FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Lionheart at Forty-Four
The Weird, Wonderful and Unique Full House and Coffee Homeground
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AHEAD of its…
PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
forty-fourth anniversary on 13th November, I have already written features about Lionheart. I have one or two more coming up. For this one, I want to include two songs that not many people talk about. The reason I am highlighting them is because they signal the biggest shift from her 1978 debut, The Kick Inside, in terms of style and mood, I think. By that, I mean they are more eccentric, anxious, and experimental even than anything that came on that debut. Track six is the brilliant Full House. The penultimate song, track nine, is the equally brilliant Coffee Homeground. I have written about both tracks before but, as I want to unite them, these are gems that Bush did not really talk about. A B-side for Wow, you can tell that Full House was one of the new songs written for the album. As there was an expectation Bush would release a quick follow-up to The Kick Inside, that left her very little time to write new material. As it is, three of the ten tracks are original. I feel she would have made the album a track or two longer if she had more time. Both Full House and Coffee Homeground have paranoia and weirdness at their heart. Perhaps signalling Bush’s stress and fatigue regarding the busy year (1978) she had and what she was going through, psychology is at the heart of these tracks. The other new track, Symphony in Blue, opens Lionheart. Although there is some sadness, it is a beautiful song that showed Bush was able to produce masterful and truly stunning songs very quickly. Symphony in Blue is one of her greatest songs.
I feel Full House and Coffee Homeground are less regarded in a sense. I reckon they could have been likely singles. I would have loved to have seen what Bush came up with if there were videos. Hammer Horror was the first track released as a single. It has a good video, but I feel many saw it as a weaker version of Wuthering Heights. Maybe something not quite as striking as that song. In terms of the potency of the video and originality, maybe Full House would have been a better choice. In any case, it is a song that packs a punch and looked inside the mind of an artist under a bit of pressure. Rather than Full House being a strained song and one that is exploitative, it is a fascinating window into Bush’s songwriting. Whereas The Kick Inside looked mainly at love and desire, there is something a bit different and deeper when it comes to Lionheart. Consider lines from Full House that could be Bush talking about her younger self being replaced by something changed. She seems to want to return to a simpler life: “I am my enemy/Mowing me over/And towing the light away/Somehow it just seems to fit/With that old me/Trying to get back again”. An ecstatic, wracked and electric chorus brings the song to life and elicits reaction. It is another reason why I would have loved to have seen a video! Bush mixes the oblique and personal throughout. It is a wonderful track that few people talk about. I love her lyrics: “By questioning all that I do/Examining every move/Trying to get back to the rudiments/(If they nig and they nag, I'll just put in the boot)”. Showing what range and quality there is through Lionheart, Full House is an example of her incredible songwriting talent. Even though there is no video, Bush did perform Full House as part of The Tour of Life in 1979. It was brilliant visualised there. I also think it is interesting the song opens the second side. After the gentle (sort of) title track, Oh England My Lionheart, we are taken in a very different direction with Full House. Sort of like the switch between Wuthering Heights and James and the Cold Gun on The Kick Inside.
A song that leads us into the finale, Hammer Horror (I have always been unsure about the sequencing on Lionheart), Coffee Homeground seems like a companion piece. Less autobiographical in some ways, it does feel more extreme and wilder! The images and lyrics are trippy, murderous, colourful, crazy and intelligent. I am not sure where Bush wrote Full House, but we do know she wrote Coffee Homeground in the U.S. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, Bush did reveal the origins of Coffee Homeground:
“['Coffee Homeground'] was in fact inspired directly from a cab driver that I met who was in fact a bit nutty. And it's just a song about someone who thinks they're being poisoned by another person, they think that there's Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it's got poisen in it. And it's just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of German [vibe] to try and bring across the humour side of it. (Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978)”.
It is amazing that Bush managed to get Coffee Homeground from that interaction from the cab driver! Rather than it being purely based on him, I think there is a sense of Bush feeling pressure or lost in a foreign country. Maybe wary of people and paranoid: “Offer me a chocolate/No thank you, spoil my diet, know your game!/But tell me just how come/They smell of bitter almonds/It's a no-no to your coffee homeground”. Again, this is not a chance to reveal some insecurity and unhappiness. Coffee Homeground is a remarkable song! It almost whirls and waltzes like a fairground ride. A step on from anything on her debut, I picture Bush thinking of the song in the hotel room and putting the words together gradually. Her wording and lyrical twists and turns are amazing!
In actual fact, as I have noted before, the Kate Bush fanzine, HomeGround (set up in 1982) takes its name from that Lionheart song. I am not sure whether I have ever heard Coffee Homeground played on the radio. It is a Bush deep cut that should be better know. Another song that would have had an incredible video. Bush did also perform this during The Tour of Life. This being Kate Bush, there is something classical and almost literary about her lyrics! Consider these lines: “Well, you won't get me with your Belladonna - in the coffee/And you won't get me with your aresenic - in the pot of tea/And you won't get me in a hole to rot - with your hemlock/On the rocks”. One (of many reasons) to listen to Lionheart is the consistency and the variation when it comes to subject matter and sounds. Even though it came out the same year as The Kick Inside, Lionheart does sound like a different album. Songs such as Coffee Homeground are perfect demonstrations of Bush’s unique talent and the way she can create her own worlds. Her lines and lyrics draw you into the song: “Maybe you're lonely/And only want a little company/But keep your recipes/For the rats to eat/And may they rest in peace with coffee homeground”. Ahead of Lionheart’s forty-fourth anniversary on 13th November, I wanted to spend some time with it. The final feature will be more general and less track-specific, but I was keen to highlight two of the three new songs that Bush wrote for Lionheart. They sort of seem linked by a feeling of dread and paranoia, even though Full House seems more autobiographical, whereas Coffee Homeground is more musically experimental. Lionheart reached number six in the U.K. and it has been certified Platinum. A remarkable achievement given the constraints and lack of time Kate Bush had to explore and create something fresh! I think a reason why she does not see Lionheart as an album representative of her is that it was quite rushed and Andrew Powell was producing. She would exert more control for 1979’s The Tour of Life, and she co-produced her third album, Never for Ever, with Jon Kelly. Bush should be very proud of Lionheart. Full House and Coffee Homeground are two incredible songs from…
A remarkable artist.