FEATURE:
Myths and Monsters
Cowedbusting: Kate Bush’s ‘Big Return’, Hounds of Love, at Thirty-Eight
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I have titled this feature as such…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
as there was a lot of rumour and controversy surrounding Kate Bush in 1985. Interestingly, I am reading a Classic Pop special where they chart Madonna’s entire career. At the time of Like a Prayer (1989), where she signed an unprecedented $5 million deal with Pepsi, she did a commercial that was watched by millions. The next day, her Like a Prayer video came out and was met with huge backlash. Seen as blasphemous, sacrilege, and offensive, its depiction of burning crosses and Madonna kissing a Black man meant that she was vilified by many. Interestingly and pleasingly, that sort of controversy had the opposite impact on the record buyers. The album sold massively and was a chart-topper. Not that she planned it that way, yet the controversy seemed to compel people to buy Like a Prayer almost in rebellion! In the case of Kate Bush in 1985 – a year when Madonna’s Like a Virgin (1984) album was on fire and she was confirmed as the Queen of Pop -, the rumours painted Bush to be somewhere between a beast and a recluse. Because she had not dared to put an album out in three years – heaven forefend! -, many thought she was either on drugs, massively overweight, involved in some scandal, or she had been dropped by her label – or perhaps all of those! The truth was simple: Kate Bush, practically days after the tabloids started going into a hysteria about this once-famed singer disappearing, released her fifth studio album. In fact, a lot of that speculation started just before Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) came out on 5th August, 1985. As it was, the years between 1982 and 1985 had been very busy for Kate Bush. Hounds of Love’s release on 16th September, 1985 was the culmination. You do not get an album that good from rushing!
She was finishing up The Dreaming’s promotion. Still releasing singles and music for a lot of that in between period, there was a tonne going on. In 1983, as I have written many times, Bush was starting demos of songs (most of that was productive in 1984, yet Bush had songs brewing and in some form), getting a home studio started, and really laying all the groundwork for her fifth studio album. If producing The Dreaming was a slightly tormenting and exhausting process, Bush was not going to quit producing. She knew her production voice was the only that should be heard, though recording at multiple studios and taking on so much, she built a bespoke studio by her family home and would allow herself some time before recording the album to be normal – to kick back for a second and get some energy back. Recommitting to dance and eating more healthily, that led to incredible inspiration. Surrounding by nature and something less foreboding as London, Bush was merely giving herself enough time to compose and record an album that many consider to be one of the best of all time. In future Hounds of Love features, I will look at different elements of the album, in addition to focusing on a few songs that do not get as much coverage as the singles. It is interesting how the tabloids focused on Bush and felt that she was some mythical beats almost. Hidden away or depressed after The Dreaming. As PROG noted in 2021, there was a lot of writing Bush off before she retorted with one of her very best songs:
“On August 5 1985, Kate Bush made an appearance on Terry Wogan’s early evening BBC1 chat show. Introduced by the avuncular host, the singer lip-synced her way through her new single, Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God). Standing at a wooden podium while clad in what looked like a monk’s cowl, and backed by a group of similarly-attired musicians, she looked like a cross between a politician and a 16th century religious leader.
Her presence on prime time TV was something of a surprise. Just a few days earlier, the NME had mentioned Bush in a piece headlined ‘Where Are They Now?’. Unfortunate timing aside, you could see their point. It had been three years since the singer had last released an album, and she’d been largely absent from the spotlight since then – a lifetime away in those pre-internet days. Rumours swirled that she’d ballooned to 18 stone, or was living as a recluse in the French countryside, or both.
As the Wogan appearance proved, the rumour about her weight wasn’t true. And while she had retreated from public view, it was to Kent rather than France, and she certainly hadn’t been idle. What she had been doing was working on her fifth album, away from the eyes of the media and her own record label.
That record, which would hit the shelves a month after her TV reappearance, was Hounds Of Love. Her fifth album, it retained the progressive spirit of her earlier career while bringing both a new maturity and a wild sense of anything-goes abandon to her work. It would be a watershed for Bush, ushering in the second act of her career, and influencing such disparate talents as Within Temptation, Bjork, and The Futureheads. At the time, it sounded like nothing else around. Today, almost 30 years on, it stands as one of the most visionary records ever made”.
Those who felt Bush was retired and retreated didn’t realise just how hard Bush was working. A different approach and line-up to the one on The Dreaming, these songs were very different. The singles, more commercial, were designed more to impact. Rather than deliberately trying to write singles, Bush balanced the accessible with the extraordinary. The album’s second side, The Ninth Wave, was her first conceptual suite. Few female artists have written anything like this. It remains many people’s favourite aspects of Hounds of Love. It makes it all the more laughable anyone dared to think Kate Bush was done. The hateful and insulting rumours about her weight or drug use. In fact, healthier and happier than she had been in a while, the twenty-seven-year-old released a masterpiece. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for sourcing interviews where Bush discussed making a mighty and unbeatable album:
“Many hours were spent on tiny vocal ideas that perhaps only last half a minute. Many hours went on writing lyrics - one of the most difficult parts in the process for me, in that it's so time-consuming and so frustrating, and it just always seems to take far too long for something that seems as though it should come so naturally. One of the difficult things about the lyrics is that when I initially write the song, perhaps half of the lyrics come with it but it's almost more difficult fitting in the other half to make it match than it would be perhaps to start from scratch, where, for instance, you might have just hummed the tune; or where, in some cases, I wrote them as instrumentals, and then the tunes were written over the top of this. Many times I ring up Paddy and ask him to come over to the studio immediately, to bring in that string-driven thing - to hit that note and let it float.
One of the most positive things is now having our own recording studio where we can experiment freely, and it's definitely one of the best decisions I've made since I've been recording albums. We've put a lot of hard work into this album, so we've been waiting for it to be finished and ready, and I know you've been waiting. I hope that after this time, and after all the snippets of information we've been giving you, you don't find it disappointing, but that you enjoy it, and that you enjoy listening to it in different ways again and again.
This album could never have happened without some very special people. Many thanks to Julian Mendelsohn, and especially Haydn Bendall and Brian Tench, who put a lot of hard work into this project, to all the musicians, who are a constant inspiration, to Ma who helps with every little thing, to Paddy and Jay for all their inspiration and influences, and again to Del for all those moments we've captured on tape together. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)
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. Having expressed all that, I wanted this album to be different - a positive album, just as personal but more about the good things. A lot depends on how you feel at any given time - it all comes out in the music. (James Marck, 'Kate Bush Breaks Out: Bush's Bridges'. Now - Toronto Weekly, 28 November 1985)
The first in my own studio. Another step closer to getting the work as direct as possible. You cut all the crap, don't have all these people around and don't have expensive studio time mounting up. A clean way of working. ('Love, Trust and Hitler'. Tracks (UK), November 1989)
I never was so pleased to finish anything if my life. There were times I never thought it would be finished. It was just such a lot of work, all of it was so much work, you know, the lyrics, trying to piece the thing together. But I did love it, I did enjoy it and everyone that worked on the album was wonderful. And it was really, in some ways, I think, the happiest I've been when I'd been writing and making an album. And I know there's a big theory that goes 'round that you must suffer for your art, you know, ``it's not real art unless you suffer.'' And I don't believe this, because I think in some ways this is the most complete work that I've done, in some ways it is the best and I was the happiest that I'd been compared to making other albums. ('Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love, with Richard Skinner. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)”.
Even though fans knew that Kate Bush would never spiral or quit, it seemed like there was cynicism from the press. If an artist doesn’t get albums out quickly and keep in the spotlight, they are subjected to being forgotten or scandalised! I would have loved to have been Kate Bush reading the tabloids or NME and knowing, very soon, she would unveil an album that would shut everyone up! If some felt that 1985 was a year when Kate Bush was almost done in the music industry, Hounds of Love proved that this assumption…
COULDN’T be further from the truth.