FEATURE:
Erase the Race That Claim the Place
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a photoshoot for The Dreaming’s title track in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
The Dreaming’s Mesmeric Title Track at Forty-One
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I have written about…
one of Kate Bush’s best and most underrated tracks before. I think I wrote about it for its fortieth birthday last year. The Dreaming was released as the second single from her fourth studio album. Released on 26th July, 1982, it came out just under two months before the album (which was released on 13th September). It is a memorable single for a few reasons. I am going to go into the song in a bit. I have been thinking about title tracks through Bush’s career. Whilst Hounds of Love might be the best-known, I have always wondered why she never recorded one for Never for Ever. You can say that Oh England my Lionheart is a sort of title track for Lionheart (released in 1978, it was her second studio album). A track, Never Forever, was recorded but never included on Never for Ever. I digress. I wonder why The Dreaming’s track was so-called. In terms of its subject matter, there are other titles that more easily spring to mind. I sort of like the fact there is a bit of ambiguity to calling it The Dreaming. One noteworthy aspect of The Dreaming is, unlike the first single from the album, Sat in Your Lap, it was not a chart success. Hitting forty-eight, this was the least successful single in the U.K. for Bush to that point. She would fare worse with the follow-up single, There Goes a Tenner. I have always said how The Dreaming deserved a higher chart placing. Maybe the video, more cinematic and wide-lensed compared to the tight and rapid-cut Pop videos of 1982, put some people off. The subject matter is something that was uncommon in music in 1982 – and to this very day in fact. Displacement and mistreatment of indigenous people was a little unconventional for some back then, even if the song is wonderful produced and has a lot going on.
I have had to edit and selectively choose some interview archives about The Dreaming’s origins because, unfortunately, Rolf Harris was an influence. He played didgeridoo on the track. Unlike songs he contributed to on Bush’s 2005 album, Aerial, it is hard to edit Harris’ contributions out of The Dreaming’s title track. His voice is not heard, so it is easy to overlook. It is more important to focus on the positives:
“We started with the drums, working to a basic Linn drum machine pattern, making them sound as tribal and deep as possible. This song had to try and convey the wide open bush, the Aborigines - it had to roll around in mud and dirt, try to become a part of the earth. "Earthy" was the word used most to explain the sounds. There was a flood of imagery sitting waiting to be painted into the song. The Aborigines move away as the digging machines move in, mining for ore and plutonium. Their sacred grounds are destroyed and their beliefs in Dreamtime grow blurred through the influence of civilization and alcohol. Beautiful people from a most ancient race are found lying in the roads and gutters. Thank God the young Australians can see what's happening.
The piano plays sparse chords, just to mark every few bars and the chord changes. With the help of one of Nick Launay's magic sounds, the piano became wide and deep, effected to the point of becoming voices in a choir. The wide open space is painted on the tape, and it's time to paint the sound that connects the humans to the earth, the dijeridu. The dijeridu took the place of the bass guitar and formed a constant drone, a hypnotic sound that seems to travel in circles.
The title actually came last. It always does. It's the most difficult thing to do. I tried to get a title that would somehow say what was in there. It was really bad. Then I found this book [Hands me huge tome on australian lore]. I'd written a song and hadn't really given it a proper name. I knew all about this time they call Dreamtime, when animals and humans take the same form. It's this big religious time when all these incredible things happen. The other word for it is The Dreaming. I looked at that written down and thought, ``Yeah!'' (Kris Needs, 'Dream Time In The Bush'. ZigZag (UK), 1982)
The Aboriginals are not alone in being pushed out of their land by modern man, by their diseases, or for ther own strange reasons. It is very sad to think they might all die. 'The Dreaming' is the time for Aboriginals when humans took the form of animals, when spirits were free to roam and in this song as the civilized begin to dominate, the 'original ones' dream of the dreamtime. (Press statement by Kate Bush, 1982)”.
The first song from the second side of The Dreaming, I like the fact that its title track is half-way down. Many artists would put it as the first or second track. Whilst it sounds perfectly suited after Leave It Open and before Night of the Swallow, maybe as a single it is a bit unusual or without context. It must have been quite a hard single to promote. Bush did do live versions of the song. As I type that, I did write about The Dreaming quite recently and included some videos of her performing the song. The Dreaming is distinctly an album more political and socially aware. On her first album she produced alone, I think Bush was looking to create music more artistic and serious. Still seen as screechy or high-pitched, there were sections who were dismissive of her music. The final two tracks of 1980’s Never for Ever, Army Dreamers and Breathing, discussed young men sent to war ands potential nuclear destruction from the perspective of a foetus. Throughout The Dreaming, Bush explores politics and bigger causes. Whether it is the war in Vietnam or Aboriginal settlers who are losing their land, this was Kate Bush changing her sound. Other songs about the self and philosophy, the search for knowledge and the fact that everyone feels lonely and it is very much needed at times are fascinating. Bush also explored Harry Houdini and The Shining. There is a broad mix of topics being discussed, but I think that the plight of an indigenous Australian population arrived at a time when this was not widely discussed. There was love out there for The Dreaming album and Bush, but there were no clear-cut singes from her 1982 masterpiece. I wanted to celebrate the upcoming (on 26th July) forty-first anniversary of a brilliant song. Distinctly the work of Kate Bush, it still sounds like nothing else to this day. If you have not heard it before, then I would encourage you to…
TAKE a listen now.