FEATURE:
Celluloid and Bookmarks
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 2011’s Director’s Cut
Looking at the Literary and Filmic Inspirations Behind Kate Bush Songs
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WHEN we think of Kate Bush…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush filming The Line, The Cross & the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
we often look towards books and T.V. Maybe films. Although she draws from people as a main source of influence, we know that Kate Bush is hugely influenced by that which comes from the page and screen. It started from her debut single, Wuthering Heights. Although not directly inspired by the Emily Brontë, Bush did read the novel after she wrote the song. It was a BBC 1967 adaptation of the novel that Bush caught and was moved by. The last section of the adaptation. A powerful moment that compelled her to write a number one single. I think fans of Bush’s music need to go back to the sources. Investigate the T.V., cinema and literature that Bush took from. I will investigate more of the sources that influenced Kate Bush’s music. For a start, checking out Wuthering Heights. That is where it all started with Kate Bush. Right through her albums, literature and the visual came into her lyrics. Lizie Wan/Lucy Wan/Fair Lizzie is an old murder ballad that was a key source for Kate Bush when she wrote The Kick Inside’s title track. Early sources of inspiration. She lived in a very creative household where she was introduced to so many sources of art. I do believe that we need a website or source where we collate the literature and films/T.V. behind some of Kate Bush’s finest songs. I shall get to some famous examples from Hounds of Love onwards. Running up to 1985, there were plenty of diverse sources that made her songs deeper and more colourful. On Lionheart, the song In Search of Peter Pan should compel people to look at J.M. Barrie’s classic novel. For an artist who could have made all of her earliest songs about love or herself, Bush was referencing and dipping into classic texts. I can imagine Bush writing the songs and thinking about these pages. Immersing herself in fantasy. Hammer Horror referencing Hammer Films. That classic studio. The old Horror films that other artists in the 1970s would not have been thinking about. Far beyond the Lionheart song, one should think about the legacy of Hammer Films.
Every Kate Bush album mixes human experiences with literary and filmic sources. So early on, Bush was ignited and moved by so many varied and diverse sources. Think about Babooshka from Never for Ever. The song’s titular character arranges to meet her husband, who is attracted to the character because she reminds him of his wife in younger days. Paranoia ruins the relationship. Bush cited the English folk song, Sovay, where a woman dresses as a highwayman and accosts her lover in order to test his devotion. Bush recalls hearing about that story from a T.V. series: “I'm sure I heard about it on some TV series years ago, when I was a kid", Bush remarked of the song's story. "You know, these period things that the BBC do. I think it's an extraordinary thing for someone to do... That's why I found it fascinating". Whereas many of Bush’s contemporaries were writing about their love lives and personal strains, Bush exposed herself to the screen and page perhaps more than most of her same-aged friends. Hugely accomplished at school and very curious, it is no shock that she would bring literature and film/T.V. into music. I will end with features that discuss Bush’s draw to celluloid and the written word. How that is integral to her art. The Infant Kiss (from Never for Ever) should draw people to a film that influenced it:
“It was based on the film, The Innocents. I saw it years ago, when I was very young, and it scared me, and when films scare you as a kid, I think they really hang there. It’s a beautiful film, quite extraordinary. This governess is supposed to look after these children, a little boy and a girl, and they are actually possessed by the spirits of the people who were in the house before. And they keep appearing to the children. It’s really scary – as scary on some levels as the idea of The Exorcist, and that terrified me. The idea of this young girl, speaking and behaving like she did was very disturbing, very distorted. But I quite like that song.
Into The Dreaming, Bush was taking from literature and T.V. Sat in Your Lap came at an interesting time. When she was experiencing writer’s block, she saw Stevie Wonder perform in concert and was compelled to write. A song about a quest for knowledge seems to sum up Bush’s songwriting. I don’t think Bush was trying to escape or move away from her own personal experience and become too open. Instead, she saw and sees songwriting as something higher Where she could enrich and inspire listeners. Bring something beyond the ordinary and commercial into her music:
“‘Sat In Your Lap’ is very much a search for knowledge. And about the kind of people who really want to have knowledge but can’t be bothered to do the things that they should in order to get it. So they’re sitting there saying how nice it would be to have this or to do that without really desiring to do the things it takes you to get it. And also the more you learn the more ignorant you realize you are and that you get over one wall to find an even bigger one. [Laughs]
Interview by J.J. Jackson for MTV, 1985”.
Even There Goes a Tenner seems to come from old crime capers. Drawing from films that Bush might have seen as a child. In reverse, Bush seems to create her own worlds. Songs more as short films or chapters from books. The Dreaming’s Night of the Swallow seems like it could have been taken from literature. I will move to Hounds of Love, but think about Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). How epic that is. Even though the song was not inspired by a film or book, the song was used in Stranger Things. A reversal. Bush’s music inspiring a powerful scene rather than a powerful scene inspiring Bush. Get Out of My House was inspired by The Shining. Rather than Bush taking from the film, it was the Stephen King book that moved her to write one of her most potent and scary songs.
Hounds of Love is where Bush’s attraction to and understanding of cinema and literature combined in an album that is its own film. The title track’s intro features a quote from a line spoken in the film Night of the Demon by Maurice Denham. A source that should be investigated. The video for the song, directed by Kate Bush, was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. As we move through the albums, we are collating a bookshelf with various texts. Bringing in cinematic sources that make for compelling viewing. I would love to see an illustration of Bush writing at her desk in the centre of the image dreaming or imagining. We then see a bookshelf with texts that have influenced her songs. Films or old film cannisters containing celluloid that have gone into her songs. Bush turning the title song of her most acclaimed album into its own film almost:
“In the song ‘Hounds Of Love’, what do you mean by the line ‘I’ll be two steps on the water’, other than a way of throwing off the scent of hounds, or whatever, by running through water. But why ‘two’ steps?
Because two steps is a progression. One step could possibly mean you go forward and then you come back again. I think “two steps” suggests that you intend to go forward.
But why not “three steps”?
It could have been three steps – it could have been ten, but “two steps” sounds better, I thought, when I wrote the song. Okay.
Consider how the second side of Hounds of Love, The Ninth Wave, was influenced in part by Tennyson and his poem, The Idylls of the King. The Ninth Wave’s title was influenced by that. Though, if you read more, you can see the narrative of The Ninth Wave can be applied to the Tennyson poem. The natural cinematic flavours and suggestions of Mother Stands for Comfort and The Big Sky. Contrasting songs in many ways, though both pulled from literature or T.V. Bush would have had in mind. Trying to create her own larger piece. Almost like an artist building a landscape with different colours and layers. Another incredible clash of film and literature comes from Cloudbusting. Not only did the video star the late Donald Sutherland, realising where the story and lyrics came from. The song was inspired by Peter Reich’s 1973 memoir, A Book of Dreams. I hope that people who love the song go back to the source. Bush discussed the song’s origins:
“This was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It’s about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child’s point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a ‘cloudbuster’; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it”.
Though Aerial, Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow have film, T.V. and literary influences, The Sensual World has its share. I will cover this album and then finish with features that discuss the cinematic and literary sources that are so natural and embedded in her music. In some ways, Bush’s albums seem like their own films or novels., Chapters and scenes being played out in each song. I have not even mentioned some of the literary and filmic influences subtly worked into songs. Like Pinocchio in Get Out of My House. It is everywhere! 1989’s The Sensual World is bookmarked by literature/film. This Woman’s Work closes the album. It featured in the 1988 film, She’s Having a Baby. Even though Bush did not get permission to take word directly from James Joyce’s Ulysses for The Sensual World, it was very much at the heart of the song:
“There’s a few songs that have been difficult to write. I think the most frustrating and difficult to write was the song, ‘The Sensual World’. Uh, you’ve probably heard some of the story, that originally it was written to the lyrics at the end of ‘Ulysses’, and uh, I just couldn’t believe how the whole thing came together, it was so… It was just like it was meant to be. We had this sort of instrumental piece, and uh, I had this idea for like a rhythmic melody, and I just thought of the book, and went and got it, and the words fitted – they justfitted, the whole thing fitted, it was ridiculous. You know the song was saying, ‘Yes! Yes!’. And when I asked for permission, you know, they said, ‘No! No!’ That was one of the hardest things for me to swallow. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was that, um, I wasn’t allowed to have access to this great piece of work that I thought was public. And in fact I really didn’t think you had to get permission but that you would just pay a royalty. So I was really, really frustrated about it. And, um… kind of rewrote the words, trying to keep the same – same rhythm and sounds. And, um, eventually, through rewriting the words we also changed the piece of music that now happens in the choruses, so if they hadn’t obstructed the song, it would have been a very different song. So, to look at it positively, although it was very difficult, in the end, I think it was, it was probably worth all the trouble. Thank you very much.
Kate Bush Con, 1990”.
There are articles like this that explore how gothic filmmaking influenced Kate Bush. Bush directing and writing The Line, the Cross and the Curve around the time of The Red Shoes. This article focused on Kate Bush and her ‘Cinema of Sound’. I am going to end with this article that explores Bush’s literary and filmic influences:
“Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)’ from Hounds of Love is number one on the UK singles chart and padded shoulder suits are all the rage, but, no, it’s not 1985.
Just as a new generation of listeners were introduced to the wonders of Queen thanks to 1992’s Wayne’s World, Gen Z have been inaugurated into the mystic magick of Kate Bush’s own undefinable brand of gothic-art-pop through the latest season of Stranger Things.
Unlike her contemporaries, Kate existed out of time. Not content to cater to the fashions or references of the era, she wove her eclectic knowledge of literature, film and art into her songs alongside comedy, mime, theatre and the macabre to carve out her own niche of mystical surrealism and pop performance art.
When everybody else was singing about a “crazy little thing called love” or wondering whether you “like pina colada”, Kate was invoking Shakespeare’s Othello, “put out the light, then put out the light” she sings in 1980’s ‘Blow Away’, the same lines he speaks to Desdemona before killing her.
Whenever I reread Emily Brönte’s 1847 Wuthering Heights, its imagery of the deep dusky moors and Heathcliff’s sadistic power are entwined with the girl with the huge hair and wide eyes in the blinding white dress, limbs moving as if casting deep spells.
Kate was only nineteen when she released ‘Wuthering Heights’ in 1978 and she appeared on Top of the Pops out of the darkness like she knew the secrets of life itself; she was Cathy at the window, histrionic, dazzling, ethereal, come to life.
Jack Clayton’s 1961 film The Innocents (itself inspired by Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw) lay the foundation for the disturbing tale at the centre of Kate’s song ‘The Infant Kiss’, where she sings ethereally “I’ve never fallen for/a little boy before”, establishing herself further as a wunderkind at crafting melodies out of taboo subject matters.
Through her songs, she is able to imaginatively project herself into different personas, like a grieving son looking back at his memories of childhood wonder. ‘Cloudbusting’ was inspired by Peter Reich’s memoir A Book of Dreams about his father, the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and the ‘cloudbuster’ machine he tried and failed to build.
Mainstream contemporary art wasn’t altogether excluded, just given the quintessential Kate twist: in ‘Get Out Of my House’, she sings about Stephen King/Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, only from the perspective of the house. “The house is like a human being, ” she said of it, “The person has been hurt and has decided to keep everybody out. “
1989’s ‘The Sensual World’ from the album of the same name is a delicious paean to early feminist icon Molly Bloom from James Joyce’s Ulysses. The novel ends with the roaring power of Molly’s soliloquy, an ode to a voracious appetite for all things carnal: Kate’s song explodes into a fit of velvety “mm yes”, channelling Molly’s voice, “and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
The album The Red Shoes signalled her 1993 comeback, a work three years in the making, aptly named after the 1948 Powell and Pressburger film (and the Hans Christian Andersen tale) all about the gruelling agonies and ecstasies of artistic obsession.
It’s befitting that Max in Stranger Things, in her grief and solitude, would find her salvation in ‘Running up that Hill (A Deal with God)’, and turn to Kate, of all artists, an enigmatic figure you could project your feelings of being
Just like Max, when I was in my own version of hell/upside down as a depressed teen, hearing Kate’s voice that oscillates between a feral growl and a soothing whisper, singing about all of the ways in which it’s possible to hurt, felt like healing in itself.
She could be an angelic apparition one moment and horrific monster the next, sometimes within the same song, like in ‘Hammer Horror’, a campy embrace of the movies of the same name. “’I’d like my music to intrude. Not many females succeed with that”, she said in a 1977 interview.
Her intrusion not only kicked down the doors for female artists today but set a precedent, both creatively and behind the scenes; Kate was not only the singer, but songwriter, producer and choreographer on her albums. Her influence can be heard in the conceptual storytelling of St. Vincent’s music or Florence and the Machine’s avant-garde pop romanticism.
Within her music, she gave women permission to be everything, all at once: to be soft and sweet, to howl and shriek.
The multitudes she contained were not only freeing, but slyly transgressive, defying what the image of a female pop star should be”.
Kate Bush is a different kind of artist. A creator. A visionary. How she could blend pages from literature and scenes from films alongside universal sentiments and human emotions. Exploring characters from fiction and real life in such a distinct way. When we hear songs that have cinema and literature in them, it is important to go back to the sources. How rich Bush’s influences were. We can take it all back to her childhood and how curious she was. Amazing to see all these colourful and diverse threads in her songs. More of a filmmaker than a songwriter, we all need to appreciate Kate Bush’s…
CINEMATIC and literary world.