FEATURE:
Outside Gets inside
The Haunting Impact and Modern Relevance of Kate Bush’s Breathing
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ALTHOUGH I am writing this…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of Breathing/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
because the song is forty-two on 14th April, there is another, scarier reason for coming back to Kate Bush’s Breathing. The first single from her 1980 album, Never for Ever (and the last track on the album), it features backing vocals from Roy Harper. The single was released four months before the album was released. It reached number sixteen in the U.K. charts. The other reason why I wanted to write about Breathing is that the song is about imminent war and nuclear possibilities. At a time when the Cold War was raging and there was genuine fear of nuclear destruction, we face something relatively similar in 2022. The circumstances are different to when Bush wrote Breathing, but I wonder what she feels now. A song that she thought would document a terror and situation the world hoped we never see again; it is hauntingly prescient and relevant today. Away from that, it is also one of Bush’s best songs. Perhaps her best-produced (she produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly) song to that point, it is full of atmosphere, tension and images that etch into the mind! The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia collated interviews where Bush discussed Breathing. I have chosen a few of them:
“When I wrote the song, it was from such a personal viewpoint. It was just through having heard a thing for years without it ever having got through to me. 'Til the moment it hit me, I hadn't really been moved. Then I suddenly realised the whole devastation and disgusting arrogance of it all. Trying to destroy something that we've not created - the earth. The only thing we are is a breathing mechanism: everything is breathing.
Without it we're just nothing. All we've got is our lives, and I was worried that when people heard it they were going to think, 'She's exploiting commercially this terribly real thing.' I was very worried that people weren't going to take me from my emotional standpoint rather than the commercial one. But they did, which is great. I was worried that people wouldn't want to worry about it because it's so real. I was also worried that it was too negative, but I do feel that there is hope in the whole thing, just for the fact that it's a message from the future. It's not from now, it's from a spirit that may exist in the future, a non-existent spiritual embryo who sees all and who's been round time and time again so they know what the world's all about. This time they don't want to come out, because they know they're not going to live. It's almost like the mother's stomach is a big window that's like a cinema screen, and they're seeing all this terrible chaos. (Kris Needs, 'Fire In The Bush'. Zigzag (UK), 1980).
From my own viewpoint that's the best thing I've ever written. It's the best thing I've ever produced. I call that my little symphony, because I think every writer, whether they admit it or not, loves the idea of writing their own symphony. The song says something real for me, whereas many of the others haven't quite got to the level that I would like them to reach, though they're trying to. Often it's because the song won't allow it, and that song allowed everything that I wanted to be done to it. That track was easy to build up. Although it had to be huge, it was just speaking - saying what had to be put on it. In many ways, I think the most exciting thing was making the backing track. The session men had their lines, they understood what the song was about, but at first there was no emotion, and that track was demanding so much emotion. It wasn't until they actually played with feeling that the whole thing took off. When we went and listened, I wanted to cry, because of what they had put into it. It was so tender. It meant a lot to me that they had put in as much as they could, because it must get hard for session guys. They get paid by the hour, and so many people don't want to hear the emotion. They want clear, perfect tuning, a 'good sound'; but often the out-of-tuneness, the uncleanliness, doesn't matter as much as the emotional content that's in there. I think that's much more important than the technicalities. (Kris Needs, 'Fire In The Bush'. Zigzag (UK), 1980).
“There was a point in people's lives when the imminent prospect of war was scaring the shit out of them, and that resulted in a lot of anti-war songs. At that time it was worthwhile. When I wrote 'Breathing' it seemed like people were sitting waiting for a nuclear bomb to go off. Nuclear power seemed like... Someone was getting set to blow us up without our consent. I felt I wanted to write a song about it. If it was something that was bothering so many people then yes, I think it was worthwhile. Songs or films or little individuals don't do anything on a big level. Big things need bigger things to change them. (Richard Cook, 'My Music Sophisticated? I'd Rather You Said That Than Turdlike!'. NME (UK), October 1982)”.
A song that, at the time, was the grandest and most epic thing Bush had ever committed to tape, its story of a foetus inside the mother’s womb being shielded (albeit it, precariously) from the dangers and poison outside, aware that there is really no protection at all, is a terrifying image. I was going to write about Breathing because it has an anniversary on 14th April. Considering what is happening in Ukraine, and how war is spreading, and there is this possibility of nuclear weapons being unleashed…it brings a song like Breathing to mind. As I said, Bush wrote that in reaction to what was happening in the world in the late-1970s/into the 1980s. Huge nations hovering over the nuclear button meant everyone was in a constant state of unease and dread. It is horrifying to think that, over forty years later, the same scenario might befall us. Because of that, Breathing has this fresh relevance and additional layer of meaning and potency. A majestic and arresting finale from the wonderful Never for Ever, it was one of the first songs where Kate Bush was thinking bigger in terms of sound and scope - beyond the confines of the traditional Pop song. Almost symphonic and choral at the end, it is a track that builds and builds. The longest song on Never for Ever by some way, it is this epic that I think does not get played enough. Maybe it feels too raw in the current state. Showcasing Bush’s growing talents and ambitions as a songwriter and producer, the mighty Breathing is enormously powerful, thought-provoking and devastatingly real…
OVER four decades after its release.