FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at Forty-Eight
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
The Live Performances and Legacy
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I am already looking ahead…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush preforms Wuthering Heights on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show in Ireland on 25th March, 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Eve Holmes
to its forty-eighth anniversary, and that is not until 2018! However, I will hold back for now and, instead, mark forty-eight years of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. Her debut single was released on 20th January, 1978. It was initially due to be released late in 1977 but, for a number of possible reasons, it was held back. By this time, the song had been heard and played on the radio. EMI were perhaps keen for it to be kept under wraps until its official release, but it had been heard and played prior to its release, so there was this anticipation when it was officially out as a single. Despite the fact it started life outside of the top forty in the U.K., Wuthering Heights did get to number one. Kate Bush became the first female artist to have a self-penned number one song. That sounds amazing to consider but, in the forty-eight years since, there have not been a huge amount of women who have topped the singles charts here with a self-written song. One where they are the only writer. As I noted in a previous anniversary feature, there is contention as to what inspired her to write the song. I had always assumed Bush watched the final ten/fifteen minutes of a 1967 BBC adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel. That she raced to her room and started to pen the song, rather than there being a gap. She did eventually read the novel to get context and more depth before the single came out. However, it was that moment of a T.V. adaptation that stayed in her mind and then she wrote it over the course of a few hours on the night of 7th March, 1977. A late contender for inclusion on The Kick Inside, it was not viewed by EMI as a natural single.
Kate Bush argued that it should be her debut, and the tensions got hot and charged. Though Bush was not crying, she was definitely emotional and resolute. She won the battle and was proven right. Had the more conventional James and the Cold Gun had been her first single, it would not have reached number one. The Kick Inside might not have sold as hugely. I shall come to discuss the legacy of Wuthering Heights. I will get to the live performances. Not the very first times Kate Bush had performed live, it was her first time on T.V. Prior to that, with the KT Bush Band, she played at clubs and pubs around London and the south east of England. Building up this name and reputation, that experience did give Kate Bush some foundation and understanding of what it would be like on this promotional trail. However, Bush could not have anticipated just what it would entail promoting Wuthering Heights. Nineteen when the song was released, she was thrown straight into this whirlwind! There is a lot to explore when it comes to Wuthering Heights, and I will discuss it again when marking twenty years of The Kick Inside ahead of its anniversary on 17th February. However, the live performances fascinate me. With Kite as its B-side, Wuthering Heights was this amazing single that proved Kate Bush was so different to her peers. Prior to getting to those live performance, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia brought together interviews where Kate Bush discusses the single. For her fan club newsletter in January, 1979, Bush discussed the origins of writing this iconic and incredible debut single:
“I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon.
Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn’t seem to get out of the chorus – it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn’t link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I’d been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.
I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn’t relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.
It’s funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn’t know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with ‘Wuthering Heights’: I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.
I’ve never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it’s supposed to be”.
I am going to return to this source when exploring the legacy of Wuthering Heights. It is forty-eight on 20th January. Of course, as the single became more played and popular, Kate Bush was expected to perform it live. Perhaps not the song she has performed live the most, she did have to get used to performing this regularly. For 1979’s The Tour of Life, it was part of the encore. A song that so many people came to see, her T.V. performances were perhaps less comfortable and amazing. It is hard to make a song like Wuthering Heights came alive live. For The Tour of Life, she did have this space to create her own set and backdrop. More natural and personal, the T.V. apparencies were a mixed bag.
Prior to a mortifying first performance on Top of the Pops – where Kate Bush said it was like watching herself die -, there were a couple of T.V. appearances. The second time Wuthering Heights was performed was on Magpie, though it would have been between 9th and 16th February. 9th February, 1978 was the first time the single was performed. Oddly It was for German T.V. and Bio’s Bahnhof This was an entertainment show hosted by Alfred Biolek, which was broadcast by ARD in Germany from 9th February, 1978 to 28th October, 1982. Being a German T.V. show, they did not know what Wuthering Heights was about and the connection to Yorkshire and the Moors. Instead, Bush was backed on stage by a volcano! A bizarre and ill-fitting visual for the song, it was a mimed performance. Top of the Pops would be when she got to perform it live. However, as solo artists could not perform with a band and they had to be accompanied by a BBC orchestra, Bush was completely dumbfounded. She hoped that she would be able to perform with her band for moral support. However, she had to go on stage and perform backed by a pre-recorded and awful orchestral backing. She did not really have the luxury of making it a one-off. I guess, to help the single climb the charts, she could not just send a video in place. A video was made especially for Top of the Pops, though she did perform the song on Top of the Pops a further couple of times. If the performance became more comfortable and less awful, that first appearance was quite galling. On 2nd and 23rd March, Bush played again on Top of the Pops. A red and white dress version of the video was shot. The red dress version is considered the most iconic. Though the video (the white dress version I think) was shown on Top of the Pops for a Christmas edition, due to Musicians Union rules, Bush had to perform the song live. Whilst it would have been amazing to hear and see the late Ian Bairnson’s iconic electric guitar on Top of the Pops, Bush did not have the luxury of bringing the song to life in the way she would have liked. Not until The Tour of Life when she got to right this wrong. For The Tour of Life, KT Bush bandmate and old friend Brian Bath was on electric guitar. A shame we did not get to see Bairnson play this on stage with Kate Bush.
The two final T.V. performances of Wuthering Heights were interesting: 19th May, 1978 on Szene (Germany), and 9th September, 1978 for Festivalbar (Italy). The countries where she played the songs live were receptive. The song charted well there. Germany, Wuthering Heights reached eleven. In Italy, it went to number one. Another nation where it hit the top spot and Bush played the song live there is Ireland. The nation her mother, Hannah, was born, Bush played for RTÉ ‘s The Late Late Show, hosted by Gay Byrne. Bush looked amazing and it was another case of her not being able to bring in a full band. The chat between Byrne and Bush was awkward. Somewhat patronising and sexist, Bush would deal with a lot of awkward, ill-informed and old-fashioned male hosts and interviewers who she was always professional around. 25th March, 1978 is when Bush was on the Irish chat show. That was a few days after the final Top of the Pops appearance. No volcano for when Bush appeared on Rendez-vous Du Dimanche in France on 7th May, 1978! It was a brown/blurry background. Perhaps not quite knowing what to do, it was another simple, mimed performance. On the same day as her appearance on The Late Late Show in Ireland, Bush performed Wuthering Heights on Toppop in the Netherlands. I have checked this and wonder how it was managed. I am sure both were live performances, but maybe she performed on Topop earlier in the day or it was broadcast on 25th March, 1978, and then she was in Ireland live for the Late Late Show. It is amazing, right from the off, how far she was sent. Artists today would not be sent across Europe and the U.K. to perform their debut single on T.V. It is a monumental ask. However, the song went to number three on the Dutch chart. France and Germany were among the lowest-charting countries, though fourteen in France and eleven in Germany is respectable! Australia, Italy and New Zealand also made Wuthering Heights a number one. Bush would promote in New Zealand and Australia in 1978.
I think that the most fascinating pre-The Tour of Life performance of Wuthering Heights was a De Efteling TV Special. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia again for details about the special. Wuthering Heights was one of several songs from The Kick Inside that Kate Bush performed. Though mimed again, there was more in the way of set design and concept. Though quite strange and gothic. Though, thinking about it, totally appropriate for Wuthering Heights at least! That amusement park performance is the most charming and remake of the T.V. spots:
“On 12 May 1978 at 7.12pm, the Dutch broadcaster TROS broadcast a 20 minute Kate Bush television special, recorded at the Dutch amusement park Efteling. On 10 May 1978, Efteling was ready to open the Haunted Castle, the most expensive attraction it had ever constructed, and they wanted to promote it as much as they could. Ton van der Ven, who designed the castle, appeared in a popular talk show and in April a documentary featuring the Haunted Castle was made by filmmaker Rien van Wijk, who was eager to shoot in the latest attraction before it officially opened. Kate, who just had a big hit with Wuthering Heights, was approached for a television special that would promote both Efteling and her songs. The special was filmed in April, a month before the official opening of the castle.
The special consists of six songs, each filmed in different locations:
Moving was filmed on the square in front of the castle.
Wuthering Heights has Kate dancing around inside the main show of the castle. A smoke machine is used for added effect.
Them heavy people was filmed on three locations: inside the main show in the attic; at the entrance of the main show with the oriental ghost; and outside before the entrance of the cave which is part of another attraction, the Indian Waterlillies.
The Man With The Child In His Eyes was recorded at the side of the lake with the gondolettas
Strange Phenomena has Kate walking around in the dark passages of the castle
The Kick Inside was filmed on the lake, with Kate lying in a death-barge. At the end of the song, she sails slowly down a placid river, evoking images of Elaine and The Lady of Shalott, classic poetical figures of Arthurian legend”.
Eleven T.V. performances between 9th February and 9th September. Between these dates, Bush was performing other songs in other countries. Moving was released as a single in Japan. Wuthering Heights was the B-side. However, Bush did undertake promotion in Japan in June 1978. Considering all the countries she visited and the fact that she had to make these distinct songs translate must have been head-spinning and odd! However, one cannot overlook the instant impact and popularity of Wuthering Heights. Returning to that first link from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, and Kate Bush talked about the reaction to Wuthering Heights in its first year or so:
One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I’ve had from the song, though I’ve heard that the Bronte Society think it’s a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn’t know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I’m really happy about that.
There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV – it was about one in the morning – because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that’s all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence”.
ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Steve Smith
On 30th July, 2018 – Kate Bush’s sixtieth birthday – The Telegraph wrote how Kate Bush reinvented Pop with her debut song. A piece of music that has changed the life of so many people, the fact it has been covered so many times means that it connects with other artists. CMAT recently performed the song. Though the original has a distinct vocal performance, other artists have provided their takes:
“In 1978, Bush cited Patti Smith, Johnny Rotten and The Stranglers as major influences. Good music, she said, “is like an interrogation, it really puts you up against the wall, and that’s what I want to do. I’d like my music to intrude. I think that anything you do that you believe in, you should club people over the head with it. Not many females succeed with that. Patti Smith does.”
Orton says that by being fearless and “not answering to anyone”, Bush embodied the attitude, if not the sound, of punk. In this sense, the softness of Wuthering Heights was a red herring.
“Everyone said ‘Ooh isn’t she ‘crazy’’, but no, she was really profoundly strong. Anyone who can hold that energy has to be incredibly focused. She’s got a punk spirit. It takes incredible strength to hold your own, especially at that time, as a woman who looks like her, writes like her and sounds like her,” Orton says.
Paranoid about being labelled, Bush strove to keep changing after Wuthering Heights. She said she wanted people to “chase after her”, to find out what she’d do next. “If I really wanted to, I could write a song that would be similar to Wuthering Heights. But I don’t want to. What’s the point?” she said in 1978.
This explains why over 40 years, it’s been impossible to anticipate her next move. She’s constantly created extraordinary musical netherworlds that have, in turns, taken in mainstream pop, Philip Glass-like minimalism and Balearic house, to name just three. To this day, Bush remains one of pop’s last great eccentrics. Her sold-out and critically lauded run of 22 shows at Hammersmith Apollo in 2014 showed what a force she remains.
But it was the uniqueness of Wuthering Heights that gave her this licence to experiment. Its release announced the arrival of an honest, unusual and fearless performer, rather than the arrival of a singer of piano ballads based on Victorian gothic literature.
As all truly great performers would, Bush used her unforgettable and idiosyncratic debut as a springboard rather than a template. And it is sadly unimaginable, in our more homogenised pop climate, with its fragmented listening patterns and lack of must-see TV music shows, that a song such as Wuthering Heights would have such a national impact if released today”.
I would point people to this article from Dreams of Orgonon when it comes to exploring the inspiration for Wuthering Heights, why it is so effecting, original and enduring. I am going to end with this article from Steve Pafford, who ranked it third when considering the greatest debut singles of all time. I don’t think anything like Wuthering Heights has come along since:
“A doctor’s daughter, Kate began playing piano at age 11, writing songs at 13, and making a demo tape with Pink Floyd‘s Dave Gilmour at age 16. EMI signed her and gave her two years to develop her songwriting and that otherworldly four octave range voice. Oh, and the dancing. Those “self-expression” lessons with Bowie‘s former mime mentor Lindsay Kemp had certainly paid off, as the landmark track’s engineer Jon Kelly would attest:
“In the case of Wuthering Heights, she was imitating this witch, the mad lady from the Yorkshire Moors, and she was very theatrical about it. She was such a mesmerising performer — she threw her heart and soul into everything she did — that it was difficult to ever fault her or say ‘You could do better.’”
Kate’s handwritten lyrics. Yup.
Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thorn takes up the story…
“In 1978, when Kate Bush released Wuthering Heights, I was too immersed in my punk records to like it. More than the fact that it featured piano – drippy – and referenced a novel – swotty – I struggled with the singing. That melodramatic, all-over-the-shop approach to vocal melody just screamed “hippy” at me, and seemed to be the aural equivalent of shawls, beads, headdresses and candles, all of which I suspected Kate Bush was wearing or surrounded by while she recorded the vocal.
It was this very flamboyance that imprinted itself on people’s minds and made it so appealing to the amateur performer (still imprinted on my eardrums, eyeballs and indeed damaged psyche, is the memory of two friends’ moving rendition at a Christmas karaoke party), but singing in that way, in that voice, steered the song close to the ridiculous.
You could contend that the novel itself is somewhat manic and hysterical, so Kate Bush’s vocal is true to the tone of her source material, and yet, what a gamble to take. It paid off, of course – four weeks at No 1 for a debut single about a Victorian novel isn’t bad going – and proved once again that with rock and pop singing it’s probably safe to say that you can never go too far in your quest to find a distinctive voice for yourself.”
At the time people assumed Bush would be a one hit wonder. The single certainly sailed close to being a novelty hit (“Sounds like a bag of cats!” John Lydon‘s mam told him when the Sex Pistol brought the 45 home), but 40 years on here we are. Incredibly, Kate, who’d spent her childhood in the Kent countryside “immersed in English folk music, and Irish jigs and sea shanties,” was just 19 when Wuthering Heights topped the British charts, knocking off Abba‘s Take A Chance On Me and spending four weeks weeks at the summit, holding off a cheeky challenge from Blondie’s Denis.
It also reached the top spot in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Italy, and was a smash right across the world. Except the US. Go figure.
While Debbie Harry and her auto-American boys only had to wait a year before going that one step further in with Heart Of Glass and a succession of other UK chart-dominators, Wuthering Heights remains KB’s only No.1 single to date – the closest she’s come since being 1985’s Number 3-peaking Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), the trailer for her undisputed masterpiece, the epic dreamscape that is the Hounds Of Love.
If we can talk an earlier album for a second; Amazingly, in the pre-Madonna, pre-Adele days of 1980, Bush’s third set, Never For Ever, was the first ever long-player by a British female solo artist to top the UK album chart. Bolstered by a triumvirate of memorable hits – Breathing, Babooshka, Army Dreamers – it was also the first LP by any female solo artist to enter the chart at No.1. In 2014 she was still setting new records.
Thanks to the hardly surprising hoo-ha surrounding Before The Dawn, her first live shows in 35 years, Kate became the first woman to have eight albums in the Top 40 simultaneously. Indeed, at the end of that August every one of her eleven (11!) albums made an reappearance in the Top 50, a pretty staggering achievement for a living artist.
Remix fix? In 1986 Kate inexplicably re-recorded the song’s vocals for her only singles collection, The Whole Story because “It sounded dated. I think if we’d had more time I probably would have done the same with a couple of other songs.” Wow, just wow.
Wow, what a career, what a startlingly original talent. Kate’s had so many brilliant and unique songs course through her veins – Cloudbusting, The Man With The Child In His Eyes, This Woman’s Work, Under The Ivy, The Sensual World, Moments Of Pleasure to reel off just a few – and all of them self-penned. What vision, what self-possession. She really is the closest any country has got to producing a female Bowie.
But unlike the grand old Dame, she was never interested in that ghastly word celebrity, and never flinched from her bloody minded refusal to present her affecting art on her own terms. This is why we love her – those admirable qualities to never compromise, never play the game and to do what the fuck she wants.
Cherish the genius. Cherish that cultural legacy. Cherish the Bush.
Long may she reign.
Released on 20th January, 1978, Kate Bush, EMI or anyone in the world could quite have anticipated how Wuthering Heights would explode. That is would be discussed, performed and played forty-eight years after its release. One of the most staggering debut singles ever released, it was during 1979’s The Tour of Life, when she could really bring something out of it. Playing life to audiences around the U.K. and Europe, Bush would slightly detach herself from the song in years since. Perhaps not a fan of her original vocal, many critics attacked it and ridiculed her for being hitch-pitched and witch-like. Many associating everything Bush did after with Wuthering Heights and that sound. However, Kate Bush should be immensely proud of her masterpiece! The fact that she wrote it when she was eighteen is still something I cannot comprehend! Proof that, from the very start, Kate Bush was this…
SONGWRITING genius.