FEATURE:
They Say, No, No, It Won't Last Forever!
Searching for the Lyrics to Kate Bush’s Ivor Novello-Winning The Man with the Child in His Eyes
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THERE are a couple of things…
I want to discuss in this feature. I have discussed The Man with the Child in His Eyes before. Released on 26th May, 1978, it was the second (U.K.) single from her debut album, The Kick Inside. After a number one with Wuthering Heights, she followed it with a track that reached six in the U.K. It reached three in Ireland and actually got to eighty-five in the US Billboard Hot 100. There are a couple of reasons as to why I am revisiting this song. For a start, it is almost forty-five years since the track won an Ivor Novello. Bush won for The Outstanding British Lyric. Actually, Wuthering Heights was nominated for Best Song Musically and Lyrically – though it lost to Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street (which it beat for The Outstanding British Lyric). In the same ceremony, George Martin was given the Outstanding Services to British Music. You can see more of the winners here. I cannot find the exact date of the ceremony, though we are coming up to the forty-fifth anniversary. If this site is to be believed, it does seem like she won the Ivor Novello on 29th April. That was when she was performing a run of shows for The Tour of Life. That day, Bush was at The Amsterdam Carre Theater. It is not the only time Kate Bush has a connection with and honour from the Ivors. In 2002, she was given the Outstanding Contribution to British Music award. That was a few years before Aerial was released. In 2020, Bush became a Fellow of The Ivors Academy. With that last honour coming when she was sixty-one and the first when she was twenty, it goes to show that she has been celebrated and recognised as a world-class and influential songwriter for decades now. It still amazes me a song she wrote when she was thirteen won her an award and got so high in thew charts. Such prodigious talent at such a young age! The Man with the Child in His Eyes remains one of her most loved and beautiful songs. This pure and gorgeous moment that appears just before Wuthering Heights on The Kick Inside.
There has always been a bit of mystery regarding the subject of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. As she was thirteen when she wrote it, I detach the song from the romantic or sexual. Maybe more of a teenage fantasy, instead it seems more to be fictional or imagined. There are those who think that it is about Steve Blacknell. As we source from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia: “Born in Lambeth, South London on 6 September 1952, Steve Blacknell started out as a toilet cleaner in a mental hospital in Bexley, Kent. During this time he had a relationship with Kate Bush – before she became famous. During this time she wrote The Man With The Child In His Eyes, which Blacknell claims is about him”. I never felt this was true. Kate Bush herself never said it was about Blacknell. She has said it wasn’t about anyone specific. I consider it more of a poem that turned into a song. Other says it was written about her mentor, David Gilmour. It is the mystery of the song’s origins that gives it so much power and appeal. I always like to think this teenager imagining a few lines and it formed into this evocative and beautiful song. I have said before how the one thing I would love to own related to Kate Bush is the Cathy photobook. Consisting of photos her brother John Carder Bush took from her childhood, it is an intimate and fascinating look at Kate Bush before she was Kate Bush. Cathy. At home in East Wickham Farm, Welling, we get this access to someone who, not many years after the photos were taken, would choose a career in music and soon be a major name.
I do often think about The Man with the Child in His Eyes. Specifically the lyrics. If there was this rare and unique item that I could have then that would be it. The original handwritten lyrics. In 2010, Steve Blacknell put up Kate Bush’s handwritten lyrics of The Man With the Child in His Eyes for auction via the memorabilia/auction website 991.com. I guess its owner would never consider re-auctioning them, but I would love to know where in the world they are. I love how authentically juvenile yet classic the lyrics are. Written in hot pink felt tip pen, there is a blend of the child-like and elegant. Something pure and historical, this is the template or starting place of a song that would win an Ivor Novello award about seven or eighty years after the song was written. Kate Bush recorded the song in 1975 with David Gilmour acting as executive producer. Laying the track down in AIR Studios in London. Bush was accompanied on the song by an orchestra. That was an experienced she said terrified her. Regardless, her vocal performance is flawless. Compare the vocal sound of that – which she recorded when she was sixteen – and the one for Wuthering Heights. Even though they were recorded a couple of years apart, you feel like you’re listening to two completely different people.
Bush made her debut (and only) live U.S. T.V. appearance on SNL in 1978 and performed The Man with the Child in His Eyes. During that performance, Paul Shaffer played piano. In the same way as Kate asks where her man is during this classic song, I wonder where the lyrics now are. A man perhaps lost sea or missing, what about those beautiful hand-written lyrics that one could imagine her penning in her bedroom when she was thirteen. The mix of excitement and focus as she composed those words. Why a pink felt tip pen?! I always would have though there’d be a fountain pen or something like that. I guess, as she was so young, she would have had a selection of felt tip pens and felt that hot pink was perfect for the task and look of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. There are so many treasures and precious rarities out there fans would really love to possess. I think that these lyrics are what I would pay anything for. A rare piece of Kate Bush history hanging on my wall! I pine and yearn for these lyrics. I have been wondering why Steve Blacknell decided to release for auction words that, if not directly about him, where given to him by Kate Bush. It does seem mad that he would let these out of his grasp! Regardless, they are now somewhere else. I am not sure what state they are in, though I do hope that whoever has them has kept the page clean and protected so that no damage is done to these important and award-winning words. I guess the fact that the lyrics – or a love letter depending on whether you feel The Man with the Child in His Eyes is about Steve Blacknell – were sold for £10,000 means they would be out of most people’s price range (including mine).
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Steve Blacknell
Looking at this source, we learn more about the song and those lyrics. Steve Blacknell discussing his relationship with Kate Bush and how he went from a toilet cleaner at a psychiatric hospital to working in the music industry. No doubt Kate Bush gave him a certain confidence to pursue his dreams and to move into the industry. He in turn obvious motivated her a lot. Just reading about how the two came together and how they briefly inspired one another intrigues me! It is a shame that these lyrics are not in a museum or somewhere that the public could see:
“But Steve Blacknell, Kate's first boyfriend, revealed the story behind the music as the hand-written lyrics went on sale at music memorabilia site www.991.com.
Penned in girlish pink ink and featuring circles instead of dots over the 'i's, the piece is part of a package which features hand-written lyrics to another track from The Kick Inside.
Steve Blacknell, 58, of Hythe, Kent, said: 'By the spring of 1975 she had become my first true love.'
'All I really knew about her was that she wrote songs, played the piano and lived in a lovely house with an equally lovely family.'
The pair would 'plot their destinies' together, with Kate vowing to dedicate her life to music, and Steve also planning a career in the industry.
Steve, who was working at the time as a toilet cleaner in a local hospital, said: 'She had her heart set on becoming a global star and I was going to be a flash DJ.'
'One day I would introduce her on Top Of The Pops. In the summer of 1975, I finally got my break and landed a job as a marketing assistant with Decca Records.'
'It was then that I finally thought I was equipped to hear her music and it was a day I'll never forget. I went round to her house and she led me to the room where the piano was.'
'I thought "Oh my God". What I heard made my soul stand on end. I realised there and then that I was in love with a genius.'
Steve took Kate to gigs by groups such as The Incredible String Band and Camel, but as her career took off, their love faded.
Steve added: 'As things hotted up for her, so our relationship cooled and we drifted apart.'
'But I've been told by those around her that I was indeed The Man With The Child In His Eyes and I know that those words were given to me by someone very special.
'They say you never forget your first love and in my case it's as true as it is for anyone. It's true too that she went on to charm, enlighten and entrance people all over the world.'
'I'm proud to have known and loved her, and proud to have shared such amazing times with the genius that is Kate Bush.'
Julian Thomas, of 991.com, said: 'This is one of those items that comes on the market once in a blue moon. We're expecting a lot of interest because Kate Bush is a highly collectable artist”.
I have been thinking a lot about Kate Bush’s 1979. During The Tour of Life, when she was twenty, she was taking her first couple of albums around the U.K. and Europe. In the middle of all of this, Bush won an Ivor Novello for The Man with the Child in His Eyes. This majestic and sublime song she wrote when she was thirteen was given this big honour. Maybe Kate Bush would not have wanted the original hand-written lyrics to the track to leave the hands of Steve Blacknell. Perhaps they are not that sentimental to Kate Bush now. I don’t know the name of the person who has the lyrics for The Man with the Child in His Eyes. I keep imagining how this piece of paper of such importance is out there somewhere. I do not know of any other Kate Bush written lyrics that has been auctioned. There are fan letters and things like that, yet there is something special and more impactful when you think of the history of The Man with the Child in His Eyes and the way the song would grow into this award-wining and much-loved track. Considered one of her very best, the song won a prestigious Ivor Novello almost forty-five years ago. The way those lyrics Bush wrote when she was thirteen transformed into what it did is…
AMAZING to think.