FEATURE:
The Teen Prodigy
Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Six
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ON 17th February…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot on 2nd March, 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix
it will be forty-six years since Kate Bush released her debut album, The Kick Inside. Only nineteen when the album came out, it reached number three in the U.K. Produced by Andrew Powell, it contained huge songs like The Man with the Child in His Eyes and Wuthering Heights. I find it strange that this album is not better known or has a wider appreciation. Many people know about it, yet I don’t really heard it played much across radio. Perhaps the odd song or two. There are some real gems from the album that one never heard at all. It is a pity. Such a phenomenal introduction, here was this teen prodigy that put out an album like no other! I am going to get to some parts of a fascinating exploration of The Kick Inside. The album has never fully been embraced the same way as Hounds of Love. That is fair enough. I just feel that Bush’s debut is worthy of a lot more love. Rather than this being a promising debut or her first step to something better, The Kick Inside is a fully-formed and astonishing album in its own right! I will finish with a review for The Kick Inside. Obviously, with so much interest around this new and exciting young artists, there are a lot of interviews available from 1978. An interview that I have sourced before, Donna McAllister spoke with Kate Bush for Sounds in March 1978. There was a lot of curiosity around this new artists. Most not knowing how to write about her. Many of the early interviews are quite lurid and talk about Kate Bush’s sex appeal. Others are patronising and piss-taking. There are some that get the tone right:
“The story is not at all as overnight as it seems to be, it was in fact two years ago that Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour bopped around to Kate’s flat with a Revox -- goal in mind to get some of Kate’s tunes published. She wasn't, at the time, considered a singer but Gilmour, who is genuinely interested in giving undiscovered talent a shot-in-the-arm (with his Unicorn organization) felt that the bubbling under songs should have the opportunity to be heard. They recorded about 15 songs per tape, and took them around to various record companies. The unanimous opinion, then, was 'non-commercial', and after all . . . it's not creative unless it sells, 'eh?
How Kate and Gilmour hooked up is rather a vague 'girlfriends'- boyfriends'- girlfriends friend' sort of rigmarole, but the fact is that he never did lose interest in her er . . . talents, and decided that the only way to reach a record company's gold lined pocket was to produce finished product. Which is exactly what they did. Gilmour put up the money, and Kate went into Air studios complete with a band, and laid down the three tracks she and Dave both felt were best. This is the tape which eventually landed Kate her contract with EMI Records.
Despite the fact that she has been already wrongly built (no pun intended) in the media to be a mere child, she is surprisingly aware of what is going on around her, and is accepting the entire shindig with a pleased air of disbelief.
"They keep telling me the chart numbers, and I just kind of say 'Wow' (she sweeps her arms) . . . it's not really like it's happening. I've always been on the outside, watching albums I like go up the charts, and feeling pleased that they are doing well, but it's hard to relate to the fact that it's now happening to me..."
'WUTHERING Heights', Kate's self-penned song, inspired by the book of the same title, is literally catapulting up the UK charts, and looks as though it will be one of those classic world-wide smasheroonies, though it has yet to be released in most other countries. She recently took her first air-borne flight to Germany for a television appearance, as the single, apparently, has been chosen as whatever the German equivalent of 'pick-of-the-week' might be.
"It was mind blowing," she said euphorically, in reference to flying, "I really want to do more of that . . ." Wonder how she'll feel about in in two years’ time.
She writes songs about love, people, relationships and life . . . sincerely and emotionally, but without prostituting her talents by whining about broken hearts.
"If you're writing a song, assuming people are going to listen, then you have a responsibility to those people. It's important to give them a positive message, something that can advise or help is far more effective than having a wank and being self-pitiful. That's really negative. My friends and brothers have been really helpful to me, providing me with stimulating conversation and ideas I can really sink my teeth into."
For as long as she can remember she has been toying around with the piano, much, I reckoned, to her parent's chagrin. Can you imagine living with a nine-year-old who insisted on battering away on said instrument, wailing away at the top of her lungs in accompaniment?
"Well, they weren't very encouraging in the beginning, they thought it was a lot of noise. When I first started, my voice was terrible, but the voice is an instrument to a singer, and the only way to improve it is to practice. I have had no formal vocal training, though there was a guy that I used to see for half-an-hour once a week, and he would advise me on things like breathing properly, which is very important to voice control. He'd say things like 'Does that hurt? Well, then sing more from here (motions to diaphragm) than from your throat.' I don't like the idea of 'formal' training, it has far too many rules and conventions that are later hard to break out of . . ."
IT IS QUITE obvious from the cover of 'The Kick Inside', her debut album, that Ms. Bush is Orientally influenced, but apparently it was not meant to take on such an oriental feel.
"I think it went a bit over the top, actually. We had the kite, and as there is a song on the album by that name, and as the kite is traditionally oriental, we painted the dragon on. But I think the lettering was just a bit too much. No matter. On the whole I was surprised at the amount of control I actually had with the album production. Though I didn't choose the musicians," (Andrew Powell, producer and arranger did). "I thought they were terrific.
"I was lucky to be able to express myself as much as I did, especially with this being a debut album. Andrew was really into working together, rather than pushing everyone around. I basically chose which tracks went on, put harmonies where I wanted them . . . I was there throughout the entire mix. I feel that's very important. Ideally, I would like to learn enough of the technical side of things to be able to produce my own stuff eventually."
Kate has a habit of gesturing constantly with her hands, and often expressing herself with unspellable sounds and grimaces. Though this make tape transcriptions difficult, it does accentuate something which is very much a part of her, 'movement expression'. She has studied under the inimitable Lindsay Kemp, mime artiste, an experience shared with Kate's favourite musician, David Bowie.
"I admire actresses and actors terribly and think it's an amazing craft. But singing and performing your songs should be the same thing. At this point I would rather develop my music and expressing it physically, as opposed to having a script. I think I'm much better off as a wailer. . ."
She is, indeed a beautiful woman. Carved ivory, with nary a nick. So obviously there is no way she can avoid becoming the target for sexist minds. Although she does not advocate this reaction, she's not flustered by it. After all, it is a compliment.
"As long as it does not interfere with my progress as a singer/songwriter, it doesn't matter. I just wish people would think of that first, I would be foolish to think that people don't look. I suppose in some ways it helps to get more people to listen . . ."
'THE KICK Inside' suggests a keen interest in mysticism.
"I try to work on myself spiritually, and am always trying to improve my outlook on life. We really abuse all that we've got, assuming that we are so superior as beings, taking the liberties of sticking up cement stuff all over the place. I think there is a lot to astrology, and the effect the moon has upon us all' but I hate the way it's become so trendy now.
"I'm a vegetarian, and now that's trendy as well . . . but what annoys me the most is the way people are so automatically cynical about astrology. I mean, like the Greeks put an incredible amount of hard work into carefully planned geometric charts, based purely on mathematics. People just shrug off. It's the same with coincidence, as I said in the song 'Strange Phenomena',"
At first, Kate was opposed to having any sort of management, feeling strongly that less mistakes are made if you deal with situations yourself, directly. But she quickly found out that this sort of idealism does not work, and now has Peter Lyster-Todd handling her business affairs.
"He has worked more on the theatrical side of entertainment than music. I like that. I think most managers are crooks, greedy and non-musical, and that mixing with other music managers is contagious. I think Peter will be amazing . . .”.
Prior to getting to a review and my thoughts about The Kick Inside turning forty-six, Stereogum’s 2018 feature (on the album’s fortieth anniversary) takes us inside this beguiling and beautiful album. Not this Pop ingénue who was being led and relying on others calling the shots, Kate Bush was determined and had a clear vision of her own music. In terms of the singles that would be released from it. I do often wonder whether there were any photographs taken of Bush at AIR Studio in 1977, when she was recording The Kick Inside. It would have been fascinating seeing her captured in action:
“Bush, a cult figure in America who is regarded as a national treasure in the UK, created a legacy that has influenced countless musicians, many of whom might not even realize she made their work possible. How would most pop stars tour without the headset microphone, which was created for Bush’s 1979 Tour Of Life, using a wire hanger? Producing her own work in an industry in which a small percentage of women are producers, Kate Bush has maintained a level of control and integrity within her spellbinding music that few artists have matched. She opened the door for all artists, but especially women, to experiment more radically in their audio and visual work. As Imogen Heap once said, “When I was 17 and getting my first record deal, it was the likes of Kate Bush who had contributed to labels taking me seriously as a girl who knew what she was doing and wanted.” To be frank: Without Kate Bush, none of your faves would exist in the same capacity. That might sound hyperbolic, but there is so much, from turning live performances into multimedia, theatrical spectacles, to making music videos years before MTV’s debut, to wearing a swan dress — that Kate Bush did first.
Her groundbreaking legacy of experimental yet accessible, inspiringly individualistic work begins with the extraordinary debut album that turns 40 this weekend: The Kick Inside. Released when Bush was 19 in 1978, it included songs she had written as early as age 13 and introduced the world into Bush’s wild imagination. Arriving in a year otherwise dominated by disco and punk (“Wuthering Heights” replaced Abba’s “Take A Chance On Me” as the UK’s #1 single) this imagination felt “strangely out of time” and singular. The album’s focus on female sexuality, its use of voice as an instrument, and Bush’s unique storytelling techniques — particularly her exciting use of fluid narrative identity, in which she changes identities and narrative point of view with every song — created a new, unprecedented model for women in music. The Kick Inside (referred to as TKI from now on) made the world a safer place not just for women musicians but also for freaks and outcasts everywhere, and its anniversary is well worth celebrating.
Of course, first we need to address what will make most people either adore or despise TKI: That Voice. As the album begins, a wailing, impossibly-high-pitched voice grabs (or repels) the listener as it sings that opening line “mooooooviiiiiing straaaangeeeer.” Deborah Withers, author of Adventures In Kate Bush And Theory, wrote that the pitch of her voice is “an assault on the normal parameters of vocal modulation.” I feel it is no coincidence that, within a music criticism field dominated by straight white men, her most acclaimed album is 1985’s Hounds Of Love, on which her voice deepened enough for them to be able to handle it. Dismissive and condescending quotes from male critics about Bush’s early work, both from the ‘70s and now, are too numerous to collect here, but Suede frontman Brett Anderson’s assertion in the BBC’s The Kate Bush Story that in her early work she was “finding her way … she hadn’t quite found herself and all that early stuff of her dancing around in leotards is a little bit am-dram” (is he forgetting how he dressed in the early ‘90s?) and that Hounds Of Love is “the zenith” of her artistry, typifies the traditional critical approach to Bush’s work.
Reared in the country known for stiff upper lips and repressed sexuality (full disclosure: this author is part-English), Bush sang frankly in songs written in her teens about lust, and her narrative voice on TKI possesses an active feminine, sexual gaze. In the album’s second song, “The Saxophone Song” she imagines herself “in a Berlin Bar” as she watches a saxophonist play and becomes a voyeur filled with desire, a traditionally masculine position. On the album’s second half, Bush becomes franker, and downright explicit, about her active sexuality. In “Feel It,” she and her lover go “back to your parlour” where “Locking the door/My stockings fall onto the floor, desperate for more.” She stretches out the word “more” with her inimitable voice for as long as she can, mimicking the sound of a woman in ecstasy. She then sings, “The glorious union, well, it could be love/Or it could be just lust, but it will be fun/It will be wonderful.” In case there was any doubt that Bush was singing about sex, she then explicitly describes penetration: “keep on a-moving in, keep on a-tuning in/synchronize rhythm now.” What teenage girl was celebrating the “fun” of a possible one-night stand in pop music in 1978, much less the “sticky love inside” (a cringeworthy lyric, yes) it produces in “L’Amour Looks Something Like You”?
TKI is also revolutionary because it establishes Bush’s narrative style as fluid and multiple; her songs are short stories each written from a different narrator’s perspective rather than from her own point of view. This writing style stands in stark contrast to the traditionally personal style of music focusing on love and heartbreak that continues to dominate the charts. “I often find myself inspired by unusual, distorted, weird subjects, as opposed to things that are straightforward. It’s a reflection of me, my liking for weirdness,” she said in 1980. Unlike the majority of pop/rock artists, The “I” in Bush’s music is rarely Bush. Her songs are not confessional, but are rather short stories told from the points of views of a diverse range of narrators. From Bush’s songs, we can know about themes that interest her, but Kate Bush herself rarely speaks in her work; her narrators, who occupy multiple genders, races, and historical times, do instead. This is a deeply radical break from traditional “confessional “ songwriting, especially for women up to that point. Consider that the most acclaimed female musician of the time, and probably of all time, Joni Mitchell, is most-lauded for her confessional album, Blue”.
IN THIS PHOTO: An outtake from The Kick Inside’s cover shoot, showing the metal bar and ropes that were constructed for the shot/PHOTO CREDIT: Jay Myrdal
That sense of confidence and having a say regarding her music and aesthetics comes across when it comes to The Kick Inside’s cover. Not merely a cover that was similar to what so many other artists were putting out in 1978, there was a story and something unique behind this one. Even though I think that a portrait of Kate Bush would have been a better choice, what we have for the cover – the U.K. cover anyway; various countries had different images on the cover – is, in part, inspired by Disney. Kate Bush News, when marking forty years of The Kick Inside, spoke with Jay Myrdal. He shot the ‘kite’ album cover:
“It must be remembered that when I shot the photographs of Kate for her first album, ‘The Kick Inside’, no one had heard of her before. She was very young and even EMI didn’t expect her first album to be anything more than a minor success. While the record company were confident that she was indeed a considerable talent, they were as surprised as anyone when she topped the charts. I had listened to the tape of Wuthering Heights before the shoot and my recollection was that, while it was interesting, I thought she had a rather shrill voice and I did not expect it to do very well.
What do I know?
Kate arrived at the studio with her father and a car full of bits of wood and painted paper from which he constructed the kite as it appears in the photograph. I rigged the rather fragile kite on the black painted wall of my studio with ropes and a metal bar which was strong enough for her to hang from.
In the meantime Kate was in the back room with a makeup girl being covered in gold body paint. The image was entirely Kate’s idea and Steve Ridgeway, the art director and I simply did more or less as we were told. The idea had come from the Disney animated film ‘Pinocchio’ and the scene when Jiminy Cricket floats past the whale’s eye using his umbrella like a parachute.
IN THIS IMAGE: A still from Walt Disney’s Pinocchio (1940)
The shoot went well of course but I had never been fully briefed on just how it would be used. I had been instructed to shoot it on black which was how it appeared on the single. Used that way, it worked just fine. Unfortunately, when it was composited against the light yellow background of the eye, the dark shadows around her legs and on the bottom of the kite didn’t work for me. In spite of it being probably the most famous record cover I ever shot, I never used it in my portfolio, feeling that this technical problem was an embarrassment to a perfectionist like myself.
Again… What do I know?
Kate returned to my studio a few times after the shoot, once to collect the kite and a few more times just to say hello. Shortly after her record was released I held one of my well known studio parties and invited Kate but sadly by that time she was far too famous and busy to attend although she did send her apologies via the record company… (sigh!) – Jay Myrdal FRPS”.
I will finish on yet another source I have included before. Laura Snapes reviewed The Kick Inside for Pitchfork in 2019. Even though it is playful and child-like at times, it is determined and complete. If many in the media portrayed Kate Bush as a hippy or doe-eyed (or worse) in 1978, they were overlooking the fact that this was a very strong young woman getting what she wanted. An artist who deserved a lot more respect than she was afforded:
“There’s not a fearful note on The Kick Inside, and yet there is still room for childish wonder: Just because Bush appeared emotionally and musically sophisticated beyond her years didn’t mean denying them.
“Kite” unravels like a children’s story: First she wants to fly up high, away from cruel period pains (“Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o”) and teenage self-consciousness (“all these mirror windows”) but no sooner is she up than she wants to return to real life. It is a wacky hormone bomb of a song, prancing along on toybox cod reggae and the enervating rat-a-tat-tat energy that sustained parodies of Bush’s uninhibited style; still, more fool anyone who sneers instead of reveling in the pure, piercing sensation of her crowing “dia-ia-ia-ia-ia-ia-ia-mond!” as if giving every facet its own gleaming syllable.
“Strange Phenomena” is equally awed, Bush celebrating the menstrual cycle as a secret lunar power and wondering what other powers might arrive if we were only attuned to them. She lurches from faux-operatic vocal to reedy shriek, marches confidently in tandem with the strident chorus and unleashes a big, spooky “Woo!,” exactly as silly as a 19-year-old should be. As is “Oh to Be in Love,” a baroque, glittering harpsichord romp about a romance that brightens the colors and defeats time.
She only fails to make a virtue of her naivety on “Room for the Life,” where she scolds a weeping woman for thinking any man would care about her tears. The sweet calypso reverie is elegant, and good relief from the brawnier, propulsive arrangements that stood staunchly alongside Steely Dan. But Bush shifts inconsistently between reminding the woman that she can have babies and insisting, more effectively, that changing one’s life is up to you alone. The latter is clearly where her own sensibilities lie: “Them Heavy People,” another ode to her teachers, has a Woolf-like interiority (“I must work on my mind”) and a distinctly un-Woolf-like exuberance, capering along like a pink elephant on parade. “You don’t need no crystal ball,” she concludes, “Don’t fall for a magic wand/We humans got it all/We perform the miracles.”
The Kick Inside was Bush’s first, the sound of a young woman getting what she wants. Despite her links to the 1970s’ ancien régime, she recognized the potential to pounce on synapses shocked into action by punk, and eschewed its nihilism to begin building something longer lasting. It is ornate music made in austere times, but unlike the pop sybarites to follow in the next decade, flaunting their wealth while Britain crumbled, Bush spun hers not from material trappings but the infinitely renewable resources of intellect and instinct: Her joyous debut measures the fullness of a woman’s life by what’s in her head”.
On 17th February, 1978, Kate Bush released The Kick Inside into the world. Everything would change. Performing and being interviewed all around the world, this unusual and unconventional young English artist was like nobody else. Forty-six years later, I feel The Kick Inside is underrated. Not as explored and admired quite as much as it should be. Laura Shenton’s book about The Kick Inside is a useful reference. It is my favourite album of all time. The more I listen to The Kick Inside, the more I know that…
WILL never change.