FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Aerial
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton/National Portrait Gallery, London
Revisiting An Endless Sky of Honey
___________
I am revisiting Kate Bush’s Aerial…
because it is an album I did not cover fully during my series that ranks the songs from her studio releases. The reason for that is that its second side/disc compromises nine songs. It is a gorgeous, glorious forty-two-minute suite of songs that is a nice accompaniment to the first side, A Sea of Honey – a shorter half that is more conventional and has seven standalone tracks. Originally entitled A Sky of Honey, we hear and feel a complete day. From Prelude and the morning awakening through to Sunset and on to the darkness of Nocturn, it then ends with the wonderful title track. It is a hugely impressive series of songs that I always heard as a suite. On the album, the individual tracks are there so we can see the titles and feel them as their own songs. As of mid-May 2010, Aerial was released for the first time on iTunes. The second disc, A Sky of Honey, then ran as one continual track - its title was changed to An Endless Sky of Honey (the track titles merged altogether on the sleeve). In 2011, Bush re-released Aerial alongside others of her albums on her own label Fish People, where they appeared again in 2018 in Remastered versions. The reason why (for one) An Endless Sky of Honey was changed back to A Sky of Honey is because of the involvement in the album of Rolf Harris. Due to his convictions for sexual assault, In the 2018 remastered edition, A Sky of Honey was returned to its original nine tracks. The spoken parts parts that Harris originally voiced (An Architect's Dream, The Painter's Link) were removed and replaced by Albert ‘Bertie’ McIntosh (Bush's son).
I am going to talk about the second disc of Aerial and why I feel we need to see a return to An Endless Sky of Honey/a separate project that explores the songs. I think it is important to source from an interview that was conducted in 2005 by The Guardian. One needs to remember that there was no expectation for a Kate Bush album in the 2000s. After 1993’s The Red Shoes, there was little intimation and suggestion that she would release an eighth studio album. Whereas some rumoured that she had retired or was super-reclusive, the simple fact was she was taking a break, working on her first double album, in addition to being a mother to Bertie (who was born in 1998). I wouldn’t normally say that a new album after twelve years is worth the wait. In the case of Aerial, I definitely think that it was! Not that I want to source the entire interview - though it is interesting reading the interaction between Bush and Tom Doyle:
“We have been waiting for Kate Bush. For 12 years, she has been missing, Garbo-like, from public life, leaving tabloid reporters to rattle up frothing reports, and patient fans to gratefully absorb every molecule of drip-fed information. Until very recently, EMI Music's directors were chewing their nails down to their elbows wondering if their most elusive signatory would ever finish making her eighth, long-gestated record, Aerial. The rest of us could rely on nothing but whispered rumour, adding to an already towering myth.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton/National Portrait Gallery, London
Yet here, in Kate Bush's home, there is a 47-year-old mother of one, the antithesis of the mysterious recluse, dressed in a workday uniform of brown shirt, jeans and trainers, hair clipped up in practical busy-busy fashion, all wary smiles and nervous laughter. We shake hands, tentatively. She seems tiny (five foot three-and-a-half inches) and more curvaceous than the waif-like dancer of popular memory.
Famously, Kate Bush hates interviews - the last was four years ago, the previous one seven years before that. So the prospect of this interrogation, the only one she has agreed to endure in support of Aerial, must fill her with dread. Around us there is evidence of a very regular, family-shaped existence - toys and kiddie books scattered everywhere, a Sony widescreen with a DVD of Shackleton sitting below it. Atop the fireplace hangs a painting called Fishermen by James Southall, a tableau of weather-beaten seadogs wrestling with a rowing boat; it is soon to be familiar as part of the inner artwork of Aerial. Balanced against a wall in the office next door is a replica of the Rosebud sledge burned at the dramatic conclusion of Citizen Kane, as commissioned for the video of Bush's comeback single, King of the Mountain, and brought home as a gift for her seven-year-old son Bertie.
Can she understand why people build these myths around her?
"No," she begins, apprehensively. "No, I can't. Pffff. I can't really."
You once said: "There is a figure that is adored, but I'd question very strongly that it's me."
There is silence. A stare. You did say it ...
"Well supposedly I said that. But in what context did I say it?"
Just talking about fans building up this image of you as some kind of goddess.
"Yes, but I'm not, am I?"
So, do the rumours bug you? That you're some fragile being who's hidden herself away?
"No," she replies. "A lot of the time it doesn't bother me. I suppose I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world." Her voice notches up in volume. "Y'know, I'm a very strong person and I think that's why actually I find it really infuriating when I read, 'She had a nervous breakdown' or 'She's not very mentally stable, just a weak, frail little creature'."
This is how 12 years disappear if you're Kate Bush. You release The Red Shoes in 1993, your seventh album in a 15-year career characterised by increasingly ambitious records, ever-lengthening recording schedules and compulsive attention to detail. You are emotionally drained after the death of your mother Hannah but, against the advice of some of your friends, you throw yourself into The Line, the Cross & the Curve, a 45-minute video album released the following year that - despite its merits - you now consider to be "a load of bollocks". You take two years off to recharge your batteries, because you can. In 1996, you write a song called King of the Mountain. You have a bit of a think and take some more time off, similarly, because you can.
Two years later, while pregnant, you write a song about artistic endeavour called An Architect's Dream. You give birth to a boy, Albert, in 1998 and you and your guitarist partner Danny McIntosh find yourselves "completely shattered for a couple of years". You move house and spend months doing it up. You convert the garage into a studio, but being a full-time mother who chooses not to employ a nanny or housekeeper, it's hard to find time to actually work in there. Bit by bit, the ideas come and a notion forms in your mind to make a double album, though you have to adjust to a new working regime of stolen moments as opposed to the 14-hour days of old. Your son begins school and suddenly time opens up and though progress doesn't exactly accelerate ("That's a bit too strong a word"), two years of more concentrated effort later, the album is complete. You look up from the mixing desk and it is 2005.
If the outside world was wondering whether Kate Bush would ever finish her long-awaited album, then it was a feeling shared by its creator. "Oh yeah," she sighs. "I mean, there were so many times I thought, I'll have the album finished this year, definitely, we'll get it out this year. Then there were a couple of years where I thought, I'm never gonna do this. If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time ... evaporates".
Coming back to Aerial, and I am fascinated with A Sky of Honey vs. An Endless Sky of Honey. Bush performed the songs as part of Before the Dawn in 2014.I saw the same thing about Hounds of Love’s second side, The Ninth Wave (which was also performed in 2014)…but it would be great to see a short film based around the song suite on Aerial. Whilst one can enjoy A Sky of Honey on Aerial, I would be very interested having a separate vinyl that was An Endless Sky of Honey. All of the songs on their own are terrific – I especially love Prelude, Aerial Tal and Somewhere in Between -, but I think of that second disc as one piece. I immerse myself into the whole that is The Ninth Wave, rather than seeing them as individual songs. Maybe we will not see another remaster where there is a restoration to An Endless Sky of Honey. I have spoken about it before. I really love the idea of, similar to Bush’s concept for Before the Dawn – where the conceptual suites from Hounds of Love and Aerial were paired -, playing out these songs as a narrative whole. Although the albums were released twenty years apart, I think The Ninth Wave would make an intriguing first half of a short film; one where the heroine is adrift at sea and battling for her life against the uncertainty of the water as she clings to hope.
Fast forward, and Aerial’s An Endless Sky of Honey could be her in her home admiring the beauty. A stark and welcomed contrast where she is at peace and we get a dichotomy. It would make for an epic piece. I listen to Aerial a lot and, whilst I love A Sea of Honey, it is the second disc/side that always draws me in. It is the scope, power, diversity and blend of colours and emotions Bush mixes that intrigues me. Perhaps these song cycles could feature in a wider whole. Not a musical based on Kate Bush’s albums; perhaps a feature where there are central characters that either live within the songs or we hear Bush’s tracks soundtrack the action. To see these gorgeous songs visualised away from the stage would be fascinating. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a great deal of Bush music used in films. I know she wrote a track for the 1994 film, Castaway (where she was originally approached to appear). Andy Samberg asked Bush for permission to use Cloudbusting in his film, Palm Springs (she accepted his request). These are cases of her music playing against someone else’s story and vision. To have a film where An Endless Sky of Honey could end the second act would be wonderful. I think 2011’s Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow would perfectly open the third act; perhaps a part of the film where the heroine/characters have aged. Of course, Bush’s career is not through - so one does not know how the film would end. Some might say that, unlike The Ninth Wave, An Endless Sky of Honey might be a little drama-less and anticlimactic – that is the point, really. Bush loved recording Aerial, so one could never rule out the possibility that the album could feature more heavily. She does not often grant permission to use her tracks – and she mist get requests every week! -, so it would have to be something special that she would love. I will leave it there. I have been struck and hooked back in by A Sky of Honey and its possibilities, either on a new vinyl or on the screen. Bush’s music is so powerful and fantastic that it is interesting to imagine…
JUST what could be!