FEATURE:
From the Ghosts of the Overlook Hotel…
Kate Bush’s The Dreaming at Thirty-Eight: Is Get Out of My House Her Finest Closing Track?
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SEPTEMBER sees three of Kate Bush’s albums…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signing copies of The Dreaming in 1982
celebrating anniversaries. Never for Ever was forty on the 8th, whereas Hounds of Love turns thirty-five on the 16th. Although it is not a big birthday, one cannot ignore The Dreaming’s thirty-eighth birthday tomorrow (13th). I like how Bush’s third, fourth, and fifth albums celebrate anniversaries in order, and that they were all released close to one another in terms of the month of September. Anyway. There will be love online for Bush’s album which, to me, took her beyond the realms of convention into the Avant Garde. One might say she was already there when she released her debut single, Wuthering Heights, in 1978, but in terms of opening up the doors and letting her imagination and limitations run wild, The Dreaming was really that moment! Bush co-produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly, and it seemed like a pleasant and inspired period for her. The fact that she decided to produce The Dreaming solo is no reflection on Kelly; it was more a steppingstone to Bush doing what she had always wanted to: producing on her own and having the final say. Never for Ever, thanks in part to Bush’s discovery of the Fairlight CMI (which she used on Never for Ever but utilised a lot more for The Dreaming) and a need to make an album more in her own image and in her own time (her second album, Lionheart, was rush-released in 1978; 1979’s The Tour of Life was fun but exhausting and intense) lead to the very different and transformative sound we have on Never for Ever.
Before moving onto The Dreaming, I want to quote from an article written by Ben Hewitt for The Quietus that marked forty years of Never for Ever, and how it could be Bush’s most pivotal album:
“Never For Ever is a starting point, not a zenith, and those miraculous opening six minutes aren’t as groundbreaking as her later innovations. But it is, I’d argue, the first of her LPs that’s genuinely experimental. Paddy’s greater involvement brought weird new instruments – zithers, kotos, musical saws – although Peter Gabriel introduced Bush to the Fairlight, the sonic equivalent of a Jedi being handed their first lightsaber; there were only three in the UK, and while she wouldn’t master it until later, her instant obsession speaks to how determined she was to bend her ornate style into bizarre new shapes. ‘All We Ever Look For’, her happy-go-lucky reflection on knotty parent-child relationships, mutates into several different forms by itself: it jumps between lurching, whistling synths, the koto’s fluttering strings, and a mishmash of Foley-style noises including chirping birds and hurried footsteps. “The whims that we’re weeping for/ Our parents would be beaten for,” sings Bush over its jaunty, oddball din, like the ringmaster at a baroque big top.
It is clear that Never for Ever was a big move forward for Bush: in many ways, The Dreaming was an augmentation and emphasis of that album, albeit with greater experimentation and intensity. Hewitt opinions that the political songs on Never for Ever, Army Dreamers, and Breathing, do not sound too radical now, and were probably not overly-revolutionary in 1980, yet this was relatively new territory for Bush, who felt very passionately about the world around her and subjects like warfare and nuclear disarmament.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot by Pierre Terrasson in 1982
The reason I mention this is because of the way Get Out of My House from The Dreaming reminds me a bit of Breathing from Never for Ever. It is clear that the intensity and power of Breathing was something new for Bush in 1980:
Nothing, though, is as devastating as the closing ‘Breathing’, a vision of nuclear doomsday with a horrifying wrinkle, like Threads turned into a poisonous lullaby (Bush, ever prescient, actually beat the film by three years). She sings as a terrified foetus breathing in toxic fumes inside the womb, slowly being killed by the blast’s fallout because mother doesn’t stand for comfort at all in this grim new world. Every element is beautifully brutal: the brooding electronics that fill the air like dangerous smog; the chilling, fairytale-gone-wrong image of plutonium chips “twinkling in every lung”, made extra-disturbing by gorgeous, glimmering chimes; the ominous scientific lecture that builds to a billowing, mushroom-cloud explosion of ungodly noise, followed by the background singers’ dread chant of “We are all going to die!” Most harrowing of all is the strangled, throat-tearing terror in Bush’s voice. In the past she’d shrieked, yelled, whooped and wailed, but she’d never all-out screamed like she screams here, a guttural cry for help that freezes the blood: “Leave me something to breathe!” Bush was as proud of its apocalyptic nightmare as she’d been unmoved by Lionheart. “It’s my little symphony,” she boasted to ZigZag”.
This takes me to the truly brilliant Get Out of My House. I have written more general pieces about The Dreaming through the years, and I have looked at the track, Houdini – which is my favourite Kate Bush song and the penultimate track on The Dreaming -, but I wanted to focus on this track for a couple of reasons. For one, it is a track one hardly hears on the radio, and it is one of the most urgent, eye-widening and memorable songs ever released by Bush! I often wonder what the music video would have looked like it Get Out of My House had been released as a single – I think it would have fared better than The Dreaming, and There Goes a Tenner! There is one other question I want to try and tackle but, before then, I have been looking on the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia for examples of where Bush explained the origins and inspiration for Get Out of My House:
“'The Shining' is the only book I've read that has frightened me. While reading it I swamped around in its snowy imagery and avoided visiting certain floors of the big, cold hotel, empty for the winter. As in 'Alien', the central characters are isolated, miles (or light years) away from anyone or anything, but there is something in the place with them. They're not sure what, but it isn't very nice.
The setting for this song continues the theme - the house which is really a human being, has been shut up - locked and bolted, to stop any outside forces from entering. The person has been hurt and has decided to keep everybody out. They plant a 'concierge' at the front door to stop any determined callers from passing, but the thing has got into the house upstairs. It's descending in the lift, and now it approaches the door of the room that you're hiding in. You're cornered, there's no way out, so you turn into a bird and fly away, but the thing changes shape, too. You change, it changes; you can't escape, so you turn around and face it, scare it away. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982
The song is called 'Get Out Of My House', and it's all about the human as a house. The idea is that as more experiences actually get to you, you start learning how to defend yourself from them. The human can be seen as a house where you start putting up shutters at the windows and locking the doors - not letting in certain things. I think a lot of people are like this - they don't hear what they don't want to hear, don't see what they don't want to see. It is like a house, where the windows are the eyes and the ears, and you don't let people in. That's sad because as they grow older people should open up more. But they do the opposite because, I suppose, they do get bruised and cluttered. Which brings me back to myself; yes, I have had to decide”.
I think The Dreaming is both one of Kate Bush’s best and most-underrated albums, and it is clear that she put so much of herself into the album. The effort, time and soul she gave to the whole process is unbelievable, and I would love to have seen footage of Get Out of My House being recorded! Was Bush confined in a smaller recording space, or was she throwing herself around a studio?! There are a few voices in the song, but Bush takes the lead, and there is backing where she shouts the words ‘slamming’ and ‘get out of my house’, and she exudes so much terror and physicality! I can hear Bush imbibing and possessing The Shining, and this rather ghostly and demented spirit! The electric guitars from Alan Murphy are great, and Paddy Bush adds some backing vocals. The percussion is tribal and bellicose, and drum talk is provided by Esmail Sheikh; percussion is done by Preston Heyman. I get these visions of the other musicians recording their parts alone/together, and Bush doing the vocal by herself, going back time and time again to ensure the next take is as heart-stopping as the previous! When thinking about Never for Ever, The Dreaming, and Hounds of Love, they share something in common: two incredible closing tracks. Never for Ever’s Army Dreamers, and Breathing are stunning and more politically-motivated than anything Bush recorded to that point. Hounds of Love’s second side, of course, is The Ninth Wave - and we end with the glorious one-two of Hello Earth, and The Morning Fog.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured at Abbey Road studios in May 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport
For me, the best final two tracks can be heard on The Dreaming. Houdini is this lush, gorgeous and intriguing story of the escapologist, Harry Houdini, which I have written about in detail. There, Bush breaks out a more guttural vocal at times (thanks to some milk and chocolate giving her voice more mucus and rawness!), and that is intensified in a very different song, Get Out of My House. An artist who could shift worlds and themes over the course of two songs, I think Get Out of My House is her best closing track – as much as I love the title track from The Kick Inside! Like all the truly epic closing tracks – including The Beatles’ A Day in the Life from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band -, you cannot follow Get Out of My House with anything, such is the effect it has on the listener! There are so many wonderful songs on The Dreaming – including All the Love, Leave It Open, and Suspended in Gaffa -, but I think Get Out of My House defines the album. Not only is this Kate Bush almost Jekyll-and-Hyde-like transforming from the sweeter, more balletic singer of The Klick Inside, and Lionheart, to this unleashed and transformed artist! As Graeme Thomson observed in his biography, Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, one can see some personal elements in the song.
Although The Dreaming is a phenomenal album, it took a lot out of Bush, as she was solo producing for the first time. There is so much experimentation and different layers through the album, she was barely getting out or eating healthily which, as one can imagine, was taking its toll on her physical and mental-health – one of the reasons why she retreated to the countryside before she recorded Hounds of Love and why, in 1983, she radically changed her life to include an overhaul to her diet, building her own studio, and spending time with her family and boyfriend without the stress of work. Thomson observes how Bush had this “hidden anger” because she had been intruded upon and had her privacy sacrificed through her career; she was releasing this anger and “giving living expression to her darkest fears and latent instincts”. One can analysis and dissect lyrics like “They come with their weather hanging 'round them/(Slamming)/But can't knock my door down!/(Slamming)” as a nod to press intrusion, and “This house is full of m-m-my mess/(Slamming)/This house is full of m-m-mistakes/(Slamming)/This house is full of m-m-madness/(Slamming)” as, perhaps, Bush taking on producing and trying to make sense of the task ahead of her. The Primal Scream element of the song is what really arrests me! Many songwriter would be too inhibited and conscious of truly letting themselves go and releasing their energy in such a raw and unfiltered way.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed on 23rd October, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Sunday Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
That said, Lana Del Rey is planning something similar, but it is not often Pop artists venture to such dark places – even if it can be quite cathartic. To me, Get Out of My House is one of Bush’s best songs, and it is her finest closing track. One might argue The Sensual World’s This Woman’s Work, or Aerial’s title track are hard to compete with, but it is the strangeness and ferocity of Get Out of My House that not only (vividly) announced this new artist who was almost shedding off old skin and trying to excorcise demons of intrusion and previous limitations, but someone who had grown in stature and confidence since her earliest days. My next feature, arriving on 14th September, talks about Hounds of Love and its importance thirty-five years after release. It is amazing to think that the next album track, chronologically, from Get Out of My House was Running Up That Hill from Hounds of Love. If Get Out of My House is this fierce, fascinating and fiery finale from The Dreaming, then Running Up That Hill is a more luscious, autumnal and warm opening chapter from Hounds of Love. On that song, Bush asks what it would be like if men and women could, with God’s help, swap places to see each other’s position through different eyes – the song was originally called A Deal with God, until it was noted more conservative and religious territories might consider it blasphemous and radio stations would not play it! I consider Hounds of Love to be an album of new awakenings, revitalisation and beginnings. Bush would go deep and dark through The Ninth Wave (especially on Waking the Witch), but Get Out of My House is a song where she makes a very bold and memorable statement – inspired by The Shining, Bush had this setting and outlet to express so many frustrations and emotions. The Dreaming turns thirty-eight tomorrow, and it is an album that warrants fresh inspection and appreciation. In Get Out of My House, the album boasts…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured at Abbey Road studios in May 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport
SUCH a perfect closer.