FEATURE:
Pulling Out the Pin
Kate Bush's The Dreaming at Forty: Three Great Promotional Interviews
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I recently…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signing copies of The Dreaming for fans at the Virgin Megastore, Oxford Street, London on 14th September, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pete Still/Redferns
did this for Kate Bush The Kick Inside. That was recorded forty-five years ago this month. I united a few promotional interviews from around the time of the album’s release (1978). It is a nice way to see what the press were saying about the album, in addition to how Bush herself reacted to its perception and various questions. In all interviews, she is fascinating and composed. I am marking the upcoming fortieth anniversary of The Dreaming. That is forty on 13th September. In future features, I will explore various songs, aspects of her production, critical reception of the album, and how it compared to her other studio albums. Two years after Never for Ever, Bush released her first album as a solo producer. It was a very different-sounding album. More experimental, layered and denser than its predecessor, you could tell how intensely Bush had worked on The Dreaming. Not that Never for Ever was a particularly commercial album, but songs like Babooshka and Army Dreamers have an accessibility to them. There is something altogether more important, atmospheric and beguiling about The Dreaming. Bush was more interested in her own vision and producing something deeper than before. Maybe intentionally moving away from writing anything radio-friendly, The Dreaming has been ignored by some because they think it is too out-there and strange.
I want to bring together three interviews from 1982. Hearing Bush discuss the album in different ways. The first was published by Poppix in the summer of 1982. I particularly love how Bush talks about The Dreaming’s title track:
“The multi-talented skills of one of Britain's finest female performers, Kate Bush, are to be found on her new album. Entitled The Dreaming, the album is a departure in style from Kate's three previous albums, but in quality it remains at its usual high standard.
The album pulls no punches. It's as mysterious as its name, as striking as its cover picture and as powerful as its first track, Sat In Your Lap.
However, probably the most interesting song on the album is its title track and first single, The Dreaming. [Actually, Sat In Your Lap, though preceding the album by nearly a year, was really the first single from The Dreaming. ] Unfortunately, it wasn't a great commercial success, as it wasn't really picked up on by the radio stations, but it certainly warranted genuine critical acclaim for being one of the more original singles of 1982. [Most English reviews were in fact quite hostile.] I asked Kate what the single was about and why she decided to record it.
"Well, years ago my brother bought Sun Arise and I loved it, it was such a beautiful song. [An early single by Australian musician Rolf Harris.] And ever since then I've wanted to create something which had that feel of Australia within it. I loved the sound of the traditional aboriginal instruments, and as I grew older, I became much more aware of the actual situation which existed in Australia between the white Australian and the aborigines, who were being wiped out by man's greed for uranium. Digging up their sacred grounds, just to get plutonium, and eventually make weapons out of it. And I just feel that it's so wrong: this beautiful culture being destroyed just so that we can build weapons which maybe one day will destroy everything, including us. We should be learning from the aborigines, they're such a fascinating race. And Australian--there's something very beautiful about that country."
The title The Dreaming is a haunting name for a song, but what does it mean?
"The song was originally going to be called Dreamtime, which is the name the Aborigines gave to a magic time before man was man as he is today--when man was an animal and could change shape. This magical time was also known as the Dreaming to the Aborigines, so I thought it would be an ideal title for the song. The Dreaming is such a strong title, too: 'dreaming' on its own means little, but with 'the' in front of it it takes on a whole new meaning."
The album is entirely produced by Kate Bush, something she has never done before, her previous albums being co-produced by her and Jon Kelly. [Actually the first album was produced by Andrew Powell, and the second by Powell with the assistance of Kate.] So why did she decide to do the production of the album herself?
"After the last album, Never For Ever, I started writing some new songs. They were very different from anything I'd ever written before--they were much more rhythmic, and in a way, a completely new side to my music. I was using different instruments, and everything was changing; and I felt that really the best thing to do would be to make this album a real departure--make it completely different. And the only way to achieve this was to sever all the links I had had with the older stuff. The main link was engineer Jon Kelly. Everytime I was in the studio Jon was there to helping me, so I felt that in order to make the stuff different enough I would have to stop working with Jon. He really wanted to keep working with me, but we discussed it and realised that it was for the best." [Phrased with typical Bush delicacy.]
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a single cover outtake for Sat In Your Lap/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Sat In Your Lap, Kate's last major hit in the British charts, is also included on the album.
"We weren't going to put it on initially, because we thought it had been a single such a long time ago, but a lot of people used to ask me if we were putting Sat In Your Lap on the album and I'd say no, and they would say 'Oh why not?' and they'd be quite disappointed. So, as the album's completion date got nearer and nearer, I eventually relented. I re-mixed the track and we put it on. I'm so glad I did now, because it says so much about side one, with its up-tempo beat and heavy drum rhythms--it's perfect for the opening track."
You mentioned earlier that you wanted the album to be different, to be a change. Is that aspect of change particularly refreshing to you? Is it important for you to keep changing?
"Yes, it's very important for me to change. In fact, as soon as the songs began to be written, I knew that the album was going to be quite different. I'd hate it, especially now, if my albums became similar, because so much happens to me between each album--my views change quite drastically. What's nice about this album is that it's what I've always wanted to do. For instance, the Australian thing: well, I wanted to do that on the last album, but there was no time. There are quite a few ideas and things that I've had whizzing around in my head that just haven't been put down. I've always wanted to use more traditional influences and instruments, especially the Irish ones. I suppose subconsciously I've wanted to do all this for quite some time, but I've never really had the time until now."
Your songs are nearly always based around a story of sorts. Is it important for you to have a meaning behind your songs?
"Oh yes, I think it gets more and more so, because although on the first two albums the songs were always based on something, they weren't all that strong; but now I get more involved with the ideas behind a song, and I do my best to make the concept as vivid and as solid as I can. On the new album, for instance, there is a track about the legendary ecapologist Houdini. During his incredible lifetime Houdini took it upon himself to expose the whole spiritualist thing--you know, seances and mediums. And he found a lot them to be phoney, but before he died Houdini and his wife worked out a code, so that if he came back after his death his wife would know it was him by the code. So after his death his wife made several attempts to contact her dead husband, and on one occasion he did come through to her. I thought that was so beautiful--the idea that this man who had spent his life escaping from chains and ropes had actually managed to contact his wife. The image was so beautiful that I just had to write a song about it." [The full story is quite complicated, but Mrs. Houdini later stated that no such contact was ever made. Kate has indicated in other interviews--conducted presumably a bit later than this one--that she was aware of the dubious aspects of the story, but that the beauty of the concept and imagery were no less true for that.]
"Now that the album is completed, it doesn't mean that my work has ended. There are so many things that I want to do connected with music, and I want to do them as soon as possible. In fact, I see myself being pretty well committed for the next couple of years. I'd like to do a show with both this and the last album, and there are a few videos as well, but I just don't know if or when I'll get the time”.
I think the immediate reaction from a lot of the media – and perhaps Bush herself – was that this very unusual and dense album would take a while to be appreciated. Would that nuance and need for dedicated listening drive fans away? In an interview for Kerrang!, Bush answered the question as to whether she was worried about alienating some fans and risk putting barriers up to potential new followers:
“Maybe the album is more difficult for people than I meant it to be. It isn't intended to be complicated, but it obviously is, for some. A lot of it is to do with the fact that the songs are very involved--there's lots of different layers.
"Hopefully the next one will be simpler, but each time it gets harder, because I'm getting more involved. I'm trying to do something better all the time."
Do you worry about losing fans?
"Yeah, I do, because obviously from a purely financial point of view I depend on money to make albums, and if they're not successful it's quite likely I won't have the scope to do what I want on the next one.
"But, I'd rather go artistically the way I want to than hang onto an audience, because you have to keep doing what you feel. It's just luck if you can hang onto the people, as well."
The time and cost of The Dreaming has already been fairly well documented--did you intend to spend that long recording it?
"No, not at all. But I find that a lot of things I do now take so much longer than I thought they would."
What is it that takes the time? Translating your ideas onto record?
"Yeah, that's what's really hard. In so many cases you need to be in the studio to get the sounds, and it can maybe take a couple of days just to get one idea across. Sometimes you wonder if you should just leave them."
How do you feel about your early records now?
"I don't really like them. A lot of the stuff on the first two albums I wasn't at all happy with. I think I'm still fond of a lot of the songs, but I was unhappy about the way they came across on record.
"Also, until this album I'd never really enjoyed the sound of my own voice. It' always been very difficult for me, because I've wanted to hear the songs in a different way."
Why didn't you like it?
"I think a lot of people don't like the sound of their own voices. It's like you have to keep working towards something you eventually do like. It was very satisfying for me on this album, because for the first time I can sit and listen to the vocals and think, 'Yeah, that's actually quite good.'"
Were you pushing it more to create different sounds?
"In a way. But I probably used to push it more in other ways. I went through a phase of trying to leap up and down a lot when I was writing songs. I used to try to push it almost acrobatically. Now I'm trying more to get the song across, and I have more control. When I'm trying to think up the character is when it needs a bit of push."
Do you always try to put yourself in the role of a character, then?
"Yeah, normally, because the song is always about something, and always from a particular viewpoint. There's normally a personality that runs along with it.
"Sometimes I really have to work at it to get in the right frame of mind, because it's maybe the opposite of how I'm feeling, but other times it feels almost like an extension of me, which it is, in some ways."
You have been accused in the past of living in some kind of fantasy world. Would you say you refuse to face up to reality?
"Now. I think I do, actually, although there are certain parts of me that definitely don't want to look at reality. Generally speaking, though, I'm quite realistic, but perhaps the songs on the first two albums created some kind of fantasy image, so people presumed that I lived in that kind of world."
Where do you get the ideas for songs from?
"Anywhere, really. They're two or three tracks that I had the ideas for on the last album but never got together. Others come from films, books or stories from people I know. That kind of thing."
What about Pull Out the Pin, a song about VietNam? Was that something you'd always wanted to write about?
"No, I didn't think I'd ever want to write about it until I saw this documentary on television which moved me so much I thought I just had to."
The title track concerns the abuse of Aborigines by so-called civilised man. Where did that interest come from?
"That's something that's been growing for years. It started when I was tiny, and my brother bought Sun Arise [a hit of the early 1960s by Rolf Harris.]. We thought it was brilliant--to me, that's a classic record. I started to become aware of the whole thing--that it's almost an instinctive thing in white man to wipe out a race that actually owns the land. It's happening all around the world."
Do you hope to change people's opinions by what you write?
"No. Because I don't think a song can ever do that. If people have strong opinions, then they're so deep-rooted that you'll never be able to do much. Even if you can change the way a few people think, you'll never be able to change the situation anyway.
"I don't ever write politically, because I know nothing about politics. To me they seem more destructive than helpful. I think I write from an emotional point of view, because even though a situation may be political, there's always some emotional element, and that's what gets to me."
The thoughts and ideas are expressed through a variety of sounds, an adventurous use of instruments and people--from Rolf Harris on dijeridu to Percy Edwards on animal impressions! Kate has also discovered the Fairlight, a computerised synthesiser.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pierre Terrasson
"It's given me a completely different perspective on sounds," she enthuses. "You can put any sound you want onto the keyboard, so if you go 'Ugh!', you can play 'Ugh!' all the way up the keyboard. Theoretically, any sound that exists, you can play.
"I think it's surprising that with all the gear around at the moment, people aren't experimenting more."
Whatever you may think of Kate Bush, you could never say that she's not been prepared to take risks. In the four years that have passed since her startling first single Wuthering Heights, she has grown increasingly adventurous and ambitious, creating music that she hopes will last longer than much of today's transient pop.
Of The Dreaming she says: "I wanted it to be a long-lasting album, because my favourite records are the ones that grow on you--that you play lots of times because each time you hear something different."
Never particularly a public fave, her last live shows were three years ago, and although she plans to do some in the future, they'll take at least six months to prepare. [Try six years and counting.]
She admits that she found her initial success hard to cope with at times.
"I still find some things frightening. I've adjusted a hell of a lot, but it still scares me. There are so many aspects that if you start thinking about are terrifying. The best thing to do is not even to think about them. Just try to sail through”.
The final interview takes me to NME. Bush made it clear during the interview that, with The Dreaming, she was not interesting in making songs as singles. This was more about the entire album and creating a whole, as opposed a series of singles that one could pick from the pack. At the age of twenty-four, this was a very mature and brave artist risking a certain commercial loss to pursue something deeper and richer:
“You have no regard for those instantaneous qualities of the single? A rocket going up brilliantly for a moment?
"Each album is like a rocket. I build it up as much as I can, and see how high it goes. I'm never aware of any commercial value. I never sit down to write a single. Whenever I write, I'm challenging myself in some area. Everyone who creates something considers themself an artist in some way, don't they?
I wonder whether you really want to do music--whether you'd rather do poetry or theatre or dance or...
"I'm doing that as well, really, aren't I? Maybe it's wrong to see me as a pop personality. You're going to keep changing-- Wuthering Heights was a story with music and dancing, but I've changed so much since then. The things that the media most remember about me are those things. Some people see that I am changing, but...oh, not as many as the people who hang onto those singles. But I am beginning to be seen as an albums artist."
What's an albums artist?
"It's not being a pop personality or whatever it was you called me. I'm not interested in making singles. Maybe I will make some 'singles' one day...
Pull Out the Pin
The Dreaming is an ornate, billowing record. Its songs are peculiarly ambitious: their grand design all but drives out the spirit of lowly pop music.
The ghosts of famous men pace their dark corridors; great tunnels of sound emulate mighty and multi-levelled conceptions. Songs are sung in a multitude of voices, like a chittering, half-heard spirit-world. Bush's operatic entreaties are finally matched to music of a similar size and shape. At any one moment
It's already a huge success. Despite the failure of the title song in single form--there are surely no singles on the record--Bush has found that her admirers have not gone away. I suggest to her some of the things it seems to be about, like the struggle between public and private faces, and the ability to disappear inside a recording; she is scarcely drawn. Not suspicious--simply not interested in the ambiguity and anatomy of music so intensely organised. <The meaning of this statement is unclear to IED.> Kate Bush is a dedicated artist.
Is she there?
The Dreaming
"Primitive? I'm not sure about that word...Perhaps. There are traditional roots in it. Basic forms of music."
I think it's extremely sophisticated.
"Do you? Sophisticated? Well, I'd rather you say that than turdlike.
"I could explain some of it, if you want me to: Suspended in Gaffa is reasonably autobiographical, which most of my songs aren't. <Doug Alan is loving this. IED can just see him chortling with glee.> It's about seeing something that you want--on any level--and not being able to get that thing unless you work hard and in the right way towards it. When I do that I become aware of so many obstacles, and then I want the thing without the work. And then when you achieve it you enter...a different level--everything will slightly change. It's like going into a time warp which otherwise wouldn't have existed.
"Oh, yes, quite a few people have surmised that from listening to the song. But when you explain it like this it doesn't sound like anything. The idea is much more valuable within the song than it is in my telling you about it. When you analyse it, it seems silly.
" Leave It Open is the idea of human beings being like cups--like receptive vessels. We open and shut ourselves at different times. It's very easy to let your ego go " nag nag nag " when you should shut it. Or when you're very narrow-minded and you should be open. Finally you should be able to control your levels of receptivity to a productive end.
"The Dreaming is very different from my first two records. Each time I do an LP it feels like the last one was years and years before. The essence of what I'm playing has been there from the start; it's just that the expression has been changing. What I'm doing now is what I was trying to do four years ago. If I do a show, it will only be music from the last two albums.
"I wish I had a five-year plan, but I never plan too far ahead. I get into trouble because I always take longer to do things than I expect. That's why I knew I had to wait for another two albums' worth of material before doing another show.
"I suppose I'd count myself an old-fashioned person. I like to think I'm open-minded, but when it comes down to basic codes, I am old-fashioned. Everyone has vices. I have vices, but I don't think I've got any...glaring ones--is that what they're called?
"It would really worry me if I thought my art was being untruthful. Being true to something is the closest way to express things. But then in another way, the whole thing is untruthful--I'm being someone I'm not; I'm writing about situations I'll probably never be in. Behind it there has to be sincerity. Insincerity doesn't ring right; it has a nasty taste.
"The worst thing? The pressures, I suppose. They come in from so many different levels--from so many people--that they feel destructive towards me as a human being. Although it happens very rarely. And I have so little time to do things I want to."
Are you ever worried that you are absent from your art?
"Oh, no. I am expressing myself, but it's also something else--it's something that's coming through me. My intentions are to put across situations that aren't that close to me but which are more interesting.
"It scares me that I work too hard. I can be so tired and involved in work that I'm not living on another level. It's a reality of the situation. I have to do things I don't want to, so that I can do what I want the rest of the time. It's that I don't seem to have time to myself.
Still breathing
"I want to do a show next. It'll take at least six months to prepare, because there'll be so many levels to it. The musical challenge will be the hardest I've set myself..." <This show never materialised, of course.>
A lot of people would like to see you just sitting at a piano and singing a set of your songs.
"Not nearly as many. It would be too easy, as if I couldn't be bothered to prepare a proper show. It wouldn't do anything for the blend of movement and music. That is what I really want to do. Music and movement together in a modern sense. People like it that you're not taking the easy way out”.
On 13th September, The Dreaming turns forty. I am keen to explore it from a number of different sides. It is such an important album. Bush’s first solo producer step, The Dreaming was followed by 1985’s Hounds of Love. Whilst that album gets a massive amount of love, its predecessor is not as dissected and celebrated. Maybe that is because it is very different in terms of it sound, structure and its singles. I know there will be a lot of new consideration and inspection of The Dreaming before 13th September. If you have never heard the album, then go and listen to it now and…
LOSE yourself in its brilliance.