FEATURE:
That Golden Ticket!
PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn Residency at Eleven
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ONE of the biggest regrets…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured during the first night (22nd August) of her Before the Dawn residency in 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex
of my life is not being able to get a ticket for Kate Bush’s Hammersmith residency in 2014. Or not being fast enough getting on the phone to buy one! The run of twenty-two wonderful nights began on 22nd August, 2014. As we are almost at the point of marking the eleventh anniversary of Before the Dawn, I wanted to return to it once more. I am going to bring in a review about the residency. I have written about it quite a few times, so I will not go over stuff I have covered before too much. Although the cheapest tickets were not that cheap, think about gig tickets for major artists today and what you get. Unless it is a huge performance and very long, are you getting value for money?! Kate Bush delivering this incredible production with these wonderful sets and scenes, you would happily pay loads to witness that! Demand was so huge for the initial fifteen dates that tickets sold out in fifteen minutes. Seven additional dates were added. Bush won the Editor's Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. It was also nominated for two Q Awards in 2014: Best Act in the World Today and Best Live Act. Thinking back, if I could have got a ticket, I would have been as close to the front as possible. I would have snapped up some merchandise and made it a night to remember. Not to revisit regret and a missed opportunity, for the thousands that did get to see Kate Bush at the Eventim Apollo in 2014, that must have been simply unforgettable! In many ways, her son Bertie helped persuade her to get back on the stage. Thirty-five years after her first big live undertaking, The Tour of Life, Bush made an announcement few thought that she ever would. There was not a great deal of coverage around the tenth anniversary last year. Given it is one of the most significant live shows in the past few decades, why was there this absence of features and celebration?!
One cannot rule out Kate Bush doing this again. In previous features, I have asked what another residency would involve. Which albums and songs would go together. Perhaps, after an eleventh studio album is released, that would give her more inspiration and possibility. In terms of the setlist and musicians who played, you can read more here. When it came to the songs included, it was mainly fusing Hounds of Love with Aerial. Only two tracks from the former were not included (The Big Sky and Mother Stands for Comfort); a few songs from Aerial were missed out to give chance for songs from The Red Shoes and 50 Words for Snow to feature. Even though Bush did not have to travel too far from her home to Hammersmith, the idea of doing twenty-two dates must have been daunting. That is a massive undertaking! The live album for Before the Dawn was released in 2016. I will end with a review of Before the Dawn. I am surprised that there has not been an entire book about the residency. Providing context, reviews, details and documentation of being there. The famous faces that were in attendance from the world of film, radio, literature and beyond. How there would have been this incredible anticipation in the air. On 22nd August, 2014, this was this excitement and electricity around the Eventim Apollo! Though Kate Bush was nervous before coming onto stage every night, her performances were outstanding. She and her team mounted an unbelievable stage experience. I think a lot of massive artists today who produce these spectacles with set changes and visual elements are inspired by Kate Bush. In terms of turning a live performance more into a film or this multimedia experience. One of the major reasons for Before the Dawn was to finally see The Ninth Wave realised. The second side of 1985’s Hounds of Love, it was initially going to be turned into a film. That is what Kate Bush had in mind. That never happened (though I think that it should).
I keep thinking how I missed out on something life-changing. In terms of how everyone I know who got a ticket said it was one of the most emotional nights of their lives! There will never be a DVD release of one of the performances. I will wrap up shortly. When the press attended Before the Dawn, I guess they had no ideas what to expect. Most would not have seen Kate Bush perform live. This was an artist in her fifties delivering an awe-inspiring performance that was worlds away from what other artists were producing. So much more immersive and ambitious. This is what DIY observed when they were in attendance:
“While you try to catch your breath and reorganise your sense of reality after three hours of an astonishing, immersive and utterly singular show, the one thing that instantly becomes apparent through the mist is that Kate Bush is not one to cede to your run-of-the-mill expectations.
The whole night feels unreal and unravels in a dreamlike fashion – even attempting to put it into words here it seems to dissolve on the screen. That’s not just because of the feverish speculation that came before the show or the fact that Bush hasn’t performed in concert since 1979, but also because whatever your hopes or anticipations for this show – one of the most eagerly awaited pop performances in history – Bush turns them on their head and pours them away in an avalanche of artistic contrariness and outlandish theatre which sees the stage filled with a wooden mannequin, fish skeletons, sheets billowing like waves, a preacher, a giant machine that hovers above the audience pounding like a helicopter as well as lighthouses and living rooms, axes and chainsaws.
Yet through all the theatrics and artistry one thing remains constant, and it’s the thing that shines through the most: the rush of humanity that ties all the ideas together; the one thing that takes Bush to that other place. It’s the innate heart that pulses through all this theatre and all these ideas: the simple truths of love, hope and family life that hold all her ideas together.
‘I feel your warmth,’ she says appreciatively as the crowd passionately cheer and clap her every move and gesture. And it’s her shy but generous smile at the response from the crowd which shows exactly what this means to her.
This is the weight of 35 years being lifted – thrown off with the skilfulness and heart that shows Kate Bush is no ‘mythic’ artist but a very real, supremely talented original. Tonight is an unequivocal demonstration that she’s a one-off: only she has the ambition, nerve and imagination to pull off the ideas that had filled her mind.
Yet at first it seems she’s going to play it pretty straight. Barefoot and dressed in elegant black, she strolls around the stage gently, occasionally twirling. It begins with ‘Lily’ as she leads a small group of backing singers that includes her son Bertie (who, she says, has given her the "courage" to return to the stage). The band that line up behind her are as tight as you would imagine. They play ‘Hounds Of Love’ and ‘Running Up That Hill’. They sound huge, they sound brilliant. If there’s one thing you notice most it’s that her voice is remarkably powerful and it’s brilliant on ‘King Of The Mountain’ which brings the opening ‘scene’ to a close, heralding a storm as a bullroarer fills the air and cannons fill the theatre with confetti.
It's now time for the drama of 'The Ninth Wave', the second half of 'Hounds of Love'. Here we see a story of resignation and resurrection played out in the most theatrical of ways. We see Bush in a lifejacket floating in water, looking up at the camera as if waiting to be rescued (she’s reported to have spent three days in a flotation tank at Pinewood Studios to create the special effects). At one point fish skeletons dance across the waves, at another a helicopter searches the crowd, before a living room (yes, a living room) floats across the stage in which a son and his father – played by Bertie and Bush's husband Danny McIntosh – talk at length about sausages.
It’s hard to comprehend exactly what’s happening but the band skilfully navigate the pastoral prog and Celtic rock. Even when the music isn’t captivating, the sheer sense of spectacle means you can’t avert your eyes for a second. As the ‘The Morning Fog’ brings the performance to a close with another standing ovation.
After a twenty minute interval – during which time the bars buzz with delirium – the third act sees her play out ‘Sky of Honey’, the entire second half of 'Aerial'. It’s so intricately detailed that you get the feeling Bush had always planned to perform these two scenes live.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during her Before the Dawn residency in 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Gavin Bush/Rex
‘Honey’ is a grandiose daydream moving through a summer's day. Again the scope of her vision is immense – even when the songs don’t enthral the enormous paper planes and human birds do, as we see a wooden mannequin finding himself lost and alone. Bertie plays a major part throughout dressed as a 19th-century artist – and at one point telling the mannequin to "piss off". It ends, as only it could, with Bush gaining wings and flying.
She returns to earth to perform a solo version of ‘Among Angels’ on the piano, before the band return to help close the show with a joyful ‘Cloudbusting’. "I just know that something good is going to happen", she sings as a now even more euphoric crowd jump to their feet.
Then she’s gone. You’re left with the image of a singer who has managed to retain her mystery and surprise. An enigma, the mythic artist who is intensely human. It’s overblown and preposterous and brilliant. All its startling achievements, magical highs and am dram faults – its relentless ambition and human imperfections – make it the only document you could possibly have asked for from such a unique artist. Before the Dawn is everything you would expect but couldn’t imagine”.
Before the Dawn was a seismic moment in music history. Few thought that Kate Bush would return to the stage, let alone in such spectacular fashion! A residency in London where she focused on two of her best albums. It is hard to believe that, on 22nd August, it will be eleven years since that first date. To have been there to witness something so transcendent. All these fans from around the world together to see Kate Bush deliver her first solo live performance in thirty-five years. Though we can never say never, maybe 2014’s Before the Dawn was the final live chapter. If it is, then it was a very special way of signing off! Today, we marvel at artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Charli xcx who give these epic and grand live performances. Ones that take live music to new heights. I think people need to look back to 2014 and what Kate Bush did for Before the Dawn. Surely her inspiring artists of today. Her residency ranks alongside the most important and finest live performances…
THAT we have ever seen.