FEATURE:
A Masterpiece of a Title Track
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and Gow Hunter in the video for Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty
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WE had…
some incredible Kate Bush celebrations last year. Hounds of Love, her fifth studio album, turned forty on 16th September. It did garner a lot of new interest in this masterpiece. There are two singles from the album that are forty this year. I will look at The Big Sky closer to its fortieth on 21st April. However, Hounds of Love’s title track turns forty on 17th February. There is a lot to note about the song. Kate Bush wrote the title track at her house early on in the recording process for Hounds of Love. It reached eighteen on the U.K. singles chart. It seems incredibly low for such a remarkable song. Many critics see it as her greatest song. Hounds of Love has this remarkable video that Bush directed. The first time she directed herself, though she did co-directed and assist on videos before this. I have written about this song quite a few times. I am going to repeat some information that I have used in other features. Kate Bush discussing the song and what influenced it. However, as it turns forty on 17th February, there are new things to bring in. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia. We get some interview archive about this astonishing song:
“[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.
Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985
The ideas for ‘Hounds Of Love’, the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case the hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it’s very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive.
I do wonder why Hounds of Love was not considered as the first single from the album. As strong as Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is, I wonder if Hounds of Love would have got a stronger chart position is it was released first. I think the video is one of Kate Bush’s very best. Although Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was the first song Kate Bush wrote for Hounds of Love, its title song led to that album title. It is such an interesting idea for a song. That idea of portraying love in this way. I wonder how many other artists before that used animals as metaphors for love. If you look at the album cover – shot by her brother, John Carder Bush -, Bush is lying down and embracing her two hounds, Bonnie and Clyde. They are sleepy and non-threatening, so it maybe offers an opposite take on the title track. The connection between the cover and the track. Maybe the cover shot is Bush taming those chasing hounds. Although we do not see dogs chasing Bush in the video, there is that suggestion that something in the dark is chasing her. Perhaps not literal hounds, there is this spirit or psychological shadow that seems like hounds baying for blood. Instead of talking about heartbreak and doubts in a traditional or cliché way, Kate Bush took this different approach. The fear of commitment and being committed was something preying on her mind. Rather than run from these chasing hounds, perhaps they are friendly and are not scary. It is this idea that I have not really heard other artists exploring. Such a clever angle from Kate Bush! As much as I love other title tracks, there is something about Hounds of Love that stands aside. Bush seemingly running away from love but also towards it. She was dating Del Palmer at the time she wrote the song. Perhaps, a point in life when others her age might have been getting married and having children, that might have been looming in her mind. Bush maybe committed to music and work and putting her relationship aside. It is wonderful to pick Hounds of Love apart and what compelled her to write the song.
I will round things off soon. When MOJO ranked Kate Bush’s fifty greatest tracks for their feature, they put Hounds of Love at number one. I think a lot of journalists today would share that love and opinion. From its writing, performance and production, this is a masterpiece that will always be relevant. Themes and thoughts that so many people can identify with. There are so many takeaways from the lyrics. I shall come to that:
“No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?” The uncertainty, however, is not reflected in the confidence – the perfect, dazzling completeness – of the song’s execution. On Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush is going at full pelt, chasing the horizon, running her vision to ground. Not really the hunted, but the hunter all along”.
In terms of lines that stay I your head, there are so many: “Among your hounds of love/And feel your arms surround me/I’ve always been a coward/And never know what’s good for me”. Also: “Take my shoes off/And throw them in the lake/And I’ll be/Two steps on the water”. The poetry in those lyrics. Whilst other artists would offer something more basic and ordinary, Kate Bush’s choice of language is fascinating. More cinematic and visual than anything. Writing a song that she definitely wanted to see visualised. It is a shame that I could not get a ticket for 2014’s Before the Dawn and see Kate Bush perform this live. It is one of those songs that is not talked about as much as others, yet it is perhaps her crowning achievement. I might pick apart the lyrics for another feature. When it comes to a lyric I just referenced, Bush explained its meaning to Doug Alan in 1985: “In the song ‘Hounds Of Love’, what do you mean by the line ‘I’ll be two steps on the water’, other than a way of throwing off the scent of hounds, or whatever, by running through water. But why ‘two’ steps? Because two steps is a progression. One step could possibly mean you go forward and then you come back again. I think “two steps” suggests that you intend to go forward. But why not “three steps”? It could have been three steps – it could have been ten, but “two steps” sounds better, I thought, when I wrote the song. Okay”. I did not know about the 12” version of the song and how it is different to the album version. I prefer the version we hear on the album, though it is really interesting hearing this other version. Even though I do not like their take, Futureheads covered it in 2004. I said this when discussing the song last year for a run of features around the fortieth anniversary of Hounds of Love. How the band suck all the power and drama out of the song and turn it into this weird versions that is more dancey and jokey. Quirky and just odd. I am not sure why people love this cover! Listen to the only version that matters: the one Kate Bush recorded. Turning forty on 17th February, I wanted to spend some time with this incredible song. One that is always going to hold this amazing resonance and gravity. It send shivers down the spine when you play it! Whilst some might argue, there are many who consider this iconic title track…
HER finest work ever.