FEATURE:
Inside Kate Bush’s The Dreaming at Forty
Track Three: Pull Out the Pin
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THE fortieth anniversary…
is in September, but I am interested in Kate Bush’s The Dreaming, as it is an album that gets overlooked or seen as a bit weird and experimental. Gaining more acclaim and love than it did back in 1982 – though it was a commercial success and there were some positive reviews -, I am going through each of the ten tracks on the album. I have reached the third track, Pull Out the Pin. Not that Sat in Your Lap and There Goes a Tenner are conventional, though Pull Out the Pin is the first sign that this is not a conventional album! I love all of the tracks on The Dreaming; Pull Out the Pin really demonstrates how far Kate Bush had travelled from her first few albums. Incredible layers of sound, epic production (by Bush) and one of her best vocal performances on the album, the lyrics are also phenomenal. I will come to them soon and highlight a few choice passages. Before that, and as I am leaning on the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia for information regarding the songs on The Dreaming, here is Bush discussing the inspiration behind Pull Out the Pin:
“We sat in front of the speakers trying to focus on the picture - a green forest, humid and pulsating with life. We are looking at the Americans from the Vietnamese point of view and, almost like a camera, we start in wide shot. Right in the distance you can see the trees moving, smoke and sounds drifting our way... sounds like a radio. Closer in with the camera, and you can catch glimpses of their pink skin. We can smell them for miles with their sickly cologne, American tobacco and stale sweat.
Take the camera in even closer, and we find a solitary soldier, perhaps the one I have singled out. Sometimes a Vietnamese would track a soldier for days and follow him, until he eventually took him. This soldier is under a tree, dozing with a faint smile and a radio by his side. It's a small transistor radio out of which cries an electric guitar. I'd swear it was being played by Brian Bath, but how could that be, way out here on our stereo screen. I pop the silver Buddha that I wear around my neck into my mouth, securing my lips around his little metal body. I move towards the sleeping man. A helicopter soars overhead, he wakes up, and as he looks me in the eyes I relate to him as I would to a helpless stranger. Has he a family and a lady waiting for him at home, somewhere beyond the Chinese drums and the double bass that stalks like a wild cat through bamboo? The moving pictures freeze-frame and fade - someone stopped the multi-track, there's more overdubs to do. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982)
I saw this incredible documentary by this Australian cameraman who went on the front line in Vietnam, filming from the Vietnamese point of view, so it was very biased against the Americans. He said it really changed him, because until you live on their level like that, when it's complete survival, you don't know what it's about. He's never been the same since, because it's so devastating, people dying all the time.
The way he portrayed the Vietnamese was as this really crafted, beautiful race. The Americans were these big, fat, pink, smelly things who the Vietnamese could smell coming for miles because of the tobacco and cologne. It was devastating, because you got the impression that the Americans were so heavy and awkward, and the Vietnamese were so beautiful and all getting wiped out. They wore a little silver Buddha on a chain around their neck and when they went into action they'd pop it into their mouth, so if they died they'd have Buddha on their lips. I wanted to write a song that could somehow convey the whole thing, so we set it in the jungle and had helicopters, crickets and little Balinese frogs. (Kris Needs, 'Dream Time In The Bush'. Zigzag (UK), November 1982)”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pierre Terrasson
Featuring backing vocals by her mentor, David Gilmour, and drums by Preston Heyman, string bass by Danny Thompson, piano by Kate Bush and electric guitar from Brian Bath, the band on Pull Out the Pin are incredible! One of the most original and thought-provoking lyricists ever, Kate Bush always distinguishes her songs. I am not sure how she comes up with some of the words and lines she puts into her tracks! Pull Out the Pin boasts really striking and stirring images. One of my favourite verses is this: “You learn to ride the Earth/When you're living on your belly and the enemy are city-births/Who need radar? We use scent/They stink of the west, stink of sweat/Stink of cologne and baccy, and all their Yankee hash”. There is a mixture of the cryptic and direct in Pull Out the Pin. You need to listen to it a few times through before you can absorb all of the notes and ideas. Another fantastic verse is this: “I've seen the coat for me/I'll track him 'til he drops/Then I'll pop him one he won't see/He's big and pink, and not like me/He sees no light/He sees no reason for the fighting”. It is important to salute the variety of wonderful tracks on The Dreaming. It turns forty in September, and I hope a lot of people come to the album and spend a lot of time with it. Stunning production, writing and performing from Bush throughout, this is an album that was ahead of its time. With ten wonderful and individual tracks on the album, Pull Out the Pin is one of…
ITS brightest and most bewitching gems.