FEATURE:
And Focus on the Day That’s Been…
Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes at Forty-Five
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WHEN thinking about what I should focus on…
when it comes to Kate Bush, I was looking through singles and albums that have anniversaries coming up. One that I could not let go by was the forty-fifth anniversary of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. That song was released as the second single from her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. Released on 26th May, 1978, it reached six in the U.K. It even reached eighty-five in the US Billboard Pop Singles chart in 1979 – which is more successful than her debut single, Wuthering Heights. There is a lot to unpack and explore when it comes to one of Bush’s most beautiful and mature songs. And it is a mature song. Made all the more extraordinary when we remember that she wrote it when she was thirteen! Most people her age would struggle to write half-decent poetry. Kate Bush managed to write a song that is among the most stunning ever recorded. I often wonder what sparked her interest or switched her brain on to the idea of the song. Whether it was a concentrated effort to write a song or she was struck by a rare inspiration and followed that path! It is an amazing song that is often ranked alongside her best work ever. When you see magazines and websites ranking the best Kate Bush songs/singles ever, The Man with the Child in His Eyes always places very high – on a few occasions, it has been placed at the top spot too. It is a wonderful work that I wanted to rightly celebrate and spotlight. I shall come to another thought I had in a second.
It is interesting hearing the story behind The Man with the Child in His Eyes. The Kate Bush Encyclopedia compiled interviews where Bush talked about the story behind the song. This being Kate Bush, her inspirations and thought process is very different to any other artist out there:
“The inspiration for 'The Man With the Child in His Eyes' was really just a particular thing that happened when I went to the piano. The piano just started speaking to me. It was a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic. I, myself, am attracted to older men, I guess, but I think that's the same with every female. I think it's a very natural, basic instinct that you look continually for your father for the rest of your life, as do men continually look for their mother in the women that they meet. I don't think we're all aware of it, but I think it is basically true. You look for that security that the opposite sex in your parenthood gave you as a child. (Self Portrait, 1978)
I just noticed that men retain a capacity to enjoy childish games throughout their lives, and women don't seem to be able to do that. ('Bird In The Bush', Ritz (UK), September 1978)”.
I have not read many features where individual songs from Kate Bush are dissected. You get album features and bits about tracks such as Wuthering Heights and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), but there have not been too many features revolving around The Man with the Child in His Eyes. That is a shame, for it is one of those songs that, once heard, can never be forgotten. Before coming to a more detailed piece, Song Stories Matter discussed The Man with the Child in His Eyes earlier this year. There is a very relevant aspect to the song. Kate Bush is nominated for an Ivor Novello award this year. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is nominated for Most Performed Song. It is amazing but hardly surprising that The Man with the Child in His Eyes won an Ivor in 1979:
“The Meaning of the Song
“The Man with The Child in His Eyes” is a song about a relationship between a young girl and an older man. In an interview with Music Talk in 1978 Kate Bush said: She sees this man as an all-consuming figure. He’s wise, yet he retains a certain innocent quality. The song tells how his eyes give away his “inner light”. He’s a very real character to the girl, but nobody else knows whether he really exists.
The song originated when Kate Bush observed that most men were still a child at heart, which explains the title of the song. Bush considered this childish innocence a delightful and magical quality. Because of these qualities, the young girl in the song is capable of communicating with this older man.
The song left fans wondering who this mysterious older man was. In 2010, Steve Blacknell told the Daily Mail that he was “The Man with the Child in His Eyes”. Blacknell and Bush were first lovers in the spring of 1975. Due to Kate Bush’s musical endeavors, the two drifted apart. But Blacknell heard from those around Bush that he was in fact “The Man with the Child in His Eyes”.
This story, however, doesn’t make a lot of sense. Given the fact that Kate Bush wrote this song aged 13 (in 1972), the song could never be about Steve Blacknell. After all, the two fell in love in 1975, 3 years after the song was written. We do know Bush gave the handwritten lyrics of the song to Blacknell, because he offered it for sale in 2010. It is more likely to believe Blacknell gave extra meaning to the song, rather than being the inspiration behind it.
Kate Bush herself never spoke about who “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” is. For the better, because the mysterious aura of the song is part of its beauty.
The Song’s Legacy
“The Man with the Child in His Eyes” was released as a single in 1978. It is accompanied by a simplistic music video, which alternates between Kate Bush sitting cross-legged on the floor, and close-ups of her face. The song was a hit in the UK, reaching number 6 on the UK singles chart. The was also a small hit in the US, where the song reached number 85 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The song received an Ivor Novello Award in 1979 for “Outstanding British Lyric”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
I am going to wrap up with a feature from Dreams of Orgonon. Christine Kelley goes into detail. She is one of the best writers on Kate Bush, and her blog has dived deep into Bush’s work through the years. Bush wrote the song aged thirteen. This was one or two songs that appear on The Kick Inside – the other is The Saxophone Song – that was recorded before the rest of the album. In June 1975, Bush went to AIR Studios in London (where the album was recorded) for a recording session overseen by David Gilmour (who was instrumental in getting her signed and known). The version we hear on The Kick Inside is the one the then-sixteen-year-old recorded. Gilmour saw something in the track and wanted it released. You only need to listen for a few seconds to be transported somewhere magic:
“The answer presents itself immediately—most young artists in the Seventies didn’t write their own hits, and their hits were rarely so good. The only other UK hit single written by an under-18 female artist by the time of “Child” that I can find is “Terry,” an a lugubrious piece of grimdark pop from 1964 by 16-year-old Twinkle. Apart than that, young singers didn’t (and probably weren’t permitted to) write their own songs. The lack of songwriting royalties certainly didn’t hurt precocious young stars—Helen Shapiro recorded hits without writing them, and Little Jimmy Osmond hit number 1 at the age of nine with the agonizing “Long Haired Lover from Liverpool.” Picking on these young artists who sang some micromanaged mediocre hits four to five decades ago would be petty at best and mean-spirited at worst, so we’ll eschew that, but all this shows just how odd “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” was. It was as far from micromanaged as possible. Its inception and recording predate its public release by about three years, and Kate was mostly left to her own devices while creating it (her family helped her procure business deals that would basically allow her to do whatever she wanted creatively)
So what we’re given with “Child” is that ever-so-rare thing in pop music: a young person’s vision of the world, undiluted by executive interference. In it Kate sings about a strange, wonderful man, older than herself but with an adolescent spirit that’s not unlike hers. The song is somewhat impenetrable, like any artistic work by a young person beginning to navigate the world, and it’s accessible and applicable and gorgeous. It’s rare for artists to pull this off successfully so early on, which may account for the limited amount of in-depth analysis on “Child”—Ron Moy finds little to say on the song in his book Kate Bush and Hounds of Love, and Deborah M. Withers’ classic Bushology text Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory skips the song altogether (frankly the best reading of the song hails from this Tumblr post). The most useful critical take comes from Graeme Thomson’s seminal biography Under the Ivy:
“[Kate] is surely unique among female songwriters in that her canon contains not a single song that puts down, castigates, or generally gives men the brush off. She has never been feminist in the bluntest sense — she wants to preserve and embrace the differences between the sexes and understand the male of the species. Many songs display a desire to experience fully what it is to be a man; she invests them with power, beauty, and a kind of mystical attraction which is incredibly generous.”
It’s rare to find guts like that in a song by an older artist, which is perhaps why this song doesn’t work when sung by older artists. When Hue and Cry sing it, it’s too dour, and even Dusty Springfield doesn’t imbibe it with a new life. Kate sang it for the last time in 1979, when she plays the song for the last time on a BBC Christmas special. It’s a strong performance—Kate’s haunting and soulful voice had significantly evolved across four years, and it lends the song a fitting maturity. There’s a sense that this is the end of its tenure, that this is as far as it can go. It’s hard to imagine a hypothetical 80s Kate Bush concert where “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” would fit in a setlist alongside “Breathing,” “Suspended in Gaffa,” or even “The Big Sky,” which is an older adult’s song about being a child. It belongs to a moment. Kate may have already grown beyond it when it was released as a single after “Wuthering Heights.” It’s a 1975 song that detonated as a 1978 one. “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” is likely the last Cathy song, but maybe also the first Kate Bush song. It dwells in a liminal space on its own. “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” as a popular song was at a distance from its inception where its creation was a relatively distant memory. Art is a snapshot of a moment. Sometimes its creative gestation periods last a while. Kate Bush has mastered the slow burn. She didn’t hastily release this song—she set it free”.
An award-winning and much-lauded single from the spectacular Kate Bush, The Man with the Child in His Eyes turns forty-five on 26th May. Whilst we may never discover who the eponymous man was in the song, it is clear that Bush, aged thirteen, had this remarkably mature and keen mind. In an age (1978) when peers her age were releasing music that was far less advanced and deep, here is this song that we are still unpicking forty-fiver years later. Almost symphonic in its modesty, beauty and grace, I was eager to pay my respects to…
A work of genius.