FEATURE:
Speaking in Sympathy
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Kate Bush’s Love and Anger at Thirty-Four
_________
THERE are a few singles…
in Kate Bush’s cannon that are underrated or did not get the reception they deserved. One that stands out is Love and Anger. On 26th February, the single turns thirty-four. Many people will not know about the song. It has a prominent place on 1989’s The Sensual World. The second song in the running, Bush clearly had faith in the track. It was not buried in the middle or left near the end. Following the title track, we get this really amazing number. I have looked at the track before but, as it has an anniversary coming up, there is opportunity and need to revisit it. There are some cool and interesting B-sides worth exploring. Peaking at thirty-eight in the U.K., Love and Anger went to number one on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Featuring David Gilmour on guitar, we get Ken as the B-side on the 7” cassette single. The 12” and C.D. single has the beautiful One Last Look Around the House Before We Go... as one of the B-sides. Kate Bush directed the video. If not seen as one of her best singles, it is a great song that I have never heard played on the radio. It is a song that Bush had trouble putting together and getting finished. I shall come to some press snippets where Bush was discussing Love and Anger. The press redaction was not too positive:
“Is it too late to take back all those gushing hymns of praise we wrote in homage to Kate’s recent LP? [This is] pretty dispensable, fairly orthodox pop-rock listening.
PAUL LESTER, MELODY MAKER, 3 MARCH 1990
Kate seems to have lost the plot… all middle without a beginning or an end… lost in an unfocused mire…
TIM NICHOLSON, RECORD MIRROR, 3 MARCH 1990
Dynamic understanding and depth that is quite untouchable. Bloody fantastic.
PHIL WILDING, KERRANG!, 3 MARCH 1990”.
It is a shame there is not more love for a very good track! I never miss any Kate Bush single anniversary, so I wanted to spend some time with one of The Sensual World’s highlights. Love and Anger is clearly a personal song for Kate Bush. She has revealed how The Sensual World is an album where she was exploring herself as a woman. Sensual. Revealing, honest and deep, there is quite a bit in common with earlier albums. If Bush pointed towards a more masculine sound for albums such as Hounds of Love (1985), its following album was more concerned with Bush taking things in a different direction. I don’t think we have given Love and Anger enough exposure and respect. Going back to the previous website I quoted from, this is what Kate Bush said about Love and Anger:
“Well ‘Love and Anger’, of all the songs on the album, is really the one I know the least about. I don’t really know what it’s about – it’s had so many different faces. But it was one of the first songs to be written, but one of the last songs to be finished. And I think all the songs on this album are about relationships.
VH1 INTERVIEW, 1989
This song! This bloody song!
It was one of the most difficult to put together, yet the first to be written. I came back to it 18 months later and pieced it together. It doesn’t really have a story. It’s just me trying to write a song, ha-ha.
Obviously the imagery you get as a child is very strong. This is about who you can or cannot confide in when there’s something you can’t talk about. “If you can’t tell your sister, If you can’t tell a priest…” Who did I have in the lyrics? Was it sister or mother? I can’t remember.
LEN BROWN, ‘IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES’. NME (UK), 7 OCTOBER 1989
It’s one of the most difficult songs I think I’ve ever written. It was so elusive, and even today I don’t like to talk about it, because I never really felt it let me know what it’s about. It’s just kind of a song that pulled itself together, and with a tremendous amount of encouragement from people around me. There were so many times I thought it would never get on the album. But I’m really pleased it did now.
INTERVIEW, WFNX BOSTON (USA), 1989
I couldn’t get the lyrics. They were one of the last things to do. I just couldn’t find out what the song was about, though the tune was there. The first verse was always there, and that was the problem, because I’d already set some form of direction, but I couldn’t follow through. I didn’t know what I wanted to say at all. I guess I was just tying to make a song that was comforting, up tempo, and about how when things get really bad, it’s alright really – “Don’t worry old bean. Someone will come and help you out.”
The song started with a piano, and Del put a straight rhythm down. Then we got the drummer, and it stayed like that for at least a year and a half. Then I thought maybe it could be okay, so we got Dave Gilmour in. This is actually one of the more difficult songs – everyone I asked to try and play something on this track had problems. It was one of those awful tracks where either everything would sound ordinary, really MOR, or people just couldn’t come to terms with it. They’d ask me what it was about, but I didn’t know because I hadn’t written the lyrics. Dave was great – I think he gave me a bit of a foothold there, really. At least there was a guitar that made some sense. And John [Giblin] putting the bass on – that was very important. He was one of the few people brave enough to say that he actually liked the song.
TONY HORKINS, ‘WHAT KATIE DID NEXT’. INTERNATIONAL MUSICIAN, DECEMBER 1989”.
There are tracks from The Sensual World that get a lot of focus. The title track is one example. This Woman’s Work another. Many of the other songs are underrated and under-discussed. I have said how The Fog is one of my favourite Kate Bush cuts. I realise that hard decisions need to be made when it comes to releasing singles, though many might wonder why Love and Anger was selected as the third single from The Sensual World. Perhaps not as strong as other choices on the album, perhaps there has been this negativity through the years because of what Bush has said. Even if she sees it as throwaway and has been a bit dismissive, I feel that Love and Anger warrants better. There is a Stereogum feature about the song, though it is paywalled. We need to make it accessible and free to all. In fact, there needs to be more features about Love and Anger. From one of Kate Bush’s finest albums, there are many standout lines and moments from the song. I feel the opening lines refer to struggles Bush might have been having. Reflecting on relationship with Del Palmer, perhaps: “It lay buried here, it lay deep inside me/It's so deep I don't think that I can speak about it/It could take me all of my life”. Poetic, emotive and interesting, it is impossible not to jump into the song and the scenes unfolding: “To let go of these feelings/Like a bell to a Southerly wind?/We could be like two strings beating/Speaking in sympathy/What would we do without you?”. As Love and Anger turns thirty-four on 26th February, I felt it deserved salute and spotlight. Not as loved as, say, Deeper Understanding or The Sensual World, it is a track from an album that many hold dear. By 1989, Bush was in her thirties and was perhaps being more personal with her music. More willing to be more open. This can be heard in 1993’s The Red Shoes. Love and Anger might seem disposable and a lesser track, though I feel that it is…