FEATURE:
Watching Them Without Her
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features
Merchandise, Streaming and Footage: Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Eight
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THIS is the second feature…
PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
I am writing about Kate Bush’s live residency, Before the Dawn. The first night at the Eventim Apollo was on 26th August, 2014. I want to mark eight years since Bush came back to the big stage after twenty-five years away. If she experienced nerves every night, audiences and critics did not detect that. By every account, this was a masterful artist delivering a theatrical and immersive experience that will stay with people forever. I have a few questions and points to make regarding Before the Dawn. Before that and, if you do not know about Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn, here is some information from Wikipedia:
“Before the Dawn was a concert residency by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush in 2014 at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. The residency consisted of 22 dates; it was Bush's first series of live shows since The Tour of Life 1979, which finished with three performances at the same venue. A live recording of the same name was released in physical and digital formats in November 2016.
On 21 March 2014, Bush announced via her website her plans to perform live. Pre-sale tickets were on sale for fans who had signed up to her website and an additional seven dates were added to the original 15, due to the high demand. Tickets were on sale to the general public on 28 March and were sold out within 15 minutes.
With the program, Bush won the Editor's Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards;[3] and was subsequently nominated for two Q Awards in 2014: Best Act in the World Today[4] and Best Live Act but did not win either award.
Before the Dawn was presented as a multi-media performance involving standard rock music performance, dancers, puppets, shadows, maskwork, conceptual staging, 3D animation and an illusionist. Bush spent three days in a flotation tank for filmed scenes that were played during the performance, and featured dialogue written by novelist David Mitchell. Also involved with the production were Adrian Noble, former artistic director and chief executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company, costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel, lighting designer Mark Henderson and Italian Shadows Theatre company Controluce Teatro d'Ombre. The illusionist was Paul Kieve, the puppeteer Basil Twist, the movement director Sian Williams and the designer Dick Bird. The video and projection design was by Jon Driscoll”.
The reaction to Kate Bush bringing Before the Dawn to the people was amazing. I remember hearing the news and the sort of electricity there was. I love the live album of the residency. It is almost like you are there when you listen to it! Bush spent a lot of time mixing and producing the album. It is available on vinyl and, if you can find a copy then go and get it. This is what Pitchfork observed in their review:
“Live albums are meant to capture performers at their rawest and least inhibited, which doesn’t really apply to Before the Dawn. Bush is a noted perfectionist best known for her synthesizer experiments and love of obscure Bulgarian choirs, but her recent work has skewed towards traditional setups that reunite her with the prog community that fostered her early career. With marks to hit and tableaux to paint, the 2014 shows were more War of the Worlds (or an extension of 2011’s Director’s Cut) than Live at Leeds. But never mind balls-out revamps of Bush’s best known songs; with the exception of tracks from Hounds of Love, none of the rest of the setlist had ever been done live—not even on TV, which became Bush’s primary stage after she initially retired from touring. These songs weren’t written to be performed, but internalized. Occupying Bush’s imagination for an hour, and letting it fuse with your own, formed the entirety of the experience. Hearing this aspic-preserved material come to life feels like going to sleep and waking up decades later to see how the world has changed.
“Jig of Life” is the midpoint of Before the Dawn, and its crux. It forms the part in “The Ninth Wave” where Bush’s character is exhausted of fighting against drowning, and decides to succumb to death. A vision of her future self appears, and convinces her to stay alive. “Now is the place where the crossroads meet,” she chants, just as her (then) 56-year-old voice channels her 27-year-old one. Despite her alleged taste for burning one, Bush’s voice has gained in power rather than faded with age. It’s deeper now, and some of the songs’ keys shift to match, but it’s alive and incalculably moving, still capable of agile whoops and tender eroticism, and possesses a newfound authority. When she roars lustily through opener “Lily” and its declaration that “life has blown a great big hole through me,” she sets up the stakes of Before the Dawn’s quest for peace. In Act One, she’s running from the prospect of love on “Hounds of Love” and “Never Be Mine,” and from fame on “King of the Mountain,” where she searches for Elvis with sensual anticipation. She asks for Joan of Arc’s protection on “Joanni,” matching the French visionary’s fearlessness with her own funky diva roar, and sounds as if she could raze the world as she looks down from “Top of the City.”
Rather than deliver a copper-bottomed greatest hits set, Bush reckons with her legacy through what might initially seem like an obscure choice of material. Both Acts Two and Three take place in transcendent thresholds: “The Ninth Wave”’s drowning woman is beset by anxiety and untold pressures, with no idea of where to turn, mirroring the limbo that Bush experienced after 1982’s The Dreaming. That suite’s last song, the cheery “The Morning Fog,” transitions into Aerial’s “Prelude,” all beatific bird call and dawn-light piano. The euphoric, tender “A Sky of Honey” is meant to represent a perfect day from start to finish, filled with family and beautiful imperfections. “Somewhere in Between” finds them atop “the highest hill,” looking out onto a stilling view, and Bush’s eerie jazz ensemble anticipates the liminal peace of Bowie’s Blackstar. “Not one of us would dare to break the silence,” she sings. “Oh how we have longed for something that would make us feel so… somewhere in between.”
Purgatory has become heaven, and in the narrative Bush constructs through her setlist, “A Sky of Honey” represents the grown-up, domestic happiness that staves off the youthful fears explored on Hounds of Love. For her final song, she closes with a rendition of “Cloudbusting,” a song about living with the memory of a forbidden love, which is even more glorious for all the hope that it’s accumulated in the past 30-odd years. Bush’s recent life as a “reclusive” mother is often used to undermine her, to “prove” she was the kook that sexist critics had pegged her as all along. These performances and this record are a generous reveal of why she’s chosen to retreat, where Bush shows she won’t disturb her hard-won peace to sustain the myth of the troubled artistic genius. Between the dangerous waters of “The Ninth Wave” and the celestial heavens of “A Sky of Honey,” Before the Dawn demystifies what we’ve fetishized in her absence. Without draining her magic, it lets Bush exist back down on Earth”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features
At the moment, you can get a copy, but it is quite expensive. I know there four vinyl albums in there to cover everything but, even if the price can be knocked down to £50 or lower, it would make it more affordable and accessible to fans and those new to Kate Bush. You can stream Before the Dawn on Apple Music. I have asked whether it will come to Spotify or Amazon. I guess Bush wants people to buy the album if they are streaming so, with Apple Music, you can only preview songs for free – there is that possibility in Spotify to stream it all with no charge. I would love to see, if humanly possible, a cassette release of the live album. Maybe it would need to be on four cassettes, but even a triple cassette release would be great. This sort of brings me to merchandise. You can get stuff on eBay, and there is a lot of great merchandise from Before the Dawn. It occurs that there must be programmes, merchandise or other bits either unsold or in new condition. For those people (like myself) who did not see one of the twenty-two dates, it would be wonderful to get merchandise. I would love a programme and poster at a reasonable price. Maybe they could be reprinted. In a couple of years, Before the Dawn turns ten. It is as important as any Kate Bush album. It begs the wider question when we might get merchandise from Kate Bush related to her albums – either in the form of posters or T-shirts and other things like that. Rather than being overly commercial or Bush milking her work, there is a whole new generation of fans who would snap up merchandise. This is true of anything relates to Before the Dawn.
I want to finish, before I get to part of a review for Before the Dawn, to thinking about footage. There was a camera in the venue to film it (though only one or two nights I think). Bush has that footage, but she wanted people to experience the album and not be distracted by a DVD. I think, as it was professionally filmed, there is this demand. I can see what she means though. If you were there, it was a unique experience. It seems like a pale comparison trying to experience the show through your screens. If she does not release the whole performance, maybe official videos would be an idea. Releasing a few tracks on her official YouTube channel would be a treat for fans. I also wonder whether there was any behind the scenes footage of The KT Fellowship rehearsing. Again, if it was a small clip, having some footage from Before the Dawn would be really interesting. It as this special and incredible event that should be treasured. There were many who did not get a chance to see her perform. I am going to round off with a bit of the review from The Guardian:
“Over the course of nearly three hours, Kate Bush's first gig for 35 years variously features dancers in lifejackets attacking the stage with axes and chainsaws; a giant machine that hovers above the auditorium, belching out dry ice and shining spotlights on the audience; giant paper aeroplanes; a surprisingly lengthy rumination on sausages, vast billowing sheets manipulated to represent waves, Bush's 16-year-old son Bertie - clad as a 19th-century artist – telling a wooden mannequin to "piss off" and the singer herself being borne through the audience by dancers clad in costumes based on fish skeletons.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features
The concert-goer who desires a stripped down rock and roll experience, devoid of theatrical folderol, is thus advised that Before the Dawn is probably not the show for them, but it is perhaps worth noting that even before Bush takes the stage with her dancers and props, a curious sense of unreality hangs over the crowd. It's an atmosphere noticeably different than at any other concert, but then again, this is a gig unlike any other, and not merely because the very idea of Bush returning to live performance was pretty unimaginable 12 months ago.
There have been a lot of improbable returns to the stage by mythic artists over the last few years, from Led Zeppelin to Leonard Cohen, but at least the crowd who bought tickets to see them knew roughly what songs to expect. Tonight, almost uniquely in rock history, the vast majority of the audience has virtually no idea what's going to happen before it does.
Backed by a band of musicians capable of navigating the endless twists and turns of her songwriting – from funk to folk to pastoral prog rock - the performances of Running Up That Hill and King of the Mountain sound almost identical to their recorded versions - but letting rip during a version of Top of the City, she sounds flatly incredible.
You suspect that even if she hadn't, the audience would have lapped it up. Audibly delighted to be in the same room as her, they spend the first part of the show clapping everything she does: no gesture is too insignificant to warrant a round of applause. It would be cloying, but for the fact that Bush genuinely gives them something to cheer about.
For someone who's spent the vast majority of her career shunning the stage, she's a hugely engaging live performer, confident enough to shun the hits that made her famous in the first place: she plays nothing from her first four albums.
The staging might look excessive on paper, but onstage it works to astonishing effect, bolstering rather than overwhelming the emotional impact of the songs. The Ninth Wave is disturbing, funny and so immersive that the crowd temporarily forget to applaud everything Bush does. As each scene bleeds into another, they seem genuinely rapt: at the show's interval, people look a little stunned. A Sky of Honey is less obviously dramatic – nothing much happens over the course of its nine tracks – but the live performance underlines how beautiful the actual music is.
Already widely acclaimed as the most influential and respected British female artist of the past 40 years, shrouded in the kind of endlessly intriguing mystique that is almost impossible to conjure in an internet age, Bush theoretically had a lot to lose by returning to the stage. Clearly, given how tightly she has controlled her own career since the early 80s, she would only have bothered because she felt she had something spectacular to offer. She was right: Before The Dawn is another remarkable achievement”.
It may be unlikely a DVD of Before the Dawn will come about but, in terms of lowering the vinyl price, bringing it to cassette, and making it accessible on streaming, that would put it in new ears and minds. Merchandise from the residency will be in demand now. You can get some, but it is pretty expensive. Also, thinking about how amazing the twenty-two shows were, maybe a few clips from Before the Dawn would be a compromise between what we have now and releasing a full concert to DVD. For fans like me, it would be awesome to…
RELIVE some of that wonder and genius.