FEATURE:
A Foetus's Perspective of Nuclear Holocaust
Kate Bush’s Breathing at Forty
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THERE is never any shortage of…
Kate Bush-related things to explore and, in the coming weeks, I have a few things to tick off the list. Right now, an important song of hers is turning forty. Breathing was released on 14th April, 1980, and it is from her album, Never for Ever. Some might query why Breathing is such an important work. Bush has songs in her cannon that are more celebrated and finer – including Wuthering Heights, and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) -, but there was this very noticeable and important growth that occurred in 1980. What propelled this shift? Well, Kate Bush is an artist who always likes to move and never likes to repeat herself. After Lionheart in 1978 – her second album -, and the Tour of Life of 1979, there was this feeling of taking a step in a new direction. Her first two albums, The Kick Inside (1978), and Lionheart, are defined by a very distinct vocal sound and musical texture. Bush’s voice, for the most part, is agile and high-pitched; she has this romantic, seductive quality, and most of her songs concerned the personal rather than the political. Sure, right from her debut album, she was writing songs that went way beyond matters of the heart. Look at The Kick Inside’s Wuthering Heights, Them Heavy People, and The Kick Inside, for instance – between the three tracks, she ticks off classic literature, spirituality/spiritual teachers, and incest. Bush has never been afraid to let her imagination roam, and her songwriting is among the most original ever committed to tape.
Whilst she was certainly unique and broad in terms of themes, her first couple of albums featured little in the way of political songs; numbers that were symphonic and raw. Whilst there is no single reason why Bush wrote Breathing, I think there was a sense of tension in the air that there was going to be nuclear destruction. I will talk about the song’s meaning and details soon but, not only did she write Breathing for Never for Ever; Army Dreamers concerns young soldiers, barely out of school, being sent to die. Whilst that song features quite high-pitched vocals (Bush imitating an Irish accent), Breathing is a completely different thing. Vocally, one can notice a slight move away from the more theatrical and gymnastic sounds of The Kick Inside , and Lionheart. Breathing features, in my view, one of Bush’s best-ever vocals. Symphonic, utterly engrossing and compelling, it is almost a transformation of the girl into a young woman. I think many people in the press considered Bush to be a bit hippy-dippy, airy-fairy; maybe a bit naïve and wide-eyed – someone who was very different to a lot of her Rock and Punk peers. Of course, this sort of patronising attitude was not the reason Bush included a song like Breathing into an album. That idea of Bush as this ingenue who was a bit out-there and not too serious…that must have hit her quite hard.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot by Andy Phillips in 1980
I want to source an interview from NME of 1979, where Danny Baker met Kate Bush. I think, in the years since the interview was published, Baker has distanced himself somewhat; he wanted to make the people at NME laugh and, to his credit, there is a jocularity and sense of confrontation that is refreshing – most interviews with Kate Bush were very well-mannered and samey. I want to source a few extracts from the interview – which was published on 20th October, 1979 – not very long before Breathing was recorded over a few days in early-1980:
“Asking a few more questions, I begin to realise that this isn't the kind of stuff that weekloads of Gasbags [NME letters page] are made of. I'm searching for a key probe, but with Kate Bush – well, there's not likely to be anything that will cause the 12-inch banner-headline stuff, is there now? I recall Charlie Murray's less than enthusiastic review of her Palladium shows, which were apparently crammed with lame attempts to "widen" the audience's artistic horizons – y'know, lots of people dressed as violins and carrots an' that. CSM reckons it was one of the most condescending gigs in the history of music. Kate had read the review, but she didn't break down.
Well, that certainly seems a worthwhile thing to do, all right, although it has in fact been done before. Y'see, occasionally Kate allows the poet and all-round Tyrannosaurus Rex dreamer to slip out, a sucker for Lord of the Rings. For a start I have cut about a hundred "wows" and "amazings" from her speech. She talks at length about how important she feels it is to be "creating" all the time, and when I asked her if she looked to the news for any song inspiration I got this curious answer:
"Well, whenever I see the news, it's always the same depressing things. War's hostages and people's arms hanging off with all the tendons hanging out, you know. So I tend not to watch it much. I prefer to go and see a movie or something, where it's all put much more poetically. People getting their heads blown off in slow motion, very beautifully."
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in May 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix
She grins broadly again. Kate is an artist through and through, seeing the world as a crazy canvas on which to skip. Her outrageous charm covers the fact that we are in the midst of a hippy uprising of the most devious sorts. I approach her on the question of being a woman in pop music once more”.
You can read the full interview, but there is a sense that Baker had little respect for Bush’s music at the time. I am not suggested this interview was what compelled Bush to ‘get serious’, but some corners of the press had a very particular impression of who she was and how deep her music was. Breathing is the lead single from her third album. Bush released Breathing as the first single from the album, which signals that she wanted to send out a big message straight away. Army Dreamers, the other big political-minded track, was released as the third single – the more commercial Babooshka was the second single from the album. Whilst there are tracks on the album that are a bit more accessible and ‘commercial’ (if that is the most fiting word) – such as The Wedding List, and Violin, I love the fact that Breathing was the first single from Never for Ever – quite a big change from Wuthering Heights (her iconic debut single) and Hammer Horror (the lead single from Lionheart).
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush circa 1980
Breathing concerns nuclear war as seen from the perspective of a foetus. The foetus cannot hear or see the bombs, but he/she knows that their life might be terminated as his/her mother is breathing in radioactive air – “Outside/Gets inside/Through her skin/I've been out before/But this time it's much safer in”. Bush’s lyrics are always extraordinary, but the way she delivers “Breathing/Breathing my mother in/Breathing my beloved in…”, is a mix of the soothing-cum-haunting. Whilst those lines are the mantra and most devastating part of the song, there are other lines that catch my ear. “We've lost our chance/We're the first and the last, ooh/After the blast/Chips of plutonium/Are twinkling in every lung” is so evocative and striking! In terms of her vocals, I think this is the first real high point after Wuthering Heights for Bush. Her band are incredible and give her exceptional support. Breathing featured: drums: Stuart Elliott; fretless bass: John Giblin; Fender Rhodes: Max Middleton; electric guitar: Alan Murphy, Brian Bath; Prophet: Larry Fast; percussion: Morris Pert; backing vocals: Roy Harper. The backing vocal from Roy Harper is especially stirring and impactful – Bush provided her vocals to Harper’s 1980 album, The Unknown Soldier. In terms of explaining Breathing and its background, Kate Bush gave some explanations in the press. When speaking with Keyboard in 1985, she said the following:
"'Breathing' is about human beings killing themselves. I think that people smoking is one of those tiny things that says a lot about human beings. I mean, I smoke and enjoy it, but we smoke and we know it's dangerous. Maybe there's some kind of strange subconscious desire to damage ourselves. It would seem so if you looked back through history, wouldn't it?"
Bush was worried at the time that Breathing was quite negative and heavy; that it was a bit real and might not be as popular and widely-played as previous singles like Wow (the second single from Lionheart). Rather than the foetus/embryo reflecting on the present (1980), Bush saw it more as a vision from the future; a spiritual embryo that gives warning about what could happen to the world if things continue as they are. Although Breathing only charted as high as number-sixteen in the U.K., I think the track is hugely important. Look at what is happening now and the position we are in. Whilst we are not threatened with nuclear war, it is a very scary time, and I think Breathing sounds as relevant today as it did in 1980. I want to bring in a few extracts from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia that pertain to Breathing:
“The track includes spoken words describing the flash from a nuclear bomb. The exact words - which are missing from the artwork on the album - are: "In point of fact it is possible to tell the Difference between a small nuclear explosion and a large one by a very simple method. The calling card of a nuclear bomb is the blinding flash that is far more dazzling than any light on earth - brighter even than the sun itself - and it is by the duration of this flash that we are able to determine the size of the weapon…
After the flash a fireball can be seen to rise, sucking up under it the debris, dust and living things around the area of the explosion, and as this ascends, it soon becomes recognisable as the familiar 'mushroom cloud'. As a demonstration of the flash duration test let's try and count the number of seconds for the flash emitted by a very small bomb; then a more substantial, medium-sized bomb; and finally, one of our very powerful, 'high-yield' bombs".
“'Breathing' is a warning and plea from a future spirit to try and save mankind and his planet from irretrievable destruction. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)”.
“From my own viewpoint that's the best thing I've ever written. It's the best thing I've ever produced. I call that my little symphony, because I think every writer, whether they admit it or not, loves the idea of writing their own symphony. The song says something real for me, whereas many of the others haven't quite got to the level that I would like them to reach, though they're trying to. Often it's because the song won't allow it, and that song allowed everything that I wanted to be done to it. That track was easy to build up. Although it had to be huge, it was just speaking - saying what had to be put on it. In many ways, I think the most exciting thing was making the backing track. The session men had their lines, they understood what the song was about, but at first there was no emotion, and that track was demanding so much emotion. It wasn't until they actually played with feeling that the whole thing took off. When we went and listened, I wanted to cry, because of what they had put into it. It was so tender. It meant a lot to me that they had put in as much as they could, because it must get hard for session guys. They get paid by the hour, and so many people don't want to hear the emotion. They want clear, perfect tuning, a 'good sound'; but often the out-of-tuneness, the uncleanliness, doesn't matter as much as the emotional content that's in there. I think that's much more important than the technicalities. (Kris Needs, 'Fire In The Bush'. Zigzag (UK), 1980)”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush circa 1980
“There was a point in people's lives when the imminent prospect of war was scaring the shit out of them, and that resulted in a lot of anti-war songs. At that time it was worthwhile. When I wrote 'Breathing' it seemed like people were sitting waiting for a nuclear bomb to go off. Nuclear power seemed like... Someone was getting set to blow us up without our consent. I felt I wanted to write a song about it. If it was something that was bothering so many people then yes, I think it was worthwhile. Songs or films or little individuals don't do anything on a big level. Big things need bigger things to change them (Richard Cook, 'My Music Sophisticated? I'd Rather You Said That Than Turdlike!'. NME (UK), October 1982)”.
I do think the pre-Hounds of Love period is very underrated. Bush was exceptional from the start, but I think Breathing, and Never for Ever marked a turning point. The video, too, in an extraordinary thing – from an artist who always put her all into her videos. When Breathing turns forty on 14th April, I do hope it gets some airplay, and more people discover the song. It is one of Kate Bush’s many gems, and I felt it only right to mark its fortieth anniversary. Listening to Breathing, it is clear that the power, relevance and beauty of the song will…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photoed at the British Rock and Pop Awards on 26th February, 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix
NEVER fade.