FEATURE:
They Say, "No, No, It Won't Last Forever"
Fifty Years of Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes
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I am not sure as to…
the exact date the song was written, but Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes was completed when she was thirteen. As Bush turned sixty-three on 30th July, it allows me the chance to revisit one of her finest songs. Included on her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside, it was recorded in 1975. Written when she was thirteen and recorded at the age of sixteen, it is scary when you listen to the song. It is such an accomplished and hugely mature thing! It goes to show the incredible writing gift she possessed at such an early stage in life. Fifty years since its creation, we are still listening to this masterful track! The second U.K. single from The Kick Inside, it reached six on the charts. I am going to come on to the inspiration behind the song because, as I have said before, perceived wisdom is incorrect – or I feel there is no specific person Bush was referring to. Before then, I want to bring in a great article from Far Out Magazine. They looked at Bush’s mini-symphony in July:
“When writers circle the adjective pool looking for appropriate words to describe the wonderfully talented Kate Bush, they usually end up labelling her something along the lines of eccentric, unique and dynamic. All of those words are wholly applicable to an artist who has kept the entire public waiting for the next drop of music, rarely to have never toured, and still managed to remain free from a commercial burden on her creativity. But the only word that really suits Bush to a tee is gifted.
Gifted like Picasso, Mozart and Godard are gifted. The kind of talent and prowess that emanates from her every move and has likely shone brightly since birth. Of course, there can be no doubt that Kate Bush worked hard for her success, but there’s a looming sense that no matter the discipline, the singer would have found a way to become the dynamic, unique and eccentric character she is. If you’re looking for proof, we have it in the shape of one of her first songs.
‘The Man With the Child in His Eyes’ was written by Bush when she was only 13-years-old. The singer had been leaning towards making music her life’s passion for some time, but this was the song that not only inwardly sealed her fate but would end up becoming one of the main reasons Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour would back Bush to emerge as a global superstar. However, as with everything she does, the song came straight from Bush’s soul.
“The inspiration for ‘The Man With the Child in His Eyes’ was really just a particular thing that happened when I went to the piano. The piano just started speaking to me,” Bush told an interviewer in 1978. “It was a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic. I, myself, am attracted to older men, I guess, but I think that’s the same with every female. I think it’s a very natural, basic instinct that you look continually for your father for the rest of your life, as do men continually look for their mother in the women that they meet. I don’t think we’re all aware of it, but I think it is basically true. You look for that security that the opposite sex in your parenthood gave you as a child.”
In truth, the song was actually penned for Steve Blacknell, Bush’s older boyfriend at the time. “She had her heart set on becoming a global star, and I was going to be a flash DJ,” Blacknell explained. “One day, I would introduce her on Top Of The Pops. In the summer of 1975, I finally got my break and landed a job as a marketing assistant with Decca Records. It was then that I finally thought I was equipped to hear her music, and it was a day I’ll never forget. I went round to her house, and she led me to the room where the piano was. I thought, ‘Oh my God’. What I heard made my soul stand on end. I realised there and then that I was in love with a genius.”
He added: “As things hotted up for her, so our relationship cooled, and we drifted apart. But I’ve been told by those around her that I was indeed ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’, and I know that those words were given to me by someone very special.” It may have meant something to Blacknell, however, the song means a lot more to Bush. It would be the track that gave David Gilmour the impetus to ensure Bush would find herself a proper audience.
Kate Bush was only 16 when her demo was passed on to Gilmour. While there would undoubtedly have been some trepidation from any teen had they known Gilmour, who, at this time, was one of the most well-regarded musicians on earth, was listening to their demo tape. However, it turns out that Bush was relatively unaware of who Gilmour was actually was, outside of a family friend, that is. “I was not really aware of much contemporary rock music at that age,” recalled Bush in 1985. “I had heard of them but hadn’t actually heard their music. It wasn’t until later that I got to hear stuff like Dark Side of the Moon. And I just thought that was superb–I mean, they really did do some pretty profound stuff”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
I do not think that Blacknell was the titular man with the child in his eyes. Even though he was an older man and Bush would have been enamoured of him, I feel the song is more about men in general. Those who have a sense of child-like wonder in their eyes. As this article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia explains (via a link to a 1979 interview from Swap Shop), Bush provided some clarity and truth regarding the focal point of The Man with the Child in His Eyes:
“Oh, well it's something that I feel about men generally. [Looks around at cameramen] Sorry about this folks. [Cameramen laugh] That a lot of men have got a child inside them, you know I think they are more or less just grown up kids. And that it's a... [Cameramen laugh] No, no, it's a very good quality, it's really good, because a lot of women go out and get far too responsible. And it's really nice to keep that delight in wonderful things that children have. And that's what I was trying to say. That this man could communicate with a younger girl, because he's on the same level. (Swap Shop, 1979)”.
I wonder if Kate Bush has thought about the song and the fact that it is fifty years old – or very close to it anyway! As a very young teenager, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when inspiration struck and she put pen to paper. It must have been such a magical moment!
I want to finish with a bit on the lyrics and the place the song holds in our hearts. Before then, I want to drop in some information from Dreams of Orgonon. In a feature from 2018, we get to learn more about the making of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. There are some sections that struck me:
“Musically, MWCIHE is Kate’s most significant accomplishment to date. It’s easy to see why Dave Gilmour wanted it released. It’s the first Kate song to really work melodically—it’s cleanly structured, gorgeous, organic, and uncanny. She manages to balance ethereality and hummable melodies while keeping her more experimental drive. She finally develops a memorable hook, an arpeggiated E minor chord (B-G-E-E). The song continues by displaying Kate’s propensity for unorthodox key changes. The first part of the verse (“I hear him before I go to sleep” through “when I turn the light off and turn over”) in E minor with a progression of i-III-VI-III-iv (E minor-G-C-A minor). The second half of the verse moves to E minor’s dominant key, B minor, before shifting to Bb major, doing some things in G, and shifting to a chorus in C. The song is not static—it’s organic, it breathes like a person.
Andrew Powell’s often hit-or-miss production works here. Usually he’s at his best when he takes a hands-off, simple approach, and that’s what he utilizes on this song. He arranges the orchestra himself, and no instruments are heard outside it apart from Kate’s piano, which leads the way (as it does in all her best early songs). For all Kate’s admitted terror at playing with an orchestra, she shines here, sounding perfectly confident and even outshining the gentle ensemble of strings accompanying her song.
It’s rare to find guts like that in a song by an older artist, which is perhaps why this song doesn’t work when sung by older artists. When Hue and Cry sing it, it’s too dour, and even Dusty Springfield doesn’t imbibe it with a new life. Kate sang it for the last time in 1979, when she plays the song for the last time on a BBC Christmas special. It’s a strong performance—Kate’s haunting and soulful voice had significantly evolved across four years, and it lends the song a fitting maturity. There’s a sense that this is the end of its tenure, that this is as far as it can go. It’s hard to imagine a hypothetical 80s Kate Bush concert where “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” would fit in a setlist alongside “Breathing,” “Suspended in Gaffa,” or even “The Big Sky,” which is an older adult’s song about being a child. It belongs to a moment. Kate may have already grown beyond it when it was released as a single after “Wuthering Heights.” It’s a 1975 song that detonated as a 1978 one. “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” is likely the last Cathy song, but maybe also the first Kate Bush song. It dwells in a liminal space on its own. “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” as a popular song was at a distance from its inception where its creation was a relatively distant memory. Art is a snapshot of a moment. Sometimes its creative gestation periods last a while. Kate Bush has mastered the slow burn. She didn’t hastily release this song—she set it free.
Recorded: June 1975 at London AIR Studios. Released on The Kick Inside 17 February 1978, and as a single on 26 May 1978. Personnel: Kate Bush-vocals, piano. Production and arrangement: Andrew Powell. Engineering: Geoff Emerick”.
PHOTO CREDIT: The Northcliffe Collection
There are a couple of reasons as to why The Man with the Child in His Eyes is a genius song. Bush’s vocal is restrained and mature. In 1978, she was being labelled as a singer with a high voice. There was a degree of mockery and labelling. In reality, she was heightened and shifting her voice to suit the song. As we can hear on The Man with the Child in His Eyes (which she recorded two years before the rest of The Kick Inside), she was perfectly capable of a sensitive, sensual and graceful vocal without acrobatics and histrionics! The lyrics are what really stand out. I know that the original handwritten lyrics were auctioned a while ago. What any Kate Bush fan would do to own such a piece of music history! The song seems like a dream. There are elements of fantasy throughout. This feeling that the man is at sea or lost on some horizon, Bush herself presents a more grounded image of someone who is caring and very real. This balance of the intimate and domestic together with something more poetic and fictionalised, it is such an intriguing song! My favourite lyrics are the following: “Listening to a man I've never known before/Telling me about the sea/All his love, 'til eternity”. Those lines could have been lifted from classic poetry or a novel! Not to hark back to her age, but those are some incredible advanced and sophisticated lines from a thirteen-year-old! There is passion and longing together with regret and hesitation (“And here I am again, my girl/Wondering what on Earth I'm doing here”). Fifty years later, people are discovering this song written by a girl who, a few years later, would record this song at AIR Studios backed by an orchestra! It is a stunning and truly unmatched song that will survive…
FOR all of time.