commercial triumph upon release. It peaked on nearly a dozen charts internationally — including ones in the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Norway, and Germany — and dominated as the best-selling album of 1970, 1971, and 1972. Concerning America’s Billboard 200, it hung on for nearly 100 weeks; curiously, it stayed CBS Records’ top seller for over a decade, too, only to be overthrown by Michael Jackson’s seminal Thriller in 1982. Eventually, it was awarded 8 x Platinum by the RIAA and has since sold over 30 million copies. By and large, it was received positively by the press, too, although some publications (such as Melody Maker) expressed criticism as well. It won two Grammy Awards in 1971 (for Album of the Year and Best Engineered Record), with the title track also winning for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Instrumental Arrangement of the Year, and Contemporary Song of the Year. Of course, countless major magazines have since extolled its merits, with Rolling Stone and The Times rightfully including it on their modern lists of the best albums of all time.

Speaking of Bridge Over Troubled Water’s subsequent treatment, it’s been reissued countless times over the years and across the globe. Sadly, the only way to hear one of its most famous rejected tunes, “Cuba Si, Nixon No” (a Chuck Berry-esque rocker), is through miscellaneous bootlegs. In a 2016 article for Rolling Stone, Andy Greene called it a “lighthearted take on Cuba’s political situation” before referring to an interview with Simon from 1972, in which he states, “Art didn’t want to do it … We even cut the track for it. Artie wouldn’t sing on it. And Artie wanted to do a Bach chorale thing, which I didn’t want to do.” That “Bach chorale thing” turned out to be “Feuilles-O”, a short but sweet and harmonious ode sung in French and with minimal accompaniment from acoustic guitar. Thankfully, it’s available on few newer versions of the sequence.

Unquestionably, it houses some of the pair’s most joyous and lively compositions. Its third selection, “Cecilla”, offers a hooky, bouncy, and slightly sophomoric account of romantic misbehavior that virtually all listeners can empathize with. (Reportedly, Simon also penned it about his deeper issues with the limelight and songwriting.) Its natural percussion and assorted backing vocals also point to the World music influence he’d later explore. Likewise, their take on Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s “Bye Bye Love” is simple and tasteful, evoking The Everly Brothers’ more well-known interpretation and while calling back to their days as Tom & Jerry. Elsewhere, “Keep the Customer Satisfied” is a purposeful regression into Big Band and rockabilly that’s quite fun and light, whereas “Baby Driver” focuses its airy rock and roll atmosphere on a youth who desires sexual adventure after being raised in a conservative home. There’s even a faint Reggae edge to the carefree folk of “Why Don’t You Write me?”

As strong as those are, it’s Bridge’s ballads and more serious staples that reign supreme and cement Simon’s legacy as a master of relatable and evocative songwriting. With its gospel proclivities and focus on orchestral embellishments, sobering piano chords, and Garfunkel’s angelic lone voice, the opening title track is like their version of “Let It Be” in that it’s a hopeful yet bittersweet recognition of the enchantment they shared with fans. (Outside of that, it was inspired by Simon’s then-wife, Peggy, and the racial tensions that plagued America at the time.) It’s an absolutely gorgeous and gratifying statement whose agelessness and universality has been celebrated through covers by Fiona Apple, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, and Willie Nelson, among others.

Fifty years later, Bridge Over Troubled Water is every bit as impactful, endearing, prophetic, and daring. It signifies everything that made Simon & Garfunkel such a special and significant act while also ranking as one of the most long-lasting and culturally resonant musical statements of its period. From its softest and emptiest segments to its most full-bodied and daring moments, Bridge Over Troubled Water still overflows with one-of-a-kind brilliance”.

Prior to moving on to a couple of reviews for the 1970 masterpiece, I want to highlight a feature from the BBC. It is about the superb and emotional title track from Bridge Over Trouble Water. It is an amazing song that many people do not talk about in terms of deeper roots. Often associated with being this ballad that is a little saccharine. Bridge Over Troubled Water deserves more:

“On the evening of 30 November 1969, the silver-haired actor Robert Ryan introduced CBS viewers in the US to a buzzkill of historic proportions: Simon and Garfunkel’s first ever TV special. “These two young men have attracted a tremendous following among the youth of America with their lyrical interpretation of the world we live in,” said Ryan, who was a genuine fan. “We think you will find the next hour both entertaining and stimulating.”

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel certainly hoped so. According to executive producer Robert Drew, Simon talked about using the primetime opportunity as a Trojan horse for “a home movie about where he thought the nation was”. Directed by actor Charles Grodin, Songs of America used the duo’s hits to soundtrack footage of riots, marches and the war in Vietnam, much to the horror of sponsors AT&T, who demanded their $600,000 investment back. Even more sympathetic viewers found the movie’s earnest sermonising hard to swallow.

We first meet Simon and Garfunkel in the back of a car. Coming off the back of four hit albums and two number one singles in four years, the 27-year-old superstars are not overburdened with humility. When Garfunkel brings up the subject of America’s imminent bicentennial, a camera-conscious Simon gazes into the distance and asks solemnly: “Think it’s gonna make it?” This mood of pensive pomposity comes to dominate the film, as Simon frets: “What’s the point of this album? The world is crumbling”, and Garfunkel less coherently ponders “the chaos of what the hell is the whole thing about”.

They did have a point. Songs of America was screened on the eve of the country’s first draft lottery since World War Two, amid the years of the My Lai massacre, the Manson murders, the Days of Rage demonstrations in Chicago and the anti-Vietnam War March Against Death in Washington DC. But the average CBS viewer didn’t want to see the world crumbling. The heaviest sequence was a dark twist on the film’s travelogue theme, juxtaposing clips of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King on the campaign trail with footage of mourners watching Bobby Kennedy’s funeral train go by. The musical accompaniment was unfamiliar: a kind of white gospel song, stately and hymn-like, building to a shattering climax as the long black train sped through America’s broken heart. One million viewers responded by turning the dial and watching the figure skating on NBC instead. Some sent hate mail. Songs of America wouldn’t be seen again for over 40 years. This was the US public’s inauspicious introduction to what would become one of the defining songs of the 1970s and beyond: Bridge Over Troubled Water.

‘My greatest song’

While writing songs for the duo’s fifth album in the spring of 1969, Simon had borrowed an old Swan Silvertones album from the musician Al Kooper. Listening to the gospel group’s version of the 19th-Century spiritual Oh Mary Don’t You Weep over and over again in his Upper East Side apartment, Simon was thunderstruck by a line improvised by lead singer Claude Jeter: “I’ll be your bridge over deep water if you trust in my name.” Simon grabbed his guitar, sketched out some gospel chords, and began writing his own song around that image. (Two years later, he was introduced to Jeter and wrote him a cheque on the spot.) Actually, it didn’t feel like he was actively writing it, more that it was flowing through him. Something about the sturdy grace of the melody and the Biblical register of “I will lay me down” made it seem as if the song had been around forever.

The melody and lyrics weren’t quite right yet but Simon knew that Bridge Over Troubled Waters (as it was then called) was “exceptional” even as he wondered if the words were “too simple”. On songs such as The Sound of Silence, Mrs Robinson and America, he used characters, narratives and vividly precise imagery to map national unease onto personal anxiety. The uncharacteristically timeless, universal language of Bridge Over Troubled Water really does seem to hail from somewhere else. The celebrated New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint liked to say: “That song had two writers: Paul Simon and God.” Fortunately, God wasn’t registered with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

The opening line about feeling weary and small was personal. While Simon was in New York writing songs, Garfunkel was off in Mexico appearing in Mike Nichols’ movie Catch-22 with his new Hollywood friends, including Charles Grodin. Simon felt abandoned, taken for granted. He was therefore feeling hypersensitive when Garfunkel finally reconnected with him in Los Angeles in June and heard the demo. Paul thought that only Artie’s choirboy voice could do justice to the song but Artie liked the sound of Paul’s falsetto and hesitated before agreeing to front the song. Garfunkel meant it as a compliment; Simon took it as a snub. Such was the state of their partnership in 1969. When Robert Drew first sat down with the duo he came away thinking that the film would be “Simon and Garfunkel’s last stand”.

Recording the song began in August 1969 in Hollywood, where producer Roy Halee gathered the elite session musicians known as the Hollywood Golden Trio: drummer Hal Blaine, bassist Joe Osborn and keyboardist Larry Knechtel. It was Knechtel’s challenging job to translate the music from guitar to piano according to Simon’s paradoxical brief: “Paul wanted it to be gospel but not gospel,” he recalled. Simon imagined that Bridge Over Troubled Water would be a “little hymn” but Garfunkel and Halee insisted that the song needed to be immense. It therefore needed a third verse, which Simon dashed off in the studio. It opened with a message to his wife-to-be Peggy Harper, who had recently fretted about finding her first grey hairs: “Sail on, silver girl.”

Garfunkel wanted the song to start quietly and gradually build to a transcendent finale in the vein of Phil Spector’s work with The Righteous Brothers — “like an airplane taking off”. Simon wasn’t sure about the bombastic strings (nor the fact that arranger Ernie Freeman had paid so little attention to the lyrics that the sheet music was titled Like a Pitcher of Water) but he had to admit that it sounded undeniable. Once the music was wrapped, Garfunkel recorded his showstopping vocal in New York in November. Simon, at Garfunkel’s insistence, wasn’t in the room.

Several songs from the Bridge Over Troubled Water album were debuted on a short tour that autumn and Bridge Over Troubled Water left audiences breathless. It may feel overfamiliar now but imagine being in the crowd one night in November 1969, hearing Garfunkel say: “This is also one of our new songs. It’s called Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and then hearing that for the first time. And imagine being Paul Simon, waiting in the wings with a cigarette while the other guy got all the applause for his song. That shouldn’t have bugged him – it was his idea – but it did. “He felt like I should have done it,” Simon grumbled to Rolling Stone magazine four bitter years later. “And many times I’m sorry I didn’t do it.”

An instant classic

Despite the song’s warm reception, Simon and Garfunkel had absorbed the industry wisdom that long, stately ballads weren’t radio-friendly and proposed the jaunty Cecilia as the album’s taster single. But after the first album playback, Columbia Records president Clive Davis was adamant that this was no ordinary ballad. “I felt Cecilia would be a hit but Bridge was something more,” he told Simon’s biographer Robert Hilburn. “It was a landmark record.”

Davis was right. The song’s slow-burning arc became a virtue. Most hits made sense in snatches, overheard from a passing car radio, but Bridge Over Troubled Water held the listener spellbound: you had to hear the whole thing or else you’d miss the payoff. Released on 20 January 1970, it held the top spot for six weeks in the US and three in the UK. Hard on the single’s heels, the album was a goliath: 10 weeks at number one; six Grammy awards; 25 million sales worldwide. In the UK, it occupied the top of the charts for an astonishing 35 weeks over an 18-month period. It just kept coming back”.

I am going to round off with a couple of reviews. The first is from Pitchfork. In 2011, they reviewed a reissue of Bridge Over Troubled Water:

“This diverse album contains the roots of Paul Simon's subsequent incorporation of African and South American rhythms into astute pop songs, especially "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)". The tune is hundreds of years old, but Simon came to it via a contemporary Peruvian group called Los Incas. He wrote new English lyrics about the rural versus the urban, and he and Garfunkel sang them over the original instrumental track. Especially coming after the grandiose gospel of the title track, the song sounds both exotic and humble. Later, "Keep the Customer Satisfied" swells with gargantuan blasts of brass, "Baby Driver" revs up some R&B sax, and "Cecilia" sounds impossibly infectious with its pennywhistle solo and handclap/thighslap percussion. Despite the breadth of sound-- and despite the splintering of their relationship-- Bridge sounds like a unified statement enlivened by styles and rhythms not often heard on pop radio at the juncture of those two decades.

The album cuts on Bridge hold up arguably better than the singles-- or maybe it's just that we've all heard the title track and side-two opener "The Boxer" so many times, while songs like "Keep the Customer Satisfied" and "Baby Driver" still sound less familiar, and therefore full of surprises. Especially on this subtle remastering, Bridge reveals a surfeit of strange, exciting sonic details, as Simon, Garfunkel, and co-producer Roy Halee insert small flourishes of sound, such as the disruptive skiffle beat on "Why Don't You Write Me" or the audience rhythm section on the live version of "Bye Bye Love". The title track derives its outsize drama not only from Garfunkel's intense, measured vocals but also from the resonating percussion, which mimics the echoing crack of sound against a cathedral wall. Thanks to the echo-chambered vocals, disembodied organ, and Joe Osborn's melodically prominent bass, "The Only Living Boy in New York" sounds practically weightless, as if Manhattan were as lonely and desolate as the moon. Even after it's been Zach Braff'ed, the song still retains its considerable evocative power and remains one of the most natural and surprising juxtapositions of sonics and sentiment in Simon's catalog.

"The Only Living Boy in New York" conjures a very specific sense of melancholy abandonment, which makes it a companion to the title track's pledge of steady friendship and devotion. In some ways, Bridge sounds like a chronicle of Simon and Garfunkel's career and collaboration over the years, especially the album-ending send-off. The live "Bye Bye Love" reveals a greater kinship with the Everly Brothers than with Dylan, and an even stronger engagement with their audience; clapping a massive backbeat and yelling along with the song, that rambunctious crowd in Ames, Iowa, remains one of their most intuitive collaborators. As the noise dies down, the quiet "Song for the Asking" adds a brief epilogue that reveals their simple mission "to make you smile." It's a modest close to both the album and the musical collaboration between these two old friends.

Instead of non-album cuts from those same sessions (some of which have been compiled previously), this edition adds a DVD with a television special from 1969 and a new making-of, which emphasize the duo's social awareness and sonic innovations, respectively. Directed by Garfunkel's Catch-22 co-star Charles Grodin and airing on CBS in 1969, "Songs of America" mixes live footage with political rallies and American landscapes, depicting Bridge as a response to the heavily politicized turmoil of the preceding decade. Simon & Garfunkel ponder the ramifications of Vietnam and Woodstock, MLK and RFK, Cesar Chavez and the Poor People's March. At that time such political images were extremely controversial, especially coming from such seemingly nonthreatening folkies as Simon & Garfunkel, and the show was a commercial failure, beaten in the ratings by a Peggy Fleming ice-skating special. But today it plays as a highly instructive time capsule, offering entrée into that era and a valuable glimpse at the duo's chemistry while hinting at their conflicts.

This edition presents Bridge as an end-of-an-era document, that era being both the 1960s and their career together. Instead of acrimony, however, we get devotion and bonhomie, as Simon gives Garfunkel good songs to sing and Garfunkel sings them so well. Perhaps because it never addresses their restlessness or any particular social issue too directly, the album proves both visionary and revisionary, as the two ponder both their own and their country's past while looking ahead to new musical adventures. That Simon & Garfunkel split up shortly after recording this album only makes the sentiments more fleeting and the songs more affecting, lending them a timeless quality that transcends genre and generation”.

I will end with a review from AllMusic. One of the greatest albums of all time, it is worth considering and evaluating as it turns fifty-five on 26th January. A whole new generation should pick it up. For those who have not heard the album in a while, you need to pick it up:

“Bridge Over Troubled Water was one of the biggest-selling albums of its decade, and it hasn't fallen too far down on the list in years since. Apart from the gospel-flavored title track, which took some evolution to get to what it finally became, however, much of Bridge Over Troubled Water also constitutes a stepping back from the music that Simon & Garfunkel had made on Bookends -- this was mostly because the creative partnership that had formed the body and the motivation for the duo's four prior albums literally consumed itself in the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The overall effect was perhaps the most delicately textured album to close out the 1960s from any major rock act. Bridge Over Troubled Water, at its most ambitious and bold, on its title track, was a quietly reassuring album; at other times, it was personal yet soothing; and at other times, it was just plain fun. The public in 1970 -- a very unsettled time politically, socially, and culturally -- embraced it; and whatever mood they captured, the songs matched the standard of craftsmanship that had been established on the duo's two prior albums. Between the record's overall quality and its four hits, the album held the number one position for two and a half months and spent years on the charts, racking up sales in excess of five million copies. The irony was that for all of the record's and the music's appeal, the duo's partnership ended in the course of creating and completing the album”.

Recently, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel seem to have reunited. After years of silence, they appear to have built a bridge. It would be amazing if they performed together and revisited songs from their final album. Whilst some would argue Bookends is a more consistent and stronger album, there is this weight and significance to Bridge Over Troubled Water. The incredible songs on Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth and final studio album still sounds relevant and powerful…

AFTER all of these years.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Something Like a Song: Inside Her Extraordinary Early Demos

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Something Like a Song: Inside Her Extraordinary Early Demos

_________

I have discussed…

Kate Bush’s demos before. I wanted to revisit them because I wonder whether they will ever be made available on streaming sites. There are YouTube versions of many of her demos, though it would be great hear remastered versions of these songs. Kate Bush has reissued and remastered her studio albums. The live album for 2014’s Before the Dawn. She has also revisited songs from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes for 2011’s Director’s Cut. I do wonder whether Bush holds much affection for her demos. Whether she considers them worthwhile. It would be great for fans to hear a compilation of them. Even if some are pale compared to songs that appeared on her 1978’s debut album, The Kick Inside, they are valuable and essential. Part of her history and story. So many fans do not know about the demos. Whether you have heard of The Cathy Demos and know about the songs (some I will highlight later), there does need to be a wider release. This Early Demos compilation is perhaps the most expansive. There are articles that examine and discuss these amazing demos and this very young talent who would soon go on to become a hugely successful and adored artist. I would love to own this compilation of recordings primarily made in 1974 at Kate Bush’s family home. This amazing glimpse into some of her earliest songs. With Bush still a teenager, these are some of the first glimpses into her remarkable, once-in-a-generation talent. I think that there should be some sort of revival and excavation of these demos. They show what a prodigious talent the young Kate Bush was. Her piano playing superb. Having learnt from her father and developed a bond with the instrument as a young child, that combination of her playing, developing (yet sublime) voice and mature songwriting really stands out.

Whilst a song like Atlantis might sound a little high-pitched or wild, others such as Cussi Cussi are more level-headed and grounded. You Were the Star and Something Like a Song are two of my favourite Kate Bush early demos. Passing Through Air ended up as a B-side of Army Dreamers in 1980. It is an astonishing song where Bush shows so much command. Not only are the 1974 demos recordings worth listening to. During 1976 and the early part of 1977, Bush was recording a new batch of demos. At least two tapes were made. Many of the songs have leaked out. The largest collection of such recordings (and thanks to Rob Jovanovic’s Kate Bush biography) came from the Phoenix Broadcast. In 1982, a radio station in Phoenix, Arizona, KTSM, aired twenty-two Kate Bush demos. The D.J. on the show was John Dixon. He worked at EMI when Bush was working on her debut album. Songs he played were taken from several different sources. He played numbers that were taken from her first two albums, 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart, plus seventeen unreleased songs. Some of the songs played were from 1973. Tracks Bush was still considering when she signed with EMI. These tracks made their way onto The Cathy Demos that were released as vinyl E.P.s in 1989. Among the demos are Rinfey the Gypsy (a.k.a. Playing Canasta in a Cold Room) and Snow. Something Like a Song allows Bush to show more variation in her piano player. If a lot of the tracks were quite similar and would not have hugely appealed to record labels, other demos showed more depth and different shades. Earlier versions of Kite and Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake were circulated. These songs, backed by a band, showed how she had matured and extended her musical range. The early version of Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake sound like a live take. Another song on the demo tape, Scares Me Silly (a.k.a. Really Gets Me Going), is a gem that should have appeared on The Kick Inside.

One listens to the demos – whether from 1973/1974 or 1976/1977 – and wonders which artist inspired her. Maybe childhood heroes like Elton John. As a child, she grew up around various musical influences. Her mother’s Irish side. Summers at Dungarvan. County Waterford, where the family would take the ferry and then drive by car to Bush’s (Cathy as she was known then) grandparents’ cottage. Uncles who would be playing accordions and fiddles. At the family home, East Wickham Farm, Bush loved artists like A.L. Lloyd. He specialised in drinking songs and sea shanties. Her brothers, especially Paddy, introducing their sister to Folk music and music from around the world. A mix of English and the unconventional. Bands like King Crimson, The Beatles and T.Rex. Her favourite album Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, arrived in 1971. Her brother Jay (John) was a great poet and opened up his sister’s mind to new themes and realms. Paddy’s love of the more esoteric and unusual. A family home filled with so much diverse music, literature and art. Think about the early songs. An art harmonium, manufactured in Paris by Victor Mustel, was in the barn at East Wickham Farm. It was this Mustel pump organ that gave a young Bush the opportunity to develop and experiment with chord progression. Even if Bush couldn’t read music and didn’t want to learn – and she was not particularly skilled at maths -, she practised endless, had this incredibly curious mind and was very dedicated. Thanks too to Tom Doyle and his Kate Bush biography, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. All of these early experiences and influences led to her demos. By age nine, Bush was intensely curious and wanted to create. It heightened by the age of eleven. Feeling misunderstood or thinking more like an adult than child, this sense of frustration and alienation saw the young Kate/Cathy Bush escape into songwriting.

You can hear this imagination and passion in her earliest demos. Whilst she was not particularly happy at school, she did develop a love and interest in poetry. Five or six hours a day, seven days a week, Bush would shut herself away and play piano. Her first song would have been written about the age of eleven. Bush felt it was terrible and overdone. By thirteen or fourteen, she developed a real interest in songwriting and advanced in terms of quality and concision. Remember Bush wrote The Man with the Child in His Eyes at the age of thirteen! Bush approached songwriting like poetry. A pivotal moment was when Elton John’s Your Song was released in 1970. Something that had always been brewing inside of her was released to the surface. Her musical hero opened her heart and eyes. I will discuss the piano more for another feature. How few artists around the time Bush started were idolised because they played piano. Bush’s father Robert marvelled at how his young daughter could summon songs from nowhere. He invested in an expensive AKAI reel-to-reel recorder. Songs were copyrighted by her and her father as they would post songs back to themselves with a time and date stamp from Royal Mail. By aged sixteen, Bush felt she was on a mission from God. Her positivity and ambition can be heard in the early demos. Bush’s brother Paddy would often accompany her on mandolin. Brian Bath (a family fiend who was part of the KT Bush Band) recalled his diary entries from 1972 how he would witness Paddy playing on Kate’s songs. He was even invited to play guitar on various occasions. Bath recalled how beautiful the songs were. Chord progressions that were like nothing else. Songs that were worlds of their own. By 1972, Kate Bush had amassed over fifty songs. She was writing about two songs a day. She reckoned she might have had a couple of hundred stacked away.

Tom Doyle highlights a few standout demos from the early years. Ones more formed such as Sunsi, and ones that were promising but a little flawed (Cussi Cussi as an example). In the 1980s, a West German record company, Wild Wind, announced the release of a ten-track demo album, The Early Years. White label vinyl copies were pressed up. When Bush and EMI caught wind of this release, they issued a cease and desist. By 1997, these demos were online. Maybe Bush feels it is not worth officially releasing the home demos because they have been out there and she has passed that stage in life. Songs not studio-made and incomplete in a way, she puts emphasis on mastering her studio recordings and ensuring that her recorded work sounds as good as possible. These sketches and demos might be the opposite of all that. However, as historical artefacts, they are incredibly important and striking. This blog post looks at some of those early demos. So much fascinating and revealing context:

“The act of performing a critical analysis of the Cathy demos has a tinge of historical revisionism. It inherently goes against how these songs were meant to be heard. These are home demos which became audition tapes—recordings which were circulated to impress record labels (and for a while didn’t.) These songs weren’t recorded with thoughts of royalties and press eventually coming into the picture. Cathy wasn’t writing for an audience (arguably, she never has been), although the praise of her family was welcome. While the tapes were shared for the purpose of getting an audience, they weren’t written with this in mind. These songs give us a snapshot of the mind of a young creative finding her voice. So what did Cathy sing about at home?

Let’s listen to “Cussi Cussi,” which demonstrates that these songs are a learning experience for their creator. “Cussi Cussi” is a sprawling thing, less coherent than the songs we’ve previously covered. It’s a schizoid song, afraid of losing someone—is the singer trying to keep their identity in the face of adversity? Rather than pitch straight empathy, “Cussi Cussi” has a slightly despairing tone — its melody is tumultuous and complex, never committing to a single mood and always in conflict. The singer is begging the subject not to leave them, not to waste their life. “And I’ve noticed in your eyes/a sadness I don’t like/to recognize/you are feeling a heavy side of your ecstasy” is suggestive of a star being eaten away by their commitment to excess.

Yet the song itself also gets caught up in excess in messy ways which don’t quite land, albeit the tone remains pleasantly bemusing. The “cussi cussi” of its refrain is a bit hard to decipher. “Cussì” appears to be a word in the Romantic language Friulian for “so” (perhaps bringing the song’s title close to Spanish’s “así- así” for “so-so”?) It’s an interesting, obscure little track, but it’s not hard to see why it doesn’t have a second take in the Phoenix sessions. To be sure, it’s not boring—it’s an intriguing hot mess, and melodically it’s astonishing. If your weaker compositions at 15 sounded like this, you were in good shape.

It remains astonishing that we have 31 of Cathy Bush’s demos. This is the happy product of some tapes changing hands several times. The first person to circulate these songs was music publicist Ricky Hopper, a friend of Cathy’s brother Jay, who was given between twenty and thirty songs to send to record companies. No luck was had attracting labels, although Bush would eventually get lucky via other avenues. None of Bush’s demos were publicly available for years until tapes made their way into the hands of DJ John Dixon, who had acquired them at EMI around the time Bush signed to the label in 1976. Six years later, he broadcast twenty-two of the songs from his Phoenix-based KSTM radio station (this was around the time Bush was putting out The Dreaming. For David Bowie fans, this would be like hearing “The Laughing Gnome” when Scary Monsters came out). Gradually, the earliest demos were released, with the Cathy demos surfacing in 1997. So there’s our point of origin.

There is no First Kate Bush song. We established off the bat that “Wuthering Heights” is not the beginning of the Kate Bush story by choosing to begin the blog with “Something Like a Song.” This is designed to give a fuller picture of her music. In its beginnings, the Bush story is tumultuous and malleable. It’s reasonably well-documented for what it is, but still trying to shape itself like any young person trying to express themselves for the first time. Recording dates are uncertain — we have a small handful of demos recorded in 1973 called the Cathy Demos, and several more dating from around 1976 dubbed the Phoenix Demos (after the aforementioned broadcast). There’s an overlap in material from the two sessions, leading to us having two demos each for some songs that were never professionally recorded. Even the titles of the songs were applied retroactively, and not by Bush herself. To navigate this labyrinth of obscure music, the Bushologist must choose a trajectory and follow it. I chose “Something Like a Song” for the first post because of its relative malleability and accessibility; there’s not a lot to unpack in it, which allowed me to sketch out the approach of the blog. With “Queen Eddie” (or “The Gay Farewell,” whatever you wish to call it), another early Cathy song from both the Cathy and Phoenix sessions, we’re free to play around a little with ideas.

“Queen Eddie” is a surprisingly sharp and melancholy song. It’s multifaceted in its thematic concerns and has a grasp of rhythm and melody that “Something Like a Song” doesn’t quite. In “Something,” we had a singer who admired someone from a distance, who they didn’t quite understand. “Queen Eddie” is more mature: it’s about the singer finding out that someone they already know is more complex than they previously realized. In short, it’s a song about learning to empathize.

And Eddie in dire need of empathy. “I’ve never seen/such a sad queen as Eddie,” ponders the singer. “I’ve seen him raving/maybe even in pain/but never weeping like a baby.” Eddie isn’t some macho hero to sweep the damsel off her feet (indeed, he may not even swing that way). He’s a frightened young person whose life is falling apart for reasons not specified in the song. He’s a person who’s noticeably pretty, and on Saturday evening transforms into a drag queen. Bush’s music often displays a strong interest in the feminine side of men, and this is the earliest musical manifestation of her concern. Eddie is someone with no time for masculinity. Everything from the effeminate adjective of “pretty” to the fact he’s saying goodbye to “his boy” points to that (who’s his boy? Is he breaking up with a boyfriend, or is he transitioning?) Even the song’s varying titles, in all probability not penned by Bush, point to a queer reading of the song (“The Gay Farewell” is a pretty wretched pun even by my standards). There’s an element of fetishization here — Eddie is denied an identity outside of his gender and sexuality in a way that’s genuinely harmful. For all that the empathy on display is genuine, so is the singer’s privilege”.

I wanted to spend some time with Kate Bush extraordinary early demos. Where things began. Those who might know Kate Bush from The Kick Inside onwards might not be aware of these demos. Whilst some show Bush still finding her feet, there are some gems that many people have not heard. I would love for them to either appear on streaming sites or for there to be a new official album with a selection of twenty or twenty-five of these amazing demos. Bush’s reluctance to release outtakes, demos and rarities sets her aside from other artists. It is all about the new from here on perhaps. However, she should consider giving new light and lease to these…

BEAUTIFUL and engrossing demos.

FEATURE: The Root: D’Angelo’s Voodoo at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The Root

D’Angelo’s Voodoo at Twenty-Five

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ONE of the first classic albums…

of the twenty-first century arrived on 25th January, 2000. A new millennium welcomed in different sounds and scenes. 2000 was a remarkable year for music. Perhaps the finest album from that year came from D’Angelo. His second studio album, Voddoo, was a commercial and critical success. A number one in the U.S., in 2001, Voodoo won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album at the 43rd Grammy Awards. D'Angelo recorded the album between 1997 and 1999 at the legendary Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Voodoo features is defined by a looser, groove-focused Funk sound. It is a bit of a change from his 1995 debut album, Brown Sugar. An astonishing and deep album whose lyrics explore themes of spirituality, love, sexuality, maturation, and fatherhood. I want to come to a few features about Voodoo prior to ending with some reviews. In 2020, to mark twenty years of a classic, NPR spoke with engineer Russell Elevado about making Voodoo sound timeless:

“Black radio was changing quickly at the end of the 1990s, as artists like Jill Scott, Maxwell and Lauryn Hill melded R&B with slick hip-hop production and a coffee-shop poetry-night sheen. But D'Angelo had spent the past few years indoors, away from the vanguard. As part of The Soulquarians, a collective that also included superstar drummer Questlove, keyboardist James Poyser and heady, trippy producer J Dilla, he had logged countless hours holed up in Greenwich Village's Electric Lady studios, whose vintage equipment had previously helped artists like Stevie Wonder, The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix make their masterpieces. As Nate Chinen of NPR's Jazz Night in America described in The New York Times, The Soulquarians were in their own world — jamming out to old Prince and Stevie bootlegs, transporting themselves and the music they made there to the past, not the future.

Russell Elevado was there, too. A rising producer and engineer, Elevado had been tapped a few years earlier to finish mixing D'Angelo's 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, after the original engineer left the project. As he got to know the artist, he introduced him to his favorite '60s and '70s rock records and grittier, more stylized production methods, and the two began enthusiastically plotting their next venture together.

"I grew up on classic rock and soul — like, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, that's really where my roots are," Elevado says. "My whole concept was, hey, people are sampling these records. I can create those sounds — using the microphones they were using, using the consoles they were using, the same techniques — and make it our own thing organically."

Elevado recorded and mixed Voodoo with D'Angelo and his band over the course of three years, going to great lengths to ensure everything about the album and all its influences melded seamlessly. When it finally arrived in 2000, it came as a stealth throwback at a moment when R&B and soul felt caught up in something new. But while many today think of it as a masterpiece, it seems we still haven't figured out how to make sense of Voodoo: what box to place it in, how to pay it the respect it deserves, all the nuance and depth of a young black artist making a previous generation's black music.

Voodoo is so many things. It is jazz, soul and funk all at once. You can hear hip-hop's footprint in some of the songs, but it never dominates. While the influence of Prince and Funkadelic and Marvin Gaye is there on every track, it draws just as much inspiration from Hendrix and The Beatles. And for the artist, it was such an important statement that he waited nearly 15 years to follow it up. If it took time to see that Voodoo didn't live in the same music world as its peers in 2000, by now it has stopped feeling vintage — and started feeling timeless. I spoke with Russell Elevado about what it took to make Voodoo sound the way it does, and the legacy it maintains on its 20th birthday.

Sam Sanders: You had been working in studios for over a decade when you were hired to engineer Voodoo, but it took a while for you to move into R&B and soul. Why do you think those artists eventually started to notice you?

Russell Elevado: When I first started engineering I was doing a lot of house music, with Frankie Knuckles and David Morales. I first started getting my feet wet with that, and doing hip-hop remixes with this producer Clark Kent. From there, more R&B people started recognizing what I was doing, and I started going through the R&B circuit.

Later on, I realized how much it was like the work I was doing on house music. Because the bass has to be right. And the kick drum should have its own presence to not get in the way of the bass. Striving to get that in my early part of my career, think I intuitively started to know how to make the bass pump without being too large, and get the impact of the drums. House music is all about the bass and drums, and I guess that filters into everything else I did.

When did D'Angelo come into your orbit, and how?

I had been working on an album for Angie Stone, who was managed by the same manager as D'Angelo, Kedar Massenburg; he also managed Erykah Badu at the time. They were looking for another engineer to finish Brown Sugar. He'd heard what I was doing, saw my mixes were sounding good. He played me the songs that were finished so far, and I was like, "Yeah, get me on this album. I'll do whatever — I love it." So he introduced me to D'Angelo.

How was that first meeting?

When we met, he introduced himself as Michael — and I thought this was just Angie's boyfriend. They were dating at the time, and he was coming in to visit Angie a lot.

Do you think it's fair to call Voodoo a neo-soul album?

No, I don't think so. Brown Sugar, I would call neo-soul. Voodoo, I think, stands on its own: It's really a soul and funk album, versus an R&B album. I consider it like how we would call a soul album back in the day, like Sly Stone, or even Sam Cooke. And I'm starting to recognize over the years that there's a lot of fusion on that album, too, where we were fusing a lot of rock elements.

Which songs? Give me an example.

"The Root" has sort of a Jimi Hendrix guitar lick, but it also reminds you of Curtis Mayfield — so, blending this psychedelic rock thing on top of funk-soul. "Playa Playa" is another good example: It's really funky, but there's a lot of these psychedelic elements. It was kind of like he was schooling me on a lot of funk music, and I was schooling him more on the rock side.

What kind of rock were you showing him?

Like, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles. Because he grew up in a black community and was not exposed to a lot of quote-unquote "white music," which would have been rock or pop. He knew "Purple Haze," but he had no idea. Once he got it, it was like an epiphany: "Wow, I can't believe it — everybody was influenced by Jimi Hendrix." Prince was heavily influenced by Hendrix. Even Sly Stone, and especially Funkadelic and Parliament, they were all about Jimi, and if anything they were continuing what Jimi was doing after he died.

What song on Voodoo has the most spirit of Jimi in it?

I would have to say "The Root" — and in fact, that song grew out of a Hendrix jam at Electric Lady. It was Charlie Hunter and Questlove and D'Angelo, and they had just covered two or three Hendrix tunes: I think they played the actual song "Electric Ladyland," and maybe "Castles Made of Sand," something from Axis. "The Root" came from those jams, for sure”.

I want to move on to a brilliant and in-depth feature from Stereogum. Published in 2020, it argues that Voodoo is possibly the greatest album of the twenty-first century. A bold claim, but one that is backed up by real detail and passion:

“Twenty years after its release Voodoo remains the greatest album-length synthesis of hip-hop and R&B ever made, as well as a work saddled with one of music’s more fraught and complicated legacies. Voodoo sold 320,000 copies in its first week of release and debuted at #1, a startling feat for a dense and challenging work from an artist who’d released one previous studio LP that hadn’t cracked the top 20 and was nearly five years old. (It’s hard to believe, but five years actually once felt like a really long time to wait for a new D’Angelo album.) There are a number of reasons for this — Virgin promoted the hell out of it; D’s fans were cultishly devoted and ravenous for new stuff — but the biggest was probably “Untitled (How Does It Feel?),” a song that had first appeared in October of 1999 as the B-side to “Left & Right” and had been officially released as a single on the auspicious date of January 1, 2000.

D’Angelo’s physique did not naturally look like that — no one’s does — and was the result of prolonged work with a personal trainer in the run-up to Voodoo’s release. Touring life is unconducive to such regimens; Questlove recalled that D would sometimes postpone shows in order to frantically do stomach crunches. Delays and cancellations abounded, until D’Angelo retired from the road and public life for over a decade, turning a man who was briefly pop music’s greatest sex symbol into its most mysterious and, at times, troubled recluse.

It’s worth emphasizing here that “Untitled” is an incredible recording and performance, a slow-burning ballad that channels a tradition running from Ray Charles to James Brown to Al Green to Prince. Since his emergence as a prodigy out of Richmond in the mid 1990s, D’Angelo had been seen as one of the leading lights of the movement/subgenre dubbed “neo-soul,” and for much of his early career, he didn’t shy away from this. He was an obvious student of musical history, and his renown as a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist invited obvious comparisons to Stevie Wonder and Prince. He’d covered Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin'” on his debut, Brown Sugar, and had taken on Marvin Gaye, Eddie Kendricks, Howard Tate, and Prince himself on various soundtrack albums and compilations. In early 2000, “Untitled” seemed to fit snugly within this lineage, provided you ignored its subtle hints of refusal: the false start; the cut-the-tape ending; the very title itself.

As anyone who bought Voodoo in January of 2000 can tell you, it took only a few moments into the album to realize that “Untitled” was far more outlier than forerunner. Voodoo has sometimes been described as the apotheosis of the neo-soul movement, a superlative that strikes me as entirely wrong. It was an utter break from that movement, a resignation letter that doubled as a prophecy. If neo-soul had been a back-to-roots movement that largely stemmed from the too-slick production and performance styles of much of mainstream 1990s R&B, Voodoo was something else entirely, the sound of an artist grabbing an entire, illustrious tradition of American music and declaring, “Now we’re going here.”

In fact, “Untitled” itself had been something of a false “beginning.” Voodoo’s actual first single, released well over a year before the album came out, was a far better indicator of what D’Angelo had in store, had anyone bothered to notice. First released on the soundtrack to Belly, the DJ Premier-produced “Devil’s Pie” was a rattling and pummeling work of profane, gospel-inflected boom-bap, like Curtis Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s Hell Below, We’re All Gonna Go” reimagined through an MPC powered by pure premillennial dread. “Fuck the slice, want the pie/ Why ask why, till we fry” were the song’s opening lyrics, half-spit, half-slurred by a multi-tracked D’Angelo, his voice split between registers, teetering on atonality.

There had been nothing on Brown Sugar like this; the apocalyptic imagery, the sonic abrasiveness, Premier’s signature cuts and scratches on the bridge. “Devil’s Pie” was an audacious and completely extraordinary piece of music; it was also a flop. An almost violent departure from his prior work that was buried on a soundtrack to a movie that bombed, promoting an allegedly forthcoming album that wouldn’t arrive for 15 more months, the song evaporated into the void until it resurfaced as Voodoo’s second track.

Still, in retrospect “Devil’s Pie,” much more than “Untitled,” was the harbinger of Voodoo. The album opens with the ambient and foggy murmurings of a crowd, recalling the beginnings of soul classics like “We’re A Winner” and “What’s Going On” but augmented by the sound of a drum, distinctly ritual in character. As musicologist Loren Kajikawa notes, the sound connotes the album’s title, “suggesting that some mystical power is being invoked, a power that will be made manifest as the introduction gives way to D’Angelo and his band.” After about 15 seconds these mysterious, beguiling sounds — which will recur periodically throughout the album — bleed into Voodoo’s first track, “Playa Playa.” The song begins in spare and atmospheric fashion, as a slowly repeating, three-note riff is increasingly augmented by light drums, finger snaps, backwards cymbals, bass, ever-growing layers of vocal, guitar, keys.

The opening minute or so of “Playa Playa” is a rhythmic mission statement for the rest of the album to follow: flamboyantly unhurried, irrefutably funky but also distinctly off-kilter, the constituent parts never completely lining up and instead creating an ever-creeping, hypnotic soundscape of uneven strokes, microscopic archipelagos of sound and space bound by slink and slippage. For a group of people to play like this, at this tempo, for any prolonged period of time is almost impossibly difficult, and requires a virtuosity that both entails and exceeds the mastery of practice and technique and history. Musicians — particularly those who ply their trade in rhythm sections — often speak in vaguely mystical tones of the concept of “feel,” a word that collapses the individual and group into a particular sort of sensual experience that underlies (in my opinion, at least) music-making in its highest form, and R&B music in particular.

This particular feel that we hear at the outset (and throughout) “Playa Playa” — which, despite the paragraph above, is entirely indescribable, but you absolutely know it as soon as you hear it — is the defining sound of Voodoo, heard on tracks like “The Line,” “One Mo ‘Gin,” “The Root,” “Greatdayindamornin’,” and elsewhere. The musical brain trust around Voodoo was a loosely-knit collective known as the Soulquarians. Founded by Questlove, D’Angelo, keyboardist James Poyser, and hip-hop production maestro J Dilla, the Soulquarians soon included Welsh bassist Pino Palladino and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. Throw in guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter on several tracks and Voodoo featured some of the best players of their generation doing some of the finest work of their careers.

And yet the skeleton key to Voodoo’s rhythmic magic is Dilla, whose influence over the album is massive even if he’s never credited as a producer. In his great book Playing Changes, Nate Chinen writes that “[e]ach of the principal musicians on Voodoo traces this revolution in rhythm back to J Dilla.” Questlove in particular has repeatedly invoked Dilla, telling writer Jason King, “The thing that really attracted me to D’Angelo’s music was this inebriated execution thing that he had, which we both got from J Dilla.” Dilla, who passed away in 2006, was one of the great musical geniuses of hip-hop, a producer whose brilliant ear for sampling coupled with his stubborn refusal to use quantization — a tool that allows beatmakers to snap their sounds into “proper” rhythmic place at the push of a button — led to one of the most unique and influential sensibilities in modern music, forging digital worlds that were nonetheless shot through with tactile intimacy and idiosyncratic humanity.

The sound of Voodoo is the sound of some of the world’s finest instrumentalists setting out to replicate the sound of deliberate glitch and willful technological misuse, a virtuoso rhythm section in Questlove and Palladino whose point of spiritual departure was a sample-based musician who programmed like a percussionist in some altered state. (In a 2013 Red Bull Music Academy interview, Questlove recalled hearing Dilla for the first time as “the most life-changing moment I ever had… It sounded like the kick drum was played by a drunk three-year-old.”) That sound is, in many ways, the collision of the two centuries, an intoxicating mobius strip of analog into digital into analog, human into machine and back, round and round and back again”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews. The first is from 2015 and is by The Line of Best Fit. Reviewing the reissued edition of Voodoo, it is a towering album that still has this incredible power and genius. One of the greatest albums of all time, if you have never heard it, I would advise you to do so now:

“D’Angelo made those comments some time in 2000, when he was promoting what we now know to be his magnum opus, Voodoo (recently given a long-overdue vinyl reissue). The lay-off of five years between that record and its predecessor, 1995’s Brown Sugar, looks positively paltry in retrospect, set against the fourteen years the world was made to wait for the album that was originally known as James River and would eventually become the fiery Black Messiah. If ever the term ‘rush-release’ has been used with scything irony, it was in relation to D’Angelo’s decision to drop that third LP in the no-man’s-land of mid-December - in response to ongoing racial unrest in America - rather than stick with the already-slated date of early 2015.

There’s certainly no shortage of entirely feasible explanations for those wilderness years that followed Voodoo; disillusionment with the music industry, drug and alcohol issues and D’Angelo’s well-documented track record of perfectionism to a fault are all amongst them. The question of whether the passage of more time than his two-year tour for Brown Sugar constituted was necessary for the thematic material that makes up Voodoo itself, though, is another matter entirely, and one worth saving for a little later; after all, this album’s strength lies primarily - but by no means exclusively - in the sheer virtuosity of the musicianship on show.

D’Angelo is a man of prodigious talent, and on Brown Sugar, he demonstrated as such; he recorded the vast majority of the instrumentation himself, sprinkled in clever guitar licks and smartly considered orchestral flourishes with a wisdom beyond his years, and applied real intelligence in keeping the entire piece so unremittingly economical. Accordingly, the album is a study in restraint and minimalism, but there was perhaps always the sneaking feeling that he might have been underselling himself. Sure, that approach was far preferable to him throwing everything he could at the record for the sake of it - bringing in every possible big-hitting guest, attaching bells and whistles to every aspect of his instrumental repertoire, and putting his inimitable falsetto very much front and centre - but at the same time, Brown Sugar felt in some respects as if it only represented the tip of the man’s talent.

And so, on Voodoo, it would prove. This is a record that has few, if any, points of genuinely valid comparison. Brown Sugar was easy enough to pick apart; R&B with flecks of soul, jazz and hip hop. Voodoo is a different beast entirely. It by no means does away with those points of genre reference; instead, it expands upon them tenfold. Across thirteen tracks, the complexity of the stylistic construction takes the breath away. This is no longer an R&B record with nods to other genres; D’Angelo brings in his soul influences wholesale, pitching the album halfway between them and something else entirely, something that, in many ways, provides the genuine lifeblood of the record - funk.

On “The Line” or “Chicken Grease”, you’ve got a veritable chorus of D’Angelos singing at you - these multi-layered, harmonic vocals, a new development post-Brown Sugar, seem to have held the key all along to him having uncovered his true soul man. In anybody else’s hands, you suspect that this kind of delivery wouldn’t work when set against an instrumental backdrop concerned mainly with groove and texture, but it comes off spectacularly. The ultimate result is that whilst D’Angelo sounded aggressively focused on Brown Sugar, he absolutely strolls through Voodoo. More than that, he positively swaggers; this was one of the last huge records of the pre-digital era, of a time when artists on majors could take as long as they needed to find their stride - the confidence that oozes out of every proverbial pore here suggests D’Angelo did just that.

After making Brown Sugar with limited outside involvement - especially surprising in terms of the lack of collaborations, which were staples of the R&B genre at the time - he was more open to the idea on Voodoo, especially given that both Common’s Like Water for Chocolate and Erykah Badu’s Mama Gun were being recorded at Electric Lady in New York at the same time. A loosely collaborative atmosphere ensued at the studio, with Questlove - on production duty on both Common and Badu’s albums - quickly taking his rightful place behind the kit on most of Voodoo. Those three records would quickly come to form the crux of the finest output from the Soulquarians, the soul and hip hop movement that counted those artists as members alongside the likes of Mos Def, Q-Tip and the late J Dilla.

When D’Angelo gave a lecture at the Red Bull Music Academy last year, he said, “I never claimed I do neo-soul. I always said I do black music.” His more relaxed attitude to the idea of working with his peers held the key to the complex, intelligent and ultimately, more visible way in which he referenced his black influences on Voodoo (funnily enough, the biggest obstacle faced early on in sessions for album number three was that he wanted to go back to doing everything himself, an indicator of his ongoing fixation with Prince.) “Left & Right”, with a well-judged guest turn from Method Man and Redman, didn’t just nod to hip hop - it incorporated it. "Devil’s Pie" chops up no fewer than six samples from the likes of Fat Joe, Raekwon and Teddy Pendergrass; having master sampler DJ Premier behind the desk on that track couldn’t have hurt, either. The verses on “One Mo’gin”, meanwhile, are straight-up delta blues, and whilst he’d tackled a quiet storm-style blues cover before with “Cruisin’”, his take on Roberta Flack’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love” has been moulded unmistakably into his own style - in fact, it was originally intended as another collaborative effort, with Lauryn Hill, in the early stages of production.

Questlove told Spin that the fluid nature of the album’s personnel made Voodoo’s recording sessions feel like “a left-of-center black music renaissance”; you kind of get the impression that it wasn’t until years later that those involved realised the degree to which they’d captured lightning in a bottle. This was a special kind of alchemy in instrumental terms. Questlove, on drums, worked with Dilla to put together programmed rhythm tracks that, by design, couldn’t be distinguished from a live kit; in one of the record’s many ingenious instrumental turns, they would deliberately fuck with the inch-perfect programmed tracks to lend them a human feel, resulting in the languid - almost sloppy - percussion that stands up as one of Voodoo’s hallmarks. Another of those is Pino Palladino’s contribution; his basslines are of monstrous importance to the album’s sound, particularly on “Devil’s Pie” and during the so-called “virtuoso part of the record” - Questlove again - that comprises “The Root”, “Spanish Joint” and “Greatdayindamornin”. All three were recorded totally live and are riddled with the kind of elaborate twists and turns that you can get totally lost in - however many times you hear them, you always come out the other side feeling like you’ve picked up on something new. Of particular note on that hat-trick are Charlie Hunter’s smartly considered guitar lines, as well as D’Angelo’s gravitation towards Latin jazz on “Spanish Joint”.

In 2015, with the benefit of hindsight on Voodoo and Black Messiah, there’s no question that D’Angelo is a genuine intellectual; his take on America’s recent civil unrest along racial lines on the latter record, for example, was clearly born of both deep thought and real soul. Listen to Brown Sugar, though, and the themes feel relatively rudimentary; a bunch of love songs in a classic style. Voodoo saw a wholesale expansion in conceptual terms; lyrically, he ruminates upon faith with real depth, as well as studying maturity (“Send It On”), psychological challenges (“The Line”) and, quite prominently, his then-recent entry into fatherhood - closer “Africa” deals both with that and his heritage in general. On top of that, he cherry-picks ideas from his favourite genres to suit both his own tastes and the album’s cerebral approach; “Playa Playa”, for instance, embraces the traditional competitiveness of hip hop, but “Devil’s Pie” is an out-and-out dismissal of its obsession with material wealth. The fact that the lyrics are actually difficult to discern on first listen for the most part, thanks to the heavy, Let’s Get It On style vocal multi-tracking, is one of many excuses to less give Voodoo repeat listens than approach it with the same meticulous ear for detail that D’Angelo himself lent to it in the studio.

And then, of course, there’s the penultimate track, and his most famous. “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” is ultimately better-known in the popular imagination for extracurricular reasons; the video, which features nothing but an apparently nude and by no means gym-shy D’Angelo against a black background, turned him into an unlikely - and reluctant - sex symbol. Both the track and the video utilise a sledgehammer touch that contrasts jarringly with the album’s otherwise largely subtle approach to sexuality, and the ensuing attention at live shows - with feverish female fans packing shows more in the hope that he’d flaunt his torso than deliver a musical tour-de-force - was a major factor in forcing D’Angelo into the reclusion - and substance abuse - that kept LP number three on the back burner for so long. That shouldn’t, though, detract from the quality of the song itself; if you’re going to shoot for unabashed sensuality, at least do it like this. Prince, again, apparently provided the inspirational blueprint for “Untitled”, but Gaye, White, Wonder and Summer are all in spiritual attendance, too, in a manner that made the likes of Boyz II Men and Ginuwine sound trite by way of comparison. “Untitled” was released as a single on January 1st, 2000. The next millennia of R&B songwriters have plenty of time to top it, but I still wouldn’t hold my breath; it’s hard to imagine anybody absolutely nailing sensuality like D’Angelo did with this cut. It’s brazen, but still nuanced.

Like the reissue of Brown Sugar, this new press of Voodoo isn’t a remaster, and again, why would it be? It often feels as if D’Angelo was walking a bit of a tightrope by making the album so unrelentingly complex - there are so many deft touches, and so much going on at all times, that to go back and tamper with either the mix or the masters would surely detract from what makes Voodoo truly great. It’s an album scored through with tiny intricacies; the little instrumental turns of phrase and carefully woven textures make this a masterful construction project, but the scarcely-there spoken word snippets that wax and wane in and out of the intros and outros mean that it’s a human one - you can feel Electric Lady circa 1999 living and breathing on this LP. It is at once both intimate and monolithic. In terms of twenty-first century soul, R&B and funk - even blues - it is utterly without compare”.

I am going to end things there I think. You can read more about the album here. The accolades it received Ahead of its twenty-fifth anniversary on 25th January, I wanted to spend some time with D’Angelo’s staggering second studio album. It still sounds fresh to this day. One that artists should be listening to. It has doubtless inspired many, though it is hard to point at an artist today that reminds you of D’Angelo. His latest studio album, 2014’s Black Messiah, is another masterpiece. Let’s hope we get more material from him soon. This amazing artist is in a league of his own! After the brilliant Brown Sugar in 1995, D’Angelo took another big step and created…

A timeless work of brilliance.

FEATURE: I’ve Come Home: Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at Forty-Seven

FEATURE:

 

 

I’ve Come Home

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at Forty-Seven

_________

LET’S start out…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

with some background behind the writing of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. There is some mystery around the date of its creation. Bush wrote it around midnight when there was a full moon in March of 1977. Many say the date is 5th March, 1977. It was a song that almost did not make it onto her debut album, The Kick Inside. The last song written for that album, Wuthering Heights reached number one. Bush became the first female artist to achieve a U.K. number one with a fully self-written song. Bush got inspiration to write her debut single having watched the final ten minutes of a 1967 BBC miniseries adaptation of Wuthering Heights. I have seen that adaptation and it seems like maybe Bush caught the last fifteen or twenty minutes. A powerful scene where the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw Linton appears at the window as this ghost. Filmmaker Emerald Fennell is adapting Wuthering Heights for a new film out this year. Although the casting has raised eyebrows, it is another chance for people to discover the novel. I hope people do go to the source. The only novel written by Emily Brontë, it was published in 1847. One-hundred-and-thirty years later, Bush was inspired to write a song based on the novel. Although she didn’t read the book until a while after the single was released, it is incredible that this amazing and iconic artist would launch into the world with a song that was so original and unusual. I will end by writing as to why people need to read Wuthering Heights and how important that source is. I want to bring in a few features about Wuthering Heights. The first is from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia:

“The song was recorded with Andrew Powell producing. According to him, the vocal performance was done in one take, “a complete perfomance” with no overdubs. “There was no compiling,” engineer Kelly said. “We started the mix at around midnight and Kate was there the whole time, encouraging us… we got on with the job and finished at about five or six that morning.” The guitar solo that fades away with the track in the outro was recorded by Edinburgh musician Ian Bairnson, a session guitarist.

Originally, record company EMI’s Bob Mercer had chosen another track, James And The Cold Gun as the lead single, but Kate Bush was determined that ‘Wuthering Heights’ would be her first release.  She won out eventually in a surprising show of determination for a young musician against a major record company, and this would not be the only time she took a stand against them to control her career.

The release date for the single was initially scheduled to be 4 November 1977. However, Bush was unhappy with the picture being used for the single’s cover and insisted it be replaced. Some copies of the single had already been sent out to radio stations, but EMI relented and put back the single’s launch until the New Year. Ultimately, this proved to be a wise choice, as the earlier release would have had to compete with Wings’ latest release, ‘Mull of Kintyre’, which became the biggest-selling single in UK history up to this point in December 1977.

‘Wuthering Heights’ was finally released on 20 January 1978, was immediately playlisted by Capital Radio and entered their chart at no. 39 on 27 January. It crept into the national Top 50 in week ending 11 February at No.42. The following week it rose to No.27 and Bush made her first appearance on Top of the Pops (“It was like watching myself die”, recalls Bush), The song was finally added to Radio One’s playlist the following week and became one of the most played records on radio. When the song reached number 1, it was the first UK number 1 written and performed by a female artist”.

Kate performed ‘Wuthering Heights’ numerous times in TV programmes.

9 February 1978: Bio’s Bahnhof (Germany)
[unknown date] 1978: Magpie
16 February 1978: Top of the Pops
2 March 1978: Top of the Pops
23 March 1978: Top of the Pops
25 March 1978: The Late Late Show
25 March 1978: Toppop (Netherlands)
7 May 1978: Rendez-vous Du Dimanche (France)
12 May 1978: Efteling TV special (Netherlands)
19 May 1978: Szene (Germany)
9 September 1978: Festivalbar (Italy)

I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn’t seem to get out of the chorus – it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn’t link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I’d been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.

I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn’t relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.

It’s funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn’t know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with ‘Wuthering Heights’: I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.

I’ve never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it’s supposed to be.

One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I’ve had from the song, though I’ve heard that the Bronte Society think it’s a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn’t know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I’m really happy about that.

There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV – it was about one in the morning – because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that’s all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence.

Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979”.

In 2015, Uncut published a feature around the making of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. Some words from those who recall how the song came together and why it is resonant. Forty-seven years after its release, this song still creates shivers. It is a remarkable debut single that catapulted Kate Bush to the forefront. She was an instant star:

“The fact that Bush shared her childhood name (Catherine) with Earnshaw, and a birthday (July 30) with Bronte, fostered a sense of cosmic kinship with the subject of “Wuthering Heights”, a bond acted out when she recorded the song with members of the Alan Parsons Project. “She seemed to adopt different personas when she was singing,” recalls guitarist Ian Bairnson. “Suddenly there was another person there.”

Aided by a wildly eccentric video and some choice publicity photos, “Wuthering Heights” was instantly impactful, and later spoofed by everyone from Pamela Stephenson to Alan Partridge. These days Bush may regard its unbridled romanticism with mixed feelings (it was nowhere to be heard in Before The Dawn), but it remains one of music’s boldest opening statements of artistic intent, and an unforgettable exploration of obsessive love, supernatural imagining and powerful femininity.

“ANDREW POWELL (Producer, Arranger, Bass): In 1975 I got a call from David Gilmour, saying he’d got this artist and he just thought she was something really special. This was substantially prior to Kate signing to EMI. Initially he said he was going to produce her, but in the end Dave put up money for some sessions. These were really superior demos, and I ended up producing them, including “The Man With The Child In His Eyes”. A couple of years later I went in to do the album. She had so many songs. I’ve still got some of the cassettes. I must have 100 songs here, still, written pre-The Kick Inside.

BRIAN BATH (Guitarist in KT Bush Band): She wrote “Wuthering Heights” at her flat at Wickham Road in Brockley when she was living with [KT Bush Band bassist] Del Palmer there. At the time [their relationship] was all a bit hush-hush, a bit keep it careful.

POWELL: My memory is that “Wuthering Heights” was written very close to us going into the studio. I think it was only a matter of a few days before. Kate came around to where I was living and said, “What about this one?” She sat down at my piano and out it came. It was obvious to me immediately that it was something extraordinary.

DAVID PATON (12-string guitar): Andrew gave us a brief outline as to what Kate was all about, Dave Gilmour nurturing her and all that. He said, “She’s very young but EMI are really excited about her, she’s really special.” I remember him saying the music was a bit wild, a bit wacky even. We arrived at the studio, Kate introduced herself, and Andrew just said, “Sit down and play them the song,” and that’s how it was done. She sat down at the piano, said, “It goes like this,” and just played. We were all gathered around the piano with our jaws dropped, because it was a stunning performance. Faultless, absolutely faultless, and she could do that time and time again. It sounded fantastic, there was just a great vibe in the studio.

IAN BAIRNSON (Guitar): She sat and played the piano and sang the guide vocal. We wrapped ourselves around her, looking for ways to embellish it or give it direction. For us it was a very refreshing thing, because it was wide open.

PATON: Talking about Cathy and Heathcliff was so clever. I didn’t like to ask her, “What’s this song really about?” That book must have had a huge impact on her to influence her in that way, but she kept her vision to herself. A lot of artists you work with you usually find that they’re besotted with themselves – like Freddie Mercury, all he could do was talk about himself all the time. She wasn’t like that at all. She didn’t say, ‘”I want to do this and that, me, me, me, me.” She wasn’t that kind of person at all and that in itself was very refreshing.

BAIRNSON: I didn’t pay a lot of notice to the lyrics. It was only about a year ago when I read the lyrics and appreciated them so much more.

PATON: Her influences were pretty unique, pretty stylised. And that high–pitched voice. It wasn’t until I was listening to “Wuthering Heights” on the radio that I really realised, Woah, that’s really high pitched! When she sat and sang live for us I didn’t really notice anything unusual about it, I just felt her style was very unique.

POWELL: I loved it, I was very much in favour of it. She was doing some very interesting things with her voice. She was experimenting more and more in all sorts of directions – vocally, lyrically and musically.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

GERED MANKOWITZ (Photographer): I took the infamous ‘leotard’ photo in my Great Windmill Street studio in Soho in early 1978. I was doing a lot of work for EMI, and they called me and said, “We’ve got this extraordinary young woman called Kate Bush, she sounds like nobody else, she’s wonderful to look at, but we don’t know what to do with her. We need some photographs, we need an image.” I always found the clothes that dancers used during rehearsals a very attractive look, and I thought it was a natural fit for Kate because she was so into dance and movement. I simply suggested we got leotards and woollen working socks and all that gear, and they put it to her and she seemed to like it. When the pictures were processed, the advertising agency EMI had employed to promote “Wuthering Heights” came up with the campaign of putting the posters on buses, and selected the one in the pink leotard – famously showing her nipples – and the rest is history. She certainly wasn’t uncomfortable with it. She was perfectly aware of how she looked, because she had spent two hours in the dressing room during the shoot. It was her choice, done with her full participation and knowledge. She was very comfortable with her body. The pictures were a huge commercial success and I think they had a great deal to do with putting Kate on the map.

KELLY: I can remember saying to Kate, “You’re going to be so famous you’re not going to be able to walk down the street.” I said that to her after the first week of recording, though she wouldn’t have believed it.

POWELL: The unusualness was key, this strange girl. As soon as she did “Wuthering Heights” on Top Of The Tops, that made a difference, too, because it wasn’t a conventional performance.

BAIRNSON: It was quite a shock when I saw her first on Top Of The Pops, because the Kate that we knew in the studio and the one that turned up on TV was a completely different persona.

BATH: She was just a bag of nerves her first time on Top Of The Pops. Unfortunately it’s not a great performance. It wasn’t ideal. The KT Bush Band all went along expecting to play, and at the BBC they said, “Oh no, we use our own musicians.” We were all upset not to be included in it, and so was she. All we could do was stand in front of her and say, “Come on Kate, go for it.” But she was very nervous. I think if we had been on stage with her it would have been better, but it didn’t matter. The song was already massive by then. I think the video helped”.

There are a couple of other features that I want to introduce. Dreams of Orgonon wrote a wonderful feature about Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. It was so different to everything that was around at the time. Released on 20th January, 1978, it is amazing that the public connected with the song and made it a success. Bush was right to fight for this song. She instinctively knew that Wuthering Heights would be taken to heart:

“In accordance with this liberty, Bush carries off “Wuthering Heights” with such ease. Her singing is offbeat and non-conventional but blatantly works. She phrases her lyrics with dramatic pauses and breaks in odd gaps. Her emphasis on “you had a temper” followed by the rapid concession of “like my jealousy” is terribly in character for Cathy. She knows how to be coy and how to express fear (“turn down that road in the night” sounds genuinely panicked, as if she’s ready to lunge headfirst through Heathcliff’s window.) These turns would sound jarring from any other singer (covers struggle with the song’s tonal shifts), but Bush anchors it all with a mercurial gravity that takes the material dead seriously. Who else would handle placing the first syllable of “Heathcliff” in the pre-chorus and using the second to land the chorus this well?

Bush has total command of the song’s melody. “Wuthering Heights” has a concise structure of intro/verse/pre-chorus/chorus/verse/pre-chorus/chorus/bridge/chorus/outro which keeps the song moving and indulges in its pleasures without overstaying its welcome. The song appears to begin in A major but quickly reveals itself to be in F sharp minor, a conspicuous choice of key change signaled by the two keys’ use of three sharps, creating a fascinating mix of tension and uplift. As Cathy experiences her “bad dreams in the night,” the song creeps into B flat minor, before explosively modulating into D flat major for the chorus. While these key changes dazzle, the time signature is just as malleable. The first verse moves forward in 4/4 while the pre-chorus dips into 2/4, before the chorus pulls a series of time signature shifts from 4/4 (“it’s me, Cathy”) to 3/4 (“I’m so cold”) down to 2/4 (“let me in-a your window”) before settling on 3/4 for “window.” The second verse then slows down to 2/4, the time signature of the pre-chorus which is retained for the bridge. The chorus repeats and the outro carries on in 4/4, led by Iain Bairnson’s legendary guitar solo. There’s not a bum note in “Wuthering Heights.” As a song, it’s a masterpiece.

To sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee

And one can’t imagine a more fitting visual rendering of “Wuthering Heights” than the music videos produced for it. The first video directed by Nick Abson filmed on location at Salisbury Plain is probably more iconic as it’s the more literal video. Bush’s red dress and the use of an actual moor has to many people become the definitive image for Wuthering Heights as well as “Wuthering Heights.” The second video shot by Bush mainstay Keef Macmillan is perhaps more in tune with the atmosphere of the song, with its black room and echo-visual-effect placed on a glowing Bush, but it’s stodgier and less satisfying. But perhaps even more iconic than either video is the dance. Bush had been learning dance from legendary mime Lindsay Kemp for a time, and it shows. Bush’s choreography is less classical and more representative — she’s intent on capturing a character. “When I needed to possess you” is expressed poignantly by early Bush’s signature glance directly into the camera, while she directly holds her hands out for the pre-chorus. The precise spinning of “Heathcliff, it’s me, Cathy” is, of course, the highlight, right next to the farewell wave of the outro. “Wuthering Heights” is not only sung but danced.

The solitary neighbour

The spectacle of a 19-year-old auteur pulling this off was astonishing to record label EMI. Indeed it seems like they didn’t realize they had a hit on their hands. Executive Bob Mercer wanted “James and the Cold Gun” for lead single on The Kick Inside, but Bush was tearfully resolute on making “Wuthering Heights” her thesis statement. She got her wish, and handled the market better than the experts did. EMI did, however, make the wise decision to not bill their new star right before Christmas (and rightfully so — Paul McCartney and Wings were hijacking the charts with “Mull of Kintyre,” the bestselling single in UK history at that time). Unfortunately for EMI (or perhaps rather fortunately), copies of the single had been sent out prior to the delay, and radio stations loved “Wuthering Heights” enough to play it prior to its release. The ghost was making its way into audience’s ears.

And then it exploded. “Wuthering Heights” debuted on the 20th of January 1978, lingering for a month before moving comfortably into the Top 40 on the 14th of February. Two days later Bush was on Top of the Pops, making an unprepared performance of the song and looking appropriately ready for death. But the appearance caught enough people’s attention that by the 21st “Wuthering Heights” was at #13 on the charts. As Bush got more press attention and did scads of interviews, the song rose to #5 on the 28th. On the 2nd of March, the Macmillan video was showed on Top of the Pops and insured that “Wuthering Heights” wasn’t going away. Finally, on the 7th of March, Kate Bush’s debut single, recorded and released when she was 19, topped the charts, less than two months after its release. EMI were appropriately gracious, holding a champagne reception for Bush and giving her dinner in Paris. To celebrate, Bush used some of her royalties to buy a £7000 Steinway piano. Her success made her confident she wouldn’t stop there.

And she didn’t. The Kick Inside peaked on the albums charts at #3. In the same year, Bush would release her second album and begin planning her one and only concert tour. This was the most promising start to a career Bush could have asked for, and she wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. In 1986, she cut a new vocal for the song to appear as the opening track of her compilation The Whole Story. Yet the story of “Wuthering Heights” had a life beyond that.

In 2018, Kate Bush made a rare public appearance to pay tribute to her old muse, Emily Brontë. As part of the Bradford Literature Festival, Bush was one of numerous writers to write a poem set in stone in Brontë’s honor:

She stands outside
A book in her hands
“Her name is Cathy,” she says
“I have carried her so far, so far
Along the unmarked road from our graves
I cannot reach this window
Open it, I pray.”
But his window is a door to a lonely world
That longs to play.
Ah, Emily. Come in, come in and stay.”

Perhaps the years has shifted Kate Bush’s perspective on Cathy and Heathcliff. But her respect for Emily Brontë and her creation has never gone. “Cathy will live on as a force. I was lucky she stopped in me long enough to write a song,” Bush mused in a 1980 book of sheet music. The ghost of Cathy hasn’t stopped haunting Kate Bush. She gave Bush a career. And Bush hasn’t left us alone either. May she haunt us for years to come”.

In many ways, Kate Bush brought Wuthering Heights to life. Made it more accessible to people. How the song is almost a lesson. Together with the extraordinary videos for the song – the first video of her in the red dress or the white dress version that followed -, this incredible novel was given this extraordinary and unforgettable interpretation. This feature from 2019 is must-read. Even though I have featured this article before, I wanted bring it in again:

“I’m not alone in hearing echoes of Kate Bush’s voice echoing across the culture. Though she has always been much better known in the UK, her American fans make up in ardor what they lack in numbers. To celebrate the November release of a career-spanning Rhino Records boxed set, Margaret Talbot unpacked her decades-long connection to the songs of Kate Bush, whom she identifies as a forerunner to Perfume Genius, St. Vincent, and Mitski. Earlier in the year, Wesley Morris lovingly deconstructed the use of “Running Up That Hill” in the FX series Pose.

So if a consideration of Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” briefly leads the class away from discussions of the uncanny in Wuthering Heights or the othering of Heathcliff or the tricks that Brontë plays with the reader’s complicity, the song is well positioned to open up a host of other, equally valuable, conversations that have nothing to do with my inclination toward post-punk British music. A close look at the video puts us only a cartwheel away from conversations about art, where it comes from, who it ignores, and who gets to make it.

According to the lore that surrounds the song, Kate Bush’s first encounter with Wuthering Heights came in 1977 when she caught the closing minutes of the BBC miniseries. She wrote the song in a single night, mining lyrics directly from the dialogue of Catherine Earnshaw Linton, one of the star-crossed lovers at the heart of the novel.

But as Bush borrowed from the dialogue, she made a crucial transposition in the point of view. When she sings, “You had a temper, like my jealousy / too hot too greedy,” the my refers to Cathy and the you to Heathcliff, the novel’s brooding protagonist/antagonist/antihero/villain (depending on your point of view). But the novel itself never inhabits Cathy’s consciousness: she is seen and heard, her rages and threats vividly reported, but everything we know about her comes from either Nelly Dean, a longtime housekeeper for the Earnshaw and Linton families, or through Lockwood, a hapless visitor to the Yorkshire moorlands and the principle first-person narrator of the novel (most of the novel consists of Nelly’s quoted speech to Lockwood, who is eager to hear the complete history of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and its neighboring property, Thrushcross Grange). Although the novel spans decades and multiple generations of Earnshaws and Lintons, Kate Bush’s shift into Cathy’s point of view centers the song entirely on Cathy and Heathcliff—which is fittingly how Cathy, in the novel, views the world. She and Heathcliff share one soul, she claims; everyone else, including her husband Edgar, is little more than scenery.

With this choice, Bush gives voice to a female character who—though an electric presence in the novel—is denied the agency of self-narrating, or even of being narrated through a close third person. Nelly may be presented to us by Lockwood as a simple, transparently objective narrator, but the novel is littered with moments where Nelly complicates the lives of those around her by revealing or concealing what she knows. Bush’s musical interpretation of the novel makes visible the questions that surround point of view: who does the telling? What is their agenda? Who can we really trust?

By opening up these questions, the song situates itself in the tradition of other so-called “parallel texts” that respond to or reinvent earlier, often canonical works of literature: think Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, or Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation and Albert Camus’s The Stranger. In each pairing of “parallel” and “source” text, the later work privileges characters narrated about, but never before narrated from within.

Like the novels by Rhys and Daoud, Bush’s song demonstrates how art can respond to art, and points to the ways in which crucial reevaluations of past works take place not only in scholarly articles but in one artist grappling with the erasures and silences of an earlier age. Rhys and Daoud both insist on a voice for a silenced, maligned, or dismissed colonial subject. Their aim is not to create a work that merely amends (or acts as a footnote to) the earlier text, but to produce a narrative that calls into question the primacy, and even the authority, of the earlier text.

Kate Bush’s shift into Cathy’s point of view centers the song entirely on Cathy and Heathcliff—which is fittingly how Cathy, in the novel, views the world.

Kate Bush may not have been aiming to supplant Emily Brontë, but just as the song itself points to issues within the novel, Bush’s role as its creator exposes the straitened public personae of the Brontë sisters in 1840s England. Remember that the Brontës—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—published their own work under vaguely male pseudonyms: their first joint publication, in 1846, was The Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Jane Eyre appeared a year later, attributed to Currer Bell, and a year after that Ellis Bell’s name appeared on the title page of Wuthering Heights.

It was unthinkable at the time that young, unmarried women would circulate their names so freely on books that portrayed the love between a wealthy man and his hired governess, or the flare-ups of passion and cruelty that marked the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff. The sisters also knew that women authors were routinely dismissed or pilloried by the all-male fraternity of critics, and they hoped that the Bell names would offer protection and a fair shake from reviewers. Still, one early review blasted the incidents in Wuthering Heights for being “too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive,” while even a more positive review called it “a strange book. It is not without evidences of considerable power: but, as a whole, it is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable.” Two years after Emily’s death in 1848, an edition of Wuthering Heights was published under her own name, with a preface and biographical note by Charlotte defending her sister’s moral character against the aspersions cast on her. 

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in March 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix

Fast forward to the late 1970’s and Kate Bush finds herself a young female artist in a culture industry still dominated by men. Her record company, EMI, pushed for another song, “James and the Cold Gun,” to be her first single, but Bush insisted that her debut had to be “Wuthering Heights.” After winning that argument, she delayed the release of the single in a dispute over the cover art, and later referred to herself as “the shyest megalomaniac you’ll ever meet.” When the single was finally released in early 1978, it needed only a few weeks and a performance by Bush on Top of the Pops to claim the #1 spot on the UK charts, displacing ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me.” Only 19, Bush became the first female singer to make it to #1 with a song that she herself had written. At a time when women were viewed primarily as interpreters of others’ lyrics—as instruments rather than creators—Kate Bush upended the narrative with her first piercing notes. She would narrate from within, and in her own words.

The song’s connections to debates about cultural literacy, art-as-critique, and the fraught space of the female artist are enough to earn the video its place in the classroom. But I also count on “Wuthering Heights” to speak directly to my students about some of life’s other, bigger questions. My students, like teenagers everywhere, often wonder when their real lives will begin: when their ideas will matter to the wider world; when the art they make will feel like more than another assignment to be graded. But if high school students campaigning across the country against gun violence can illustrate the political power of the young, then Kate Bush argues that your artistic impulses also matter, that they’re valid, and that there’s no reason to wait.

And, it’s important to add, Kate Bush doesn’t care if you’re laughing. Because she is all-in, all the time. To watch the “Wuthering Heights” video is to see an artist consumed by a sense of personal vision. She isn’t aiming for the mainstream. She’s singing about a 19th-century novel known to most of her peers from their A-Levels cram sessions. Her voice soars and rumbles, and her dancing is a mix of pirouettes, leaps, and contortions. She even mimes sleepwalking. The video also uses every trick in the 1970’s A/V club handbook: gauzy filters, freeze frames, lighting gels, multiple exposures, a fog machine. It’s completely over the top, but Bush seems to know that holding back or winking at the camera will break the spell and cause the entire project to collapse into a cheap parody. If nothing else, Kate Bush is authentically herself”.

Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights has this strong legacy. Each year, there is The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever. It is an event held at locations around the world where participants recreate the music video (of her in the red dress). Last year’s event took place in Margate on 28th July. In 2018, Kate Bush paid tribute to the Brontë sisters in a new memorial on the Yorkshire Moors on the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth. In 2013, three-hundred Kates gathered in a park in Brighton to break the record for most lookalikes in one place at one time. Steve Coogan performed Wuthering Heights as part of a medley sung by Alan Partridge for his stage show (he did it again for Comic Relief in 1999). Kate Bush popped out for the evening and caught the final performance of Coogan’s run and told him after the show that “it was nice to hear those songs again”. Noel Fielding danced to the song in 2011 for Let's Dance for Comic Relief. Bush sent him a message wishing him good luck. With the Emerald Fennell film out soon, I do hope that many people read Emily Brontë’s novelistic masterpiece. I am reading it at the moment. Whilst Kate Bush was inspired by the final parts of a 1967 BBC adaptation, she did read the novel and loved it. Wuthering Heights is fascinating. Forty-seven years after it was released as a single, I would urge people to read the novel. It is beautifully written and endlessly fascinating. You quickly become invested in this story of destructive power of love, revenge, and obsession.  We follow the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw (Linton) and Heathcliff, a poor orphan taken in by Catherine's father. You can read a fascinating summary here. I would suggest you invest in the novel as, in some ways, it brings you closer to Kate Bush’s masterpiece song. I imagine Bush reading Wuthering Heights for the first time and her reactions. How stirring it must have been. When thinking about the song, I wonder what it would have been like hearing it for the first time. The strangeness, beauty and originality of the song. It endures to this very day. Wuthering Heights remains one of the greatest and most important debut singles…

EVER released.

FEATURE: Idiot Wind: Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

Idiot Wind

Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks at Fifty

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I may only scratch the surface…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bob Dylan on stage in 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Ray Stubblebine/AP/REX/Shutterstock

of this wonderful album but, as it turns fifty on 20th January, I wanted to spend some time with Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. His fifteenth studio album, it was released by Columbia Records. Having begun recording at A & R studio in New York City in September 1974, Bob Dylan hastily re-recorded the material in December. That was shortly before Columbia were due to release Blood on the Tracks. Dylan re-recorded the album in Minneapolis. The final album features five tracks recorded in New York and five in Minneapolis. Even though Bob Dylan has denied the songs on Blood on the Tracks are autobiographical, it is hard to look beyond that. Songs about his estrangement from his wife, Sara. I want to start out with a feature from The Guardian. In 2018, they reviewed a new set, More Blood, More Tracks. It expanded on a classic album:

“On 16 September, 1974, Bob Dylan entered A&R recording studios in New York to begin work on his 15th studio album. He was 33 years old, his marriage was on the rocks and, despite a successful comeback tour that same year, his reputation rested solely on the epochal songs he had produced a decade previously. Having so defined the 1960s, Dylan had become an increasingly marginalised figure following his retreat to rural Woodstock at the close of the decade. The domestic normality he found there had precipitated a run of low-key, creatively unfocused albums that stretched from 1969’s Nashville Skyline to 1974’s Planet Waves. All that was about to change.

The making of the masterpiece that is Blood on the Tracks is as tangled a tale as any in Dylan’s long recording career. A version of the album was completed over four days in the studio in New York, the pace of Dylan’s impatient creativity confounding the hastily assembled band that had been recruited to flesh out his darkly reflective songs. Guitarist Eric Weissberg later recalled: “I got the distinct feeling Bob wasn’t concentrating, that he wasn’t interested in perfect takes. He’d been drinking a lot of wine, he was a little sloppy, but he insisted on moving forward, getting on to the next song without correcting obvious mistakes.” For the second day’s session, only one of the six musicians was retained, while two others were drafted in.

The finished album was scheduled for late December release. A record cover was printed, an advertising campaign finalised and test pressings dispatched to selected radio stations. A dissatisfied Dylan spent Christmas with his brother, David Zimmerman, his closest confidant. On hearing the finished record, David told him that it would fail commercially because the songs were too stark and stripped back to appeal to a mass audience. Rattled, Dylan derailed his triumphant return by insisting at the last minute that the album be withdrawn from the schedules.

Five of the 10 songs were then re-recorded in Sound 80 studio in Minneapolis over two days in the week after Christmas with a hastily assembled group of local musicians. The reworked album was rush-released on 20 January, 1975. Out of these messy and fraught circumstances, a masterpiece somehow emerged. Its gestation is mapped out in often revelatory detail on the imminent More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol 14, a 6-CD deluxe box set released this week, in which the 10 original songs are augmented by every single outtake in chronological order from the 1974 recording sessions. A facsimile of one of the famous red notebooks adds to the allure of the expensive deluxe edition, while the less obsessive Dylan fan can make do with a pared-down version on single CD version and double vinyl formats.

The elaborately packaged album arrives on the back of the recent announcement by film director Luca Guadagnino that he is to follow up the mainstream success of Call Me By Your Name with an adaptation of Blood on the Tracks, which, he says, will be a “a multiyear story, set in the 70s, drawing on the album’s central themes”. Four decades after its release, Dylan’s most personal record continues to cast a spell.

As is the case for many Dylan devotees, Blood on the Tracks has been part of the soundtrack of my life since its release, as constant a presence as classic albums such as Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? and Dylan’s previous masterpiece, 1966’s Blonde on Blonde. In the mid-90s, I came by a CD called Blood on the Tracks: The New York Sessions, an unofficial bootleg which had surfaced soon after the release of the original. It includes early, spartan recordings of songs including If You See Her, Say Hello and Idiot Wind. Over time, I have come to love them even more than the official versions, not least because, in their raw and still unfinished state, they sound even more intimate and revealing.

A case in point is his stark, acoustic reading of Idiot Wind, his most splenetic song since Positively 4th Street, which sounds even more intense than the more elaborate version on the 1975 original release. The contrast between the two reveals Dylan’s mercurial creativity at that time. Now comes news that the deluxe More Blood, More Tracks contains no fewer than nine versions of the song. (You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go unfolds over 12 separate takes.) This is manna from heaven for Dylan completists. For the rest of us, it provides intimate evidence of his often frenetic approach to recording and rewriting, capturing him in full flow at a pivotal moment on his creative journey. Lines, rhymes and even melodies change as Dylan searches for the shape and core meaning of each song in take after take. “It’s like you’re in the room...” elaborates producer Steve Berkowitz in the current issue of Uncut magazine. “It’s living history”.

I will finish with a couple of reviews for Blood on the Tracks. Before that, in 2020, Albumism marked Blood on the Tracks at forty-five. One of the all-time best albums, for those who have not investigated it yet, I would advise spending time with it. I think it ranks alongside the very best Bob Dylan albums:

“Like many of Bob Dylan’s albums, Blood On The Tracks has a complicated and involved history that greater musicologists than I have documented. A book, Simple Twist of Fate, was written about it, but the broad strokes of Dylan’s fifteenth studio album are reasonably well known.

Blood On The Tracks was Dylan’s first album back on his long-time home Columbia Records after releasing a pair of albums through Asylum. It was seen as his first and greatest comeback album that cemented him as an artist that could prosper in any era. At the time of its release, most believed it was his best album in close to a decade. And now, 45 years later, many say that it’s the best project that he ever recorded.

The relatively obscure details about the album have also been documented. How Dylan initially recorded the entire album over four chaotic days in New York City. How on the eve of the album’s release, with test copies of the vinyl pressed and artwork printed up, he decided to recall it and rerecord at least half of it (possibly at the suggestion of his brother). How he recorded the album in Minnesota using mostly unknown session musicians; the only credited musician for Blood On The Tracks is Eric Weissberg of “Dueling Banjos” fame. How he retooled the album’s sound and changed the lyrics on some of the songs in order to “soften” them. How he helped make the album lighter by changing the key everything would be played in.

Out of that mess, Blood On The Tracks in its “official” form was born, a timeless masterpiece of folk rock Americana. This makes it a difficult album to pay tribute to, because so much has been said and written about it in the past 45 years. Few other Dylan albums have gone through such extensive analysis. The angles and superlatives have all but run dry.

So I’ll just state my opinion, which is just that Blood On The Tracks is unquestionably great, high within the ranks of the best albums of all time. I’m not of the opinion that it’s Dylan’s best album, but I have it comfortably within the top five. That does indeed put it amongst the best albums ever released.

The album opens with “Tangled Up In Blue,” one of Dylan’s most beloved songs. It’s famous for the non-linearity of its narrative, which wasn’t a frequently used songwriting tool in the mid ’70s. Dylan’s approach to this unorthodox narrative structure was apparently influenced by artist Norman Raeben, who gave Dylan painting classes during 1974. The ’70s were a time when a folk rock god could say that his music was influenced by Anton Chekhov and Ukrainian painters and not sound pretentious.

“Tangled Up In Blue” remains one of Dylan’s surrealistic tours-de-force, filled with wistful memories of a woman with red hair and the time they spent together, including a still elusive tale of how they first met. Dylan has continued to change the lyrics to the song, performing many different versions of it over the years.

Blood On The Tracks is replete with strong narrative fare, creating vivid and fully realized characters through his lyrics. “Simple Twist Of Fate” documents what appears to be a one-night stand in a waterfall hotel. Dylan explores the thoughts of the man and woman, as she leaves to wander the docks soon after the night of passion has ended. He also makes inventive use of shifting the perspective of the song from first to third person, sometimes within the same verse.

Of course, the guts of Blood On The Tracks cover Dylan’s lamentations of love lost. On songs like “You’re A Big Girl,” “You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” and “If You See Her Say Hello,” he struggles to balance being the mature adult and learning to let go, all while being haunted by what could have been. “Meet Me In The Morning” is another largely underappreciated composition, a traditional Blues record that’s the only song on the album where the aforementioned Eric Weissberg appears.

Melancholy gives way to bile on “Idiot Wind,” the centerpiece of the album’s first side and Blood On The Tracks as a whole. At nearly eight minutes in length, it features Dylan railing against all manner of slights and perceptions, while leavening it with brief humorous asides. It’s a mash of over-the-top imagery and fury at his critics, musical or otherwise. It’s a subject matter that has been popular with Dylan since the days of “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

His anger is crystallized perfectly in the song’s second verse, as he rails, “People see me all the time / And they just can’t remember how to act / Their minds are filled with big ideas / Images and distorted facts.” He then segues into rage towards those who believe the criticisms that they read, sneering, “I couldn’t believe after all these years you didn’t know me any better than that.”

These words and other verses throughout the song only encouraged the idea that he was using the album to communicate bitterness towards his soon to be ex-wife. “Idiot Wind” is allegedly one of the songs that received the most extensive lyrical makeover, as some sections cut too close to the bone. Still, lyrics like “You hurt the ones that I love best / And cover up the truth with lies / One day you’ll be in the ditch / Flies buzzing around your eyes” are still pretty damn harsh.

“Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts” is Dylan at his most cinematic, an upbeat country ballad depicting the night in the life of bandits, a diamond baron, and cabaret performers in a town in the Old West. Structurally, the nearly nine-minute epic unfolds like a Larry McMurtry story, perfectly setting the scene and exploring the motivations of nearly everyone, except the enigmatic Jack of Hearts himself. Reportedly, there have been multiple attempts to turn the song into a film, but nothing has ever been made.

“Shelter From The Storm” features some of the album’s most arresting and beautiful imagery, as Dylan recounts his visions of the former love of his life providing him solace from the constant turmoil that life presents you. But like many of the songs on the album, unconditional love gives way to regret, as they lose sight of each other. Dylan sums up his feelings in the song’s second-to-last verse, singing, “Now there’s a wall between us / Something there’s been lost / I took too much for granted / I got my signals crossed.”

The album-ending “Buckets of Rain” is the only straight-ahead love song on Blood On The Tracks that doesn’t center on heartbreak. Playing his guitar and backed only by a bass, Dylan describes love in uncomplicated terms. He describes the effort it takes to find it amongst the misery of everyday life and the reality that comes from friends drifting apart. His lyrics are simple, yet pack a lot of depth and meaning, as he sings, “Friends will arrive, friends will disappear / If you want me honey baby, I’ll be here.”

Blood On The Tracks continues to be a source of fascination for Dylan fans and musical scholars. Columbia released More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14 (2018) as part of their continuing series of releasing outtakes and alternate takes of Dylan’s music. It was released as a single CD and six-CD boxset. The obsessives out there can use the six-CD set to piece together the “original” unreleased version of the album.

Blood On The Tracks could all be ruminations on the short stories of Chekhov or coded messages to the mother of his first child. Or it could be something else entirely. But whether or not it’s based on reality is immaterial. The album still has a power that hasn’t waned in the past four-and-a-half decades. Whether or not I personally ever thought of it like that, Blood On The Tracks stands as an unyielding monument to the permanent timelessness of heartache and pain”.

I am going to end with two reviews for Blood on the Tracks. Fifty years after its release, it is an album that still resonates and cuts deep. One of Dylan’s most poetic and revealing albums. The first review I want to include is from the BBC:

“Bob Dylan as an artist had a tough early 70s. By 1974 our Bob was in the strange position of being still regarded as the next Messiah while seeming bored with himself. This was, remember, the era of Planet Waves and Self Portrait – not his brightest moments - while his tour the previous year with the Band was also fairly iconoclastic. In the end two factors got Dylan back on (hem hem) track: painting and a very messy breakdown of his marriage.

In fact, one seemed to lead to the other. Dylan had spent two months in the spring of 1974, studying painting under Norman Raeben in New York. Afterwards he claimed: ‘It changed me. I went home after that and my wife never did understand me ever since that day’. While the album has a confessional sense of hurt Dylan’s always denied the connection but still admits that there’s a lot of pain on the album.

Initially sessions were held in familiar surroundings in New York. What’s more he was back with his old record company following an unsatisfactory sojourn with David Geffen’s Asylum label. Bob used Eric Weissberg’s band, Deliverance, to rush through the recording process and have the album finished in one week. In typical Bob form he showed scant regard for polish, leaving the sounds of his buttons and nails rattling against the guitar strings on many tracks. All was set for an Autumn release until, back in Minnesota, he played an acetate to his brother who suggested that it did need a more commercial sheen. Hastily assembling a cast of local musicians, Dylan re-recorded about half of the album and from these two halves this masterpiece was born.

From the opening track, “Tangled Up In Blue”, Dylan embarked on a whole new era in his work. Seemingly autobiographical, these tales of a lover relating a series of unrelated events all set in a mythical America used the impressionist method that he’d learned from Raeben: ‘I wanted to defy time, so that the story took place in the present and the past at the same time. When you look at a painting, you can see any part of it, or see all of it together. I wanted that song to be like a painting.‘ The same trick is pulled on the gorgeous “Simple Twist Of Fate.”

Over ten songs Dylan alludes to heartache, deception, angry name-calling and poignant regret and loneliness. While on the searing “Idiot Wind” he seems to have no mercy for his ex (‘It’s a wonder you can even feed yourself’ on “You’re A Big Girl Now” he pleads with her : ’I can change I SWEAR’. It’s different from his previous work because suddenly he’s singing about things that don’t pertain to youth anymore. Gone is the clever, sneering tone of the mid-60s or the haranguing of his protest years. It’s a world-weary, nostalgic and ultimately more poetic Dylan we hear, and that is what makes Blood… a timeless record”.

In 2016, Pitchfork explored Blood on the Track. Even though some feel it is quite caustic and sharp in places, it is actually a very warm and welcoming album. One of Bob Dylan’s most accessible albums. I first heard Blood on the Tracks when I was a child. It has lost none of its power decades later:

“Though the disintegration of Dylan’s marriage might easily be spotted in nearly every song on the album, there are also meditations on the ineffable passage of time (“Tangled Up in Blue”), a transitory love affair in the present tense (“You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”) and media jackyldom and other bummers (“Idiot Wind”). For that matter, a full third of the LP’s second side is concerned with “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts,” a nine-minute 16-verse ballad that bucks the album’s signature themes of time regained, implacable loves, and unnamed names. Though remaining convincingly jaunty throughout with a light melody that catches the details in forensic clarity, its drawn-out story is a chore to decipher. Unlike the ambient emotional narratives of the rest of the album, the linear ballad requires a full and present attention, a reminder of one of the ways that music consumption is different than reading. Reportedly once considered for a film adaptation, the screen may’ve suited its stage-directed characters better than folk-rock. Further separating it from the rest, the blood spilled on this particular track doesn’t seem to be Dylan’s own, detracting from the album’s bigger picture and only underscoring the unifying power of the other nine songs.

Drawing on a range of songwriting tricks (including an open “E” tuning that assures that very few will play Dylan like Dylan, either), Blood on the Tracks emphasizes a feeling of raw expression. Singing live in the studio (with the exception of the overdubbed “Meet Me in the Morning”), Dylan placed his usual focus on capturing in-the-moment performances. And though his reputation for studio and onstage spontaneity is well-deserved, Blood on the Tracks also presents songs that he had spent almost all of 1974 writing and reworking. Personal, perhaps, the songs easily transcend their would-be biographies. If Dylan’s attitudes towards his partners sometimes stand out as patronizing—“You’re a Big Girl Now” acting as an equally infantilizing bookend to 1966’s “Just Like a Woman”—they reveal more about the nature of hurt than anything useful about the songwriter.

One glimpse into the making of the album comes through the version that Dylan very nearly released, scrapping it at the last moment, after jackets and test pressings had already been made. Playing an advance copy at a family gathering in Minnesota in over the holidays, Dylan—at the behest of his brother—decided he wanted a brighter sound, less of a downer. Flexing his superstar muscle and anticipating Neil Young, Kanye West, and others, he had the album recalled, pulling together a band of local folkies in the days after Christmas 1974 to rerecord half of the songs. The New York acetate (most recently offered in 2015 for $12,000) is all late night atmospherics, mostly just Dylan and bassist Tony Brown, the sound of the former’s coat-buttons brushing against his guitar strings. Though tracks have come out via various box sets, bootlegs of the New York sessions—sourced warmly from the acetate—are every bit as magical as the final product, a classic all its own, minus a clunkier “Lily, Rosemary, the Jack of Hearts.”

In Minneapolis, Dylan brightened up the sound (changing keys on “Tangled Up in Blue,” striking a lighter keynote) and toned down some of the crueler lyrics (especially on “If You See Her, Say Hello”). If atmosphere was lost (and it was, especially without the pedal steel-drenched “You’re A Big Girl Now”), then accessibility was gained. Charting at #1 on its January 1975 release, Blood on the Tracks is arguably the last Dylan album on which a majority of the songs became standards of their own, part of the invisible canon shared at coffee houses, college campuses, or anywhere bright-eyed young pickers might congregate. In that way, it is also maybe Dylan’s last album of originals to qualify as “folk music” in both senses of the phrase: the popular genre defined by the presence of idioms and acoustic instruments, but also the great shared body of songs with lives and language that exist apart from their studio recordings and original performers. With the Byrds and many others achieving their own hits with his tunes and Dylan himself often circulating unrecorded work via folk music zines and songwriting demos, this had long been the expected fate of Dylan's songs.

Imagining Dylan as a simple songwriter, the template of Blood on the Tracks—sad boy with an acoustic guitar and a handful of chords—might seem basic, until one tries to replicate anything about it, or even just strum the songs at home. Blood on the Tracks lives alone in Dylan’s catalog, that open “E” tuning (which Dylan refused to explain to his musicians) often preventing the songs from sounding exactly right in the hands of others. It lives on in its own peculiar way. Dylan has seemed to keep “Tangled Up In Blue” in particular to himself, rewriting the song several times, both casually (playing fast and loose with the pronouns), and more formally, including a near-total rework released on 1984’s Real Live. One of the few older songs Dylan has performed consistently in recent years, even newer verses have emerged over the past half-decade. Nobody covers Dylan like Dylan either, apparently.

Though the albums on either side of Blood on the Tracks both made it to #1 and contained hints of the same songwriting territory, via Planet Waves’ “Going, Going, Gone” and *Desire’*s “Sara,” especially, they were only just hints. Some of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks persona remained visible via the two legs of the Rolling Thunder Revue, but the original open tuning never returned, and Dylan would soon bury his vulnerability, too. The surrealism would resurface in full force for 1978’s Street-Legal, but the musical appeal didn’t. It took another few decades for Dylan even to return to the warm string-band sound of Blood on the Tracks, coming closest on his two 21st century albums of standards, Shadows in the Night and Fallen Angels. For a restless musician, it was a combination of factors that only came together once, locking together to transmit themselves through the years.

Even roughly 40 years later, Blood on the Tracks broadcasts hurt and longing so boldly it has become a stand-in, the type of shorthand a song licensor would deploy at the push of a button if it wasn’t so expensive and maybe too predictable. It manages a balance of old pain resolved and wounds so fresh they seem as if they might never heal, brutal personal assessment and doubt, unnecessary cruelties and real-time self-flagellation. While Blood on the Tracks can be a constant companion to listeners during periods of initial discovery, it (and Dylan’s whole catalog) has also become something to be lived with over a long period and put away for special occasions. Functioning like a literal album, the density of the passed time and pressed memories in “Tangled Up in Blue” grow richer with each passing year. As with the narratives of the songs themselves, Blood on the Tracks continues to absorb yesterday, today, and tomorrow, promising it can sustain new listeners as much as new meanings, should it ever have to be called back into service”.

On 20th January, the amazing Blood on the Tracks turns fifty. I wonder how Bob Dylan views the album now. Still one of his most acclaimed and celebrated, make sure that you spend some time with this masterpiece. It is personal and affecting but it is also inviting and layered. Songs that have stood the test of time. A genius songwriter at the peak of his powers. There are few stronger and more affecting albums than Bob Dylan’s…

FIFTEENTH studio album.

FEATURE: And Spend My Evenings with it Like a Friend: Kate Bush: A.I., Outtakes and Fresh Potential in 2025

FEATURE:

 

 

And Spend My Evenings with it Like a Friend

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush: A.I., Outtakes and Fresh Potential in 2025

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MY penultimate…

Kate Bush feature of 2024 looks to the future. I am going to be spending time discussing 1978, The Kick Inside and that period. For now, I want to assort a few different topics. That clash and contrast between the past and present. Recently, Kate Bush joined voices from artists calling for protection of their work from A.I. The Guardian reported on this:

“Kate Bush has called on ministers to protect artists from AI using their copyrighted works amid growing concerns from high-profile creatives and ongoing political uncertainty over how to handle the issue.

The reclusive singer-songwriter has joined the actors Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, Rosario Dawson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Bonneville in signing a petition, now backed by over 36,000 creatives, which states the “unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted”.

Her intervention emerged after Sir Paul McCartney became the latest star to back calls for laws to stop mass copyright theft by generative AI companies, warning the technology “could just take over”.

Bush, who shot to fame with Wuthering Heights in 1978 but whose last album was released in 2011, gave a rare interview this year in which she said she was “very keen” to make a new album, saying: “I’ve got lots of ideas … it’s been a long time.”

The 66-year-old told the BBC: “I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space … Particularly [in] the last year, I’ve felt really ready to start doing something new.”

Amid growing hunger from tech companies for content on which to train their artificial intelligence algorithms, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, was expected to launch a consultation last month on a system that would require copyright holders to opt out of having their work mined to train AI algorithms. Kyle believes AI could be an engine of growth in the UK economy”.

The longer we await new music from Kate Bush, the greater the fear that someone will use A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) and try to replicate her work. They can write a Kate Bush song without her performing it. New words but manipulate her vocals. It is scary that we are in a position where artists can be exploited by A.I. No true Kate Bush fan would do that. However, as we have seen bands like Oasis and The Beatles subjected to A.I. replications of their music, it would be horrible to hear something like this happen to Kate Bush! She has always been at the forefront of technology but, as an artist and person, she favours natural sound. Analogue and vinyl. Rather than streaming and anything that is not warm and rich. A.I. really does seem to be the opposite of all of that. I really do hope that we never get a ‘new’ Kate Bush song from someone using A.I. I guess it puts a certain pressure on her to get ahead of this and release her own work.

That is not to say Kate Bush will never use A.I. herself. In terms of videos and helping to create visuals. It would never be part of recordings, but I wonder whether she will utilise it for any music videos. The thought does occur about artists like Kate Bush being subjected to the negative aspect of A.I. Not only when it comes to creating new recordings using her voice. Or her original music being used and manipulated by A.I. It is not only to protect Kate Bush. Other people involved in the recordings. I have already written about 2025 and what might be in store. I will write another feature as to what a possible eleventh studio album might sound like. Themes explored and what direction Kate Bush will head in. It does seem like we have seen the final push of archiving. Before talking about the possible end of retrospection and reissuing. I do wonder about 2025 and what will arrive. I have recently re-pitched the idea of Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave being adapted for the screen. Something Kate Bush wanted to do around the time Hounds of Love was released (in 1985), I do think it is a project that would intrigue her. People will say that she has already been approached by producers about this. But nobody knows Kate Bush or can speak for her. I always think this when people shoot down ideas. Assuming Bush would reject them or has already been asked. This year has seen Kate Bush’s music feature in trailers and T.V. shows. Including an appearance of Hounds of Love’s The Morning Fog in season three of The Bear, there have been nods to her incredible work. I do think that this will continue into 2025. Even though Bush is protective of her work and would not say ‘yes’ to everything, that is not to say she is going to deny everyone who comes her way! Will we see another one of her songs enjoy the same sort of exposure and revival as Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) did in 2022?! I would like it f another album got some focus. Not that we want people to use her music as a novelty or a sure-fire way to get some attention.

It would be good for Kate Bush when it comes to reaching new people. I think a big part of her reissuing her albums and putting so much effort into that is to attract both existing fans and a younger demographic. The fact that Emerald Fennell is adapting Wuthering Heights for the screen, does this mean that Kate Bush’s debut single will be in the film?! Whilst we do hope that A.I. and Kate Bush’s music do not mix in a bad way, it is always pleasing when filmmakers pay tribute to her. Not only does her music heighten particular scenes. It creates this attention and wave of curiosity that brings new people to that particular song. I have also pitched other Kate Bush-related projects. Like photographers John Carder Bush (her brother), Guido Harari and Gered Mankowitz discussing their time photographing Kate Bush. I know that there will be plenty of celebrations and discussions around her work next year. Possibly a new album. Have we seen the last of Kate Bush reissuing her albums? Will there ever be anything older but unheard brought to people? I don’t think that everything Bush has released on her albums is all that we have. In terms of archive takes and demos. Have they been erased? After 2014’s Before the Dawn and the 2016 live album from that residency, Bush began the first real reissuing of her albums. In 2018, Bush – assisted by James Guthrie - reissued her albums on vinyl and C.D. under her Fish People label. One important bit of retrospection and editing centred around 2005’s Aerial. With Rolf Harris providing vocals, they were taken out for new reissue. Bush’s son Bertie took on Harris’s parts.

Two C.D. and four vinyl boxsets were released (Remastered in Vinyl: I-IV). This was a chance to have her studio albums collected together. The Whole Story was included. Repackaged to include The Kick Inside through to The Dreaming, Hounds of Love to The Red Shoes (repackaged as a double album); Aerial to 50 Words for Snow. Thanks to Graeme Thomson and his book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, for the information. A fourth boxset, The Other Sides, collected B-sides, remixes, non-album tracks and songs that appeared on soundtracks. It was one of the first cases of Bush’s releasing these lesser-known tracks. Dipping more into the archives and away from the well-known albums. One big reason why Bush initiated this first round of reissues is because she wanted ownership of her work. It was hard to find many of her albums on vinyl pre-2018. Now on Fish People, this was important to Kate Bush. Ensuring that her work was available again on physical formats. Bush spent so much time and energy overseeing the reissues. Many artists have their work reissued but do not get involved. Bush wanted to make sure that the sound and packaging was to her specifications and subject to her approval. In February 2023, Bush announced that Fish People was working with a new distribution partner, state51 Conspiracy. They would take over from Warner Music Group. They would reissue her work released from 1980 onwards. The entire catalogue in the U.S. It was a big moment. Given the new interest in her work in the U.S. – no doubt bolstered by Bush being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2023) – her albums were rereleased to C.D. and vinyl in 2023. It was another round of reissuing that is likely going to be her last. The 2023 editions featured 2018 remastering by Kate Bush and James Guthrie. Alongside the studio album reissues, Bush also put out special editions for The Dreaming, Hounds of Love and 50 Words for Snow. Hounds of Love got extra special treatment. Some fans found it excessive and too pricey for their tastes. I think it was this final and definitive push to get her albums on physical formats under her own label.

If we think A.I. is something fake and designed to exploit and undercut artists and manipulate and steal their music. Physical formats seem to be the opposite of that. Albums that will not be copied or subjected to anything underhand. Bush realising that streaming was not viable for most artists. That most artists were not making any real money from it. When Bush performed Before the Dawn in 2014, she reinvestigated and mounted her work from 1985 onwards. No retrospection of the period before. I think Kate Bush genuinely only wants her albums to come out as they always were. Not expanding or adding anything. Many of her music heroes, with us and departed, have seen their legacy reshaped with outtakes, demos, live recordings and anything else that can be mined. Mainly designed to gain money for estates and labels, it does reshape how we see that artist. Prince and David Bowie are two examples of deceased artists who have had so much posthumous material released. No doubt Kate Bush has an archive and there are outtakes, demos and some unreleased songs that will never come out (such as the title track of 1980’s Never for Ever). Bush’s albums have not been distilled and there has been no major architecture or excavation. Instead, Bush has tweaked, tailored and repurposed her albums. Making sure her albums are available on vinyl. So, next year will be one with very little in the way of looking back. Bush is looking ahead. Now that she has mainstream acceptance and awareness in the U.S., there will be occasions where artists cover her work, T.V. shows and films use her work; there will be this new demand and desire. With every reissue and new step, Kate Bush is protecting and preserving her work. As intended. In her own vision. It takes me back to A.I. and this unauthorised use of artists’ work. Ensuring that we do not hear a horrible A.I. Kate Bush song that would be roundly condemned by Bush and her fans. New possibilities and horizons for 2025 now that Bush opened the possibilities of new material. It could be announced at any moment really. From GRAMMY nominations to her work being included on the screen, through to Bush releasing a video, Little Shrew (Snowflake), and raising funds for War Child, it has been…

>

A wonderful year.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Ella Isaacson

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Ella Isaacson

_________

I am going to bring in….

a few interviews with the amazing Ella Isaacson. This is an artist that everyone needs to keep a close watch out for next year. Someone who is going to make huge steps. I am going to start off with some biography about an artist that you should know about and follow:

“Her solo project has garnered over 26 Million streams on Spotify and 40 million across platforms as well as a songwriter that has amassed over half a Billion streams now and a Billboard #1. Discovered upon a chance meeting abroad, Ella was taken under the wing of Norwegian Hitmakers Stargate, who played a pivotal role in developing her as an artist and honing her songwriting skills. Ella is a regular feature on Spotify's SALT Playlist and Apple Music's BREAKING POP. Ella has seen a bunch of viral tiktok success over various singles on her Artist project in the last few years including her latest "FMLYLM" with over 6 Million views on the platform.

In 2022, Ella's single Armageddon was a "Popular" Tiktok sound trending over 30 Million streams across UGC, while her 2023 release, "RUDE," has been played on 50+ US radio stations, earning support from notable radio figures like Ted Stryker at Alt 98.7, Jojo Wright from Kiis FM, and Maxwell on z100. Ella has collaborated on releases with artists like Illenium, Blasterjaxx, Zed's Ded, R3hab, Gallant, Deep Chills and BKAYE and has penned songs for Bryce Vine, Aespa, Xiumin from EXO and more”.

I am quite new to Ella Isaacson. She is an artist that I have just connected with and am loving her music. I am interested to see where she heads next year. With such a distinct sound and a clear talent, I am excited to see where she heads.

I want to start out with a 2021 interview from FLAUNT. Around the time Ella Isaacson released the incredible single, Out of My Head, it is interesting learning more about the New York-raised artist. I will move on to some 2024 interviews in a minute:

“Growing up, Ella fell in love with poetry first before discovering her own voice as a singer. In combining the two, suddenly she found solace in songwriting and recording songs… inspired by a wide range of influences from Avril Lavigne to Green Day to Billy Joel. First releasing music under another moniker, Ella spent some time overseas where she came to the realization of what it meant to be 100% authentically herself.

Ella describes her character in one word: time. “She’s a time traveler essentially, she's era driven,” she explains. “There’s a lot of inspiration both in the world she lives in and the music she writes, that’s all driven by time. Whether it’s on a thematic level of running out of time and the anxieties that come with life, then a visual level inspired by moves through time and different eras. Pull-on different things that way.”

What part of New York are you from?

A bit of a mixed batch, I grew up in Long Island and Manhattan.

What was a young Ella like growing up there?

For my younger life, I was very much in the suburbs. I was a kid who does what kids do when they’re bored in the suburbs. [laughs] They have too many things to overthink about and they write. I wrote poetry as a kid, I’d curl up in my room or find the backyard or grass. I’d write poetry, I was that kid.

At what point did poetry turn into music?

I was doing music for a while. I did classical training, I was singing as a kid. When I was 13, I realized “Wow, I should put these two things together.” I’d been writing poetry for a lot of years, I started really young. I was one of those strange kids who fell into that at 8 years old. I started to put it together. I had a cousin who was much older than me, who was a producer. I called him and said “Hey, I just wrote a song. Could you record it for me?” That day, my poetry went into full-on recording and I fell in love with it.

Who made you want to do music?

I was the child of much, much older siblings. I was 12+ years plus to my youngest sibling. You became a sponge at that point, my sister started singing. Because she sang, I’ve always had music around my house. My parents were music lovers. There’s tons of videos of me at the piano or grabbing a hairbrush to sing. It was in my world, I just took it and made it my own.

How would you describe your sound now?

[sighs] It’s grown a lot. The EP is definitely an acoustic pop driven sound. It’s called Chapters,  I don’t know why it took us so long. We wanted to encapsulate a lot of things in the title. We’ve been releasing Chapters along with the singles as they come out. I literally had a eureka moment the other day: “that is the most perfect name for the EP!” [laughs] Last second when we got there, because I couldn’t settle. I needed it to be exactly right. It really fits in with so many things. From a literary perspective, there’s a lot of influences on the project. Just the fact it talked about stages in your life. A lot of us are always growing but this new generation in your 20’s, you’re growing up in a different way than ever before. The opportunities and choices, it’s moving so fast that things are changing so much for every generation.

For me, that’s really where I felt so much of my growth has happened. I wanted to mark that and Chapters is the perfect representation on a lot of different levels. It’s been really amazing because we’re about time. Of course, things have always been organic. For the new project, in the last month we’ve almost made an album worth of material. Sometimes, inspiration hits. You finish one thing and already have the bulk of another. [laughs] That’s been really fun. The EP was a culmination of things I worked on before and during Covid. While the new project is really where I’m at right now. So much inspiration, so many things that happened and my personal evolution with the project as well. I’m really excited. When we speak of eras, we’re really inspired by main collaborators like Billy Joel, Elton John, Queen. Everything from time signatures to the way the guitars are played and arpeggiation. Really getting specific about the time period and bringing you something fresh and new with it. It’s been really exciting to experiment with that sound because I grew up on that being a New Yorker.

How does it feel to release “Out Of My Head”?

I’m feeling really good about it. One of my big places of inspiration has been Sweden. That song was literally made the first day when I worked in Sweden for the first time.

Have you always been vulnerable with your music?

It took a while, I’ll be honest. We all have vulnerability as children, then that goes away. When I wrote music at the start I struggled with that honesty for whatever reason, I don’t know if it’s being shy or the feeling of being watched, or if you grow to be less vulnerable because of life experiences, but it took a long time. The birth of the project this time was where I said “wow, I’m really writing about my life. Things I’m really experiencing on a day to day basis, everything’s rooted from me.” It changed my life and my art, it’s all growing pains.

What would you be doing if you weren’t doing music?

Oh god, I don’t know. I don’t think I have any other plans. [laughs] I’m so focused on music. If I wasn’t in music, because I’m so inspired by poetry and film, it’d definitely have to be something in those landscapes. I’m doing that now, it’s been really exciting to try out my hands in different things. I really love that process, it’s something I see myself doing.

What do you like to do for fun when you’re not recording?

I like fun experiences with friends or people I love. A great view, a great class, a great dinner. Something where I get to share that experience, see something really beautiful and have fun doing it.

One thing you want people to get from the Chapters EP?

I want them to see that everybody goes through these growing pains. We can really feel alone in that process, in our frustration. I really go there without shame in talking about it, I throw myself under the bus sometimes. [laughs] I really want fans to hear that and feel not alone. That’s why we listen to music, so we feel less alone”.

This year has seen Ella Isaacson release incredible singles like Cocaine Kisses and Penny Lane. Perhaps her finest music to date, it bodes well for next year. What will come from this sensational artist. I will love on to a recent interview from Lock Mag. I was especially interested reading Isaacson’s response to the question as how, as a female musician, she tackles obstacles:

“How do you express your personal experiences and identity through your music?

Earlier on I learned from songwriters who gave me a shot at the start, that a great songwriter is a great storyteller. Whether that’s telling stories from your experiences and those close to you, an aspirational story of the version of ourselves we wish we could be, or bringing the listener on a journey of a world we’re tapping into in that moment. I’ve touched on all these different approaches in my process. I think identity is something that happens over time and writing many songs and creating your world brick by brick.

Have you faced any challenges or obstacles as a female musician, and if so, how have you overcome them?

I have and as a really young girl when I started, I wasn’t as vocal as I should’ve been. I think I attempted to handle those challenges with grace and just walk away from where situations where I didn’t feel respected and really pay attention to my spidey senses when things felt off. I tried to dim my feminine side in ways and be extra professional, so as not to warrant any unwanted attention, which sucked that it was all on me to try to manage that rather than people knowing right from wrong or knowing that certain things are just simply “not okay” to say to a young, female artist.

I can’t say there weren’t moments and interactions that didn’t shock me or make me feel really hurt and at odds with the way people choose to operate.

Now, my approach is much more vocal and I think the industry has gotten much more aware of appropriate conduct. I think female musicians do get a lot more criticism and meanness directed at them than men from the business side, but I really hope we are in a growth spurt of change and I believe it truly is getting better.

Are there any particular themes or messages that you aim to convey through your music?

My songs cover various themes, but ultimately, I want people to walk away feeling confident, seen, empowered, sexy, and ready to grab life by the horns while embracing their true selves.

Can you talk about your creative process and how you go about writing and producing your music?

I like to start from scratch usually, with a great guitar lick or a sound or reference of some sort. My favorite is when I have a lyric idea I’ve been mulling over and bring it into the studio and then marry that with the production idea we create. I want both the lyrical content and the sonic world to hit both separately and together. I have worked all different ways and continue to challenge myself but a bulk of the music I make lately has started this way!

How do you hope your music will resonate with your audience, especially with other aspiring female musicians?

My point of view is through a very female forward lens and I don’t sensor myself very much because I want other females to feel the freedom to say and do what they want in life and not be limited by archaic societal norms and expectations, which frankly need a real update. I want my music and world to be a place for all people to feel free to express themselves and feel confident, seen, sexy, and empowered”.

I am going to end with a great interview from The Indie Grid. They heralded an artist who is a stellar addition to today’s Rock Pop landscape. I would urge anyone unfamiliar with Ella Isaacson to check out her music. She is going to be one of the essential voices of next year:

“Can you walk us through your typical songwriting process?

It really varies, but I always love when I get a random burst of inspiration and start writing a bunch of poetry or even if I just have a line or phrase or a word or two, I’ll bring that into the studio and to my co-writers. I’ve also been in the lab just throwing ideas back-and-forth and the most amazing songs have also come out of that! 

How do you find inspiration for your music and lyrics?

In all different ways, sometimes it’s life and just getting out of my head and going and living it. Sometimes it’s listening to a bunch of music. And sometimes it’s hearing a word or phrase out in the world or on the radio. Honestly, a bunch of my best ideas come when I’m half asleep or when I’m in the shower. Listening to music and listening to new music even if it’s in a totally different world than what I make can be so inspiring.

Also listening to full albums, I feel like just really diving headfirst into those artists’ worlds for a project like that really brings me inspiration. 

What themes or messages do you hope listeners take away from your music?

I would say my songs have all different themes, but at the end of the day I want people to walk away feeling confident, feeling seen, angsty if they need to be, sexy and ready just grab life by the horns and be their beautiful selves walking through it!

What challenges have you faced as an emerging artist in the music industry?

We could be here all day haha it’s complicated being an emerging artist but what I would say more than anything is that we’re in a period of so much opportunity and have so much power being put in our hands right now.  Every industry has its challenges, but we can now reach more fans directly than ever, so I really focus on that more than the challenges. My fans and the people that are excited about the music I make keep me going and motivated.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of your musical journey so far?

There have been many, I always wanted to do something of value and impact in the space. I think the experience of putting out “FMLYLM” was really a turning point for me. I had teased it once on Tiktok and right away it went viral that day. I just felt so connected to the fans on the platform, seeing their support and excitement in real time, it really moved the needle on that song and was such a different kind of experience than my other records. 

We all come to the table with our own baggage and I have my fair share but to see all these people supporting me, really made me feel like, okay I’ve done something good. I’ve ticked a few things off my goals list songwriting for other artists, but on that song it just touched me in a different way.

How do you stay true to yourself and your artistry in a constantly evolving industry?

By doing the work on myself and paying attention to the person inside of me. The human who loves to embrace the spirit of change, but also needs to make time clear my mind and gain perspective. Often in the industry there are people around that will make you question your ideas, but your circle should have that “let’s make it happen” mentality. I make sure to place myself in environments and around my friends and creative crews, that help bring my crazy ideas to life with a spirit of positivity and excitement. 

What can fans expect from you in the near future? Any upcoming projects or tours? Where do you see yourself and your music career in the next five years?

I’m really excited about getting out there and playing for my fans. I want to connect with them on a deeper level and share this music that has a classic rock feel but with a modern twist. I’ve been working on these songs that capture the real essence of rock, both old and new. That’s what’s really inspiring me right now and I want to bring back that raw energy, boldness, and honesty that made classic rock so timeless, but put my own spin on it. We’ll be building this dream together, one song at a time, one show at a time”.

Such an accomplished artist, I am glad that I cam across Ella Isaacson’s music. She is going to have a really successful 2025. Make sure that you follow her and chart her progress. I can feel and see big things in her future. This is a sensational artist that you…

NEED to know about.

____________

Follow Ella Isaacson

Official:

https://www.ellaisaacson.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ellaisaacson/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@ellaisaacson

Twitter:

https://x.com/iamellaisaacson

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/69DKP6GuG0YiUc5K7tJ4an

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6U_mm7Wm6yyE8ufj2FwpcQ

FEATURE: Oh England My Lionheart: The Importance of Kate Bush’s Incredible Album Covers

FEATURE:

 

 

Oh England My Lionheart

The Importance of Kate Bush’s Incredible Album Covers

_________

WHEN we think about….

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Lionheart shoot in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Kate Bush’s album, there is the main focus on the music. As there should be. However, a great album cover gives us a window into what an album is about. The kind of sounds and stories that the listener can discover. Also, the strength of that central image. I recently published a feature that explored the cover of Bush’s 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. With photographer Jay Myrdal taking the image of Kate Bush suspended from a giant kite, I would perhaps rank it lower than most of her other album covers. Lionheart was released in 1978. It is her second studio album. It corrects some of the issues with The Kick Inside. Bush, now, is the focus of the cover and not part of a large collage. Not shrunk or out of focus. Before getting to a few specific album covers, it is worth noting how they changed. Phases that occurred. There were multiple different covers for The Kick Inside depending on the country it was released in. Lionheart’s striking and intriguing cover was not replaced with a lot of variations. Bush very much at the core of her album covers until 1993. Her face very much the lure and main point of most of her album covers to that point. Definitely her image. 1993’s The Red Shoes was a pair of feet in red shoes. Whether it was the most appropriate image given the album title or Bush wanted to be less out of the spotlight, we saw less of Kate Bush for her following three albums. I would have thought Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow (both 2011) would have featured Bush at the front. One of the promotional photos from each album used as the cover. For the former, Bush holding aloft some film and inspecting it. For the latter, Bush dressed in fur (fake fur) and wrapped up warm against the elements. Both would have been more tangible and striking. However, I do feel that Kate Bush wanted her covers not to feature her. More concept and illustration rather than photography. From 2005, Bush featured less and less in her videos. To match her album covers, Bush’s visual representation was more imagined and artistic rather than personal and traditional. Many people love her latest three albums’ covers. They have a distinct aesthetic.

However, there are three or four album covers where she is the focus that stands in the mind and are more compelling than covers where Bush is not featured. Think about Lionheart’s cover where Bush is dressed in a lion costume and in an attic, sat in on chest with a glimmer of light coming through. The playfulness and connection to the title. Bush as a lion or lionhearted. Her brother John Carder Bush helped compose the set and shot. The photo taken by Gered Mankowitz. From further reading, that previous sentence might not be accurate. John Carder Bush came up with the concept, but it was Gered Mankowitz who controlled the shot and took the photo. Bush on a box/chest with a lion’s head on the floor beside her. Art direction and photography based on a design from Richard Gray. Bush said that we – her and Mankowitz/the crew – wanted to get across the vibe of a lion from within her. Her pose is playful but also lion-like. One gets an impression of an album that is curious, playful, strong, brave, maybe eclectic. I do think that you get some connection with the songs from the cover. Emotions and aspects of the ten tracks connecting in some way to the stunning Gered Mankowitz photo. Bush also revealed in an interview that her brother came up with this concept. That it was sort of comical. Lionheart can also connect to Richard of Lionheart (Richard I, known as Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior, was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199). Steely, hard and dark, the cover was design to contrast impressions one might get of the word ‘Lionheart’. Bush wanted people not to quickly associate Lionheart with Richard I. Lionheart could mean ‘hero’. Bush sort of lamented the fact that word was used in so many songs. Lionheart remains one of the most fascinating Kate Bush covers.

Gered Mankowitz shot the cover at his studio and spent the day photographing Kate Bush. Mankowitz built the set and the shoot went on a long time. Bush’s natural curiosity, input, excitement and creative zeal meant that it was quite hard to get things settled. Taking a shot that was perfect. I could imagine Bush wanting to try different angles and wanting the light to be brighter or from a different perspective. Seemingly more involved in this cover shoot than for The Kick Inside – though Bush was quite involved but seems like an aside rather than the star -, once the cover shot was taken, there was a series of close-ups. The close-up shots of Bush’s hair looking red (or red-tinged) and the impression she was topless. The fact that we could not see any clothing in the shot. That slight allure. These shots could have been used as the cover but, instead, one of the shots was used on the back cover. Bush was aware that she needed to keep her photo in the paper and the publicity machine going. Bush also said how she acted up and played around because she didn’t want to have photos where she was miserable. Someone who knew that her image was going to be discussed, I think Bush being involved in photos like the one for Lionheart’s cover was an early glimpse of her visual aspirations. That would lead her to directing years later. Before wrapping up, I will look at the cover for The Dreaming and The Sensual World. I might reserve a separate feature for the cover of Hounds of Love, as it might be her most iconic and standout cover. More stunning and fascinating with every new album cover, the follow up from 1978’s Lionheart, 1980’s Never for Ever, has this wonderful and hugely imaginative illustration from Nick Price. This feature from 2023 argues that Never for Ever has the best album cover ever. The objects and visions that flow from under her dress. So many different meanings and levels:

“Album artwork serves as a portal into the soul of music. Acts like Kate Bush enrich this medium with vibrant colours, intriguing graphics, evocative imagery, and even thought-provoking text – it can hold the power to convey messages and themes that sometimes elude the music itself. Whether strolling through a record store or browsing online, the initial encounter often begins with the album cover.

In essence, this artistic facet offers a distinctive avenue for self-expression that transcends the boundaries of the album’s sonic landscapes. While an artist may assert their psychedelic inclinations through their music, there’s something uniquely resonant in the use of vivid hues and retro-futuristic visuals, coupled with imagery that frequently hints at multifaceted dimensions. This visual medium communicates more about the essence of a record than mere word of mouth ever could.

As a pioneer of theatrics and pyrotechnics, it comes as no surprise that the artwork for many of Kate Bush’s albums evoke that precise level of extraordinary: her debut album demonstrated this beautifully with its depiction of Bush holding onto a large dragon kite, gliding across a vast, all-seeing eye. Even Hounds of Love exhibits a profound sense of tensity with Bush’s voluminous hair and dramatic yet soft purple hues. However, the album that encapsulates her entire essence and arguably stands as one of the finest in the realm of music due to its profound relevance and unparalleled creativity is undoubtedly Never For Ever.

The initial two albums had established a distinctive sound that permeated every track, characterised by opulent orchestral arrangements complementing the live band’s presence. Never for Ever, however, diverges considerably in stylistic diversity, ranging from the direct and energetic ‘Violin’ to the nostalgic waltz of the chart-topping single ‘Army Dreamers’. Bush’s artistic inspirations from horror literature and cinema were once again prominently featured on this album, with songs like ‘The Infant Kiss’, which tells the story of a governess who grapples with adult emotions for her young male charge, possessed by the spirit of an adult man.

By extension, the cover art features a striking design that reflects the creative essence of the album and all of its messy yet stunning inclinations. Designed by British photographer and graphic designer Nick Price, who collaborated with Kate Bush on several of her album covers, the image depicts Bush in a surreal and ethereal tableau. Evoking an intriguing sense of mysticism and surrealism, various animals emerge underneath her dress, including a yellow-eyed owl, a black crow, and a pair of white doves.

This visual representation perfectly mirrors the album, both in terms of its sound and context. The artwork exudes a dreamy and otherworldly quality, aligning seamlessly with the album’s thematic explorations and diverse musical journeys. The project serves as the quintessential example of using music as a conduit for fantastical storytelling, illustrating the conflicting forces of good and evil that manifest within us and how these entities present themselves to the external world.

It’s an inevitable aspect of the human experience – the convergence of inner and outer worlds – and the cover’s depiction of the intricate and omnipresent nature of emotions and the darkness within is astounding. As Bush explained herself, the image represents “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”.

When coming up with the idea, Bush gave Price direction, but it was ultimately his choice to apply his vision following a simple instruction to convey light and dark themes. What he created firmly resonated with Bush’s inner world, echoing the artistic influences she held dear. One such influence was the Renaissance painter Pieter Breughal, whom she once said would be the artist she would most like to embody. Bush cited his ability to capture reality in a fantastical yet profoundly beautiful and elemental manner and found his depictions hauntingly evocative.

Another artist she admired was the late 1800s illustrator Arthur Rackham. The woman featured in his work, ‘Undine in the Wind’, bears a striking resemblance to the figure of Bush depicted on the cover of Never For Ever, right down to the detail of both figures standing on their toes. Price’s artwork also parallels the paintings of 15th and 16th-century artist Hieronymous Bosch, sharing similarities such as encompassing style, the use of colour, and the exploration of dreamlike and nightmarish subject matter.

Beyond the front cover illustration, the back continues its thematic thread, featuring Kate Bush in flight alongside ominous black vampire bats. The French picture sleeve for the ‘Breathing’ 7″ vinyl single also portrayed her as a bat. On side-A of the original vinyl release label, however, she is depicted as a graceful white swan, abstract concepts that were also featured in the music videos for ‘Delius’ and ‘Babooshka’”.

The two albums that come either side of Hounds of Love are 1982’s The Dreaming and 1989’s The Sensual World. They each have their own palette and emotional expression. Snapshots of Kate Bush at these distinct times. All three covers have Bush very much at the front. The cover for The Dreaming was shot by John Carder Bush. The image, Bush with a key in her mouth about to kiss Harry Houdini (played by Del Palmer with his back to camera), refers to the song, Houdini, and how Houdini’s wife Bess passes a key through a kiss so that the escapologist can use it to defy death. Classic Pop Mag publishes a feature in 2023 and mentioned the fantastic cover: “The Dreaming followed that September. It’s cover, taken by brother John Carder Bush at the family’s East Wickham farm home, depicted Bush as a glamorously-coiffured, Houndstooth-attired Mrs Houdini, passing her escapologist husband a key with a kiss. Sepia-tinted to look period, it was romantic but full of that crawling, Gothic ivy’s dark spaces, a scene redolent of Bush’s beloved painting, John Millais ‘A Huguenot’. That sense of fear, romance, history, fantasy and death. If Never for Ever seemed to be about this artist set free and unleashed with so many ideas and there was this fantastical element to the cover, there is something else going on with The Dreaming’s cover. Linking to one song rather than the entire album, I do feel that The Dreaming’s cover also extends beyond Houdini. Maybe this suggestion that Bush is herself trying to escape. If we think that her with a key in her mouth is solely about Houdini and her making sure he is safe, is there more to it? People have not really discussed the cover and different meanings. How it sums up The Dreaming and its emotional and visuals aspects. How one feels looking at the cover. Hounds of Love has this distinct vibe and meaning to me. The Dreaming pulls my mind in different directions. The same could be said of The Sensual World and its cover. Again shot by John Carder Bush, it is this beautiful image of Kate Bush with a flower in front of her mouth. On first glance, it is purely about romance and mystery. An alluring image that could link to sensuality and tease.

I do think that the flower by her mouth is as symbolic as the key in her mouth. If Bush wanted to conjure something nervy and anxious with The Dreaming, perhaps to represent how she was feeling or how this was a commercial gamble, maybe The Sensual World’s cover was Bush is new bloom. One of her most female and womanly albums; this new growth and purpose. It could also mean secrecy and keeping things in. We do not see her mouth. The fact that the flower is so large. Maybe to represent something obscuring her expression and true voice. The photo is in black-and-white, so there is this other possibility. Maybe a sense of mystery or a filmic nature. A dream or fantasy. Again, nobody really discusses the cover of The Sensual World. For The Dreaming and The Sensual World, I think the focal point is Bush’s mouth. There are similarities between the albums but contrasts too. A sense of maturity and elegance with The Sensual World. Romance and grace. I think this applies to the songs and gives a sense of what the album is about. New bloom and a new phase. Chaos, the unexpected and risk with The Dreaming. Even if the albums were only released seven years apart, Bush was in a very different place by 1989. I love all of her album covers, but feel that from Lionheart to The Sensual World inclusive is the finest period. The Kick Inside has its flaws and The Red Shoes is beautiful and visual impressive, but does not  have Kate Bush in it. Aerial, Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow more about illustration and art rather than being about the artist.

I would love for there to be a more forensic look at all the album covers. Photographers like Gered Mankowitz and John Carder Bush together with artist Nick Price. Maybe fans talking about the covers and which are their favourites. I have done a feature ranking the covers before. I might revisit that in the future. As I say, I will spotlight Hounds of Love’s cover closer to the album’s fortieth anniversary in September. Here, I wanted to spend a bit of time with a few of Kate Bush’s phenomenal album covers. I think each has their own canvas and palette. They summon up different visions and interpretations. If one thinks Never for Ever has no single theme or focus and The Dreaming distinctly does, I would argue against that. Lionheart has so many depths and angles. The Sensual World makes me wonder about what the flower symbolises and the decision to shoot in black-and-white. How Bush’s face disappeared from album covers after 1989. Why it was not at the front of her debut album cover. There is so much to unpick and discuss. So much care was taken to get the cover images right. To give them their own voices and personalities. People have their favourites and reasons why. You cannot deny the power and iconic Hounds of Love. However, The Sensual World and Lionheart are underrated. Never for Ever combines Kate Bush being on the cover but not. Whether you like the covers post-The Sensual World. Bush having more artistic say with the covers. Not wanting to include her. Maybe she felt her being on the cover was too definitive and not representative of the albums’ stories and colours. Interesting. Too under-discussed in my opinion, the album covers are endlessly fascinating and detailed. I would really love to know…

WHAT other people think.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Hana Giraldo

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Von Robinson

Hana Giraldo

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LOOKING around at the artists….

PHOTO CREDIT: Von Robinson

that we need to follow next year, there are definitely sparks of excitement. Artists that you should be looking at. One such artist is Hana Giraldo. I am going to spend time with her and her music. Bring in a few interviews. Some great insights from this year. I am starting out with an interview from Loop Mag. Rather than it specifically being about the music, I was interested in this piece as we get a look into her personal life and activism. An artist who wants to be a very positive influence in the world:

“After sitting in the makeup chair, Giraldo straps on a silver minidress and large hoop earrings that are reminiscent of a time when people went to clubs (you know, before every nightlife venue in Los Angeles closed to slow the spread of COVID-19). She tells stories about pre-pandemic nights out, like when she and her boyfriend, Kyle Massey, who starred on Disney Channel’s “Cory in the House,” met Justin Bieber.

“He’s a really good guy, he’s really sweet,” she says. “I think it was Kyle’s birthday, and I remember being in the club, and him just coming in and there were like, 80 security guards. … I just remember I’d never seen so much security. It’s nice too when you meet someone like that and they’re so humble.”

“Staying humble is my biggest thing because I hate it when people will act like they’re the shit”

Giraldo prides herself on similar attributes. “Staying humble is my biggest thing because I hate it when people will act like they’re the shit,” she says. “…Growing up with famous parents, I’ve always had a smaller ego because they taught me to be like that.”

Although she was raised in the spotlight—born a decade after her mother released classic hits like “Love Is A Battlefield” and “We Belong”—Giraldo wasn’t immune to things like bullying. When Giraldo was about 9 years old, her family moved from their Malibu home to Hana, Hawaii, an island she was named after, where she was constantly picked on. What she didn’t realize at the time was that the harsh words used by her peers were grooming her for a career in content creation.

“I don’t ever really dig too deep into the comment section, just because I’ve heard it all,” she says. “You tell me what’s bad about me, I’ve heard it all. It doesn’t really affect me how it would affect another person.”

When Giraldo’s family moved back to Los Angeles three years later, she remembers traveling with her mom on tour and having to find ways to entertain herself. Since this was before the smartphone era, she’d make videos using a Macbook Pro.

“I wouldn’t have anybody to hang out with, or I’d have my babysitters, so I’d have them dress up and I would shoot a video,” she says.

While these early skits weren’t Giraldo’s best work, she says today her highest performing videos are often the ones for which she has the lowest budgets and puts in the least amount of effort. “It’s very strange; it’s like the more you think about it, the more you get in your head,” she explains. “People just like to see what’s authentic, and what’s really going on”.

Another interview with Loop Mag, I was interested reading what Hana Giraldo had to say about her childhood. We get a glimpse into her past and future. How she unwinds and where she likes to hang. Also, what it is like being the daughter of a major artist who has so many fans around the world. It must have been an exciting and artistic household to grow up in:

“Hana Giraldo, daughter of pop queen Pat Benatar and songwriter and guitarist Neil Giraldo, is not to be trifled with. A victim of bullying herself, this fashion forward social media star says, “I thank God every day for putting me through that. Now I have the thickest skin in America! Just try to stop me…There’s not one thing that someone could say to me that would make me give up.” Hana began her social media career by styling Vine stars when she unknowingly moved into the Vine house on Hollywood and Vine in West Hollywood. Soon after, Hana was asked to be in these influencers’ videos and it’s been up, up, up since then, with currently over 500,000 followers on Instagram.

What was it like growing up with Pat Benatar as your mother?

HG: I guess my upbringing was different from the way most kids grow up. I learned the business very young. I traveled a lot. It was a blessing but it was normal for me. I didn’t know anything other than going to your mom’s shows every day or living on a tour bus.

In one of your videos, I heard you say that you were more of an introvert growing up.

HG: I grew up in Malibu until the fifth grade when we moved to Maui, Hawaii. I was badly bullied there. I didn’t want to make things harder on my family so I just didn’t say anything and I just stuck it out. I was always super nice, super happy, loved life. But I was badly bullied and I was alone. I always wanted to hide in my room. Being bullied takes a lot out of you. I internalized a lot. Before I was bullied, I was very outgoing. I really did have a positive mindset. I thank god everything day for putting me through that… now I have the thickest skin in America! Just try to stop me. 

You traveled a lot growing up. Do you still travel quite a bit? Where do you like to go? Anywhere you haven’t been that you would like to visit?

HG: I’ve been everywhere, except for Africa, Tokyo and Dubai. I want to go to Dubai. I love New York, Paris, Italy… I love the Cayman Islands and anywhere tropical. But I know the ambassador of the Cayman Islands so when I go there I’m with like Cayman Island royalty! On my 21st birthday, I got driven home from a Lil John concert by the ambassador of the Cayman Islands…Yeah my life’s a movie!

Does nightlife play a big roll in how you socialize?

HG: I’m very selective with who I choose to let in my life at this point. I started going out at a young age. I would go out with my sister when I was 16 or 18 years old. I went out to clubs so young. I still go out occasionally. Although, I don’t drink so it’s not fun being around really drunk people when you’re not drunk. The reason I go out is to network. I know all of the clubs in Los Angeles and all of the club owners. I am definitely involved in the nightlife scene.

What are your favorite clubs to go to?

HG: I love Delilah. I like Good Times at Davey Waynes. I like places where I can actually have a conversation and connect with people without screaming to get people’s attention over techno music. Growing up with famous parents I was always backstage so in crowded places, I am a little uncomfortable.

How does fashion play a role in your life?

HG: Fashion for me is everything. I can make something super cheap look expensive by accessorizing it correctly or putting it with the right jacket. I like to mix high-end brands with fast fashion. I love Balenciaga, Gucci, YSL, House of CB for a cheaper brand, but vintage is my shit. I don’t want to be seen in the same outfit as someone else. I would rather go to a vintage store and find something cool that is older. I make half of the stuff I wear. I will get vintage stuff and transform it into my own thing. My favorite store is Wasteland.

How would your fans describe you? What do you think they like about you?

HG: They would probably describe me as humble. I like to keep my fans in the loop. I never forget about them. I make it a big part of my journey to include them. The interaction between my fans and me has brought me where I am today. They would say I’m genuine, funny, fashionable, loyal, and a little crazy. My thoughts on genuineness are simply that it’s one thing to act like you’re the most successful person in the world. But in reality, the most successful person doesn’t have to act like the most successful person in the world.

So many young girls idolize Instagram stars and I just want my fans to realize that I’m not perfect. I don’t look like I do in my professional photo shoots all the time. I want people to go embrace who they are. First, find out who you are and work with it. I will never look like a Victoria’s Secret model. I’m not 5’10” but I’m okay with it because I’m me. With Facetune and all these crazy apps, kids are looking at this and thinking other people are perfect. It’s not healthy.

You are an advocate for victims of bullying. What are some of the things you are doing to help awareness of this issue? I think a lot of people think bullying is just something that happens to children. Do you think adults can be bullied?

HG: Absolutely. Now with Instagram and the Internet, it’s a whole other beast. It can happen to anyone. I went through a traumatizing bullying experience and had all these targets on me on this tiny island. Now I feel like I can help people. Fans will reach out to me and I will respond and that will make their day. My ultimate goal is to spread awareness. This issue is often swept under the rug. Bullying kills people and it needs to be stopped. I’ve been making videos about it lately.

Is there anything you’d like to tell your followers?

HG: Follow your dreams. Don’t let people stop you. Be positive and be whomever you want, you can achieve if you believe in yourself and your work enough. I’m always here. I answer DMs! There’s not one thing that someone could say to me that would make me give up”.

Prior to rounding things off, I want to highlight parts of an interview with XS Noise. A remarkable artist who I think will make some big steps next year and perform around the world, I do hope that Hana Giraldo gets to come to the U.K. at some point. She is someone I am new to but am compelled to follow:

“They say talent often runs in the family, for Hana Giraldo, that has undoubtedly proven to be true. As the daughter of iconic musicians Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, Hana has carved her path in the music world, earning herself millions of followers on social media and heaps of praise from fans and media outlets alike.

Her latest single “Reputation” plays like an anthem of self-acceptance and understanding, while showcasing how much she has developed and grown as an artist, and as an individual. Here, she shares what she hopes listeners take from the track, reveals how much and how her parents influence both her music and her life and looks ahead to the future and what she’d like her artistic legacy to be.

Tell me about your new single, “Reputation.” Is there a particular idea or story behind it?

“Reputation” is a playful, introspective look at how people perceive me and the labels they assign to me without really knowing who I am. It’s my way of giving listeners a deeper glimpse into my true self on my own terms. I like to take risks, and I believe that’s essential for an artist to thrive – not just by being authentic but by being unapologetically true to themselves. This song is a tongue-in-cheek way of doing that. I’m showing a side to my fans they haven’t seen before. It’s about taking control of my story and embracing who I am.

Your music blends several genres and styles, including rock, pop, and dance. Which artists and bands have most inspired you?

My biggest musical influences are my mom and dad, along with Rihanna and Lady Gaga. But it’s not just their music that inspires me – it’s what they stand for. They’ve all made significant marks through their artistry, standing up for women and empowering others to do the same. Their ability to blend genres while staying true to their message has deeply influenced how I approach my music. I aim to be as successful as my idols, and I truly hope the world sees that in my work, too.

Did either of your parents give you any advice when you decided to follow in their footsteps and carve out your path in the business?

When I decided to follow a path in music, my parents’ advice was both empowering and realistic. They always encouraged me to pursue my dreams wholeheartedly, reminding me that anything is possible if I stay committed. They’ve been a constant source of support, reinforcing the idea that I should never give up, no matter the challenges. They taught me that in this industry, there will always be people who love what you do and others who don’t – that’s just part of the journey. This perspective has helped me develop resilience and confidence, knowing their unwavering belief in me. They’ve always been there, not just as parents but as mentors. They encourage me to trust in my voice and to push forward because I can achieve anything with passion and determination.

How much of an honour for you to be chosen to cover Madonna’s “Burning Up” for International Women’s Month on Cover Nation?

Oh my gosh, I was absolutely floored when I got the opportunity to cover a Madonna song, especially for something as significant as International Women’s Month!! Madonna has always been one of my favourite artists and a huge inspiration to me. Her ability to blend theatrical music with powerful performances is something I find absolutely fascinating. As someone who loves performing, it was an incredible honor to pay tribute to an artist who has been my idol for so long. This opportunity meant the world to me.

You also co-wrote the song “LA Here I Come” from the film Dance Rivals. How did that experience come about, and is songwriting for film something you’d like to do more of?

Yeah, this was actually the first song I ever scored for a movie, and I owe a huge thanks to Andrew Lane and Kyle Massey for giving me that opportunity. They put me in a room that was totally new to me, but I love challenges and exploring new creative avenues so it was an exciting experience. I’m really honoured to have been a part of it, and it was such a fun exercise in expanding my skills. I’m definitely eager to do more in the future. Lady Gaga has always been one of my biggest influences – she’s a powerhouse as a singer, actress, and someone who scores films. If I’m on a path even remotely similar to hers, I’m all for it. Yes, I would be honoured to do more!

You’re also an ambassador for Boo 2 Bullying. Is bullying you’ve experienced yourself, and how important to you is it that you can use your platform and audience to support charities and organisations that stand up against it?

Yes, I was bullied for years, so becoming an ambassador for Boo 2 Bullying is incredibly meaningful to me. Using my platform to support charities and organizations that stand up against bullying is something I’m deeply passionate about. I’ve always wanted to help others, and whether it’s through my music, my voice, or my actions, I’m committed to making a difference. I know firsthand how tough it can be, and if I can use my experiences to help others navigate those difficult times, then I’m fulfilling a mission that’s very close to my heart.

Finally, you’re a considerable newcomer to the industry, so this might be a hard question for you to answer, but what’s your long-term goal as an artist? What do you want to have achieved years – perhaps decades – from now when you look back on your career? What do you want your artistic legacy to stand for and to say?

As an artist, my long-term goal is to create work that resonates deeply with people and stands the test of time. I want to be known for pushing boundaries and staying true to my vision, even when it’s challenging or unconventional. Decades from now, when I look back on my career, I hope to see a body of work that not only entertained but also inspired others to be bold, authentic, and unapologetically themselves. I want my artistic legacy to reflect a commitment to excellence, integrity, and the courage to take risks. Ultimately, I hope my journey will encourage future generations of artists to trust their instincts, stay passionate, and never be afraid to evolve”.

Next year is going to offer up a lot of wonderful artists to look out for. Those making their first moves. If you do not know about Hana Giraldo, go and follow her on social media. A really promising artist with a great sound, I do genuinely think next year is going to be a massive one for Giraldo. An artist who has a growing and loving fanbase. She is someone that you need to…

HAVE on your radar.

______________

Follow Hana Giraldo

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hanagiraldo/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@hanagiraldo

Twitter:

https://x.com/hanagiraldo

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GHae3C65Td725v3sUH68g

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/HanaGiraldo

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/littlest.hans/

FEATURE: Ricky Don’t Lose That Number: Getting Kate Bush’s Music Into the World

FEATURE:

 

 

Ricky Don’t Lose That Number

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1972 aged fourteen/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Getting Kate Bush’s Music Into the World

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I am not sure whether it happens….

IN THIS PHOTO: David Gilmour and Kate Bush performing together in 1987/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport/Getty Images

so much now in this digital age but, for many artists, getting their record deal relied on a lot of hauling demos tapes around. Handing them to D.J.s, clubs, promoters, agents, fellow artists and anyone else. Few were given a leg-up or a hugely easy ride. That is the case with Kate Bush. Even if she did not experience an arduous trek like so many artists, it was still not handed to her. Getting her music into the right hands in the 1970s was a matter of some luck, foresight and some family connections. Ricky Hopper was a man who made a big move. Even though David Gilmour was aware of Kate Bush before 1975, that year was a crucial one. You can see a detailed timeline here. Where Ricky Hopper had this great demo tape and passed it along to a man who would instantly take a shine to a teenage Kate Bush. Recognising true talent the minute he heard her! This article from 2023 gives us some background to that fateful moment back in ’75:

“By 15, she had amassed over 50 songs. With the help of her family, a self-made demo tape ended up in the hands of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, and the rest was history.

Ricky Hopper, a friend of the Bush family, passed her demo tape onto the Pink Floyd guitarist, who was immediately impressed. He was so impressed, in fact, that Gilmour himself paid for Bush to go and record a more professional track, leading to her being signed to EMI.

Just as Bush met Gilmour in 1975, Pink Floyd were working on their ninth studio album, Wish You Were Here.

During one of their album sessions, 15-year-old Kate Bush was invited along. “I was absolutely staggered,” Bush later wrote in a book celebrating the famous studio. Best known as the eponymous studio behind The Beatles album, artists including Aretha Franklin, Little Richard, The Zombies, and more have all recorded at the studio. To this day, Abbey Road remains a landmark, with acts like Nick Cave, Blur, Amy Winehouse, and Spice Girls adding their names to history over the last few decades.

To a teenage Kate Bush, the studio seemed like a dream: “I really thought I would never be able to record in a place like Abbey Road.”

I am going to talk more about Ricky Hopper. How he was key when it came to getting Kate Bush’s music to David Gilmour. And soon enough it would be shared with the world. Before that, this PROG article from last year discussed how David Gilmour saw that promise from the demo tape he was handed. It must have been a magical and unforgettable moment for the iconic musician:

“One afternoon in the mid-70s, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd decided to play one of the many demo tapes he received each week. This one had been given to him by Ricky Hopper, a friend of his and of the family of the artist. Although the quality of the recording was poor, Gilmour discerned something special within it.

“The songs were too idiosyncratic,” he remembered, talking to Jason Cowley of The New Statesman in 2005. “It was just Kate Bush, this little schoolgirl who was maybe 15, singing away over a piano. You needed decent ears to hear the potential, and I didn’t think there were many people with those working in record companies. Yet I was convinced from the beginning that this girl had remarkable talent.”

He got Bush into a studio and assisted in the recording of more demos, with Andrew Powell – a Cambridge friend who’d worked with Henry Cow, Cockney Rebel and The Alan Parsons Project – producing. Three songs, including The Man With The Child In His Eyes, were then presented to EMI. They weren’t averse to listening to anything recommended by Gilmour, who’d made them a few quid in his time.

They signed the young woman instantly. One of the great careers in British music history was about to burst into life. But not quite yet: EMI put Bush on a retainer with an advance for two years, feeling that if her music didn’t take off, she’d be too young to handle it. And if it did take off... she’d be too young to handle it”.

Gilmour too has said, “When I first met Kate she was this shy little schoolgirl, but very quickly you could see that she’d have arguments with producers if they didn’t do things the way she wanted them to.” The success of Wuthering Heights gave her the subsequent creative freedom that’s made her oeuvre what it is”.

I do love that period. Because this year is fifty years since David Gilmour received Kate Bush’s demo and the two headed to AIR studios that June to record professionally, it is important to mark that period. Such a magical moment. I wonder how both reflect on it now. Whether Ricky Hopper is known by Kate Bush fans. A key part of her history, it is great that he (Hopper) and Gilmour were connected. Kept that number close. I guess it was only a matter of time before Kate Bush and David Gilmour worked together. Bush hadn’t really experienced Pink Floyd in 1975. Her sitting in to hear Wish You Were Here being recorded was one of her first tastes of their music. In later years, she said how much she loves 1979’s The Wall and has named it one of her favourites. Some of her album tracks nod to Pink Floyd. The outro to The Saxophone Song (from 1978’s The Kick Inside, it was one of the songs recorded at AIR in 1975). Bits of Breathing (from 1980’s Never for Ever). I think quite a bit of Hounds of Love too. Anyway, Bush’s family knew that she was special. The transition from these earliest demo recordings and how David Gilmour came into her world. Before continuing, I want to bring in part of this article from Dreams of Orgonon that was published in 2018:

“Having a professionally recorded song makes our job much easier. What nuances are lost in the lo-fi recordings of, say, “Queen Eddie” or “Sunsi” are picked up in the clean sound of “Passing Through Air.” This is largely due to Cathy recording with professional equipment for the first time. She didn’t need it to shine before, of course—she’s simply honing her best work to date for a really, really important moment.

Artists rarely get a big break. A 15-year-old artist’s home demos getting picked up for professional recording was pretty much unheard of in the pre-Soundcloud age. For a young artist to be discovered by a musician coming off the back of releasing one of the bestselling albums of all time seems colossally unlikely. Yet this is an exaggeration—plenty of people had heard Cathy’s demos by this point, and she wasn’t the only artist David Gilmour had taken under his wing at the time. Coming off The Dark Side of the Moon’s massive success, Gilmour was nurturing about eight protégés, the luckiest of whom would hit #1 on the UK singles charts five years later. He’d found Kate via her brother Jay’s friend Ricky Hopper, who played Gilmour some tapes which struck him. Maybe it was the undercurrent of ethereal strangeness in Kate’s songs or her musical aptitude which struck him. After he’d worked on “The Great Gig in the Sky,” no wonder he was into this sort of thing”.

This passage - “What started as a "private thing between her piano and imagination", according to brother Jay, resulted in an ever-expanding songbook, copyrighted through self-addressed mail, captured on an Akai tape recorder. Plugger, Ricky Hopper, a Cambridge friend of Jay’s, circulated the tapes. Labels rejected them as "morbid, heavy and negative". But Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour immediately heard a "remarkable talent". He recorded her several times, alone at the piano, and in August 1973, with Unicorn’s rhythm section at his Essex home studio. ‘Future Army Dreamers’ B-side, ‘Passing Through Air’, comes from these sessions; doe-eyed, dreamy soft rock, remarkable for the barely 15-year-old Bush” – from a 2023 article explains how these beautiful-yet-lo-fi recordings mesmerised a musician who was used to working in professional studios. He noted the nuance and promise of these songs. I will end by coming back to Ricky Hopper. When Kate Bush was at Abbey Road during the recording of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Gilmour knew she had something. At age fifteen, Bush’s repertoire expanded from thirty to fifty compositions. In 1999, when speaking with Q, Gilmour said: “I had her up to my studio and recorded some things (Passing Through Air and Maybe, with Peter Perrier and Pat Martin of Unicorn, a band he was A&Ring, on drums and bass). I decided that the way she sung and played piano, on its own, was not going to be very effective for convincing A&R men at record companies of her value”.

However, Gilmour bankrolled demos that provided a more expansive and panoramic view of her talent and potential. Starting from these sparse demos that has twinkles of future genius but were not quite big and varied as a set, Gilmour was confident enough that Kate Bush was worthy of a record deal. And so it transpired. Gilmour knew that one of Bush’s songs needed an orchestral backing. Producer Andrew Powell – who produced Kate Bush’s first two albums – was contacted and they, alongside an all-star cast including Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, realised that in June 1975 at AIR with The Man with the Child in His Eyes. It wasn’t a first-time success when it came to Kate Bush’s demo tape. Earlier, in 1972, Hopper (who was close friends with Bush’s brother John/Jay) tried to circulate some demo tapes. It is amazing that he saw promise in her when she was so young (thirteen/fourteen). Maybe a footnote to some and unknown to most, we cannot forget Ricky Hopper and his role in getting Kate Bush’s music to the world! He persevered and used his connection with the music industry to get her music to David Gilmour. Someone Bush knew about only through Pink Floyd but not on a personal level, things changed. Things begin earlier than 1975. 1973 was a key year. As the Kate Bush Encyclopedia note, this was a year when the first glimpses of her brilliance were noticed by David Gilmour:

“In 1972 and 1973 Kate recorded several tapes of songs. Reports vary about the amount of songs that were recorded, but there must have been dozens. 20 to 30 of these demos were presented via Kate’s brother John Carder Bush‘s friend Ricky Hopper, first without success to record companies. Ricky Hopper then presented the songs to David Gilmour. Gilmour noticed her talent, but also the bad tape recorder quality. This led to one or more recording sessions with David Gilmour present, but with a better recorder. According to Kate: “Absolutely terrified and trembling like a leaf, I sat down and played for him.”

At Gilmour’s insistance, another recording session took place in the summer of 1973”.

Even if Kate Bush fans mark other events in her timeline as being more significant, there is no overstating how important someone like Ricky Hopper was. Making that introduction or at least being part of it. By 1975, Bush was in a position where she was given the money so that she could record at AIR studios and record songs that were far more polished and professional than those demo tapes. There was no turning back. I drift my mind back to 1975 and Ricky Hopper. If Bush was not truly aware of David Gilmour and Pink Floyd when she first met him – less Progressive/Contemporary Rock in her life as a teen perhaps -, she did at least know their name. She later heard The Dark Side of the Moon and realised how exceptional Pink Floyd and David Gilmour were! It was a marriage meant to be! From this child and young teen with an exceptional talent, her tapes then found their way into the hands of David Gilmour. It truly was…

A seismic event.

FEATURE: Lean Living: The Kate Bush Diet

FEATURE:

 

 

Lean Living

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

The Kate Bush Diet

_________

ONE may not find it relevant….

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of Eat the Music in 1993

to her music and career, but there is something to be said of any artist’s diet and how they live. In terms of how it affects their body and mind. How a bad diet can impact the music negatively and reduce productivity. How a better diet can be beneficial in that regards. I am interested in the diet of Kate Bush. There is this mix of healthiness and conscientiousness together with occasional excess. Moments where there was a slightly less healthy approach. Tricks she used to give her voice mucus and gravel. How vegetarianism played a big role. One big reason why she could take to the stage for 1979’s The Tour of Life and have such stamina. How key that diet was to her energy levels and mental wellbeing I think. Even if there have been times of unhealthy eating, Bush managed to overhaul this and return to her previous self. Rather than this being something a tabloid newspaper would print and then discuss her figure in a derogatory and misogynistic way, this is much more loving of course! I am writing about it because I can’t see anyone else that has. In terms of the food and drink that accompanied Bush through her career. I am going to drop in a clip of Bush with Delia Smith from early in her career. Where Bush talked about her vegetarianism and why she decided to stop eating meat as a child. Last year, I did discuss Kate Bush meeting Delia Smith. I am tempted to buy this on eBay, as I am going to reference this magazine cover from 1986. It is in Lean Living magazine and there is this wonderful photo of Kate Bush on the front I can’t seem to see anywhere else! It was another chance to read about Kate Bush talking about her vegetarianism. The magazine is about the meat-free lifestyle. Later in this feature I will talk about slightly less healthy habits and times.

However, when it comes to Kate Bush, she is someone who has had to have this healthy diet. Such a hardworking artist and dancer, her physicality was a big part of her music and videos. I will come to Lean Living soon. However, this article collates quotes and interviews where Kate Bush has spoken about her diet and vegetarianism:

“I asked if people were interested in Kate Bush quotes about Vegetarianism, and got an overwhelming response. So here's a bunch, they're from my 'Lectronic book Cloudbusting - Kate Bush In Her Own Words, which is available on the Genie computer network and in the Love-Hounds archives (the international Kate Bush Computer Network - rec.music.gaffa). It's pretty long so if you're not interested hit "N" now!

If vegetarians are against the killing of animals for food, why don't they object to them being killed for leather?

I think there are a lot of vegetarians who are against animals being killed to make leather, and they do go out of their way to wear rubber and plastic shoes and belts, but I think that there is a practical side to it, as well. Leather is very warm, and it's nice to look at, but it does require a lot of effort for most of us to make a different choice from the normal, and I find myself that I do wear quite a few leather shoes. Not that I consciously buy them because they're made of leather, but I do have a few, and I think it's something to do with the tradition of leather being used in clothing. But there's no excuse for the mass production of leather, and I think it comes down to effort and how far you really want to go. It's up to you in the long run.

You are a vegetarian and yet you wear fur coats. Why?

I don't wear fur coats. I haven't got one. I don't own one and I don't believe in wearing them - I may have occasionally been in photos with one, but it wouldn't have been mine. It would have been one that I'd borrowed because it was very cold; for instance in Switzerland, when I did the Abba special. [In fact, as far as I know, that was the only time Kate has ever been seen in a fur. - IED] But I don't believe in people wearing fur coats, I think it's very extravagant and again, I think people don't tend to associate the clothes with the animals they come from, especially the rare animals that some of the coats are made of. You can get incredibly good imitation ones now - I've seen ones that I thought were real fur and they weren't. They're really fantastic, and they cost less, too.

Do you follow vegetarian recipes from books, or do you make up your own?

I do follow recipes from books, but I find that normally I don't stick to them, especially if I haven't got all the ingredients, and I tend to substitute different vegetables. If I'm feeling really brave, occasionally I base a meal on a recipe and make the rest up. Cooking is quite a logical thing, really, and you soon learn the things that go together - what works and what doesn't.

You say in interviews that you don't eat meat because you don't believe in eating life. But you eat plants, and they are living things. Why?

I do eat plants, and I know they're living, and I'm fond of them, but I think you have to find your own level. I could live on pills, but I don't think it's very human to do that - that is something we dream of in the space age: food without texture or mass. I don't think plants mind being eaten, actually. I think they'd be really sad if no-one paid that much attention to them. I appreciate them very much for the things they give me. I'd be very sad if there weren't any vegetables, and normally it isn't the actual plant that's killed - it's the fruit or vegetable that's taken off. I think this is the purpose of plants, that they grow to be eaten. The only problem is that it has become a very mass-produced market, again, and that the really natural, unchemicalised environment doesn't really exist. Too many chemicals are used on plants, but while there is a demand for brightly coloured food in pretty packets, that's how it will carry on. But you can get fresh, organically grown vegetables. You can grow them yourselves, and if you look around and ask, you'll find that there are a few shops and some local farms that sell vegetables that have not been grown in chemically fertilised ground. (1980, KBC 5)

I just couldn't stand the idea of eating meat - and I really do think that it has made me calmer. (1982, Company)

People probably eat so much pre-packaged food because it's always so easy to get in shops, and they don't connect it with live animals. If they actually had to kill the animal themselves, they would probably have great difficulty in doing it. People who live and work with animals can be aware of what they are doing when they kill an animal. They realise that they're going to be eating it, rather than it being sent off to be sold in supermarkets. On some levels this seems to be all right, because it's on a one-to-one basis: you feed and look after the animal for a certain length of time and then it repays you by becoming your food. But it's the mass-production of living creatures just to be eaten, and the fact that people aren't really aware of what they're eating, that I don't like.

These days it seems more and more probable that fish are likely to contain pollution - which can't do you any good - as they have no choice but to eat all the muck that's in the water. But hopefully people's general awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us can't really be right, and if you've seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because it can't understand why its calf isn't by it, it can make you think a lot.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at East Wickham Farm appearing on an edition of Delia Smith’s Cookery Course in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

Working in London, I often have to go past meat markets, and when I see all those people working in there with blood all over them, and dead animals strung up from meat-hooks, just waiting to be devoured, it's like something out of a horror film. When I realised that, I didn't want to eat meat any more. I became more conscious about the things that I did eat. I think this helped me to learn more about food, because I had to start thinking what the nutritional value of something was, and I'm still learning about things I didn't think I could eat, which is really good. Just the discipline of not eating meat is a very good thing. It's like giving up anything you like - it hurts at first, but then you feel much better for it. I don't know whether it was just me, but when I first became a vegetarian I was really hungry a lot of the time, but I'm not now, and I wonder if that's because my stomach has adjusted. When you eat meat, you do tend to eat more than you need, and the body has to work a lot to break it all down.

It's interesting how the traveling that I've done reveals things about people's diets. In many European countries it's very hard to get something that hasn't got meat in it. There was one instance in Germany where I asked for a bowl of tomato soup and, having been assured that it contained just tomatoes, I tucked into it. But about halfway through the soup I could see all these lumps floating around at the bottom, and of course they were all meatballs. They just naturally do things like putting bacon and meatballs into vegetable soup, without even thinking about it. So many shops are meat-oriented: it's all sausages and pies, and the only other things you can really get are just potatoes and salads, when there is such an enormous variety of non-animal foods that can be eaten. Looking forward to a breakfast of toast and marmalade, and then getting a couple of slabs of cold meat and white bread pushed under your nose, isn't the way I like to start my day.

Japan seemed to be more vegetable-oriented. They take great pride in their vegetables, although they're greatly into fish, and this is causing them and the dolphins a lot of problems. I found Australia very meat-oriented, too, and this might have something to do with it being such a young country, and it's true that meat does give you a lot of energy. I suppose there was a time when a slab of bacon fat for breakfast might have been necessary for somebody working in a heavy manual job. But I've found that if I keep an eye on the sort of vegetarian food that I eat, I don't have any problems about dancing and singing on it.

It all comes down to looking more closely at the sort of food you are just used to having and saying to yourself, Do I really need to eat this, or is there something that will be better for me? The more people who get into good vegetarian food, the easier it will be for us. If I go into a restaurant with friends, and they settle down to a feast of meat and sauces and so on, I usually end up with salad and chips - which is OK, but that's about as far as most restaurants can go in the direction of vegetarian food. (1980, KBC 5)”.

I would love if anyone has a copy of Lean Living or could transcribe the piece or see what is in it! For Woman’s World, Bush wrote about her vegetarianism. That, in addition to her talking with Delia Smith, did project this image of an animal-conscious person. This ethical side. Whether it was a decision she made instantly as a child or there were artists she admired who were vegetarian (I can only think of Paul McCartney), it is commendable that she discussed it. It is clear that Kate Bush would occasionally use food and drink for effect in her music. To change her voice. This blog post discusses how she managed to get some rawness in her vocal for The Dreaming’s Houdini:

“The song is far from a stringent one. “Houdini” is fueled by anguished conniptions rather than melodic coherence. The verse initially sounds like “The Infant Kiss” or some other perfectly normal song with its piano balladry in Eb minor with a progression that finishes on a major tonic chord. It commences as a séance with mourners preparing to reach into the ether (“the tambourine jingle-jangles/the medium roams and rambles”). The refrain is the apex of Bush shrieks, culminating in a gravely, agonized “WITH YOUR LIFE/THE ONLY THING IN MY MIND/WE PULL YOU FROM THE WATER!” The result is hardly melodic — it’s willfully ugly, produced by Bush eating lots of chocolate and drinking milk to sabotage her own voice. Whether or not the experiment works, it doesn’t seem like Bush cares — she wants this to sound raw and ugly”.

Of course, like all people, Bush did like to indulge. I have heard her mention chocolate a few times. Even if the lyrics of Lionheart’s Coffee Homeground says, “Offer me a chocolate, No thank you, spoil my diet, know your game!” – more to do with her not being poisoned by it I suspect -, she has said in interviews how she will console herself with chocolate in the studio. That’s what Bush said to Phil Sutcliffe when he interviewed her for Q. I think Bush’s weight and body was described in very disrespectful tones by the media. She would snack and indulge in chocolate in the studio. It did mean she could be out of shape. However, as a comfort and consolation, it no doubt helped her a lot. Bush would often come into the studio with a big bar of milk chocolate. I know when she was producing Never for Ever (1980), there would be chocolate and tea in the studio. And something else. I will come to that later.

There were times when Bush was so busy working she couldn’t have the time to cook and eat a healthy diet. Hospitality was top of her mind when running a studio. She would offer tea and snacks to musicians and people in her team. However, I think about albums like The Dreaming (1982) where she would work all day and night. Subsiding off of takeaways and junk food, it showed that a balanced diet was essential to good mental health. A reason why she was exhausted and anxious after that album was recorded is because of her diet. She would overhaul her diet by 1983 and take up dance again before Hounds of Love was released in 1985. Think back to 1979 and The Tour of Life. Lots of hearty and tasty vegetarian food was brought in. It meant that Bush and her crew could fill up but had this healthy diet that gave them energy and nourishment. Something that she stuck with through her career. If fish did come into her diet later from time to time, Bush was not someone who gave up on her principles. She also knew how important healthy eating was for all aspects. Her body, mind and music. I would love to know more about the sort of tea, cakes and biscuits Kate Bush likes now. It would be interesting. I know people who have interviewed her and said that she would serve cake, biscuits and tea. I wonder what brands she likes! Tea played a big role in her career. She would often drink over a dozen cups a day. It did seen to be one of her main sources of fuel! Bush has also spoken about her love of Indian cuisine too. Kate Bush is someone who puts contrasts in her music. Polemics and huge range of emotions. Not someone who was one thing or another.

Though I see Kate Bush as someone who had a very healthy lifestyle and understood the benefits of healthy living, there was also this other side. She was and is not a big drinker. Cigarettes were a vice. She gave up smoking in the 2000s. Having taken up the habit as a child, I am surprised that it continued for so long. She managed to maintain a healthy diet and was very engaged in dancing but also smoked! I guess it was something pretty normal for artists of the time. Maybe now it would be more of a stigma or less healthy thing to talk about – even if modern artists like Charli xcx smoke and it is part of her image. I think that Bush did use cigarettes as a social lubricant. Maybe something that was more communal. There are photos online of Kate Bush having a smoke break. Whether that is in 1978 when she was at De Efteling Amusement Park, in 1993 whilst filming The Line, the Cross and the Curve or a 1993 interview from Q (that bizarrely touted her this bloke-chasing, cigarette-totting ladette!). In any case, we are glad that she has given up! Maybe it was also a way of helping with stress and anxiety. Whilst determinantal to her health and voice, she did suffer anxiety a lot through her career. Bush also partook in smoking weed. During The Kick Inside (1978), she would smoke it quite a bit. Maybe artists she admired like The Beatles compelled her. Maybe just something artists did more in the 1970s and 1980s. She would offer engineers and people in the studio weed when recording The Dreaming. Sometimes she would be chided and told that she had to put it away and focus! Again, whilst we can see this as a negative, it may have benefited her in some ways. Possibly not creatively but in terms of feeling relaxed in the studio. The late Donald Sutherland recalled a time when he was on the set of Cloudbusting (from Hounds of Love) with Kate Bush and approached her about smoking:

“During the video shoot, Sutherland also vividly remembered one funny moment he shared with Bush while on set.

“I remember being in the car and the hill and them taking me, taking Reich, away and looking back through the back window of the car and seeing her, seeing Reich’s son Peter, standing there,” said Sutherland. “And I remember the first morning on set seeing her coming out of her trailer smoking a joint and I cautioned her, saying she shouldn’t smoke that, it’d affect her work. And she looked at me for a second and said she hadn’t been straight for nine years, and I loved her”.

Kate Bush I think has also said she lives with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Of course, one might see signs of this in her working method. However, she probably also knew that she could fall into bad habits if she let her diet slip. Hard to correct. It is fascinating thinking about it. I love her discussing being vegetarian and how important that was to her. The fact she and chocolate were occasional studio collaborators. Whilst there were some unhealthier moments and times when junk food became a source of comfort - also around 1994 and 1995 -, Bush has always inspired me because of how she lived. How health and fitness were so important. As this amazing hostess, she also made sure her musicians were fed and looked after. When recording, her mother might provide the tea whilst her dad might nip out to collect takeaways for the gang. Even if she smoked her first cigarette aged nine, she knew how damaging it could be living with addictions. I would love if anyone could add anything or if they had a copy of Lean Living from 1986! As it is almost Christmas, I want to end with some words from Bush’s brother, Paddy. Sharing his thoughts in 1981 for the Kate Bush Club (KBC) he mused on what to get his sister for Christmas:

“It's December again, and how do you find me this chilly month? Well, I'm surrounded by my recent musical instrument projects: bagpipes, Indonesian mouth-harps, and a few ancient Egyptian temple instruments. There are little heaps of crumpled paper scattered over the whole of the floor, they are Christmas lists for Kate. What am I going to get her? I hear some of you shout something like Chocolate Elephants--come now, wouldn't that be a bit predictable? What a dilemma!

I could give her something really, really weird, like a reproduction of a sixteenth-century royal Viennese court tartold, but believe me, even something as crazy as that is still predictable for me. It's not as if it's easy. Kate as you know is a vegetarian so any presents like leather coats, pork chops, etc., are out. I can just see it now...rustle rustle "Ooh look! It's a..." rustle... "cabbage...Oh, thank you." You just can't give vegetarians vegetables for Christmas. The hours tick by, the piles of paper accumulate--maybe a vegetable rack, no she's got one, a carrot knife, a leek mulcher, or why not a turnip-condensing unit? Maybe a computer-aided marrow-stuffer, that might take a little too long to come from Switzerland, and it would sit around unused for months until marrows came back into season.

Hard, isn't it?

What about something to do with dancing? Some shoes, maybe... right...she doesn't wear them--says it doesn't feel natural. Maybe some mirrors--how can I get them down her chimney? Anyway, she's got mirrors when she dances with Gary and Stewart. Did you know that Gary and Stewart have their own dance group now--you must look out for them, they're called The Dance Theatre of London, and are doing shows all over the country and are getting lots of mentions in the press.

Did you see Kate on Desmond Morris's Friday Night and Saturday Morning? Wasn't she great? I could buy her a collection of his books, but as you can guess, she's already read them all. [Morris is a zoologist, and has written numerous books about the behaviour of cats, dogs and other animals.] I know you all think I'm joking, and I'm just making all this up, and what I'm really going to do is go out and buy some sophisticated electronic musical gadgetry like a Digital Real-Time Quantum On-Line H.A.R.P. Ballistic Sequential Processor, but like all these things, there is such a long waiting-list, and of course--she's already got one!

The hands on the clock creep round. I try playing the bagpipes for inspiration--soon the sound of broom handles and other heavy blunt household objects can be heard on the ceiling, floor and walls. I can hear voices crying things like "Are you strangling a cat or something?" and "I can't stand it...argh!" Ah me, it's tough trying to write Christmas lists. So this December the 25th, when you unwrap Santa's parcels to find that he has left you a new dumper-truck or a snake-charming kit, think of me as I try and wrap this giraffe in paper with "Noel Noel" written all over it--Kate likes giraffes and it fits down the chimney a real treat--well, almost. I tried earlier when she was out. Desmond said try the head first, but it isn't quite as easy as he said it would be. Nevertheless I think I have solved my problem of a Christmas surprise for her--just picture her face when she unwraps my lumpy, long, soot-covered parcel…”.

Taking things slightly away from music, I wanted to talk about the food and drink of Kate Bush. Someone whose diet was crucially linked to her productivity and wellbeing, there was a mix of healthiness and occasional indulgence. This ethical artist who would not eat life. Someone who also enjoyed chocolate and tea. The latter occasionally used to give her voice more spit. Smoking but not really drinking. Tea seems to be the defining element to me. Maybe quintessentially British, I imagine interviews overflowing with tea! Bush doing tea runs constantly! It does make me smile. This is a subject and thought that I may explore…

NEXT year.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Songs from Fantastic E.P.s of 2024

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS IMAGE: The cover for Emmy Meli’s Hello Stranger

Songs from Fantastic E.P.s of 2024

_________

WHILST many of us can name….

our favourite albums of the year and recognise the ones that have made a big impression, there are not many discussing E.P.s from this year. So many have been released. I wonder whether we view them as highly and as important as albums. A sort of middle ground between a single and an album, it is a great opportunity for artists to collect singles together or put out a project before a full-length release. I think that an E.P., whether it is four, five or more tracks, can be more consistent and tight than an album. More focused in a lot of ways. Rather than mark the very best E.P.s of this year, I have collected songs from some wonderful examples. I know that if I tried to rank the very best I will miss some obvious ones out! Instead, enjoy some cuts from some brilliant E.P.s that arrived this year. You may recognise a few of the artists, though many will be new to you. Here are songs from some…

IN THIS IMAGE: The cover of Little Simz’s Drop 7

AMAZING E.P.s.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential January Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Ringo Starr 

Essential January Releases

_________

THE first month of a new year….

IN THIS PHOTO: Moonchild Sanelly/PHOTO CREDIT: Vicky Grout

I am looking ahead to January and the best albums out. There are some really great albums due, so I will highlight them here. Even though other months of the year will be busier, it is worth shining a light on what is out next month. The first great batch of albums for 2025. I am starting with 10th January. I would recommend people pre-order Franz Ferdinand’s The Human Fear. If you have not heard about the album, here is some more detail:

“Produced with Mark Ralph, who previously worked with them on their 2013 album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, the album showcases Franz at their most immediate, upbeat and life-affirming, unashamedly going for the pop-jugular in classic Franz style. Recorded at AYR studios in Scotland, the 11-songs on The Human Fear all allude to some deep-set human fears and how overcoming and accepting these fears drives and defines our lives.

Ever since their beginnings, throwing illegal parties in condemned Glasgow buildings, Franz Ferdinand have been defined by a fresh, unfading, forward-facing outlook, a transgressive art-school perspective, but with a love of a big song and The Human Fear undoubtedly continues in this tradition; distinct yet new, musically, and creatively it’s a record eager to push forward. Pretty much all written before they hit the studio, the idea was to have a songbook ready before they started recording and once in the studio it was all quickly executed - a lot of it recorded live with the band in the room and many of the vocals on the album being the original takes.

The first studio album to feature members Audrey Tait and Dino Bardot, the record also sees Julian Corrie step forward to collaborate with Alex Kapranos and Bob Hardy on song writing and creative duties.

A band for whom the aesthetic and style is almost as important as the sound, as ever the importance of this is reflected in the cover artwork which was inspired by Hungarian artist Dóra Maurer’s self-portrait 7 Twists - Maurer’s work appealed because it does exactly what they want from their music: a striking immediacy that is impossible to ignore, but with a depth and vulnerability that bears many returns and satisfactory repetition. Maybe this is a set of songs about fear, maybe this is a set of bangers from an era-defining band continuing their unquestionably living legacy. Is that something to be afraid of?”.

Another great album out on 10th January is Moonchild Sanelly’s Full Moon. A tremendous artist who everyone should know about, this is going to be an album that you will want to pre-order. I am a fan of Moonchild Sanelly, so I am excited to hear what is coming. An artist who should be commanding big stages, Full Moon is going to offer up plenty of treats. Although there are not a lot of details available about the album, Rough Trade have put together a little bit of information regarding Full Moon:

“New album from the South African musician and creative visionary, known for her vibrant, inimitable style and affirming lyricism.  Full Moon is a collection of 12 songs which displays Sanelly's unique sonic fingerprint, joyous attitude, distinctive vocals and genre-bending hits.

Recorded in multiple locations while on the road, Full Moon is an introspective yet kinetic display of her versatility. "I can make any genre, I have fun creating music because I'm not limited," she says. Its club-ready beats oscillate between electronic, afro-punk, edgy-pop, kwaito, and hip-hop sensibilities”.

There are a lot of artists moving from genres like Pop into Country. The legendary Ringo Starr is the latest example. His new album, Look Up, is one that is going to be fascinating. Featuring some excellent guest artists, I think this is going to be one of the best albums of next year. Even though many might associate Starr with The Beatles, he is a brilliant solo artist. I would urge people to pre-order this upcoming album:

“Throughout his career, Ringo Starr has received nine Grammy® Awards and has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - first as a Beatle and then as solo artist. Now, he releases a brand-new country music album, Look Up, produced and co-written by T Bone Burnett. This stunning collection features 11 original songs, recorded this year in Nashville and Los Angeles.

1. Breathless (featuring Billy Strings)

2. Look Up (featuring Molly Tuttle)

3. Time On My Hands

4. Never Let Me Go (featuring Billy Strings)

5. I Live For Your Love (featuring Molly Tuttle)

6. Come Back (featuring Lucius)

7. Can You Hear Me Call (featuring Molly Tuttle)

8. Rosetta (featuring Billy Strings and Larkin Poe)

9. You Want Some

10. String Theory (featuring Molly Tuttle and Larkin Poe)

11. Thankful (featuring Alison Krauss)”.

From a megastar and one of the best-known artists ever to someone who might not be on your radar, Sophie Jamieson’s I still want to share is out on 17th January. An album that is definitely worth pre-ordering, I am going to check it out. An artist with an interesting biography (“Sophie Jamieson doesn’t shy away from discomfort, or life’s ugly truths. The subjects of her songwriting are put to unflinching examination, often revealing aspects of the human character that most would rather turn away from. Need, desperation and anger simmer through her songs, but are balanced by an unsentimental acceptance of life’s painful contradictions. All of this is carried by a deep, raw voice which pivots from wobbling vulnerability to soaring, pent-up longing unleashed. On stage, Sophie digs deep into the darkest corners of the human spirit. Her performances are inescapably intimate and intense, earning her supports for the likes of Father John Misty, Ezra Furman and Marika Hackman to name a few. Her debut album, “Choosing” received widespread critical acclaim for its candid examination of the self-destructive urge, with high praise from the likes of Uncut, Mojo and The Financial Times”), do go and investigate this album:

“Co-produced by Guy Massey (Spiritualised, The Divine Comedy, Kylie) and Sophie Jamieson, I still want to share is an album exploring the push and pull, merry-go-round nature of anxious attachment and how it weaves, cuts and steals through familial and romantic relationships.

Throughout the record is a perpetual longing to belong, a yearning to learn how to love and let go, and a continual missing of the mark. Each song clings tightly to the possibility of home, but never arrives there. The album was recorded in North London between Guy's studio and Konk Studios, with string arrangements from Josephine Stephenson (Daughter, Ex:Re, Lisa Hannigan) and drums from Ed Riman (Hilang Child)”.

The final album from 17th January I want to highlight is The Weather Station’s Humanhoon. Once more, there is not a lot of detail about this album out there. However, go and listen to music from the band. They are well worth investing in. Humanblood is an album shaping up to be very special. One that I will definitely be keeping an eye out for:

“The Weather Station returns with new album, Humanhood, following up 2021's Critically acclaimed album, Ignorance, and its companion piece, How is it That I Should Look at the Stars. In the fall of 2023, Tamara Lindeman gathered six musicians at Canterbury Music Company, where she had recorded Ignorance and How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars. Several of these players - drummer Kieran Adams, keyboardist Ben Boye, percussionist Phillippe Melanson, reed-and-wind specialist Karen Ng, and bassist Ben Whiteley - had worked together but never in this specific arrangement or context. Much of Humanhood is a riveting and real document of what it means to be lost, to be hamstrung by confusion, unease, and grief for a period so long you begin to wonder if there is an end”.

There are four albums from 24th January that I want to cover off. The first is  Anna B Savage’s You and i are Earth. This is an album that I am very keen to hear. An artist I have been following for a long time now, go and pre-order this album. A tremendous artist that everybody should listen to:

“Linking music and literature, building a bridge between the written and the sung–only the greats have managed to do this in the past. Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, and Patti Smith were just some of the shining stars that Anna B Savage orientated herself towards as a teenager. Born on the anniversary of Bach’s death, the young musician spent her birthday every year in the Green Room of the Royal Albert Hall watching her parents perform compositions by the grand master. That shaped her. Today, thanks to albums such as her debut, A Common Turn (2021), and the incredibly sensual art-pop opus in|FLUX (2023), the singer-songwriter is one of the truly exceptional talents on the British independent scene. In her music, otherworldly vocals nestle up against chamber orchestral compositions, delicate arrangements rise up and blow away, and the musician’s highly eclectic sound grows song by song into an experience that lingers for days and weeks. Potentially life-changing. A sense of rootedness is at the heart of Anna B Savage’s third record You and I are Earth, a record that is as much about healing as it is an unbowed sense of curiosity, and, more simply, “a love letter to a man and to Ireland.” Following on from her critically acclaimed records A Common Turn and in|FLUX, You and I are Earth manages to convey a sense of intimacy, while also being open-ended. Gentleness is as radiant a touchstone on the record as earthiness, something that Savage attributes to the place she finds herself at present, both geographically and emotionally. And quite literally the record bears witness to a particular piece of earth-Ireland, and Savage’s relationship to it as her new home. That process is brilliantly rendered on Agnes, a complicated piece of work featuring AnnaMieke that turns on tropes of duality and transformation. It mirrors an unsettling experience that Savage had through meditation, which ultimately ended in an immersive, beautiful feeling, “I felt like I was part of the earth, completely connected to the mycelium network, felt like I was where I was meant to be.”In many ways, that experience framed the album’s artwork, a photograph taken in some woodlands in Co. Sligo, with Savage looking up at the trees, their fractals reflected in her eyes, mirroring something she had felt in her meditation, bringing us back full circle, and to that sense that we are essentially in unison, or at least striving to be, that “you and I are earth”.

With one of the most striking covers from all the albums I will recommend, FKA twigs’ EUSEXUA is looking very promising. The new album from an iconic modern artist, this is another that is going to be among the best-reviewed of the year. There may be some who have not heard of FKA twigs. I would recommend people check this album out. It is going to be tremendous:

“FKA twigs releases her highly-anticipated third studio album, EUSEXUA via Young Recordings. Eusexua is a state of being. A feeling of momentary transcendence often evoked by art, music, sex, and unity. Eusexua can be followed by a state of bliss and feelings of limitless possibility. Also used to refer to: ‘The pinnacle of Human Experience’. It is united through any moment in which we are fully embodying ourselves, present in the moment, disconnected from technology, synthesized with those around us. It was moments of Eusexua that birthed EUSEXUA the album, as twigs cites her late nights in the underground techno scene of Prague”.

Before moving on, it is worth providing some background about EUSEXUA. I have been a fan of FKA twigs since she released her debut album, LP1, in 2014. Her new album is sure to sit alongside the very best of 2025:

“Twigs first began teasing the album in January 2024 through a string of posts on her Discord. Having relocated to Prague "a couple summers" prior to work on The Crow (2024), she fell in love with techno; while she explained that the album would not consist of that genre but would bear its "spirit", and she described it as "deep but not sad". She further revealed that she had teamed up with electronic duo Two Shell who helped her craft the era from scratch after 85 of her demos were leaked in October 2023. In an interview with British Vogue in March 2024, she explained the meaning behind the word "eusexua", saying that she came up with it to describe the "sensation of being so euphoric" that one could "transcend human form”.

The penultimate album from 24th January that I want to bring to your attention is from Larkin Poe. Bloom is an album that I would definitely suggest people pre-order. A fantastic duo that have a distinct sound. A new album that is going to be one you’ll not want to miss out on:

“Larkin Poe’s new album Bloom sees the dynamic sister duo venturing further along on their evolving musical journey with a collection of songs that resonate with introspection, authenticity, and a profound connection to their roots in American music. Produced and largely co-written by Megan, Rebecca, and Tyler Bryant, the album marks a significant evolution for Larkin Poe, reflecting a synergy that extends beyond mere musical partnership. Already hailed for the sincerity of their songcraft, the Lovell sisters now place an even greater spotlight on their gift for storytelling, delving deep into personal narratives with universal themes of self-acceptance and individuality against a backdrop of contemporary blues and rock influences. With their distinctive blend of masterful instrumentation and soulful harmonies, each track unfolds like a chapter, with lyrics that wind deeper and deeper towards the heart of Larkin Poe”.

Before moving on to 31st January and a few great albums out that week, the final one from 24th January I am spotlighting is Mogwai’s The Bad Fire. A wonderful album looms from the band. One that you should pre-order and add to your collection:

“Mogwai’s The Bad Fire was recorded at Chem19 studios in Scotland with American Grammy Award winning producer John Congleton (St Vincent, Angel Olsen, John Grant) joining the band in the studio for their eleventh album. A Scottish colloquialism for Hell, The Bad Fire draws inspiration from a series of tough personal moments that the band found themselves in following on from their chart-topping tenth album, As The Love Continues. All vinyl comes packaged in a gatefold sleeve, with MP3 download code and etching. The photo booklet in the box sets includes a series of photographs taken by producer and Chem19 studio owner Paul Savage (Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai, Arab Strap ) during the band's recording sessions”.

I think I will round off with two more albums. The penultimate album I want to recommend is Lilly Hiatt’s Forever. Go and pre-order an album that should be on your radar. This may be another artist you do not know about, though the album will definitely blow you away:

“Forever was a record that was written and recorded one track at a time with my husband Coley. After scrapping about 20 songs or so I had written the last few years, I wanted to get to the heart of things. I had a great talk with a friend on the phone and she mentioned she just wasn’t sure where I’d been. I realized I wasn’t really certain of that either. It’d been a foggy few years after 2020, and the pieces seemed to just be starting to be picked up. I had fallen in love, gotten married, had a dog, a house…things I had always dreamed of. But it took my quite some time to accept them as my life. For a bit, I felt like an outsider watching myself stumble though everything, and was constantly critiquing myself, to the point where I could hardly leave the house for a bit. But then I realized my life was passing me by, and the love I was living in required presence to accept. I started to do the little things you have to do to just show up for people: listen, grow, change, write….get outside of my own problems. Time is flying, and I want to be here for it all rather than lost in my thoughts all the time. My love is forever. When I was a kid I used to say to my mom and dad “I love you forever and always” then neurotically changed it to “I love you forever and always and it’s true and I mean it”…because I wanted to make sure they knew how much I wasn’t messing around! I still feel that way when I say “I love you” to anyone and hope it comes across on this record. Love y’all forever!”.

The final album I am recommending is from one of the all-time best bands. Manic Street Preachers’ Critical Thinking is out on 31st January. Go and add this album to your collection. A great album to end the month with. Here is where you can pre-order it:

“The Manic Street Preachers return with their most urgent album in years. This is a record of opposites colliding - of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution. While the music has an effervescence and an elegiac uplift, most of the words deal with the cold analysis of the self, the exception being the three lyrics by James (Dean Bradfield) which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs”.

There are other albums out in January that you can pre-order. It is a busy year. Though there will be more choice from February onwards, there are some gems from January that you will want to own. I have selected a few that are well worth pre-ordering. It goes to show that 2025 will get off to…

A strong start.

FEATURE: The Charmers Under Me: Compiling and Considering Kate Bush’s Influences and Musical Heroes

FEATURE:

 

 

The Charmers Under Me

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980

Compiling and Considering Kate Bush’s Influences and Musical Heroes

_________

I have nodded to this before….

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in 1973/PHOTO CREDIT: Masayoshi Sukita

but I have been thinking how a playlist does exist of Kate Bush’s influence. Both artists Bush grew up listening to, those she was name-checking in interviews through her career and collaborations through her career. Including cover versions and albums other than her own she appeared on. My mind casts back to a very young Kate Bush. Catherine actually. When she was a girl and young teen. Maybe not adorning the walls of her 1960s/1970s bedroom wall at East Wickham Farm with Pop stars of the day, there would have been a few posters I am sure. In an artistic household, there would have been more books and albums than posters and anything other teenagers would have had. As a girl, Bush was listening to her parents’ music and anything her brothers were introducing her to. Unknown or under the radar artists that were all important building blocks. Songs that Bush would have enjoyed but were not necessarily important in terms of her own music. The sonic and instrumental elements would definitely have inspired her yet, lyrically, it is hard really to think of other artists who Bush might have channelled. Maybe musical heroes like Elton John and David Bowie. Bush was at the final Ziggy Stardust gig at the Hammersmith Odeon on 3rd July, 1973. That gig was twenty-seven days before her fifteenth birthday. There was something in that performance and the gravity of the night that compelled Bush. That drove her to the stage six years later for The Tour of Life. Not only that, but David Bowie’s different personas and being able to keep the music non-personal yet compelling would have spoken to her. She would have imbibed a lot of poetry from her brother Jay. Folk music and Irish sounds. Bowie was a big draw for her. The theatrical nature of his work and his incredible stagecraft. Elton John, perhaps her biggest idol – who she duetted with for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow – fostered her love and exploration of the piano. Again, a wonderful stage performer, he and David Bowie charted different musical courses. Maybe John showed that a successful Pop artist could play piano. An instrument not necessarily in fashion or spotlighted in the 1970s, Bush was listening to Elton John from the 1960s. At a period in music when bands and guitars were probably more prominent.

Bush was also listening to artists like Roy Harper, Captain Beefheart and The Beatles. Think about her brief stint with the KT Bush Band in 1977. Just before she was ready to step into AIR studios to begin recording The Kick Inside from July 1977, Bush was in a band that toured pubs and clubs mostly around London. A chance to provide stage experience and also help with her performance skills, which would be utilised in her music videos, it was a chance for punters to hear some of the songs and artists who were important to Bush. One song, Nutbush City Limits (there was talk of renaming it Kate Bush City Limits, but this was quickly abandoned!), was part of the set. A 1973 song by Ike & Tina Turner, it seems that this year was important to Bush. Bowie’s retirement from the stage – which was obviously not true – and music speaking to her in a big way when she was fourteen and fifteen. The Beatles’ Come Together was also played. Released on 1969’s Abbey Road, it was one of the earlier influences that appeared in the set of the KT Bush Band. One song that I was not aware that was part of their set was by Steely Dan. Called Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me), it was their debut studio album, Can’t Buy a Thrill. That album was released in 1972. That time period (a year or so) once more making an impact. Elton John released two of his best albums in 1973 – including Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player -, though he was not worked into her live sets as far as I know. However, it is clear that he was a big inspiration.

There are interviews, especially early ones, where Bush discussed her influences. In fact, whilst researching, I have found a playlist of Kate Bush’s influences. Pink Floyd and Nick Drake sitting alongside Peter Gabriel and Roxy Music. Frank Zappa and Devo are other artists that spoke to Bush when she was younger. Not too many female influences. Although some might cite Joni Mitchell, I am not sure whether Bush was listening to Blue (1971) or Ladies of the Canyon (1970). I do think that we need a compilation or more playlists where there is a wide spread of Kate Bush’s musical influences. This feature from March highlighted an interview from 1980, where Bush spend some time talking about albums that mean a lot to her. The Beatles featuring. She covered several of their songs at various moments in her early career. Albums like 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Bush revealed some more of her favourite albums. The Eagles’ One of These Nights was in there. That album was released in 1975 (when Bush was sixteen). Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Steely Dan’s Gaucho was also discussed. I will end with a playlist of songs from ger favourite albums, some she covered with the KT Bush Band, plus some other artists and albums that have influenced her.

“Another personal choice is The Eagles’ One of These Nights. “I played it to death when studying with Lindsay Kemp, and it reminds me of him,” she said, honouring the teacher who taught her to dance. When she received her first record label advance, she spent some of it in classes with Kemp, a famed modern dance teacher who also instructed David Bowie. Clearly feeling a kind of kinship with the artist, she also picks out his own Young Americans.

One of her choices also reminds her of even earlier years as it soundtracked her childhood home. Bush picked A.L. Lloyd and Eran MacColl’s Blow Boys Blow, writing, “I was brought up with this album.” The fact that Bush was raised on a diet of shanties and traditional folk makes so much sense when considering tracks like ‘Jig Of Life’.

There are a fair few left-field yet traditional or cultural sounds on Bush’s list. She also chooses albums from The TV National Iranian Chamber Orchestra and German double bass player Eberhard Weber. Showing exactly where her interest in global sounds comes from, her eclectic musical engagement came to fruition across her records.

But she also loves the big names. She picked out Stevie Wonder’s The Secret Life Of Plants as a more soulful choice, deeming it a “modern symphony”. The Beatles naturally make an appearance as she picked out Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Her reasoning is simple as she stated, “It’s an album of excellent songs.” Somewhat bridging the gap between her classic rock tastes and her more unusual choices, she discussed her love for Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, the resident weird guys of the 1960s and ‘70s. As both artists pushed the sounds of the era to wilder places than their peers, the two figures make total sense as firm favourites of Bush’s.

Kate Bush’s favourite albums of all time:

• Frank Zappa – Over-Nite Sensation

• A.L. Lloyd and Eran MacColl – Blow Boys Blow

• The Eagles – One of These Nights

• David Bowie – Young Americans

• The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

• Eberhard Weber – Fluid Rustle

• Captain Beefheart – Blue Jeans and Moonbeams

• Stevie Wonder – The Secret Life of Plants

• Pink Floyd – The Wall

• The TV National Iranian Chamber Orchestra – Treasures of the Baroque Era”.

I would love to have heard Bush sing songs from albums like Gaucho. Maybe Glamour Profession. It seems like One of These Nights’ title track would be perfect for her. A Bush rendition of The Wall’s Mother. Perhaps something from Captain Beefheart. I have a dim memory that Bush might have sung some David Bowie at some point. Maybe Young Americans?! Even though she did cover a fair few of The Beatles’ songs, I would have love to hear her take on Magical Mystery Tour’s I Am the Walrus or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s Fixing a Hole. She did cover She’s Leaving Home when visiting Japan in 1978. Also, there is this other side. Artists Bush worked with who she was a fan of. The Trio Bulgarka (who appeared on 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes), Peter Gabriel (she featured on three of his songs), Roy Harper (he appeared on her Breathing; she retuned the favour for 1980’s The Unknown Soldier), Big Country and Elton John (she covered Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time) for a tribute album to Elton John and Bernie Taupin in the 1990s). Backtracking to Kate Bush and Steely Dan. She did actually mention Peg (from 1977’s Aja) as a standout of theirs. I keep thinking about all these artists and how, from the 1960s through to the 1980s, they made an impression on Kate Bush. Those childhood and teenage loves. Artists she was discovering and loving when she was making her own music. You can bring it up to date and artists she has mentioned in later interviews. Gorillaz in 2005. Elton John and Leon Russell in 2011. I might do another feature of the artists influenced by Kate Bush. Updating a feature I wrote a while ago. I would love to know if there are other artists who were important to Bush that I have not mentioned. I have included many (though not all) in…

katebushnews.com · Radio 1 Paul Gambaccini Kate's Favourite rock and pop 31st December 1980

A comprehensive mixtape.

FEATURE: Chart Dreams to Interesting Nightmares: Kate Bush’s Move From Pop and Into New Sonic Territories

FEATURE:

 

 

Chart Dreams to Interesting Nightmares

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during a photoshoot for 1989’s The Sensual World/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harrai

Kate Bush’s Move From Pop and Into New Sonic Territories

_________

ONE of the most interesting….

PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

topics of discussion around Kate Bush’s music is her move away from more conventional and commercial Pop to something that pushes beyond the fringes. One could say that Kate Bush has never been conventional or commercial. Consider her debut single, Wuthering Heights, and how strange that still sounds. Since it was released in 1978, nothing like it has come along. However, there are distinct periods of her career where she has released singles that are designed to get chart traction. That are more radio-accessible and less divisive. One can listen to Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, and see that as a distinct period that ended by the time of 1982’s The Dreaming. Her first three albums, whilst distinct and varied, had songs on them that could be considered relatable. Not too out-there. Perhaps never a traditional ‘Pop’ artist, there was this sense that these songs could be released as singles and be successful. Albums, at the very least, which have a distinct palette. Think about a lot of the love songs on The Kick Inside.Also, tracks like Them Heavy People. Tracks of Lionheart such as Kashka from Baghdad, Wow and Fullhouse. Cuts on 1980’s Never for Ever like Delius (Song of Summer), All We Ever Look For, The Wedding List or Babooshka. These songs are like nothing that was released at the time. However, in spite of a lack of cliché love lyrics and Pop dynamics, these tracks do seem to be of a similar kin. You can draw lines between them. Not as heavy or haunted as some of her other songs. How would one class Kate Bush’s music? At least her early albums? Not commercial Pop like you got in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a degree of relatability to her lyrics and compositions. Shorter songs that could theoretically be played on radio.

Even when she stepped more outside of Pop and experimented more for The Dreaming in 1982’s, the songs were not too long and there were at least one or two on the album that had similarities with her earlier material. I feel tracks such as There Goes a Tenner and Suspended in Gaffa have an air of familiarity. Kate Bush songs but with a slightly different edge and sound. That was the first album where she knew that she could not be a normal Pop artist. Writing songs and producing albums that were want EMI wanted or what the public expected. Bush was always able to release music that was evolving but she did not need to pay homage and acknowledge the scene around her. She had influences and artists she loved, though working with those artists or sounding like them was not high on her agenda. By 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, her most recent album, Bush acknowledged that she was pushing away from Pop and did not want to be considers a Pop artist. There was always this tussle between staying true to herself and making music that was genuine but also needing to connect with her fans and the public. An interesting tussle and development occurred between 1982 and 1985. Two terrific albums that sounds completely different. The former saw the release of Kate Bush’s fourth studio album, The Dreaming. I think it was Bush consciously trying to explore the depth and possibilities of music. Embracing the Fairlight CMI. A move from Pop’s conventionality. It did yield a terrific album that she produced solo. However, given some unhappiness from EMI and low-charting singles, Hounds of Love could not see her follow what she did before. However, though it is still an experimental, ambitious and a profoundly unconventional album – The Ninth Wave, the second side of the album, it a song-suite that is almost an album in itself -, there were songs on the first side that moved slightly more towards traditional Pop. Perhaps Art Pop. 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes were terrific albums but did seem to move away from The Dreaming - and, with it, possibly take Bush back more into ‘accessible’ territory. However, from 2005’s Aerial onwards, she has moved again further from Pop or being easy to predict.

It is no coincidence that Bush seems happier as an artist when she is not bound by chart positions or creating singles. Hounds of Love was a hugely happy time for her, though I do not see that album as ‘mainstream’ or Pop-focused as, say, Never for Ever or even The Sensual World. It leads me back towards the question as to whether Kate Bush was ever a Pop artist or someone who was always outside of that restrictive realm but did move further towards something outside and experimental at various points in her career. She has always been popular, yet that has never been at the expense of brilliance and vision. I want to move on to a few articles that frame Kate Bush as this distinct and pioneering artist. One who has influenced scores of other artists because she was able to mix something accessible or familiar but completely fresh and original. In 2020, this feature saluted Bush as one of the most revered and influential Pop artists ever:

“By 1980 and Never For Ever, her third album, Kate had broken away by setting up her own publishing and management company and producing her own material. This determination to do it her own way rewarded Kate with her first chart-topping album and big hits in ‘Babooshka’ and ‘Army Dreamers’. With her work blending imaginative themes and dramatic promotional interpretation, Kate’s commercial fortunes were consistent and her artistic reputation was soaring. She guested on Peter Gabriel’s hit ‘Games Without Frontiers’ and was continuing to win further industry awards, including another Ivor Novello Award.

It was business as usual when the stopgap single ‘Sat In Your Lap’, released in July 1981 and preceding its parent album by more than a year, got to No.11. But when The Dreaming finally hit the shops amid an exploding new pop scene dominated by The Human League and Duran Duran, the 10 songs struggled to find much of an audience and the set became Kate’s lowest-selling to date, with three of its four singles failing to even trouble the UK Top 40.

1989’s The Sensual World lacked the commercial clout of its predecessor, but contained the well-regarded title track and, perhaps, Kate’s most tender ballad, ‘This Woman’s Work’, which first featured in the cult 80s movie She’s Having A Baby. The era was also characterised by another brief run of more consistent activity with a contribution to an Elton John and Bernie Taupin tribute album that was swiftly culled for a single. Her cover of ‘Rocket Man’ made UK No.12 and was named “best cover ever” in a national newspaper poll, 16 years later. She also made an appearance in a TV play by The Comic Strip team and produced a track for singer and harpist Alan Stivell”.

Someone who never wanted to me famous or live a celebrity life, Bush’s music has always been defined by this desire not to be ordinary. To fit in or sound like artists around her whose agenda and ambitious were less concerned with musical excellence and progression, and more to do with getting them name out there and being ‘celebrated’. Earlier this year, PROG wrote how the less we see of Kate Bush, the more we need and want to know. Since that feature was published, Bush has conducted a new interview (in October) where she has opened up the possibility of an eleventh studio album:

“While the marketing men and mainstream media were far from subtle in their slavering celebration of Bush’s obvious sexual appeal, she was already proving to be more enigmatic and far smarter than the mindless pop star they clearly hoped to pin her as. When The Man With... won her an Ivor Novello Award and she swiftly followed The Kick Inside with second album Lionheart, the critical acclaim grew.

“EMI really had no idea,” says Carder Bush. “It was run by salesmen who saw her as part of an assembly line – they had obviously never studied her lyrics! So once Kate became a success, they barged in with sexy photo shoots, offers of Las Vegas residencies and Bond themes. She said ‘no’ to all of them because it was the brain and not the body that was Kate’s real quality.”

Ultimately though, Bush’s reclusive tendencies would be the making of her. As chart music went through a period dominated by glossy pop that was all veneer and little content, Kate Bush’s outsider status worked to her advantage.

A string of albums throughout the 80s went to Nos. 1, 3 and 1 respectively – Never For Ever (1980), The Dreaming (1982) and Hounds Of Love (1985).

No one song was easy to pin down, with Bush’s music drawing on murder ballads, the childhood wonder of nursery rhymes, her part-Celtic genealogy, the mythology of a lost Albion favoured by some prog and pastoral folk singers, the ethereal end of goth, the organic tones of early music, digital synth pop and emerging sequencing technologies.

Hounds Of Love alone spawned yhree classic singles – Running Up That Hill, Cloudbusting and the tumultuous, dramatically-heightened title track – and further reiterated her prog tendencies by devoting the entire second side of the album to a an experimental opera, The Ninth Wave, whose name came from a Tennyson poem. She also helped define the 1980s whilst being unlike anything else in that era: her skill was not to experiment in the live arena but by embracing emerging technologies in the studio .

“For three or four years it was a rollercoaster for Kate,” says Carder Bush (Joh, her brother). “She was being sent all over the world, and fortunately she had stockpiled a lot of songs. But when that stockpile ran out she was expected to come up with an album, then promote it, go on TV, all within a year. Well, the type of artist Kate is meant that just couldn’t work. That’s why each album has taken longer and longer to come to maturity.”

Today Bush may not be so obviously viewed as a practitioner of prog rock – not at first glance anyway. Yet her career history and collaborations are inextricably tied in with prog and her ever-evolving output has much more common with the genre than the pop world in which she first found herself operating.

In fact, Kate Bush is prog’s first pop star and pop’s first prog star. And one who is always capable of delivering nothing less than the unexpected”.

I am going to end with a feature from 2014. This was released alongside a score of other features to coincide with her returning to the stage for her Before the Dawn residency. This queen of Art Pop always defied the critics. Perhaps the more that they derided or lampooned her, the more her music stepped away from the core of Pop. I don’t think that she ever compromised or made an album that was what was expected. However, one can say that various albums/career points saw her move towards the fringes. 2005’s Aerial and 2011’s 50 Words for Snow show Bush no longer wants to be seen as a ‘Pop’ artist. Just an artist:

“As words and as music, none of these scream "hit single". Yet all but one of them were. It's therefore hardly surprising that Bush's name gets reeled out, with varying degrees of appropriateness, as the ancestor for any new female artist trying to merge glamour, conceptualism, innovation and autonomy: recent examples include Grimes, Julia Holter and FKA Twigs. Yet, strange as it seems now, Bush was not always impregnably cool. In fact, despite her massive record sales and mainstream fame, she was not afforded much respect by critics or hip listeners in the late 1970s.

Despite being as young or younger than, say, the Slits, Bush seemed Old Wave: she belonged with the generation of musicians who had emerged during the 1960s ("boring old farts", as the punk press called them). Some of these BOFs were indeed her mentors, friends, and collaborators: David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel and Roy Harper. Growing up, her sensibility was shaped by her older brothers, in particular the musical tastes and spiritual interests of Jay, 13 years her senior and a true 60s cat.

Punk often sneered at "art" as airy-fairy, bourgeois self-indulgence, but its ranks were full of art-school graduates and this artiness blossomed with the sound, design and stage presentation of bands such as Wire and Talking Heads. Yet Bush's music seemed the wrong kind of "arty": ornate rather than angular, overly decorative and decorous. It was the sort of musically accomplished, well-arranged, album-oriented art-pop that EMI had been comfortable with since the Beatles and had pursued with Pink Floyd, Cockney Rebel and Queen. They signed Bush expressly as the first major British female exponent of this genteel genre.

And that's where Bush was situated on her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart: somewhere at the crossroads of singer-songwriter pop, the lighter side of prog, and the highbrow end of glam. Like Bowie, she studied mime with Lindsay Kemp, took classes in dance, and made a series of striking, inventive videos. EMI's Bob Mercer hailed Bush as "a completely audio-visual artist" and spoke of the company's intention to break her in America through television rather than radio (this, several years before MTV even existed). Her one and only tour was a theatrical mega-production in the rigidly choreographed tradition of Diamond Dogs, all dancers and costume changes and no-expense-spared staging. Reviewing one of the 1979 concerts for NME, Charles Shaar Murray typified the general rock press attitude towards Bush at that point, scornfully describing the show as a throw-back to "all the unpleasant aspects of David Bowie in the Mainman era.... [Bowie manager/Mainman boss] Tony DeFries would've loved you seven years ago, Kate, and seven years ago maybe I would've too. But these days I'm past the stage of admiring people desperate to dazzle and bemuse, and I wish you were past the stage of trying those tricks yourself." Spectacle, in the immediate years after punk, was considered a narcissistic star trip, fundamentally non-egalitarian.

Of the ethereal-girl artists emerging in the mid-80s, Elizabeth Fraser was the most clearly indebted – indeed, the frou-frou side of Cocteau Twins could be traced to a single song on Never For Ever, Delius (Song of Summer). Björk's starburst of vocal euphoria likewise owed much to Bush. Enya, formerly of Clannad, followed in Bush's footsteps in her explorations of synths and sampling, as well as taking vocal multi-tracking to the dizzy limit.

The 90s saw the arrival of Tori Amos, whose piano-driven confessionals blatantly drew on Bush's ornate early sound. But there were less obvious inheritors, too. Touring their first album, Suede liked to air Wuthering Heights immediately before going onstage: Brett Anderson placed Bush in his personal trinity of utterly English ancestors, alongside Bowie and Morrissey. Esoteric-industrial duo Coil hailed Bush as "a very powerful witch", possibly knowing about – or simply sensing – the Bush family's shared enchantment with the ideas of Gurdjieff who, among other things, explored the magical effects of particular musical chords. Closeted fans started to emerge from the unlikeliest places: Johnny Rotten, for instance, gushed about the "beauty beyond belief" of Bush's music.

Still, it's hard to think of an artist with such an amazing body of work who has produced such a small collection of quotable remarks. (Her only rival in this regard might be Prince.) Here, to close, is one she gave me that's not bad as a encapsulation of the spirit of Kate Bush and her Never Never Pop.

"That's what all art's about – a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't – in real-life. Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really - to do something that's just not possible. But you try to do as much as you can within those physical boundaries. All art is like that: a form of exploration, of making up stories. Writing, film, sculpture, music: it's all make-believe, really”.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Kate Bush’s music is how it cannot be easily labelled or attached to genres. Never truly commercial or conventional, there were waves of sonic change. Albums that had more clear singles. Perhaps an effort to keep her in the public mindset whilst also pushing her music forward. However, in later years, Bush is releasing albums as single pieces. Not concerned with singles or radio play necessarily, Bush definitely wants her fans to experience albums fully. Not to say that her music is inaccessible or outsider. Its greatest gift is that it is like nothing else around it and not concerned with ‘fitting in’. However, the songs resonate and stand up to repeated listens. Less concerned with Pop’s structures and rules, Bush’s lack of being ‘cool’ or even following artists she has inspired gives her music extra depth and credibility. From 1978’s Wuthering Heights to 2011’s Misty, the divine Kate Bush has very much…

BEEN iimpossible to define.

FEATURE: 1 Problem: A New Level of Misogyny and Disrespectful for Women Through Hip-Hop

FEATURE:

 

 

1 Problem

IN THIS PHOTO: Jay-Z has been accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000. He has called for the lawsuit to be thrown out

A New Level of Misogyny and Disrespectful for Women Through Hip-Hop

_________

THERE has always been a huge issues….

IN THIS PHOTO: Diddy

with misogyny which has run through the marrow of Hip-Hop for decades. It is one of the last genres where there is this rife and unrelenting sense of disrespect for women. I don’t think that it has massively changed through the years. Small improvements from decades past, though very few of the men in Hip-Hop boost women or mention them in their music. Positive, empowering and respectful narratives about women. You get collaborations happening but, when you look at a lot of the lyrics of modern Hip-Hop, there is still this misogyny that is never going to shift. I don’t think the genres will ever radically change so that its men are respectful of women. I know other women in Hip-Hop can be demeaning and aggressive towards other women, though it is almost solely women in Hip-Hop who are platforming and highlighting women. Alongside misogyny is something ever darker and more disturbing. Men in the genre being accused of sexual assault. How that is slow to change. Also, when men are accusing of sexual abuse, their attitudes towards the women making the accusation are also hugely disrespectful and disgusting! When you look at Hip-Hop’s men, especially those in the mainstream who have been around for decades, there is this complete lack of positivity of basic respect for women. So many abusing through their music of reducing women to their bodies. Vulgarity and aggression. I am mentioning this because Jay-Z has been accused of rape. Alongside abuser Diddy, Jay-Z has been accused of raping a thirteen-year-old. Although it is has come to light that the victim’s story has some inconsistencies, there is no reason ever to not believe her. The attitude displayed by Jay-Z towards the allegations and victim are at best dismissive and, in reality, disgusting. Someone who has power and privilege trying to write it off.

This is not a one-off. Over the past few years, there has been a slew of men in Hip-Hop accused of sexual assault, rape and violence towards women. Nobody can say that this problem is on the brink of being resolved. So far from that are we now, it is depressingly commonplace to read a story of women coming forward about being assaulted and abused by a male Hip-Hop artist/someone in the industry. The Guardian reported on Jay-Z’s reaction to being accused of rape. How it is systematic of the Hip-Hop scene:

“Jay-Z himself isn’t a newcomer to rumours about inappropriate relationships with minors. For years, speculation about the timelines and natures of his relationships with Foxy Brown, Aaliyah and eventually Beyoncé (all of whom are significantly younger than Jay-Z and were teenagers when they met him) have put him in the category of, at the very least, “Questionable Man”.

That’s why it was even more appalling to watch the typically measured, always calculated rap mogul release a statement that was condescending, un-self-aware and smacked of the smug overconfidence of someone who has operated with god-like status for so long that they don’t know what the rules even are, let alone that they have to follow them.

For starters, Jay-Z “implored” the plaintiff to file a criminal suit, “not a civil one!!” – a nonsense request when we know just how hard it is to secure a criminal conviction in a case like this, and just how useful the civil courts have been in awarding judgments in favor of victims of old crimes.

He’s also filed a motion to deny the plaintiff’s request for anonymity, asking that either her identity be disclosed or the case be dismissed. This demand that she out herself isn’t some attempt to level the playing field in the court of public opinion like he’s suggesting – it’s a way to force her into opening herself up to scrutiny, a move that is especially diabolical considering how the world treats women who stand up to abusers. And Jay-Z of all people should know: he was instrumental in helping Megan Thee Stallion navigate the hell she went up against after being shot by Tory Lanez.

But the rapper’s hostile approach to the accusations doesn’t end with his accuser. He is also suing her attorney, Tony Buzbee, whom he accuses of extortion. Buzbee has responded, accusing Jay-Z of “orchestrating a conspiracy of harassment” against him and his legal colleagues in an attempt to intimidate and silence his client.

When it comes to public response, much of it has been predictably asinine and filled with rap legend apologia. Some Black men on social media dusted off the Bill Cosby defence playbook, gleeful to be able to call the allegations “proof” of a conspiracy to bring down one of their own.

“My biggest problem in all of this is the clown show that sexual assaults have become,” said radio presenter Ebro Darden, hedging his defence of Jay-Z as a protection of the gravity of sexual assault. “I don’t know why so many people want to see Jay-Z get torn down. It’s disgusting. People love a tear-down of somebody successful … I would say in all this [that] it still takes me back to how upsetting it is that sexual assault is a game.”

All this is to be expected: Jay-Z is arguably the most powerful man in hip-hop and our misogynistic, celebrity-obsessed culture demands that he have staunch defenders in a moment like this. What I think is more interesting are the ways that Jay-Z has situated himself within the white American establishment – his relationship with the National Football League (NFL), in particular – and what role that will play as this story continues to unfold. For his part, Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, said in a perfunctory statement on Wednesday that the league was aware of the allegations and Jay-Z’s “really strong response” to them, and that their “relationship is not changing”.

Hip-Hop is not isolated in regards to misogyny. It is as bad now as ever. When you look online and how women are viewed and discussed, you do get this sense that we are heading backwards. To some dark days. The latest case of a powerful figure in Hip-Hop being accused of rape shows that there is a huge issue in the genre. The way a lot of male artists perceive women. Thinking they are beyond punishment and can do what they like. Like women are objects and are inferior to men. I do hope that the woman who has come forward to accuse Jay-Z finds justice. Hopefully it would send a clear message that men cannot get away with this sort of thing. Sadly, it is likely that the case will be thrown out or the victim will be paid off. After the dust has settled – not that it could ever! – there needs to be this spotlight on Hip-Hop. How it is still this genre overrunning with misogyny and controversy. How women in the genre are treated and still have to fight to be heard. It is a really sorry state of affairs. Women attacked and abused and there being little in the way of hope. In terms of seeing a light. It is especially terrible when high-profile men are accused and you know they will escape consequences because of who they are. As I said, the Jay-Z case is likely to be tossed out. His attitude towards the allegations is horrible! Next year has to be one for genuine change in the music industry. Where misogyny is tackled and addressed. It is especially severe in Hip-Hop. We need to be in a place (very soon) where…

WOMEN feel safe and heard.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Eddie Vedder at Sixty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Eddie Vedder at Sixty

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ON 23rd December….

IN THIS PHOTO: Pearl Jam

one of music’s true greats turns sixty. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder is a true legend who deserves saluting. Because of that, I am going to end this feature with a playlist featuring some of the best Pearl Jam songs and deeper cuts. Some Eddie Vedder solo material too. Prior to that, AllMusic provide a detailed biography of the wonder Vedder:

“As the singer for Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder cemented his place as one of modern rock's best-known frontmen, riding the band's early success as Seattle grunge icons into a remarkably consistent and varied career. His low, rugged vocals, introspective lyrics, and dynamic presence made him one of the 1990s' most influential frontmen and he used his celebrity to promote issues like environmental activism and women's rights. As Pearl Jam's success continued into the 21st century, Vedder also branched out into occasional solo work, contributing to a number of films including his acclaimed soundtrack to 2007's Into the Wild. After his 2011 solo acoustic release, Ukulele Songs, he spent much of the following decade devoted to Pearl Jam, becoming a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer in the process. In 2022, Vedder released Earthling, his first solo album devoted to rock & roll.

Born Edward Louis Severson III in Evanston, Illinois Vedder was raised by his mother Karen Vedder and stepfather Peter Mueller. Unaware of his biological father's existence, he used Mueller as his surname until his late teens; he later found out his real father had died and eventually took his mother's maiden name as his own. The family's relocation to San Diego in the mid-'70s ushered in Vedder's two primary passions: music and surfing. He learned to play the guitar which, along with his surfboard, helped sustain him through a difficult period that ultimately saw him drop out of high school. After earning his GED back in Chicago, Vedder returned to San Diego in the mid-'80s, where he worked odd jobs, recorded songs, and played in bands like Indian Style and Bad Radio.

In 1990, friend and former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons gave Vedder a demo tape from some Seattle friends seeking a new lead singer. Vedder's powerful voice and thoughtful lyrics earned him an invitation to Seattle to meet Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, whose most recent band, Mother Love Bone, had just folded following the death of its lead singer, Andrew Wood. In fact, they were recording a tribute album to Wood called Temple of the Dog and invited Vedder to contribute vocals on several songs alongside Soundgarden's Chris Cornell. Upon its April 1991 release, "Hunger Strike," a duet with Cornell, marked Vedder's first featured vocal appearance on record and became Temple of the Dog's breakout single, introducing the newcomer to fans ahead of Pearl Jam's own debut later that August.

Anchored by Vedder's distinctive baritone growl and the band's battery of dark, chugging riffs, Ten catapulted Pearl Jam into the mainstream and became one of the best-selling albums of the decade. It preceded the release of Nirvana's watershed album Nevermind by one month, and the massive success of both bands assured that Vedder and Kurt Cobain would become the public faces of the early-'90s grunge movement. While both singers struggled under the weight of this role, Vedder managed to parlay the group's early success into a long and lasting career, while Cobain sadly succumbed to his demons in 1994. Pearl Jam spent the middle part of the decade at the top of their game, notching three consecutive number one albums, building a devoted fan base, and earning a reputation for doing things their own way; their legendary David and Goliath-like battle with Ticketmaster over inflated concert prices earned them plenty of goodwill from frustrated concertgoers. For his part, Vedder used his elevated platform to support a number of causes from abortion rights and gun control to environmentalism and liberal politics. He also dabbled in extracurricular collaborations, singing with a range of artists from famed qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to the Ramones.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Pearl Jam were fast becoming a rock institution, touring relentlessly and satiating fans with scads of official bootleg releases of their live shows. Parallel to artistically satisfying releases like 2002's Riot Act and 2006's Pearl Jam, Vedder made occasional forays into solo work, contributing songs to films like Sean Penn's I Am Sam (2001), the documentary Body of War (2007), and the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There. An ongoing friendship with Sean Penn led Vedder to compose music for Penn's 2007 film Into the Wild, the soundtrack of which became Vedder's first official solo release. In 2011, he offered up a second solo outing in the acoustic Ukulele Songs, which he supported with a tour of smaller, more intimate venues. He also continued to guest on songs by other artists including R.E.M., Neil Finn, and Glen Hansard. Meanwhile, Pearl Jam aged gracefully into middle age, releasing 2013's low-key Lightning Bolt and a 2017 live double-LP recorded at historic Wrigley Field, home of Vedder's beloved Chicago Cubs. They were also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That same year he appeared performing under his birth name, Edward Louis Severson, during an episode of Twin Peaks' long-awaited third season. Along with Pearl Jam's 11th studio album, Gigaton, 2020 brought the Vedder solo EP, Matter of Time. The following year, he resumed his ongoing collaboration with Sean Penn, contributing heavily to the soundtrack of his film Flag Day. He also teamed up with Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello for a cover of AC/DC's classic "Highway to Hell."

During May of 2021, Vedder visited the Beverly Hills studio of producer Andrew Watt in order to rehearse for a benefit concert. The singer and producer unexpectedly started collaborating on new material, songs that became the seeds of Earthling, the 2022 solo album from Vedder. Earthling found Vedder working in collaboration not only with Watt and Red Hot Chili Pepper drummer Chad Smith, but with Elton John, Ringo Starr, Benmont Tench and Stevie Wonder on a diverse, colorful album”.

The music world celebrates Eddie Vedder’s sixtieth birthday on 23rd December. An artist that I have been a fan of since childhood, I have compiled a mixtape of the finest Pearl Jam cuts, lesser-known songs and some great solo material. A couple of days before Christmas, we have a reason to cheer, as one of the all-time great band leaders…

TURNS sixty.

FEATURE: A Primadonna in Red Shoes: Why a Kate Bush Exhibition Is Long Overdue

FEATURE:

 

 

A Primadonna in Red Shoes

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in London, 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

Why a Kate Bush Exhibition Is Long Overdue

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I might have covered this off….

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signing copies of The Dreaming in London on 14th September, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pete Still

a year or two ago but, in any case, it is worth revising and updating. I recently posted a feature where I theorised how marvellous it would be to have photographers Guido Harari, Gered Mankowitz and John Carder Bush get together to discuss and dissect photos of Kate Bush they have taken through the years. I posted it to social media and Guido Harari said it would be a great idea and hopes it will happen. It would be wonderful to see! There has not been, to my knowledge, a photo exhibition for Kate Bush. There have been photobooks from the three photographers I have mentioned but I am not sure whether they have opened a gallery for people to see. In any case, there has not been a larger exhibition in London with images of Kate Bush from her childhood through to 2011. She may see it as exposing (not pun intended!) or too personal. However, as these photos have been shared, seen and many are available online, so having the public pay to see them should not cause a moral or personal crisis or conundrum. Whether it would purely be photographic or fashion-based I am not sure. I have been thinking about the various iconic looks from Kate Bush through the years and how artists like David Bowie have been the subject of exhibitions. This exhibition at the V&A. Album artwork, photographs and memorabilia. I would love to see an exhibition that included some Kate Bush fashion. The problem might be that the original garments are not available. From photoshoots through to public appearances, Kate Bush has sported some incredible looks. Whether it is the more down-to-earth fashion she wore at East Wickham Farm (her family home) and in 1978 or some of the more elegant or stylish photoshoots from that time, she kept consistently fashionable, innovative and relatable through the years. Her videos and their aesthetics are hugely important too.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush washing up at her family's home in East Wickham on 26th September, 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

One of my favourite moments of Kate Bush fashion is when she was signing copies of The Dreaming in London on 14th September, 1982. You can buy a replica of that T-shirt here. I am not sure which year of her career is the standout in terms of fashion. Many would have their own opinions. I personally love 1978 and 1989. Photos taken by photographers like Gered Mankowitz and Guido Harari. Some incredible photos like with Claude Vanheye. His 1979 photo session with Kate Bush was scheduled for thirty minutes, but she sent away her entourage and stayed for six hours, with props like a fake dolphin and dresses by Fong Leng. Bush staying fashionable and distinct during the 1980s. A decade not perhaps known for its reputable and cool fashion! Even if at times her music seemed out of step with the times, too dense and lacking commercial prowess, the same could not said of Bush’s style and designs. From what she wore through to album covers and promotional images, this is an artist who has not been discussed enough in terms of her fashion and design abilities. Not only recording the music but collaborating with photographers to create these timeless images. It is one of those gaps in the Kate Bush cannon that I think could be filled and should. Kate Bush is now more than ever receptive to a new generation and open to the idea of new music and possibilities. She has reissued her own albums so I don’t feel she would veto the idea of an exhibition. Maybe at the South Bank Centre. It would be amazing to have this retrospective. Not only to show what an icon Bush is but to showcase her amazing videos and covers. Right up to date with the sketches for the Little Shrew (Snowflake) video.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the Tour of Life in Hammersmith, May 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne

Costumes worn during 1979’s The Tour of Life. Set designs and memorabilia from 2014’s Before the Dawn. Her album covers dissected and explored. Photoshoots around the album and this interactive aspect to the exhibition. Like with David Bowie, Prince or other artists who have had their clothing and music displayed for the public, it would be incredible. To be fair, Kate Bush has been covered when it comes to portraying her as a fashion icon. Articles like this from Sloane Street that tells us how to get the Kate Bush look. There is this feature that discussed the various periods of her careers and the colour palettes and aesthetics of her looks. How they changed through the years. This article highlights seven iconic Kate Bush looks, including her performing in Amsterdam in 1979 for The Tour of Life. With seventeen costume changes, there are many stunning fashion choices to spotlight. I wonder whether Kate Bush photographed with Claude Vanheye when she performed in Amsterdam during the tour. Check out this feature that gives us some iconic Kate Bush looks. Most from her early career. People tend to ignore the wonderful photos and outfits from 1989’s The Sensual World right through to 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. There are a couple of Vogue features dedicated to Kate Bush’s best looks. One here and another. Whilst there are articles that focus on her changing and always-amazing fashion choices, nothing has been mounted in a gallery or museum. That is just the tip of the iceberg! In terms of the visual side of Kate Bush, very little has been done. You feel this has to change. In 2022, DAZED celebrated Kate Bush returning to the charts after the Stranger Things effect. They heralded a ‘bizarro style icon’ whose eclectic looks through the years have had a lasting influence and legacy:

“Nearly 40 years after it was first released, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” has become the hottest song of the summer. Playing a prominent role in the dark new series of Stranger Things, the offbeat ballad has become a global hit, as endless streams by a new generation of Bush fans propelled it to the top of the UK charts. First appearing on Bush’s 1985 album Hounds of Love, the track is a rallying cry for extreme empathy that explores what could be achieved if two lovers swapped places to understand one another better – themes which feel just as timely and pertinent as they did back then.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the cover shoot for 1985’s Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Despite her fame, Kate Bush has managed that rare thing as a mainstream musician – retaining a cult-like aura that still makes listeners feel like insiders sharing a secret. To those in the know, this appreciation extends far beyond the music. A great foreshadower of the slick pop package expected today, Bush’s work has always been led by an understanding that a great singer uses all her available tools. From taking lessons with David Bowie’s dance teacher Lindsay Kemp to devising music videos that cover every genre from sci-fi to macabre fairytale, Bush’s vision was, and is, multi-faceted. Clothes have played an integral part in this creative odyssey, cementing Bush as an idiosyncratic fashion icon in the process.

Here, we look back at the way the musician has utilised fashion throughout her career, and her subsequent influence on the way we dress.

KATE’S KEY LOOKS

Let’s reverse to the beginning. Bush burst into the limelight in 1978 with her debut album The Kick Inside. She was just 19. The lead single “Wuthering Heights” remains one of her best known to this day, its high-pitched, broken-hearted register still a favourite among brave karaoke-goers. Two separate music videos released to accompany the Emily Brontë-inspired track featured Bush fluttering around a field and a stage in flowing gowns: one red, one white. Often, this is the Kate Bush we still imagine, all big hair and ethereal seventies regalia.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Claude Vanheye

Away from her videos, Bush was frequently pictured wearing rustic knits, silk blouses, waistcoats, colourful tights, thigh high-boots, and a further succession of diaphanous dresses. Her style suggested not only hippyish ease but a particularly English kind of eclecticism: all thin fabrics and big woolly socks. She wasn’t afraid of high fashion drama either. A series of photos of her taken in the late ‘70s by Claude Vanheye see her in various jewel-coloured Fong Leng pieces, with one ritzy yellow number worn to walk a leashed crocodile.

The needs of dance also influenced Bush’s love of glittery bodysuits and tight lycra – all the better to move in. Her 1979 show The Tour of Life was a heavily costumed affair, featuring outfits including a magician’s top hat and tails, a veil, wings, leotards, and WWII army attire. Always ahead of the game, she was also the first singer to perform with a wireless microphone headset, her stage sound engineer Martin Fisher devising it from a coat hanger.

During those early years, Bush was prodigious. The Kick Inside and Lionheart were both released in 1978, Never Forever came in 1980 (featuring a brilliant futuristic look complete with chainmail bikini for “Babooshka”), and The Dreaming in 1982. The latter, which marked her most experimental work to date, received lukewarm reception but has since been recognised as a classic. Bush then stormed back onto the charts in 1985 with Hounds of Love.

Forever a shapeshifter, across the course of the album’s music videos and shoots Bush fashioned herself into a small boy complete with knitted jerkin for “Cloudbusting”, an overcoat-clad dancer for “Hounds of Love”, and an Ophelia-style figure in a life jacket framed by flowers for the album’s B-side telling the story of a slowly drowning woman. For “Running Up That Hill” she opted for grey leotards and hakama – draped Japanese trousers – ideal for the video’s soft purple light as she and fellow dancer Michael Hervieu (dressed identically) grappled together in a series of motions that rolled between intimacy and distance.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for the 1981 single., Sat in Your Lap

A LASTING INFLUENCE

To some degree, it’s hard to write about Kate Bush’s ‘style’, because so much of it exists in service to her music. Take her 1993 album The Red Shoes. There it’s all about the scarlet ballet slippers, used to reference Powell & Pressberger’s 1948 film of the same name – itself nodding to Hans Christian Andersen’s gruesome tale of a girl cursed to dance forever. For Bush, clothing is both kinetic and character-forming. It frees or accentuates the body. It allows the wearer to play role after role. Often, her vision has extended beyond the merely human. In her promotional images you can find her dressed as both a bat and a lion.

This exhilarating malleability has made the singer a firm favourite in the fashion world. Designers including Kim Jones, Phoebe Philo, Clare Waight Keller, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Luella Bartley, and Craig Green have lined up to declare their love for the grand witch-queen of pop. The latter recently described his first encounter with her work aged 13 to AnOther, saying “I was spending a lot of time alone in my bedroom, working, and I started listening to her over and over… I love that she can find music in anything – from mother-and-son love, to pigeons and snowflakes.”

There is a narrative that exists in the fashion world – that of the slightly awkward kid who spends their adolescence sketching in their room and grows up to create clothing that fulfils their hunger for beauty and fantasy. No wonder Bush appeals to that cohort. It’s one of the reasons why she’s so beloved. Yes, there’s the emotional precision of her lyrics and the expansive reach of her sounds. Yes, there’s that fantastic willingness to be intelligent and daring and strange. But there’s also an implicit suggestion about the galloping power of the imagination, particularly when combined with an outsider-ish sensibility that leaves you dreaming about literary ghosts or the merits of the mathematical symbol Pi.

That’s why her fashion choices are so memorable too. It’s not just their ethereality or eccentricity, but the stories they tell. Designers love to throw around vague statements about creativity, but in someone like Kate Bush you see the full force of an active, searching mind – and an understanding of what the dressing up box can do. Really, it’s a very simple fashion philosophy. To become someone new, all you need is a costume change”.

Now more than ever, Kate Bush is reaching people. Not only would an exhibition emphasise her incredible fashion and role as a genuine style icon. It would also make people more aware of her music. Going deeper. Whether it is Kate Bush in a T-shirt signing The Dreaming in 1982, wearing red shoes in 1993 for the film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve, or some amazing shots with Trevor Leighton in 2005, this is someone who is always pioneering and distinct! Next year, there is definite opportunity for some new celebration of Kate Bush. An exhibition would bring in fans from all over the world. Making it multimedia, interactive and truly career-spanning. I hope that one day this idea…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for Eat the Music in 1993

WILL become a reality.