FEATURE:
A Worthy Encore
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during 1979’s The Tour of Life/ PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne
Max Browne’s Three Nights in Hammersmith: Kate Bush onstage in 1979 and The Tour of Life
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I keep joking that every week…
IMAGE CREDIT: Max Browne
seems to see a new Kate Bush book being released! Recently, yet another book was announced in the form of Max Browne’s Three Nights in Hammersmith: Kate Bush onstage in 1979. I am tempted to buy it but, as it is £87.50, it may have to wait a while! I think we might see one or two other Kate Bluish-related books before the end of this year. I knew that the Browne book was coming. The photos he shot during that hugely exciting and memorable series of shows for The Tour of Life in London (the tour went around the U.K. and Europe) are amazing! There is a lot to enjoy regarding the new book:
“Industry comments on the photographs:-
' . . a new book which will showcase his incredible photographs.' (KateBushNews)
' . . a revelation to many:' (Record Collector magazine)
' . . the best live shots of her . .' (Jill Furmanovsky, RockArchive)
'This is a treasure trove!' (Guido Harari, Wall of Sound)
'Nice stuff Max . .' (Del Palmer)
This book is a photographic presentation of the last three concerts of a tour that is now regarded as one of the greatest in Rock Music history. The 250 photographs by Max Browne included here illustrate why, song by song, as Kate Bush sings, dances and role-plays her way into legend at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, in 1979.
Renowned photographer Jill Furmanovsky has contributed the Foreword: The founder of RockArchive is also a fan.
All proceeds beyond the cost of this self-published edition are to be donated to charities supporting the endangered animals of our world disadvantaged by Man”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne
I think a lot of authors and fans of Kate Bush are finding that, during lockdown, they are listening to her music more and considering its impact. It is good that there is a new photobook, as this is an area that is a little understocked. I feel photos can illustrate Bush’s work and live performances in a way that words cannot. Max Browne’s recollections are important, yet it is the way he captured her during such a big and thrilling tour that people will remember. The Tour of Life, as I have written about several times before, was such an original and influential show. Starting in April 1979, the tour lasted just over one month. Consisting of twenty-four performances from Bush's first two studio albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart (both 1978), it incorporated mime, magic, and readings during costume changes. Of course, many of were not alive when that tour took place. There are YouTube videos that are from that tour - and, whilst the quality is not great, we can get an essence of what people experienced in 1979. I think the photos provides a series of snapshots of the true experience; the way Bush transformed during the show and what an undertaking it was to pull off such an accomplished live feat! I would advise people to buy the book and get a feel of the magnificent The Tour of Life.
I will wrap up soon, but I want to bring in Dreams or Orgonon. They provided their take and details on the preparation for The Tour of Life and how it was received:
“Planning for Bush’s tour (known then and during its existence just as the Kate Bush Tour) began at the end of December 1978 with a brainstorming session involving Bush and set designer David Jackson at EMI’s headquarters. Further preliminary meetings were held at East Wickham Farm in January, and shortly afterwards Bush was meeting wardrobe consultant Lisa Hayes. Rehearsals then began in earnest: Bush spent mornings at The Place performance center in Euston, preparing the tour’s dance routines with choreographer Anthony Van Laast (now of Mamma Mia! and Harry Potter fame) and dancers Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst. These sessions were as collaborative as they were instructive: Bush had worked with Van Laast before, as he’d appeared in the “Hammer Horror” music video as her masked dancing partner. They spent the mornings designing routines for the show, informed by Van Laast’s seasoned dancing skill and Bush’s mime training. It was a positive union: the resulting concerts have notable dancing which is inseparable from the songs it’s set to. As Bush had to both sing and dance onstage, she and Van Laast worked out choreography that would both work as dance and allow her to sing without losing her breath. The minimalism of “Moving” and Bush’s all-limb gesturing during it is one such careful work of planning, as is her most frenetic gun-happiness during the extended bridge of “James and the Cold Gun,” where she doesn’t sing.
Every tour performance began with “Moving.” Whale sounds were played for several seconds, as they were on The Kick Inside, while a transparent blue curtain cordoned off those onstage from the audience, with only a bright light in the center of the stage and the silhouette of Bush completely visible through it. Then came the vocal and the piano: “moving stranger, does it really matter/as long as you’re not afraid to feel?” called Bush to her audience as the curtain was pulled back. Her dance, made up of open arms and gestures aimed at the outline of her body, was an invitation to the audience to collaborate and be part of her music. According to every recording of these concerts, it was a steady introduction: when the first number ended, the audience cheered loudly. “The show went well and the audience was wildly appreciative,” said Lisa Bradley in the Kate Bush newsletter, “it was unfortunate that we rarely had a chance to see it as the merchandise stand had to be looked after all the time.”
Every night of the show got stark raving reviews from the British press. Mike Davies of Melody Maker admitted going to see Bush “more as a pilgrim than a critic,” John Coldstream of the Daily Telegraph praised her “balance between the vivid and the simple,” and former Bush naysayer Sandy Robertson of Sounds announced she had “seen the light.” There were a couple reviews from more negative quarters, mostly notably by Charles Shaar Murray in NME, who opined that “her songwriting hints that it means more than it says and in fact it means less” and “her shrill self-satisfied whine is unmistakable.” One could smugly grin at Murray for panning a critically praised and influential tour in 1979, but why do that when he invented every sexist whinge about Lauren Mayberry more than three decades early? It’s a break from the orthodoxy of Bush’s tour reviews, and thus in keeping with Bush’s ethos.
In theory Bush was doing the Lionheart Tour, as it was her most recent album. Yet in practice, it was equally the Kick Inside Tour. All the songs from both albums were performed barring “Oh To Be In Love” (perhaps justifiably — it’s the Bush album track which most feels like a holdover from the Phoenix years), plus a couple of new songs called “Violin” and “Egypt,” the latter of which we’ll return to next week. It’s a well-organized setlist, as Kick and Lionheart are both preoccupied with the sort of adolescent world-storming the tour is. Bush’s concert setlists show off this interplay of albums well: Act One is constructed around the lighter songs of The Kick Inside like “Them Heavy People” and “L’Amour Looks Something Like You” with the two new songs, while Act Two centers the anxiety-ridden bulk of Lionheart plus “Strange Phenomena,” and Act Three provides the show with a theatrical climax of “Coffee Homeground” and “Kite” before the encore of “Oh England My Lionheart,” and finally “Wuthering Heights.” Setlists can be unruly things: while touring for albums, you’ll want to intersperse the newer material with the hits. Bush keeps this in mind while also remembering she’s doing a stage show with act breaks and thematic resonances. It’s a strong act, one that’s bolstered by its setlist.
PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne
It was a wild time for Bush. “It’s like I’m seeing God, man!” she said enthusiastically. When she’s onstage in a black-and-gold bodysuit and blasting her bandmates with a golden, it’s easy to believe she made that comment while looking in a mirror. It takes a shot of the divine (or perhaps a deal with it?) to stage a tour of this magnitude and success while dealing with such severe drama behind the scenes? It’s no wonder Bush stayed in the studio after this, recording closer to home all the time until she set up a studio in her backyard. Even when she finally returned to the stage thirty-five years later, she made sure her venue was in nearby London. 1979 was a different time. A Labour government was feasible, and Kate Bush was regularly on TV. She plays things close to the chest now, never retiring from music but often looking infuriatingly close to it. In a way, she retired in 1979. Kate Bush the media sensation was a spectacle of the Seventies. She cordoned herself off afterwards, becoming Kate Bush the Artist. Next week we’ll look at Never for Ever, the first post-tour Kate Bush album where she unleashes a flood of ideas into the world. What does one do after the Tour of Life? In Bush’s words: “everything”.
It is remarkable to think that Bush, so early in her career, delivered this sublime and rave-reviewed tour. I think that Max Browne’s new book will give us a rare insight into what it was like to watch the music and theatre unfold. Even though most of us were not there, seeing his incredible photos bring us closer to…
A once-in-a-lifetime experience!