FEATURE:
Mammy's Hero
Kate Bush’s Army Dreamers at Forty-Three
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I didn’t write about this song…
IN THIS PHOTO: An outtake from the Army Dreamers video shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
when marking the forty-third anniversary of Kate Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever. Army Dreamers, the third and final single from the album, was released on 22nd September, 1980. I thought I would wait until now to mark the anniversary on its own. Army Dreamers is a song about a mother grieving her son who is killed on military manoeuvres. The mother wrestles with a sense of guilt and anger. The fact that someone so young could have been anything, he has had his life wasted for no reason. Somewhere between an anti-war song and how a mother deals with the death of a young son, this was one of the first signs of Bush becoming more politically engaged when it came to the music. I have mentioned this when writing about the song before (this article is also worth checking out) – so I will not go over the same ground. Before moving on, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia sourced interview sections where Kate Bush discussed Army Dreamers and its background:
“The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action - it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who's obviously got a lot of work to do. She's full of remorse, but he has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream. (Week-long diary, Flexipop, 1980)
No, it's not personal. It's just a mother grieving and observing the waste. A boy with no O-levels, say, who might have [??? Line missing!] whatever. But he's nothing to do, no way to express himself. So he joins the army. He's trapped. So many die, often in accidents. I'm not slagging off the army, because it's good for certain people. But there are a lot of people in it who shouldn't be. (Derek Jewell, 'How To Write Songs And Influence People'. Sunday Times (UK), 5 October 1980)
The Irish accent was important because the treatment of the song is very traditional, and the Irish would always use their songs to tell stories, it's the traditional way. There's something about an Irish accent that's very vulnerable, very poetic, and so by singing it in an Irish accent it comes across in a different way. But the song was meant to cover areas like Germany, especially with the kids that get killed in manoeuvres, not even in action. It doesn't get brought out much, but it happens a lot. I'm not slagging off the Army, it's just so sad that there are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers, and it's not really what they want. That's what frightens me. (Kris Needs, 'Fire In The Bush'. ZigZag (UK), 1980)”.
There are a few reasons why I wanted to focus on Army Dreamers. It is coming up for its forty-third anniversary. In 1980, at the start of that new decade, Kate Bush was starting to distant herself from her earlier sound. As a producer, she was making broader and more ambitious music. In terms of themes and music, we hear something new in Army Dreamers. Previous Never for Ever singles, Breathing and Babooshka also concerned relationships and heartache. Breathing is about a foetus who is inside the womb whilst nuclear warfare has hit. It is about an actual being who wants to live against a backdrop of apocalypse and destruction. Babooshka is about deceit between a man and wife. Feeling he is being unfaithful; she creates this alias and tricks him. Traps him in the web. Bush was still writing about love and human relations, but in a much more adventurous and complicated way. Army Dreamers is one of her most devastating songs. The Irish accent and sense of bounce in the vocal pairs with a lyric saying what this boy could have been. All the things he could be are now not possible. If she didn’t explicitly say it was a protest song, there was a sense of Kate Bush looking out at the wider world and giving these big themes something quite intimate. By making them quite personal and relatable, they are more effecting and shocking than a general song about war and its futility. I also wanted to look at other aspects of the track.
It only got to number sixteen when it was released. Even if Babooshka was a comparative success, Army Dreamers did not climb as high as it deserves. Maybe people were adjusting to Bush talking about things like war. A song less commercial than others. In fact, nearly all of Bush’s songs that are more political have not charted that high. I like the fact that Army Dreamers has a family feel. Bush recorded with a range of other musicians but, on Army Dreamers, there are artists who performed on her debut album, alongside her brother Paddy (who also was on The Kick Inside). Brian Bath, Paddy Bush and Alan Murphy are on backing vocals. Brian Bath is on acoustic guitar, Paddy Bush on mandolin. There is quite a tight band who make the song dreamlike and haunted at the same time. Another reason I wanted to highlight Army Dreamers is the fact that its video, directed by ‘Keef’ (Keith McMillan), ranks alongside her best and most enduring. It is cinematic and, like Breathing, there is this real sense of tension and read. There are nice touches in the video. Little musical Easter eggs. Bush and several soldiers in the video (two of whom, Bush included, have ‘KT8’ or ‘KTB’ stencilled on the butt of their rifles (KTB was a monogram used by Bush early in her career) make their way through chaos and explosions. At the end, Bush blows up. It is a video you really have to watch, as my words cannot do it justice! Also, as she revealed to Profiles in Rock in 1980, this is a rare example of a video that she is completely satisfied with:
“For me that's the closest that I've got to a little bit of film. And it was very pleasing for me to watch the ideas I'd thought of actually working beautifully. Watching it on the screen. It really was a treat, that one. I think that's the first time ever with anything I've done I can actually sit back and say "I liked that". That's the only thing. Everything else I can sit there going "Oh look at that, that's out of place". So I'm very pleased with that one, artistically”.
On 22nd September, it will be forty-three years since the incredible Army Dreamers was released. This ‘mammy's hero’, carried back from war rather than being able to live the rest of his life, is a vision and sentiment that really hits hard. Bush, with her unique way of phrasing and using the English language, created something extremely moving and hard-hitting in 1980. Because of that, forty-three years after the fact, we need to honour Army Dreamers and show our respects to…
MAMMY’S hero.