FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Seven
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Hounds of Love cover shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
The Ninth Wave: The Rescue?
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I think about…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the shoot for The Ninth Wave/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
the title of the final track on Hounds of Love, The Morning Fog, and wonder if it has a double meaning. I am writing about Hounds of Love because it is thirty-seven on 16th September. Once more, and apologies for repetition, I am dipping into the pages of MOJO’s examination of Hounds of Love. I know I have written about The Ninth Wave, the album’s conceptual suite that forms the second side, but I want to pinpoint on something particular. The Morning Fog completes things. The general story is that a woman starts off in the water. We do not know her name, nationality or where she came from. Bush performed The Ninth Wave in 2014 as part of Before the Dawn, and a few more details were filled in. A woman is swept off a boat or ship, maybe during a storm or heavy weather. Perhaps nobody noticed her going into the sea. Again, in terms of the location of the ocean, we are not sure. I always suspected it was near England, but you might have got a different takeaway if you saw one of the twenty-two Before the Dawn dates. I see the promotional images for The Ninth Wave, and there is a certain classical elegance to her attire. On the back on Hounds of Love, words from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Coming of Arthur (1869), seem to suggest the heroine might be someone from that time.
Definitely influenced by poetry and classic text. The idea of wave after wave being mightier than the last suggests something doom-laden and hopeless for anyone caught in it. That takes me back to The Morning Fog again. We assume that the morning has come and the heroine is rescued and made it onto land (“I'm falling/And I'd love to hold you know/I'll kiss the ground/I'll tell my mother/I'll tell my father/I'll tell my loved one/I'll tell my brothers/How much I love them”). There is a sense of ambiguity. The listener might feel that the heroine is delusional and suffering the ill effects of the cold and terror. She is safe but feels like things are lost. The final lines indicate, perhaps, a desire or a wish. She wants these things to happen. She wants to tell her loved one how she feels. Before the Dawn gave a distinct ending: the marooned woman and hopeless situation resolves in a rescue via helicopter. If you are not familiar with the sublime and cinematic The Ninth Wave, here are some interview words from Bush in 1992:
“The Ninth Wave was a film, that's how I thought of it. It's the idea of this person being in the water, how they've got there, we don't know. But the idea is that they've been on a ship and they've been washed over the side so they're alone in this water. And I find that horrific imagery, the thought of being completely alone in all this water. And they've got a life jacket with a little light so that if anyone should be traveling at night they'll see the light and know they're there. And they're absolutely terrified, and they're completely alone at the mercy of their imagination, which again I personally find such a terrifying thing, the power of ones own imagination being let loose on something like that. And the idea that they've got it in their head that they mustn't fall asleep, because if you fall asleep when you're in the water, I've heard that you roll over and so you drown, so they're trying to keep themselves awake. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1, 26 January 1992)”.
I am fascinated by The Ninth Wave. Not only is its scale and concept original, epic and utterly gripping from start to finish. It is amazing to hear these seven distinct songs flow together. Extraordinary production and songwriting on each track. Able to produce this consistency and story development, there is a little mystery when it comes to the nature of the heroine being caught at sea. Who is she in fact? Bush said in 1992 that she wanted to end Hounds of Love on an uplifting note:
“Well, that's really meant to be the rescue of the whole situation, where now suddenly out of all this darkness and weight comes light. You know, the weightiness is gone and here's the morning, and it's meant to feel very positive and bright and uplifting from the rest of dense, darkness of the previous track. And although it doesn't say so, in my mind this was the song where they were rescued, where they get pulled out of the water. And it's very much a song of seeing perspective, of really, you know, of being so grateful for everything that you have, that you're never grateful of in ordinary life because you just abuse it totally. And it was also meant to be one of those kind of "thank you and goodnight" songs. You know, the little finale where everyone does a little dance and then the bow and then they leave the stage. [laughs] (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)”.
Forgive me for repeating quotes and putting in familiar videos. Like some great films, there is a twist and sense of mystery. You think you know how things ended, but you might be wrong. Indeed, you may not see a twist coming. Many people listen to Hounds of Love’s second side and assume it is all figured. I think there is a point of view shift and focal point on Jig of Life. Arriving after Watching You Without Me, I feel it is open to interpretation. I have said this before about Watching You Without Me, but the song is about loved ones of the heroines waiting for the woman to come home, no idea where she is. The sense that the alone woman is imagining the scene and is in the room as a spirit or unseen presence makes me wonder whether this is the point in The Ninth Wave where she succumbs to the relentless thunder and terror of the waves. Jim Irvin, writing for MOJO, notes how this is Bush’s Irish heritage (her mother was Irish) “asking her to “let me live”. Death, voiced by Kate’s brother John Carder Bush, seems to beckon her towards the dark: “Catch us now for I am your future/A kiss on the wind and we'll make the land/Come over here to where When lingers/Waiting in this empty world/Waiting for Then, when the lifespray cools”. This is what Bush said about the hugely spirited Jig of Life:
“At this point in the story, it's the future self of this person coming to visit them to give them a bit of help here. I mean, it's about time they have a bit of help. So it's their future self saying, "look, don't give up, you've got to stay alive, 'cause if you don't stay alive, that means I don't." You know, "and I'm alive, I've had kids [laughs]. I've been through years and years of life, so you have to survive, you mustn't give up."
This was written in Ireland. At one point I did quite a lot of writing, you know, I mean lyrically, particularly. And again it was a tremendous sort of elemental dose I was getting, you know, all this beautiful countryside. Spending a lot of time outside and walking, so it had this tremendous sort of stimulus from the outside. And this was one of the tracks that the Irish musicians that we worked with was featured on.
There was a tune that my brother Paddy found which... he said "you've got to hear this, you'll love it." And he was right [laughs], he played it to me and I just thought, you know, "this would be fantastic somehow to incorporate here."
Was just sort of, pull this person up out of despair. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)”.
There is this push-and-pull to Jig of Life. The voice of the heroine trying to stay afloat and focused enough to survive. I wonder whether this is the ‘final’ song. Maybe everything after is a dream or her watching from Heaven. It may seem defeatist, but listen back to clues in Watching You Without Me (“Help me baby, help me, baby/Don´t do this to me, baby/Listen to me, listen to me/Talk to me, talk to me, please”) and the track before it, Waking the Witch (“Over here!"/"You still in bed?"/"Wake up, sleepy-head!"). You can spool The Ninth Wave as far back as the first track, And Dream of Sheep. That song is an imploration from the heroine. She wants to sleep and be back home. Under Ice is that terror of being trapped in a terrifying situation. Did the heroine actually die right at the start? Maybe she was in peril then, but she managed to make it out by The Morning Fog. That is the fascinating thing about The Ninth Wave. There is no truth or clear answer. I think the rescue at the very end could be interpreted one of three ways. Either the woman did get out and was taken to hospital. Maybe it is a dream she has from earlier in the suite. Perhaps it is visions post-mortem of her watching what could have been.
Bush’s chance to bring The Ninth Wave to the stage in 2014 created no confusion. This was someone being pulled alive from the water. A happy and triumphant resolution for the audience, maybe one could still read something into the fact that, for the first song of the Before the Dawn encore, Bush performed Among Angels. Then comes Cloudbusting. Does that slyly allude to a possibility that the heroine is figuratively among angels and is in the clouds at the very end? I know Bush followed The Ninth Wave with Aerial’s suite, A Sky of Honey. Going from the sea to the sky. The terrifying and dark to something more relaxed and light. Is this the heroine, who survived, back in her garden enjoying the course of a summer day? Maybe it is a flipside to The Ninth Wave. So many questions to ask and possibilities afoot! I keep writing about The Ninth Wave, as it is something I feel Bush wanted to keep open-ended. On paper it seems like a case of a woman being rescued, but lyrics in songs like Jig of Life, Watching You Without Me and Waking the Witch point to a premature (and sad) end. This is my final anniversary feature for Hounds of Love. It is thirty-seven on 16th September. Such an enormously important and influential album, the staggering The Ninth Wave is something constantly near the front of my mind. I often think about the ‘rescue’ during The Morning Fog and wonder if everything is…
AS it appears to be.