FEATURE:
One Place Before π
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton/National Portrait Gallery, London
in the coming weeks, as the album turns fifteen on 7th November. That album is special as it was her first album since 1993’s The Red Shoes, and there was great excitement when Aerial was announced! It is Kate Bush’s only double album, it consists, like Hounds of Love, of a more traditional and non-conceptual first side – even though Aerial’s songs are less commercial than those on Hounds of Love - and a conceptual suite on the second side (where Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave clocks in at under thirty minutes, Aerial’s A Sky of Honey is forty-two minutes in length). The second track on Aerial is π, where Bush, literally, recites the mathematical constant! Before the album’s least conventional and most unusual track came the one and only single: the mighty King of the Mountain. The Red Shoes’ last single, And So Is Love, was released on 7th November 1994, so it was over a decade since we saw Kate Bush on film – it is not strictly true, but that was her last single before King of the Mountain. Arriving on 24th October, 2005 came this single that was distinctly and pleasingly Kate Bush! Rather than return with something quite plodding or ordinary, we get a song about Elvis Presley! With some great drumming from Steve Sanger and Del Palmer on bass (her engineer and long-time friend) - and some backing vocals from her brother, Paddy Bush -, it was a triumphant single that reached number-four in the U.K. The song was first played on 21st September, 2005 on BBC Radio 2. King of the Mountain was actually written ten years prior to most songs on Aerial, so it seemed only natural that it would lend itself to being a single.
I really love the song’s video, and Bush looks amazing in it! Directed by Jimmy Murakami, there was a concern from Bush that she had put out a bit of weight and, frequently, she had to be reassured by Murakami that she looked great! I guess there was a certain degree of nerves that she might not have felt with the album itself. Of course, putting out a double album would have been intimidating, as she had put so much time and herself into it and, since the public last saw her, there had been some definite changes. She became a mother in 1998 (to her son, Bertie), and the music world was very different since she released And So Is Love. Shot in London on the 15th and 16th September, 2005 using live animation techniques rather than 3-D computers, there is this transfixing and classic look to the video! Bush felt that computers lacked human touch, and this is typical of her. She still prefers tape to digital because of its warm quality, and Aerial is an album whose second disc, A Sky of Honey, is about the passing of a day and the beauty of nature. To have the first visual taste of Aerial by computer-generated or unnatural-looking would have contrasted the album’s full and natural aesthetics! Elvis’ famous jumpsuit can be seen in the video, whilst Bush explores and weaves her way around his mansion.
Bush and Murakami worked together on the storyboard. She has always been involved in her videos, and I do like how there was this close and productive partnership with Murakami. Interestingly, the B-side to the U.K. release of King of the Mountain was a cover of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing and, like all cover versions Bush tackled, she provide her own inimitable take! King of the Mountain was the last single to feature Bush in the video. She directed the video for Deeper Understand (from 2011’s Director’s Cut), but she didn’t appear in the video; 50 Words for Snow’s single, Wild Man, featured an animated short film by Finn and Patrick at Brandt Animation. I wonder whether, if Bush releases another album, we will get a single that features her in it! I know she would have been eager to appear in King of the Mountain as it had been a while since she was last ‘in the public eye’, as it were - but there seems to be less necessity now, seeing as singles are digital and there isn’t that same incentive releasing one; where people can hold it and have this physical thing. Aerial performed incredibly and went into the top-three in the U.K. album charts. The reviews for Aerial were glowing and, after such a gap, there was no guarantee that Bush would be welcomed back with such fervency. However, having created such a masterful double album of such scope and brilliance, there was no doubt that the reception she was afforded would be anything less than captivated!
I will delve into Aerial more as the weeks to its fifteenth anniversary unfurl, but that lone single was released to a delighted and hungry world almost fifteen years back! When Bush returned to the stage in 2014 for Before the Dawn, she ended the first act with King of the Mountain. It featured as a brilliantly energetic and powerful bookmark – after she kicked off the show with Lily -, and it followed Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). I would urge anyone who does not own the live album of Before the Dawn to get it on vinyl, as the version of King of the Mountain sounds terrific! I know Aerial’s importance lies in each of the songs hanging together rather than this one single sticking out, but as the album’s opening track and the first single release since 1994, it was hugely exciting hearing this amazing new song that Bush had spent years with. The beautiful and striking video was the perfect accompaniment, and I think King of the Mountain stands up among Bush’s finest singles (The Guardian ranked King of the Mountain as Bush’s eleventh-best single in 2018). I just love the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll being paid tribute to by the…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
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