FEATURE:
In the Month of My Birth…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot in 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin
Kate Bush, May 1983
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I have written about Kate Bush…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the studio, October 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix
quite a bit the last year or so. It is something that drives me - and I am never short of ideas. I am going to revisit a period of her life that I covered last year. The year 1983 is a really interesting one in Bush history. 1982 saw the release of her fourth studio album, The Dreaming. By all measures, it was a recording process that exhausted her! The first time solo producing, maybe she had something to prove to EMI and herself. The extraordinary hours and effort she put into the album shows in the songs. Dense with layers and different sounds, the production is remarkable. It was Bush’s least commercial album to that date – and still might be -, and it came after a few years of intense work. Consider the fact it was only four years previous that she came into the music world with The Kick Inside. From 1978 to 1982, she was putting out an album almost every year. The Tour of Life happened in 1979 and, between albums, there was a tonne of promotion and travelling! Completing recording of The Dreaming in May 1982, just over four years since her debut album came out, Kate Bush’s sound had changed radically! The Dreaming is an album where Bush employed several studios and pushed herself to the limit. Maybe inspired by bands like The Beatles and Steely Dan – both of whom she admired -, there was this vision of creating an album that was very much as she wanted.
Not what was seen as more commercial or led by the label. As such, because The Dreaming came two years after Never for Ever (a gulf of time back then!) and it didn’t perform as well as previous albums, there was a sense of disappointment. It was clear that Bush need to rest, re-evaluate and make a change. The Dreaming is genius, but I don’t think she could have recorded another album like that. When it was released in September 1982, Bush completed promotion, which only added fatigue to her already weary bones! Hounds of Love would arrive in September 1985. I am choosing May 1983 as a particularly important month, as that was when I was born! I love to imagine what Bush was doing the day I was born (9th). I would not be conscious of her for a few more years or more, but May 1983 would have been a transformative month. In June, the Kate Bush E.P. was released. A five-track E.P., it was put out by EMI America in the United States to promote Kate Bush, who was relatively unknown there at that time. Not only was there this campaign to get Bush known in the U.S. but, at home, she was starting to put together Hounds of Love. There was not a big desire to launch Bush in the U.S. previous. She was not concerned with cracking the country, and the idea of travelling there regularly for promotion did not appeal. When she did go there to promote Hounds of Love in 1985, one or two of the interviews were pretty disastrous! The nation not really understanding her or that familiar with her music. I do like the fact there was an E.P. almost ready in May 1983. A point in time when there were desires from EMI to get her music out to America…
One of the biggest things that happened in May 1983 was that her book, Leaving My Tracks, was shelved indefinitely. I think this was a memoir/autobiography that fans would have loved to read! I am not sure why the project was scrapped, but it is a shame that book was not in my family home! In the month I came into the world, Leaving My Tracks could have been on the shelf! In the summer of 1983, she hit a peak. There was this personal and professional change from the start of 1983 through to the summer. After some much-needed rest, Bush was still hard at work, but she was now determined to build her own studio and record at her own pace. Leaving 1982 behind, 1983 was a year of greatest happiness and control. By May, Bush would have had the plan for her home studio figured and was ready to oversee that. Demos and song ideas were coming together and, even though her memoir was shelved, I feel this resolve to concentrate on a new album and do it on her terms was very much at the forefront. Dig! looked at the creation of Hounds of Love and its timeline in a feature from last September:
“In early 1983, Bush moved from London into a 17th-century farmhouse in the Kent countryside. That summer she oversaw the construction of a state-of-the-art 48-track studio at her family home in nearby Welling. She explained the benefits of having her own home studio in a 1985 Melody Maker interview: “The pressure of knowing the astronomical amount studio time cost used to make me really nervous about being too creative. You can’t experiment forever, and I work very, very slowly. I feel a lot more relaxed emotionally now that I have my own place to work and a home to go to.”
Inspired by her new surroundings, Bush found that writing came easily, and she was keen for her new songs to reflect her state of mind. “On this album, I wanted to get away from the energy of the last one – at the time I was very unhappy, I felt that mankind was really screwing things up,” she told Hot Press magazine. “Having expressed all that, I wanted this album to be different – a positive album… more about the good things. A lot depends on how you feel at any given time – it all comes out in the music.”
In the summer of 1983, Bush began demoing her new songs with then partner Del Palmer – she’d compose on piano or the Fairlight while Palmer programmed patterns on a LinnDrum machine. Recording proper began in November 1983, as Bush worked with a team of engineers and musicians to flesh out the demos. As hoped for, her own studio meant that she could pursue her artistic vision with no constraints, and she outlined her approach to the Canadian magazine Now. “I feel that ‘art’ is one of those things that should have absolutely no rules at all. In fact, the rules that are already laid down I feel like deliberately breaking, to try what they say you can’t do. I think really the approach is something you continually experiment with – you try and find the best way of expressing something well”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush busy in the studio recording Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
I think about May 1983. It was obviously my start to life, but I also feel like it was for Kate Bush too. At home by East Wickham Farm with plans for a studio that she could record in and learn dance, she would be looking ahead of the summer (which technically starts in June). After a tough 1982, here was Kate Bush armed with a masterplan! She was constructing the framework for her best songs to date, and there would have been family around her. EMI were working on E.P. to get her name out in the U.S., whilst Bush was more concerned with the comfort of home and ensuring that she could produce an album – ensuring that it did not take the same toll as The Dreaming did. Almost a polar opposite to that 1982 album, Hounds of Love is ambitious and grand, yet its sounds is worlds away from The Dreaming. Bush began 1983 with resolve and a direction…but it was in the late spring and start of summer when things were really happening. Bush was writing and forming these songs in May 1983, ahead of them being demoed. One of the first songs she worked on in her studio was Deal With God (later re-titled Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). With incredible musicians like Del Palmer and Eberhard Weber, there was a lot of positivity and love in the air. In May 1983, Bush would have been in that stage of thinking what could be. With her studio, the songs, and this new album. What the world got in 1985 was one of the finest albums ever released. As she started recording in summer 1983, the final weeks of spring would have been the blueprints and notes being assembled. To me, that is the most important and exciting time in Bush’s career. To think, when I was born, the majestic Kate Bush was almost ready to start recording…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Eberhard Weber
HER masterpiece.