FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty
One: Inside John Carder Bush’s Amazing and Timeless Cover
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EVEN if I have…
ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush
published some recent features that look at Kate Bush in 1985 or are based around Hounds of Love, this is the first of a twenty-feature run specifically marking forty years of the genius album. It turns forty on 16th September. I am spending time focusing on each of the tracks. I will also publish a feature about its legacy. One around Kate Bush as a producer. In fact, I am spotlighting eleven of the tracks with a feature each. As Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) turns forty in August, I will run two features about the single. This feature is the first one of the run. That leaves four other features that I will reveal as we go through the series. I wanted to start out with the front cover. Maybe shorter than other features, it is important. It is the first thing you see when you pick up the album. Preferably on vinyl. You can get a copy here. I did write about the cover back in 2021. A shot taken by her brother, John Carder Bush, he photographed all of her album covers from 1982’s The Dreaming up to and including 1993’s The Red Shoes. I think most people would agree that Hounds of Love is his best album cover. In terms of the composition and colours. The look on Kate Bush’s face. The fact that she is lying with her Weimaraner dogs, Bonnie and Clyde. I am going to come to Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book about Hounds of Love that was published this year and what she writes about the cover. Before coming to Leah Kardos’s words and rounding off with my thoughts about the cover, I will come to words from John Carder Bush about his experience of shooting the cover. Writing in the newsletter for the Kate Bush Club in a section named ‘3. Some of the Photographs’, you can sense and feel how much of a game of patience it was getting that stunning cover shot:
“The shot of Kate Bush reclining on the Hounds of Love album cover was taken by her brother, John Carder Bush, who included plenty of funny outtakes from the photo session. The ‘hounds of love’ on the album cover were her own two dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, and it took all day to get them to settle down. When the final picture was taken, one of the pooches actually fell asleep on her. On the album sleeve notes Kate gives “A big woof to Bonnie & Clyde.”
Here’s the amazing story behind the Hounds of Love album cover shoot, as told by John Carder Bush:
“There had been quite a few ideas for this cover that we tried out in rough, and then abandoned. The feel of the photo was in the air around the music that was being finalized: color and emotional pace became clear first.
“Elaborate environments, such as forests, mountains, palaces, etc.––places for the Hounds to run that would suit their style––were rejected as too busy. The cover had to have a strong, full image of Kate, as it was the first for three years, and landscapes, however beautiful, tend to dwarf people. It’s fine to use the big outdoors for bands because you can spread them all over it, but for a beautiful solo lady it doesn’t work. So we decided on a close-up of Kate and the dogs, and a made-up background.
“There was a feeling for daylight rather than studio, so we went round and discussed it with the dogs. While Kate was chatting to them in their back garden, I snapped away. But when we looked at the processed results, daylight was too cold, there wasn’t enough diffusion of the shades of color and the environment. It just didn’t feel right. I had been working on a series of “body poems” in which I was writing my poems on people and then photographing them, and it seemed like a good idea, but when we tried it, apart from Kate looking like the tattooed lady from a circus, there was much too much activity in the small frame, and the eye just wandered around too much. But the dogs were wonderful, and did everything they were asked too.
“It was becoming clearer. We had to do it in the studio, without the writing, and with the lights set in a delicate, pastel way. So I constructed a rough, made sure all the cables were well pinned down and anything likely to be knocked over out of the way, and then phoned up the dogs and asked them over for another tryout.
“We let them explore for an hour or so, and then Kate settled down on the floor for an overhead shot.
“An hour later we had managed to persuade them to lie down next to Kate. Not surprising that they took so long, as they are not trained dogs, and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I had a minute to hoover up as much as I could before they were off again, tending to use Kate as a launching ramp for their leaps and cavorting.
“After they had left, we seriously considered trying feline friends, but Cats of Love wasn’t quite the same at all. But on looking at the shots we had, there was potential, and we decided we would persevere. And the best thing seemed to be to take the studio to the dogs, have another rehearsal and, if that was a shambles, think again. Also another rehearsal would mean I could try out more variations in the lighting and the set. So a week later I took my studio to the dogs and constructed a scaffolding for the overhead shot; a bed of lilac net and silks for Kate; and around her, a tent of lilac material to reflect and diffuse. And when I looked through the lens at the little room, it looked like an illustration from Dulac’s Arabian Nights.
“The Hounds had been taken out for a long run and then fed, because we thought that if they felt dozy long enough they would want somewhere to lie down and sleep it off. Kate did her hair in an approximation of how it would look in the final shot, and then settled down in the tent. Up came the lights, and in came the dogs––noses first––and after a few minutes of looking around, yawned and went to sleep next to her. I had all the time I wanted to explore the possibilities.
“When the film was processed, it was very exciting to see how the various elements were coming together, and how close we were getting to the album cover that existed inside our heads. There were a lot of small points to iron out, but they presented no problem, and I looked forward to the big day.
“When it came round, Kate asked Clayton Howard, the make-up artist, and Anthony Yacomine, the hair artist, to do their magic, so for three hours of painstaking work they added the colors and shapes that were necessary for the right atmosphere. I reconstructed the scaffolding and rebuilt the set, and after lunch we were ready to go. Kate lay down in the tent, and Howard and Anthony arranged the final touches of nuance. The materials were placed in just the right places, and I climbed up into the scaffolding. When I looked through the lens, it was fairyland underneath me.
“The dogs, meanwhile, had been waiting in the wings, supposedly exhausted and dying for somewhere to put their heads down. Anthony and Clayton withdrew in a cloud of hairspray and eye-glitter, so that the dogs wouldn’t be distracted by strangers, and the word was given to let them in.
“Within seconds, Kate’s delicate arrangements were in tatters and a paw in the mouth didn’t help make-up. One dog would settle down and start snoring while the other one turned her back on us all by the door and wouldn't budge. As soon as she had been persuaded to stop being a prima donna and come alongside Kate, the other one smelled Anthony and Clayton, and was off to meet them. We tried for half an hour before we realized we were wasting our time, so while Kate was being repaired, I went outside with the Hounds and had a serious talk with them.
“I could see their point of view, but it didn’t help in getting this expensive, time-consuming session off the ground. While they hurtled off to chase non-existent cats that I suggested were lurking at the end of the garden in the hope of tiring them out even more, I received the signal that Kate was ready to go again. Apparently seeing reason, the dogs returned, and we signed the deal with some chocolate digestives: if they behaved themselves and gave me the photo I wanted, there was a McDonald’s with milk shake and apple pie in it for each of them.
“We went back in, but it was the same thing. Looning and sulking. Then suddenly they lay down next to Kate, and we were away. Half an hour later I had enough photos, and could have gone on to take more, but everyone was becoming too sleepy in the heat from the lights and the softness of the set, so it seemed pointless.
“Choosing the final photo, deciding how best to present it on the cover and what sort of typeface to use for titles is yet another story”.
Starting on page fifty-one of her Hounds of Love 33 1/3 book Leah Karos dissects and discusses the cover. Considering the alternative shots, the challenge of getting too energetic and restless dogs to settle and pulling it all together, it must have been the most challenging cover shoot of Kate Bush’s career! However, it was worth the effort! Bush is, on the cover “bathed in amethyst organza”. Also, “Her hair is fanned out as though she is floating on water while the light ripples on the fabric underneath her in swirling, dreamy waves”. Kardos notes how Bush’s expression is “sensual, slightly sleepy, elegantly guarded. The dogs on either side recall the image of Hecate – the Greek goddess of the threshold realms, the places where crossroads meet – with her hounds”. The choice of purple is interesting. In terms of the mix of red and blue. Blood and water maybe? In terms of what purple represents tonally and sonically, it is more lush and mysterious than previous albums. Kardos writes how, “According to the Maitreya School of Healing, co-founded by Bush’s friend, the late healer Lily Cornford (the addressee of the song named after her on Bush’s 1993 album The Red Shoes), this colour (‘wisteria amethyst’) promotes strength, dignity, spiritual growth and courage”. It is clear that the cover indicates what is to come: “the ideas and colours of the album inside are forecast: water, sky, storms, stars, the dream, world, the liminal place between life and something else, chill and warmth; power and restraint. Never has Bush appeared so soft and so strong”.
In terms of the all-time best album covers, there are few as striking as Hounds of Love. They say a picture paints a thousand words. There are almost as many as that you can apply to John Carder Bush’s photo! I wonder how people felt in 1985, in September, when they picked up their copy of Hounds of Love. Seeing that gorgeous and slightly mysterious photo. Bonnie and Clyde in the starring roles as the Hounds of Love themselves! The colour scheme and the streak of purple in Kate Bush’s hair. The look on her face: part alluring and sensual and also a little fearful and sad in a way. When it turns forty on 16th September, I wonder if people will talk about the album cover. As important as anything on the album, this John Carder Bush-shot image will go down as one of the great album front covers! I have always admired it and feel that it tells you so much about the album. A high watermark of music photography, it is very different to his photo for The Dreaming and The Sensual World. In terms of what the images say and how they connect with the albums. In future Hounds of Love at Forty features, I am going to discuss Kate Bush as a producer, the legacy of the album, how it was received at the time and the promotion Kate Bush undertook. I will, as mentioned, explore each song and spend some extra time with Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), The Ninth Wave – the album conceptual suite on the second side – and I also might mention the artists today who have definitely been influenced by Hounds of Love. You can tell from that stunning and utterly entrancing cover photo that the music within is of…
THE highest order.