FEATURE:
Butterfly Kisses
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush as a child was photographed by her brother, John Carder Bush. This photo would appear in his book, Cathy (first published in 1986)
Exploring the Possibility of Mastered Version of Kate Bush’s Early Demos
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PERHAPS this could never happen…
but I think the early recordings and demos from Kate Bush should be remastered and given a layer of gloss. Kate Bush has remastered her studio albums and recently brought out Selections from the Other Sides. I wonder how many people know about these earliest recordings. Maybe going back as far as 1972. There is a sense of privacy about them. Bush never wanting them to be heard by the public. There have been some unauthorised and bootlegged albums with Kate Bush demos and early recordings. As Kate Bush Encyclopedia say in this article, Alone at My Piano was released in 1988. It is fascinating thinking about these tracks. Maybe hit and miss in terms of quality, I do feel like there is a case to make some available more widely. Perhaps Kate Bush would not want this to happen. Think about all the artists coming through that are inspired by Kate Bush, I feel like having access to these early recordings would be really inspiring. It gives us insight into this incredible artist as a teenager or child. There have been so many bootlegs through the years. This article is about another 1988 compilation. This time, concerning live performances. Also, in this article, we learn more about the first volume of the Cathy Demos. I would love to hear a remastered version of A Rose Growing Old. Such fascinating lyrics: “Slipping past the chimney-pots/Down among the ashes, away from old times/Why must I self-indulge in memories?/I should be celebrating to a moving melody/But it hurts me, it hurts me/Honey, honey, it hurts me/And I’m feeling like a rose growing old/Old, old, old, old”. This demo from 1976 might have been considered for Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, though it was never realised officially.
I am not sure whether Kate Bush would be as against the idea of releasing her demos as she might have been a few years ago. Even if they are scratchy and a little lo-fi, most are out there anyway. People can access them. Wouldn’t it be better to have these available in a better form? I guess it would technically not be a remaster, as these are demos and not studio recordings. Kate Bush’s videos have not be upgraded to HD or 4K, so it might be a leap to think she would go back fifty years and bring out a compilation of her demos. The fact we are talking about 1976 means that a fiftieth anniversary retrospection next year would be desirable. You can read more about the history of her demos here. We can go back as far as 1972. This was when Kate Bush was thirteen/fourteen. She was probably not be referred to as ‘Kate#. More likely her full name, Catherine, or Cathy. This school-aged child putting to tape her very earliest ideas. 1976 is when we are talking about the fifth recordings. You can read more about them here. Discogs have some tracklisting here. Maybe an odd anniversary to mark, it is worth exploring 1976 and significant events happening then. Bush signed with EMI in 1976. These are all really important moments. In 2011, Record Collector examined the cutting room floor. The demos and early recordings that many fans might not know about. They look at, among other things, the pre-fame, post-signing period between 1976 and 1977:
“A four-year contract was signed in 1976 and Kate was given time out by EMI to develop. She explained on the BBC’s Tonight show in March 1978, “I signed the contract and there was just feelings that we weren’t sure how to handle it. I myself felt I was very young and not capable of handling the business… And I think they were also worried that I was too young, and that they were looking on it as a long-term project.” Kate moved to London, where she shared a house with her brothers and continued to develop her vocal style at the honky-tonk piano she had bought with some of her EMI advance. She studied dance in Covent Garden under Bowie’s former mentor Lindsay Kemp, and would later recall her daily schedule. “I’d get up in the morning, I’d practise scales at my piano, go off dancing, and then in the evening I’d come back and play the piano all night. And I actually remember well the summer of ’76… we had such hot weather I had all the windows open. And I just used to write until, you know, four in the morning. And I got a letter of complaint from a neighbour who was basically saying ‘Shut up!’, because they had to get up at like five in the morning, they did shift work, and my voice was being carried the whole length of the street I think, so they weren’t too appreciative.”
In 1989, a batch of demos from this period surfaced, representing the first significant leak of Kate’s demo material. Initially dubbed the Phoenix collection, they went under this moniker as the recordings were originally broadcast on Phoenix radio station KSTM by former EMI employee John Dixon, who had been instrumental in plugging The Kick Inside to America. Confusingly, the broadcast seems to have taken place some seven years prior to the leak, so it seems uncertain as to why the tapes took so long to reach wider circulation. It consisted of 22 piano demos including five songs that turned up in more developed form over her first three albums: The Kick Inside and Oh To Be In Love, on The Kick Inside; Hammer Horror and Kashka From Baghdad on Lionheart; and Violin on Never For Ever. Three tracks from The Early Years tape also appeared in more refined form – Something Like A Song, The Gay Farewell and Disbelieving Angel – while the other 14 remain unique to this collection. There has been some debate over the correct titles of these tracks and they have circulated under a bewildering variety of names. Fortunately the titles were read on air during the Phoenix broadcast, presumably from the original tape box, and we present those titles here as they are, most likely, the titles as written by Kate: The Kick Inside (Brother)/Hammer Horror/It Hurts Me/Stranded At The Moonbase/Kashka From Baghdad/Surrender Into The Roses/Oh To Be In Love/Rinfry The Gypsy/On Fire/Inside A Snowball/Dali/Where Are The Lionhearts/Violin/ The Craft Of Love/The Gay Farewell/Something Like A Song/Frightened Eyes/The Disbelieving Angel/Nevertheless You’ll Do/Come Closer To Me Babe/So Soft/The Rare Flower/While Davy Dozed. The set first appeared in cassette form and suffered from major quality degradation: the tracks ran too slowly and the levels were muddied. However, a series of bootleg EP releases titled The Cathy Demos – issued in five 7” volumes over the following few months – had clearly been pressed from the master recordings as they had a remarkably clear sound and none of the speed issues horribly clear on the tapes. As a final surprise, the fifth volume debuted a song titled Organic Acid, a lengthy piece consisting of Kate singing and playing to accompany brother John’s reading of one of his poems.
It wasn’t present on any recordings from the Phoenix broadcast. It’s unfortunate that bootleg CDs of this collection – issued under many titles such as Cathy’s Home Demos, Practise Makes Perfect, Alone At My Piano, Shrubberies, If You Could See Me Fly, Passing Through Air – have all been sourced from inferior quality tapes, all of which run far too slowly and are compromised by audio deterioration. The best, Alone At My Piano, comes from a fairly acceptable version of the Phoenix tape. The worst are taken from bad vinyl pressings of the inferior tape sources. More than 21 years from their appearance, the best source remains the five 7” Cathy Demos EPs. In December 1993, Kate was questioned at length about the possible official release of the demos on the Toronto radio show Modern Rock Live. Her response: “Um, no.” Having mastered her vocal style and with a clutch of finished songs at her disposal, the next step was public performance, so with the help of her brothers, Kate recruited a group, The KT Bush Band. Their pub sets mostly comprised standards from the Stones, The Beatles, Marvin Gaye et al, but James & The Cold Gun, a track which appeared on The Kick Inside and which presumably exists as a piano demo, was debuted at these gigs. We can be confident that some of the shows were recorded because in 2009, Del Palmer posted a recording of the band performing Come Together in surprisingly good quality on his MySpace page. And while Kate isn’t at her best covering The Beatles, a greater insight into the brief live history of The KT Bush Band would be more than welcome and evidently possible”.
I do love the demos and things that she did before her first professional recordings. However, so many of these songs are in such a basic format. It is a shame that there is not this desire to master/remaster them. You could say that most artists have early demos and they do not make them publicly available. However, there is such this fascinating body of work before her professional career that I think are really important and could be made more widely available. A fifty year loom back at those Cathy Demos and those songs. In terms of the quality and endurance of these songs, there are some that maybe are a little similar and will pass you by. However, there are some real diamonds. Kate Bush might be totally against the notion. She has remastered her albums and has no issue looking back. These demos are a vital part of her legacy, and there are so many people that would love to hear these home-recoded songs in better condition. These are remarkable recordings and show where Kate Bush would soon head. A glimpse into…
WHERE this genius began.