FEATURE:
Full House
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the Wuthering Heights shoot in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Kate Bush and the Year 1978
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THERE are so many song titles…
I could have applied to this feature to describe the sheer weight of 1978 on Kate Bush. In fact, she would not really slow down and have chance to breathe until 1983! Where do we start before ploughing through such a biblically busy and eventful year?! Before I go on, I will be addressing other periods in Kate Bush’s career, as I realise I have been looking at 1978 and her earliest years quite a bit – very soon, I want to talk about Aerial (2005). One reason why I want to discuss 1978 is to show how much Bush had on her plate that year. One assumes that it was a case of releasing her debut album, The Kick Inside, in February and doing some promotion around the U.K. I think many of the biggest artists of today have a less crammed diary than Kate Bush did in the first full year of her professional career. Having recorded The Kick Inside in 1977 (a couple of tracks were recorded in 1975), her debut single was unveiled: the bewitching and utterly arresting Wuthering Heights. Bush had planned to put the single out late in 1977 but, owing to some upset regarding the single’s cover, the track was finally released on 20th January, 1978. Photographer Gered Mankowitz worked with Bush on a cover for Wuthering Height and, by all accounts, the sessions flowed and were very creative. Bush was dressed in a pink leotard and gave this mysterious-yet-engaged look to the camera that suggested a serious artist, but one would take a bit of unwrapping.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the Wuthering Heights shoot in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
The photos from that session are stunning, but an image that caused some stir was her in that pink leotard with her nipples showing. Today, I think an artist could get away with it – there have been more explicit album covers released -, and there was never any intention to exploit Bush’s sexuality. Bush herself saw no problem, and at the time she wanted people to focus more on her face – in years since, she did wonder why the photo was not cropped. In a 2014 interview with The Big Issue, Mankowitz discussed the Wuthering Heights cover that never was – a photo from that session was used as the cover for the Japanese version of The Kick Inside:
“Gered: It didn’t occur to me at that time that [the nipples visible in the full-length shot] would be a problem. I know that it was pretty edgy for the late ’70s but it wasn’t sort of discussed or thought about a great deal. That was how she looked and I wasn’t going to say to her “I think you should cover up”.
She looked absolutely gorgeous. I’m looking at a cropped version of it now and it still has all the power that it did then. Her breasts might have been titillating to a few young boys but her beauty and her serenity, her stillness are what really make this a special photograph”.
In any case, the single was put out in January 1978, and some stations and sources were sent a copy of the single back in 1977 – there were attempts to retrieve the song and not get it played, but that was to prove a futile task! The track definitely caught people’s ears. Nothing like it had ever been released, and radio stations were getting requests before the single was officially released! People wanted to know who the artist was because, before then, very few were aware of Kate Bush. The single started life at a modest number-forty-two in the charts. Now, we are hooked on streaming and ther4e is not the same fascination regarding the charts. Back in 1978, this strange and wonderful song went from forty-two to thirteen, to five…it eventually went to number-one on 7th March (and stayed there for a month). The track toppled ABBA’s Take a Chance on Me, and it kept Blondie’s Denis from claiming the top prize – pitting Debbie Harry and Kate Bush against one another must have been thrilling! Wuthering Heights was usurped, oddly, by Brian and Michael’s Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs – showing you just how varied and mad the music scene was back in early-1978! The anticipation for The Kick Inside grew before February 1978 and, as the album went to number-three, that helped the popularity of Wuthering Heights – one big factor why the song stayed at number one for so long.
Today, an artist releases a few singles before an album is released, and the promotion might include some radio interviews but, in reality, the performance and P.R. workload are relatively light. The album itself might involve more bigging-up but, even then, I think the biggest strain comes from eventual touring – only the biggest artists embark on worldwide jaunts and rigorous gigging. Bush had soon sold over 250,000 copies of the song, and her routine was now blown apart. She was courting so much intrigue and focus in the media, and she could not have envisaged what impact the song would have when she recorded it one summer’s night in 1977! She performed the song numerous times on Top of the Pops:
16th February, 1978: Kate performs Wuthering Heights. Kate described it as "a bloody awful performance".
9th March, 1978: Kate performs Wuthering Heights for the second time, dressed in a white nightgown.
16th March, 1978: Kate performs Wuthering Heights for the third time, seated at the piano.
23rd March, 1978: Kate performs Wuthering Heights for the fourth time, wearing a long black dress.
30th March, 1978: Kate performs Wuthering Heights for the fifth time.
Apart from the first Top of the Pops appearance being a nightmare – Bush, as a solo artist, was not allowed to use her band and had to use a cheesy backing track; this upset her greatly -, she came back to promote the track and was, before long, one of the most talked-about artists in the country. When it came to promoting The Kick Inside around Europe, Bush put together a version of her KT Bush band – she played in a band before releasing her debut album -, and they set off across Europe.
I will talk about a rather interesting trip to Japan soon but, with this brilliant debut album out in the ether – bolstered and augmented by Wuthering Heights’ success -, Bush and her band set off. Bush was not a fan of air travel, and the experience of promotion was something she grew to dislike quickly. She was not comfortable flying, but the exhaustion and time consumption of travel took its toll. One can look back at 1978 as an instant turning point. Bush had to promote her debut album wherever she was asked to go, but she vowed to spend more time in the studio and less time on the road/promoting very soon. Among her T.V. appearances in 1978, there was Magpie, Saturday Night at the Mill, Revolver, and the Late Late Show; T.V. appearances all around Europe and the world. On a positive note, Bush was getting valuable attention and ensuring her album and music reached as many people as possible. Increased performance meant that, by 1979 – when she took her Tour of Life around Europe – she was more confident as a stage artist. Bush would not appear on Top of the Pops again until 1985 – so that she could perform with whoever she wished-, but her face was all over the press and her music played all around the world in 1978. Bush would resolve to assume more control and say regarding her music after such a hectic and disruptive year. This bright and hugely talented artist was being pushed and pulled in every direction, and her feet barely touched the floor in 1978.
Whilst some publications focused heavily on her agile voice and use/overuse of words like ‘wow’, they were happy to have her on the cover, and Bush was being interviewed by all and sundry – some were genuinely invested in her music, whilst others just wanted to get some time with, what they saw as a flavour of the month. Bush released The Man with the Child in His Eyes on 26th May, (1978) – Moving was released in Japan only on 5th February; Them Heavy People, again in Japan only, on 5th May , and it reached number-five on the singles chart. I said earlier how artists now release several singles digitally, and the promotion for a single and album is usually not too strenuous. For Bush, this was to be the start of a period where she was very much in the tabloid gaze – for someone who guarded her private life, one can imagine how anxious and reserved Bush was regarding details of a boyfriend and her daily routine. I will end this feature by looking at her sophomore album, Lionheart, but one can look at the print interviews from 1978. Bush, later in her career, would do more radio interviews and fewer print and T.V. interviews but, in 1978, her face was all over the screen and in print. I want to quote from an interview/article entitled You Don't Have To Be Beautiful... from March of 1978 with Sounds.
“Kate has a habit of gesturing constantly with her hands, and often expressing herself with unspellable sounds and grimaces. Though this make tape transcriptions difficult, it does accentuate something which is very much a part of her, 'movement expression'. She has studied under the inimitable Lindsay Kemp, mime artiste, an experience shared with Kate's favourite musician, David Bowie.
"I admire actresses and actors terribly and think it's an amazing craft. But singing and performing your songs should be the same thing. At this point I would rather develop my music and expressing it physically, as opposed to having a script. I think I'm much better off as a wailer. . ."
She is, indeed a beautiful woman. Carved ivory, with nary a nick. So obviously there is no way she can avoid becoming the target for sexist minds. Although she does not advocate this reaction, she's not flustered by it. After all, it is a compliment.
"As long as it does not interfere with my progress as a singer/songwriter, it doesn't matter. I just wish people would think of that first, I would be foolish to think that people don't look. I suppose in some ways it helps to get more people to listen . . ."
'THE KICK Inside' suggests a keen interest in mysticism.
"I try to work on myself spiritually, and am always trying to improve my outlook on life. We really abuse all that we've got, assuming that we are so superior as beings, taking the liberties of sticking up cement stuff all over the place. I think there is a lot to astrology, and the effect the moon has upon us all' but I hate the way it's become so trendy now.
"I'm a vegetarian, and now that's trendy as well . . . but what annoys me the most is the way people are so automatically cynical about astrology. I mean, like the Greeks put an incredible amount of hard work into carefully planned geometric charts, based purely on mathematics. People just shrug off. It's the same with coincidence, as I said in the song 'Strange Phenonema'".
Re-reading Graeme Thomson’s brilliant Kate Bush biography, Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, and he speculates as to the reasons behind such intense media interest in Kate Bush.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in her first T.V. appearance on West Germany’s Bios Bahnhof (Bio’s Station) on 9th February, 1978
Of course, The Kick Inside is a unique album that arrived in a year when Punk was still a valuable commodity. The Clash, Bruce Springsteen and Blondie were popular during 1978, and Kate Bush did not really sit alongside anyone else. She deliberately avoided listening to too many female artists to avoid being influenced heavily; she disliked the more bleeding hearts/love-lost sounds of Joni Mitchell and Carole King, so Bush’s style of writing and performance was enormously enticing. Thomson suggests Bush’s looks, class and age. She was not as young (nineteen/twenty; Bush was born on 30th July, 1958) as many of her contemporaries when she began promoting The Kick Inside and continued to do so through much of 1978 – John Lydon (Sex Pistols) was twenty-one; Paul Weller was eighteen. Bush was the daughter of a doctor and came from an extremely comfortable home. She was, clearly, incredibly bright and engaging, but a lot of people focused heavily on her looks and sex appeal – especially the tabloids. One’s eyes water when they look at Bush’s itinerary in 1978. Bush was gifted a £7,000 Steinway piano by EMI following Wuthering Heights’ success and was flown to Paris for dinner (in March 1978). Bush made a brief trip to the U.S. in May – she was never truly popular and known in the U.S. until Hounds of Love arrived in 1985 -, and the cover to the U.S. release of The Kick Inside (shot by Gered Mankowitz) eschewed the oriental composition of the U.K. release and showed Bush wearing denim and gingham – a more wholesome image; one where her face was very much at the centre.
Bush performed on Saturday Night Live – where she showcased Them Heavy People and The Man with the Child in His Eyes -, but she did not tour America. Bush was offered a support slot on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours tour, but she could not limit herself to a fifteen-minute slot for a major artist where she was very much limited and confined. Bush was not concerned with cracking America and never saw that as a golden destination. She was not defined by international acclaim and loads of press inches. Bush’s goal was to make music and have her music represented in her own vision – something that was exceedingly difficult in 1978. As The Man with the Child in His Eyes’ release meant more promotion across Europe – and The Kick Inside continued to sell well -, Bush was being dragged from home and comfort to strange new lands; places she would very briefly visit before being ferried to the next country! Bush’s dislike of long-haul flights was cemented when she visited Japan, New Zealand and Australia. It is her trip to Japan that interests me. As this article explains, Bush’s busy and sapping trip to Japan might have contributed to her retreating more into the studio after 1978 – there were factors on the trip that contributed to change:
“On the 18th of June, 1978, Kate Bush performed “Moving” to an audience of 11,000 people at the Nippon Budokan for the 7th Tokyo Music Festival. This is just the number of people watching who were present, however. About 33 million people watched Bush on TV, a staggeringly large number. Japan and its huge physical music market had its eyes on Bush, and she was suitably terrified. For all that the lead track status of “Moving” makes it a fitting opening number for a performance, Bush is visibly terrified while singing this song, her voice wavering as a band she’s never met before coming to Japan played her music.
The entirety of the trip consists of Bush doing not-very-Kate-Bush things, and she’s visibly ill at ease with this. A studio artist with no tour experience was going to be out of sorts performing to thousands of people 9 and a half thousand kilometers away from home. Yet Bush was clearly set on getting as much done in a short period of time as she could. She respected Japanese cultural norms, attending a Shinto shrine and (apparently) conducting herself with characteristic etiquette. Sadly few details about the shrine visit are known, as history has generally not recorded Bush’s time in Japan well.
Bush’s relationship with Japan is slightly vexed. She’s… well, Bush is a bit rough on the issue of cultural appropriation. The cover of The Kick Inside is famously orientalist, and we’ll have lots to talk about when we talk about The Dreaming. Bush certainly has respect for other cultures, but takes the European artist’s path of lifting cultural touchstones rather than delicately conversing with their creators — indeed, she slightly flubs her one English TV interview discussing Japan when she refers to Japanese people as “not saying how they feel.” It’s a cryptic moment and some of the messages it sends aren’t great.
The most jarring moment of all comes in the form of… Kate Bush doing Japanese watch commercials. That’s not a shitpost, that is a thing that literally happened. Twice. And they use “Them Heavy People,” which didn’t seem to catch a break in Japan (as it was released as a Japan-exclusive single and reached #3 on the charts, this is understandable). “We have many varieties of mood within us, but it’s up to you to choose,” Bush enunciates possibly the most animistic commercial slogan ever. It’s a strange pair of adverts, and there’s probably a reason Bush did commercials so sparingly her next foray in the business wouldn’t be until the Nineties.
It doesn’t entirely work out for her. I mean, Bush won a silver medal at the Tokyo Music Festival, but the highest honor went to Al Green (which is hard to get upset about. If Kate Bush is going to lose to any singer, Al Green is an honorable choice). Yet she never engages with mainstream pop in the same way again. Bush will remain popular in the charts, but she doesn’t pursue the festival circuit as an artistic path. Soon she’ll retreat even further inward, abandoning a career that involved touring for a studio-bound career. Yes, this has led to tragedies like no songs from The Dreaming ever being performed live. Yet with the slightly hollow and rushed showmanship of her excursion to Japan, it’s hard not to feel like Bush benefits from staying close to home”.
The increase and rolling ball of press attention and demand meant that, amazingly, EMI were asking for another album in 1978. I cannot think of too many artists since Kate Bush who were so in-demand following a debut album and had such a head-spinning first year! Moving from London to Berre-Les-Alpes in the south of France for the recording of Lionheart, recording was to start on 7th July (1978). Bush had scant chance to pen new material since The Kick Inside, but she did write some new songs for the album: Coffee Homeground, Symphony in Blue and Full House are rare examples.
I cannot source too many contemporary reviews for Lionheart, but there was a perception that (the album) was a weaker version of The Kick Inside that did not sufficiently move her forward. Bush demoed a few songs from Lionheart to her band back in 1977; others were either considered for The Kick Inside or are earlier creations. In May, June and July, Bush and her band demoed these new songs whilst, back at Wickham Farm, Welling (where Bush and her family lived) a studio was being constructed. With Brian Bath as a friend and musical director, she had a trusted source she could bounce idea off. Her family were in awe of Bush’s family, and it must have been grounding and comforting to have her family supporting her after such a gruelling promotional year.
Barely a year since she was performing in pubs with her KT Bush band, Bush was readying her second album! Bush wanted her band (of mates) to play on Lionheart, but Andrew Powell (the producer of The Kick Inside and Lionheart) did not want to break the formula on The Kick Inside: a slick and wonderful-sounding album that resonated far and wide. Bush, as early as February 1978 felt her debut was unsatisfactory and she was more of a participant in the album rather than the architect. Although Bush’s band were tight and there was a great bond between artist and band, Powell felt they lacked experience and there was this power struggle. The fact Lionheart was recorded in the more luxurious shadow of the Alps – and not a the nosier and more polluted AIR Studios in London – did not help remove a lot of tension that was evident.
In the end, the musicians who played on The Kick Inside were flown in and, whilst there was no great falling out between Bush’s and Powell’s bands, there was not a lot of affection either – Bush was in the middle of all of this. Bush also has a credit as a production assistant on Lionheart, so Bush was already trying to redress some of the problems she encountered on The Kick Inside regarding not having much say regarding production. Although there was a comfortable and relaxed feel to rehearsals and recording – Bush and the band eating together and chilling by the pool -, one can feel an emotional and physiological shift between The Kick Inside and Lionheart. Though many of Lionheart’s tracks were already written, Full House was a new song that reflected a more troubled mind. Bush was feeling the weight of press attention and being a commodity rather than a human being. Despite the fact that Bush had this rather tight and unrealistic deadline for putting another album out, she grew ever more fascinated by the studio and what it could offer. Working to multiple tracks, she could layer vocals and instruments, and she was also able to do take after take. Maybe this fastidious technique was not ideal in terms of keeping studio costs low but, as someone who hardly had a moment to record since The Kick Inside came out, one can understand Bush’s need to focus and record the songs how they sounded in her head. Even with the songs recorded, Bush’s 1978 was not going to let up!
By September, she returned to London to do promotional rounds; Lionheart was mixed in October, and Bush was flown to New Zealand and Australia to perform and chat. Journalists were given five minutes to talk to Bush, and it was another conveyer belt of promotion. Lionheart arrived on 12th November, and some reviewers were quite harsh. Many concentrated, again, on Bush’s high voice, whilst others felt the tracks lacked maturity and memorability. Whilst songs like Symphony in Blue and Wow were standouts and among the best tracks she had ever recorded, other tracks felt either rushed or half-finished. It is no wonder, given the fact Bush was not given time to write new songs and take her music in a direction that was truer to her. Lionheart entered the charts at thirty-six, and it peaked at number-six. EMI were happy enough, but there was a tinge of disappointment regarding sales and the chart position. Bush would look back on 1978 as a reminder that she did not want to be led by the record company and promoted everywhere. 1979’s Tour of Life was a chance for Kate Bush to prove what a great performer she was and, importantly, assume a lot more creative control – though she had a large team on that tour, most of the big decisions were Bush’s. By 1980, when Never for Ever was released, Bush was co-producing – she co-produced her On Stage E.P. the year before -, and she was travelling and promoting far less.
I can understand why 1978 was important from EMI’s perspective. They had this amazing artist they wanted to show off but, in the process, I think they did not consider the determinant to Bush’s emotional and physical health. Although Lionheart was not as good as it could have been, and Bush spent a load of time travelling, I think The Kick Inside is splendid – it is my favourite album ever -, and there is no doubt the increase in live performances and travelling meant the Tour of Life was such a success – and Bush was more used to international travel; she might have been reluctant to travel/fly had it not been for the experience the year before. It is staggering to think of all that was achieved in 1978 and just how much was expected of Kate Bush! From the enormous success of Wuthering Heights and the publicity demands that followed to the international promotion and having to put out a second album so soon after her debut, Kate Bush had a lot taken out of her – even if there were some positives and useful lessons learned. 1979’s Tour of Life allowed Bush a chance to focus and concentrate on live performance, and she would change the way she promoted her albums by the time of 1980’s Never for Ever. 1978 was like a baptism of fire and, after such a draining year she would…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
NOT let that happen again.