FEATURE:
Still Breathing….
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Angelo Deligio/Mondadori (via Getty Images)
A Whirlwind 1979-1980: Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Three
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AHEAD of the forty-third anniversary…
of Kate Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever – lots of fours and threes! –, I wanted to examine the album from a few different perspectives. In terms of her career rise, the years 1979 through 1980 were really interesting. 1978 saw her complete two studio albums and promote widely. I think that the end of 1978 would have been crucial when it came to Bush deciding whether to assume more control in the studio. Only twenty, she had proven she was a success and had commercial viability. Two top ten albums (The Kick Inside and Lionheart), a number one single (Wuthering Heights), and that eagerness to add her voice more to the music, The Tour of Life was an opportunity play live her first two albums. It also meant some breathing space from the studio. The idea of rushing into a third album would not have been a pleasurable one. Instead, she undertook an intercontinental tour where she invested a lot of her money into. EMI would not have given her a huge budget. Assuming she would just want a basic set and no real extravagances, Bush’s creative vision was much larger and spectacular than the money she was afforded. Incurring a loss over the run of The Tour of Life, the experience was still a very useful one. She got such adulation and incredible response from the audiences. By the final date of the tour – 14th May in London – she had a few months before she was back in the studio.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush looking relaxed but ready in December 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Lichfield
That interim period fascinates me! Recovering from the tour itself and the energy exerted, clearly creative juices were flowing. Whilst 1979 was a bit disruptive in terms of space to write and think about a third album, Bush headed to Abbey Road and AIR in London in September 1979 with some of her most incredible and ambitious songs to date. I never know which of the ten tracks was written first and which was the one that started the whole process. A few things had been made clear by the time she started The Tour of Life. Bush did really want to prove she was a strong and independent artist. Starved of being able to express herself in the studio when it came to production, this tour was a moment where she could bring her ideas and creative visions to life. It meant that, given the success of The Tour of Life, she knew a new album had to have her producing. Andrew Powell – who produced her first two albums – was replaced by Jon Kelly. The two worked together to endure that Never for Ever was a very different beast. For my final piece about Never for Ever ahead of its forty-third anniversary on 8th September, I will go more into the songs.
There are a number of things I find amazing about the album. The fact it reached number one in the U.K. meant Kate Bush was the first British solo female artist to have achieve this. The positive critical reaction and chart success meant that Bush’s time on the road and experience she had acquired during her first two albums fed into her new music. She was no longer a teenager vying for control and regretful she was taking a back seat. By 1980, aged twenty-one, she had completed an album that took her to new heights. Twenty-two by the time it arrived, she must have looked back at the previous year and wondered where all the time went! From the travel and excitement of the tour in 1979, through to going into the studio and producing and recording this amazing album, there was not that much time to breathe! As it was, because albums need promoting, Bush undertook a record signing tour of the U.K., including London, which resulted in lengthy queues down Oxford Street. She travelled around Europe promoting the album. Having been in Europe the year before, Bush would have been used to that sort of distance. Even so, think about modern artists today, and many do not need to travel so far and wide to promote their albums. With only a short period of time between The Tour of Life ending and Bush in the studio and then on the promotional trail, her feet barely touched the ground!
The closing track on Never for Ever, Breathing, seems ironic. I wonder whether Kate Bush was able to breathe at all! A consummate professional who was very proud of this album and knew that her music was the strongest it had been, she pretty much started recording and working on her fourth studio album, The Dreaming, in September 1980. I think August 1980 was when she was working on songs and making some moves. This overlap of albums. She did it in 1978 with The Kick Inside and Lionheart; back at it again in 1980! I am going to finish with an interview from 1980. She undertook so much promotional, yet she was always so focused and showed little sign of weariness. Even if the reviews were mostly positive in 1980, I think that Never for Ever is underrated and never as discussed and admired as her later work. This was a pivotal moment where a woman in her early-twenties was taking control of her career and breaking barriers. A record-setting artist who was not yet at her peak, it is awesome thinking about Kate Bush in 1980. Having two albums already under her belt and a big tour, she was not getting complacent. Even if 1979 and 1980 were hectic years, I get the feeling that she had to make a big decision after the release of Never for Ever. She didn’t have enough new material yet for another tour. Probably not wanting to commit her own money and that much of herself to something that took her away from the studio, I feel The Dreaming was a conscious effort to take her off the road. In the mid-1960s, The Beatles immersed themselves in the studio and experimented so they could make songs that they couldn’t play live. Other artists have done too. I sense The Dreaming was a deliberate move in that respect. It was also an album where Bush produced solo for the first time and could truly be free to fly.
In September 1980, with a new album getting acclaim and fans clambering to get it, she did not set time away to rest and weigh her option up. I wonder what would have happened if she took time out and stepped away from the spotlight. I doubt EMI were affording her the opportunity to do that. That mix of newfound confidence and preexisting exhaustion took her creative mind in a new direction. Bush just wanted to keep going - and, when The Dreaming was recorded, it was evident that the artist many knew in 1978 was a very different one. Never for Ever remains this incredible intriguing midpoint. A seesaw between the teenage Bush being a passenger in her own journey, she was now at the wheel and very much set on directing where her music would go and what it would sound like. An interview I have sourced before, I want to end with one of the many promotional chats she gave for Never for Ever. In May 1980, a few months before the album arrived, she was talking with Deanne Pearson of Smash Hits. Although it is a teen magazine, there are some interesting exchanges and observations. Thanks to this invaluable website for transcribing that interview. Despite Bush never really being an artist for a teen audience exclusively, the fact that she did the interview and there was quite a good rapport between her and Pearson showed that she was excited to discuss an album that she loved making:
“Smiling warmly, she sits down with an orange juice and lemonade. She rarely drinks alcohol, she tells me, and thinks most people who do just lack confidence. I put down my lager and order a coke.
The Abbey Road Studios are famous in connection with the Beatles, in particular their Abbey Road album. In the foyer a large picture of Paul McCartney welcomes visitors. Next to it, and just as prominent, is a picture of Kate Bush.
The studios are like a second home to Kate at the moment. She's been working virtually non-stop here for the last few months--apart from some session work with Peter Gabriel and Roy Harper (for his album The Unknown Soldier ).
Kate is working on her third album, which is now scheduled for end-of-June release. When asked about it, however, she is understandably hesitant.
"It's difficult to talk about the album without you actually hearing it," she explains, in a voice so quiet I worry the tape recorder won't pick it up. "I suppose it's more like the first album, The Kick Inside , though, than the second, Lionheart , in that the songs are telling stories.
"I like to see things with a positive direction, because it makes it so much easier to communicate with the audience or listener. When you see people actually listening to the songs and getting into them, it makes you realise how important it is that the songs should actually be saying something."
The lyrics on her two previous albums are mainly concerned with love, sex and relationships. Simple and common subject matter, I suggest, safe and uncontroversial. <Incest not controversial? Explicit descriptions of coitus not controversial? OK...>
Kate rightly points out, however, that her lyrics do go into the psychology of relationships, and analyse what lies under that superficial banner of "love", which--no matter how common a theme--is still very important to a lot of people.
Her new album, however, is exploring different avenues.
"There are a lot of different songs," she says. "There's no specific theme, but they're saying a lot about freedom, which is very important to me." Which is why Kate is also producing the album herself this time, helped by John Kelly, who produced The Kick Inside and Lionheart . <False. Andrew Powell produced The Kick Inside , and Kelly was assisted by Kate on the production of Lionheart .>
"It means I have more control over my album, which is going to make it more rounded, more complete--more me, I hope."
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush circa 1980
Her latest, fifth, single is very different from anything Kate has done before, and different from anything on the album, she says. Breathing is a dramatic statement about the very real dangers of a possible nuclear disaster in our world.
"It's about a baby still in the mother's womb, at a time of nuclear fallout, but it's more of a spiritual being," Kate explains, gesticulating with her hands, drawing a picture in the air to demonstrate.
"It has all its senses: sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing; and it knows what is going on outside the mother's womb. And yet it wants desperately to carry on living, as we all do, of course.
"Nuclear fallout is something we're all aware of, and worried about happening in our lives, and it's something we should all take time to think about. We're all innocent, none of us deserves to be blown up."
The hopelessness and pointlessness of nuclear fallout is conveyed also in the haunting, ominous melody which swirls forlornly around Kate's familiar crying vocals. The lyrics are short but to the point, while in the background an officious-sounding broadcast instructs its nation what to do.
It seems strange to hear Kate singing about politics, something I associate more with fighting, militant bands such as the Clash and the Stranglers.
Kate is so slight and demure, an extremely artistic person whose aims seem more concerned with entertaining people by taking them away from the outside world and its problems, even if only for an hour or two.
Hers seems a comfortable, almost fairytale success story. Discovered by EMI Records at the age of sixteen, she was sponsored for a couple of years, writing, during which time she continued learning to dance, perform and project herself.
"I think from the outside it does look as if it's been very easy for me--if you believe what the media say. But in fact it hasn't. Everyone thinks--knows, because it's true--that you need that lucky break, but what really counts is the determination that has to be there in the beginning.
"Basically it all comes down to personality. You have to be very strong to get where you want in this business. I mean, some people have been going ages, like Elkie Brooks. She's amazing (n.b.: the only time in an hour's conversation that Kate uses that word).
"Elkie's been knocked down so many times, and yet she always gets up and fights back. It's the same with me. Because I want to keep going, I can. I don't deny that I've been lucky, though."
The determination, just as important as the talent, has always been there, probably even before Kate learnt to play the piano at the age of eight.
"Instead of going out to play with other children I used to play the piano--it was my way of talking, of expressing myself."
Kate admits she was a fairly solitary child who didn't have many friends, and I wonder if she still is a bit of a loner. It seems rather an odd question when picturing the self-assured performer onstage--but what about offstage, away from it all? Is she much of a socialite?
"No, I don't goto parties much. The last one must have been, ooh, Christmas, I suppose. When I get home I tend to sleep--especially at the moment, because I've been working too hard; or I clean up--wash-up and hoover. I find that very therapeutic. When I've got a lot on my mind I like to get away to something totally non-taxing.
"I see friends whenever possible, too, and watch television, because that's something you can just switch off when you've had enough."
She laughs at having to relate such run-of-the-mill things to prove she's "normal".
"I'm not a star," she says adamantly. "My name is, but not me. I'm still just me."
Kate has been criticised for being too pretentious onstage--for not being herself. Patiently she explains what she thinks the critics have missed.
"When I am onstage, I'm performing, yes, and yes, I'm projecting. And to do these things well, I have to be big--" (she stretches her small, slender frame upright to demonstrate) "--and bold, and full of confidence. And I am, but--" (and she plumps down in her seat again), "--it's still little me inside."
Her performance, she says, is not contrived, it's how how she feels at the time.
PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Bush on stage during The Tour of Life in 1979
"I mean, you can't go onstage and simper, and be timid and shy," she continues. "You've got to be big and strong, and give your audience everything you've got; reveal your emotions: be romantic, transport them into another world, so they're in tune with you.
"That requires an awful lot of hard work, and an almost calculated force, I suppose, in that you know what you're doing. But it does come naturally.
"Bands that do nothing, that just go out and perform their basic function, play their latest album, or sing it, or whatever, and then just walk off, are boring. You have to keep your audience's attention all the way, to be a success."
Which is why Kate Bush is a success. Her onstage performance is an extension of her songs. Through her movements she expresses the mood of her songs. They can be fast and lively, or angry, perhaps slow and sad, or maybe romantic”.
A new chapter in her career. Never for Ever was Kate Bush stepping away from a particular sound and aesthetic and stepping into new territory. Whilst it must have been exceedingly tiring and a whirlwind going from a busy 1979 and ending 1980 with nary a moment to breathe before her fourth album as taking shape, this was someone who was getting more acclaim and focus. That number one success and the Tour of Life adulation meant EMI were a lot more flexible when it came to their star producing and taking time with her music – though, even though it came out just two years after Never for Ever, they were a little peeved it took ‘so long’ and was not that commercial sounding. Still underrated and with so few of its songs played on radio – Babooshka, Army Dreamers and Breathing seem to be the easy go-to -, I hope that the approaching forty-third anniversary inspires deep diving. I will do another feature about Never for Ever before 8th September. What the amazing Kate Bush achieved in 1979 and then added to in 1980 with Never for Ever is deeply impressive! It required a…
HUGE amount of strength and discipline.