FEATURE:
Oh England My Lionheart
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the Lionheart cover shoot at Great Windmill Street, London in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Kate Bush’s Lionheart: A Rich and Underrated Album in a Year of Pressure and Change
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IN the coming Kate Bush features…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the Lionheart cover shoot at Great Windmill Street, London in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
I will sprinkle in more general themes, but this one is very much tied to Lionheart. I have explained how four of Kate Bush’s albums celebrate anniversaries in November. The Red Shoes is twenty-seven today (1st November), whilst 50 Words for Snow is nine soon, and Aerial is fifteen very shortly. Lionheart is forty-two on 12th November, and it remains one of Bush’s more underrated albums. Like The Red Shoes, perhaps Bush’s songwriting was not at its peak for Lionheart, but the album was recorded and released in the busiest year of her professional career – her very first. One can argue Bush was busier in 1979 when The Tour of Life was born and toured around Europe; 1985 was packed when Hounds of Love was released and, arguably, 1993 was a more hectic year than 1978, as Bush released The Red Shoes, in addition to the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Maybe there is a link between years where Bush is cramming in a lot and albums maybe not being that complete and rich. 1993 and 1978 are different in terms of circumstances. 1993 was the last year Bush would release an album until 2005; she faced the impact of the death of her mother (in 1992), and fatigue was starting to show. 1978 is almost a polar opposite, where it was the start of her professional career and everything lay ahead. The Kick Inside was only released in February of 1978 and Bush would uncover her second album a mere nine months later! I have said this a lot but, if Bush had more say regarding her schedule and releases, she would have left a second album for another year or so; perhaps given herself until the middle of 1979 to write new songs, then produced a tour for the end of 1979/start of 1980.
I feel she still could have produced the albums she did subsequently, and it would have meant Lionheart could have benefited from more planning and fresh creative blood. As it was, she only had inspiration and opportunity to write three new songs – Symphony in Blue, Full House, and Coffee Homeground. I want to focus on Lionheart’s ‘title track’, Oh England My Lionheart, as it is a song Bush sort of dismissed – but it remains beautiful and so evocative! I have written about Lionheart before, but I feel it is underrated to the extreme. Like The Kick Inside before it, the album was produced by Andrew Powell (Lionheart was recorded between July and September 1978). Recorded at Super Bear Studios, France, Bush would have been excited about putting out an album as I think The Kick Inside would have been in her head for a long time before she recorded it. So many of the songs on the album were very familiar to her, so getting together some fresh tracks was a necessary development. I think the success and popularity of The Kick Inside was a bit of a curse. Especially given the fact Wuthering Heights was a number-one and such a unique single, Kate Bush was catapulted into the spotlight very quickly. I want to bring in a few interview snippets – from different years – where Bush discussed her relationship with Lionheart. It is amazing that Bush managed to put out two albums in a year – she did that in 2011, but I think 1978 is more extraordinary -, and she fitted that in with so much promotion around the world!
I have focused on a few different songs from Lionheart, and I really don’t think there are many weak spots. Despite the fact EMI wanted their prodigy to put out a second album so soon after her debut – and she must have felt the weight on her shoulders -, the mixture of the three new songs and older tracks is amazing! Lionheart is a tougher, rockier album as we have songs like Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake, and Hammer Horror. Bush’s voice is less reliant on the higher register, and she is fuller and more varied, debatably, on Lionheart. Also, the compositions instrumentation seems more diverse, and I think there is a slight widening of the lyrical palette. There are a lot of positives and, with songs such as Symphony in Blue, Wow, and Kashka from Baghdad equalling the highs of The Kick Inside, Lionheart deserves more affection than it has received! One can speculate what a second album would have sounded like if Bush had been given time to write more new songs and take a breather. Would it have felt more like 1980’s Never for Ever in terms of its genres and confidence, or would she have created something similar to Lionheart, albeit it with a few tweaks?! The fact that she was not allowed to produce/co-produce was a sticking point – Bush ‘assisted’ production on Lionheart and she co-produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly -, but I have a lot of time for the album as a whole.
One of the songs that I have not yet singled out and wanted to throw some love at is Oh England My Lionheart. With help from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia (taken from an interview with Kate Bush), this is what the song is about:
“It's really very much a song about the Old England that we all think about whenever we're away, you know, "ah, the wonderful England'' and how beautiful it is amongst all the rubbish, you know. Like the old buildings we've got, the Old English attitudes that are always around. And this sort of very heavy emphasis on nostalgia that is very strong in England. People really do it alot, you know, like "I remember the war and...'' You know it's very much a part of our attitudes to life that we live in the past. And it's really just a sort of poetical play on the, if you like, the romantic visuals of England, and the second World War... Amazing revolution that happened when it was over and peaceful everything seemed, like the green fields. And it's really just a exploration of that. (Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978)
A lot of people could easily say that the song is sloppy. It's very classically done. It's only got acoustic instruments on it and it's done ... almost madrigally, you know. I dare say a lot of people will think that it's just a load of old slush but it's just an area that I think it's good to cover. Everything I do is very English and I think that's one reason I've broken through to a lot of countries. The English vibe is very appealing. (Harry Doherty, Enigma Variations. Melody Maker, November 1978)”.
Even if Bush has since distanced herself from the track, I think it is a gem that could easily have fitted on The Kick Inside. Maybe she wanted more songs about love on The Kick Inside, but it would have been nice to hear Oh England My Lionheart on the second side of her debut. One can only imagine the combination of excitement and exhaustion Bush experienced in 1978. From Wuthering Heights climbing the charts at the start of the year and her album being released in February, through to the interviews and promotion for both that followed, Bush definitely got a taste of the word and rigour of the music business very early on! I would be interested to hear about the conversation where Bush was working on getting The Kick Inside out to the world and EMI approaching her to start the process of her second album. I can imagine Bush was not overly-keen to be back in the studio so soon, and rushing an album could have derailed the momentum that was created and growing in 1978. As it was, she was charged with collecting an album’s worth of material. There is nothing quite as striking as Wuthering Heights on Lionheart, but its ten tracks enable Bush to progress (slightly) in terms of her vocals and sound whilst retaining the same shades and nuances that made The Kick Inside such a success.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush n 1978
Kate Bush’s relationship with Lionheart altered through the years. Taking from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, and there was some positivity in her voice in 1978:
“Maybe I'm a bit too close to it at the moment, but I find it much more adventurous than the last one. I'm much more happier with the songs and the arrangements and the backing tracks. I was getting a bit worried about labels from that last album; everything being in the high register, everything being soft, and airy-fairy. That was great for the time but it's not really what I want to do now, or what I want to do, say, in the next year. I guess I want to get basically heavier in the sound sense... and I think that's on the way, which makes me really happy.
I don't really think there are any songs on the album that are as close to Wuthering Heights as there were on the last one. I mean, there's lots of songs people could draw comparisons with. I want the first single that comes out from this album to be reasonably up-tempo. That's the first thing I'm concerned with, because I want to break away from what has previously gone. I'm not pleased with being associated with such soft, romantic vibes, not for the first single anyway. If that happens again, that's what I will be to everyone. (Harry Doherty, Kate: Enigma Variations. Melody Maker, November 1978)”.
I have talked about Lionheart being rushed and Bush having to toss songs together but, in her idyllic surroundings in France, there was time to hone certain songs - and, as it transpired, there was plenty of material for the album:
“[Recording in France] was an amazing experience. I mean it's the first time I've ever recorded out of the country. And the environment was really quite phenomenal, I mean it was just so beautiful, it was so unlike anything I'd seen for a long while. And I think there was so many advantages to it, but there were a couple of disadvantages - the fact that it was so beautiful, you couldn't help but keep drifting off to the sun out there, you know, that sort of thing. But you just didn't feel like you needed a break, because the vibes and the weather and everyone around was just so good, you know, you didn't feel like you were working. It was really, really fun”.
It was a difficult situation because there was very little time around and I felt very squashed in by the lack of time and that's what I don't like, especially if it's concerning something as important for me as my songs are, they're really important to me. But it all seemed to come together and it was really nicely guided by something, it just happened great. And there were quite a few old songs that I managed to get the time to re-write. It's a much lighter level of work when you re-write a song because the basic inspiration is there, you just perfect upon it and that's great. And they're about four new songs so they all came together, it was great. In fact, we ended up with more then we needed again, which is fantastic. (Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978)”.
A few years after Lionheart came out - with Bush was working as a solo producer -, and her sound had radically altered. I guess she had enough time then to look back at Lionheart and get a clearer impression of it – without feeling obligated to be positive when promoting it:
“I had only a week after we got back from Japan to prepare for the album. I was lucky to get it together so quickly. But the songs seem to me, now, to be somewhat overproduced. I didn't put enough time into them. (Richard Laermer, Kate Bush Touches the U.S. At Last, Pulse!, 1984)”.
“Even on the first two records, I was doing what I'm doing now as a artist, only because I was a lot younger, and I didn't have the room and the space to be able to truly present my music. I had to work with a producer and within certain kind of set-ups because of the fact that... that's how it was, I wasn't powerful enough basically to be able to say, ``Look, I'm producing this myself. This is what I do.'' And that's what I do now. I think that if I had been a little older, and if I'd had the experience at the time, I would have done it then, too. But I was - When I was making my first album, I was 18. I had never really worked with a band before, let alone a producer in a studio setup. So I just had - [Laughs] -I mean I just about had the guts, you know, to sing and keep it together.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during The Tour of Life in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne
But you learn very quickly what you want. By the time the second album was finished, I knew that I had to be involved. Even though they were my songs and I was singing them, the finished product was not what I wanted. That wasn't the producer's fault. He was doing a good job from his point of view, making it sound good and together. But for me, it was not my album, really. (John Dilberto, Britain's Renaissance of Concept Rock, Keyboard, 1985)”.
I guess it was that yearning to be more involved in production that meant 1980’s Never for Ever was such a revelation. In spite of Bush not having quite the input she would have liked on 1978’s Lionheart, it is a remarkable album that was completed in a truly frantic and restless year! The album has been certified Platinum in the U.K., and it reached the top-twenty in several nations’ charts; the single, Wow, reached fourteen in the U.K., and I think Bush could have released Symphony in Blue, and Kashka from Baghdad and scored higher chart positions than she obtained for the album’s first single, Hammer Horror – which only got to forty-four in the U.K. Oh England My Lionheart is a terrific song that I think Bush would feel differently about if she knew how many people loved it. Every track from Lionheart was performed for her 1979 tour. The Tour of Life received rave reviews, and I think part of that was to do with the songs’ strengths and what Bush managed to do with them in a live setting. Just ahead of its forty-second anniversary, I feel Lionheart should be reassessed; more of its songs should be played on the radio and, in a wild year (1978), Bush pulled together a second album that is very strong and eclectic. Even though Lionheart is not the album she would have wanted to release after The Kick Inside, listening back to it now staggers me – how did she manage to create an album so soon after her debut that…
IS so good!?