FEATURE:
Before a (Sort of) Live Studio Audience…
Revisiting the Magnificent 1979 Christmas Special, Kate
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AS we are in December now…
and looking towards Christmas, I wanted to pop in a few Kate Bush Christmas features. I will come to discuss her single, Home for Christmas, which was released in 1992. I wanted to spend some time with the underrated and sometimes forgotten Christmas special, Kate. Filmed at Pebble Mill Studios and broadcast on 28th December, 1979, it must have been exciting for fans to see this unique show on the screen. Earlier in 1979, Bush had performed The Tour of Life around the world. She had that live experience under her belt, because her gigs before that were a lot more modest. She had done live performance on T.V., but The Tour of Life was this huge stage production that was a whole new level. Conversely, Kate is a smaller affair. You can hear a studio audience cheering and clapping songs, though it was not recorded with an audience. It has an artificial quality that must have created this odd sensation. Having been used to playing before huge audiences months earlier, Bush was in a studio doing live versions (the vocals were recorded earlier and mimed in the performance) of songs from her first few albums. In fact, apart from some other treats, Bush was premiering songs that would appear on 1980’s Never for Ever. A single that was released in 1980, December Will Be Magic Again, was performed during the show – though it had its premiere days earlier for the Christmas Snowtime Special (22nd December). I am going to draw in a few revisiting features about Kate/her 1979 Christmas special. It was not just Bush and her band performing in the 1979 special. She was joined by Perter Gabriel. He performed solo, and there is a haunting duet of Roy Harper’s Another Day. The was a reason why Harper wanted to collaborate with her. He sang backing vocals on her 1980 song, Breathing, whist she duetted on the track, You, on Harper's album, The Unknown Soldier (1980).
Some people disregard Kate, as it is seen as inessential and a bit bare. There are a couple of odd set designs and performances (Egypt and Ran Tan Waltz spring to mind), and one glaring issue: only one of the songs, December Will Be Magic Again, is about Christmas! The set is not Christmassy, and Bush does not perform carols or any Christmas standards. I wonder whether there was any discussion about whether to include something more Christmas-like, as it is a T.V. special broadcast at Christmas that is more designed to promote Kate Bush and her music, rather than evoke something of the season. In their feature in 2019, Medium investigate the songs and whether they relate to Christmas. There is a section of the feature that I wanted to bring in:
“For the uninitiated, the Kate Bush Christmas Special (titled simply Kate on-screen) aired on the BBC on December 28th, 1979. Bush was in between albums at the time, having released Lionheart in November 1978 and in the the middle of recording Never For Ever, which would come out in November 1980. Despite the lukewarm critical and commercial reception for Lionheart, the Christmas special came hot off the massive success of Bush’s Tour of Life, her first (and, until 2014, only) concert tour, and one she embarked on after turning down an opener slot on Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk tour.
It’s important to mention the Tour of Life here, since the Christmas special’s choreography borrows heavily from that tour. But where she sang live on the Tour of Life, she lip-syncs to pre-recorded tracks here and incorporates pre-recorded video segments. As a result, the Christmas special plays out more like a crazy, longform music video than a traditional stage show.
Kate answers the age-old question: “what would happen if the BBC gave a Christmas special to an incredibly ambitious 21-year-old art rocker who also smokes a ton of weed?” 40 years have passed since it came out, and it’s just as weird and wonderful as the day it first aired”.
Some pick at the performances and the fact that it is a lesser staging of The Tour of Life. Unable to replicate the feel and scale for T.V. broadcast from a studio, there were those who disliked Kate and felt it was a missed opportunity. I feel the biggest question comes around the nature of the show and whether it should have been shown at Christmas. I think it is actually a nice and unusual twist. Not everything shown at Christmas has to be about the holiday. This was simply a nice live show featuring Bush performing some known songs, new cuts, and a great set of songs from Peter Gabriel. Perhaps not cheery and evoking much delight, there are some wonderful moments. I love Bush and Gabriel’s duet on Another Day. The rendition of December Will Be Magic Again is one or two. It was released as a single, but never performed live when it was released in 1980. Bush never released a video for it. The best version of the song, Kate is worth watching alone for this remarkable performance! There is this selection box approach to the songs selected. We get a nice mix of flavours and sounds, and Bush is committed throughout. Other highlights include a very rare performance of The Wedding List. That would appear on Never for Ever the year after, but it was never released as a single. With her brother Paddy playing a couple of roles during the performance (a vicar and a gun-toting groom assassin), it is wonderfully realised and choreographed performance! I am going to go on, but I want to bring in Far Out Magazine’s featured about a ‘forgotten’ Christmas show:
“Featuring just one recognisably Christmassy song, it is a mind-bending theatrical odyssey that sees Bush perform a range of tracks from her first three albums, with a rendition of Erik Satie’s ‘Gymnopodie No. 3’ thrown in for good measure.
By the time Kate Bush sat down to write ‘December Will Be Magic Again,’ she was in the middle of recording her third album Never For Ever, a record which would land Bush such hit singles as ‘Babooshka’, ‘Breathing’, and ‘Army Dreamers’. Despite the tepid reception of her sophomore album Lionheart, she’d managed to win back her fans with her spectacular Tour Of Life concert tour, which was praised for its originality and spectacular visual appeal. Having been forced to turn down a slot supporting Fleetwood Mac on their Tusk tour, it was clear that Bush was in the midst of one of the busiest and most creatively rewarding periods of her life, and she wanted more.
So, when she was invited to host her own TV Christmas special in 1979, she jumped at the chance. Directed by Roy Norton, the 45-minute performance saw Bush bring the theatricality of her stage show to the small screen, offering her suburban-bound teenage fans the chance to see her in action. From the moment she jumps into the frame, dressed like some chiffon-clad bat, it’s clear Bush has no intention of offering us any of the wholesomeness of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas specials – rather her intention is to thrill us into submission.
Surreal and heartwarming in equal measure, Kate: Kate Bush Christmas Special 1979 is a wonder to behold. As well as containing some hilariously overblown choreography, (including the moment in ‘Them Heavy People’ when one of Bush’s dancers breaks a glass bottle over her head) it also features a couple of amazing cameos, including one by Peter Gabriel.
So, if you’re looking for something unusual to watch this Christmas, look no further”.
I am going to wrap up in a minute. I can see why some are not huge fans of Kate. It is a special broadcast at Christmas, though it never really marketed itself as a Christmas bonanza with lots of songs set around the time of year. Instead, it is this broadcast that keeps her live momentum going, acts as some promotion for her first two albums and what was to come. It also makes me wonder whether it will be released onto DVD. There is a Japanese release that also has a Hammersmith Odeon set from The Tour of Life, but nothing else is available from what I can see. On 28th December, it will be forty-three years since the Christmas special, a.k.a. Kate, was broadcast on the BBC. I do hope that we get to see this show on the BBC again, as this year has been a big one for introducing Kate Bush’s music to new people (though it was shown in the summer). They would get a kick from seeing the 1979 special. I really love it, and I would agree that it is underappreciated and sort of lost. Not seen as an essential part of her cannon and catalogue, I would encourage people to give it a watch, because there are so many great moments. Another brilliant one is Bush’s performance of Symphony In Blue. The lead song from 1978’s Lionheart, you get tingles listening to her delivery. It is a beautiful song that is a bit of a Bush deep cut. Recorded in October 1979 at the BBC’s Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham, with choreography by Anthony Van Laast (who choreographed for The Tour of Life), the barmy, brilliant, and bountiful Kate is something that…
EVERYONE needs to see.