FEATURE:
The Mysterious ‘J.B.’
The Curious People and Symbols in Kate Bush’s Work
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SORT of returning…
to an idea I pitched a while ago, there is this host of characters within Kate Bush’s work. Bush inserts mysterious symbols and images. All of her albums have a ‘K.T.’ symbol hidden somewhere. Short of the K.T. Bush Band I think, there are codes, mysteries and these fascinating figures that are on the covers and in the works. I was inspired something that Andy Miller posted recently to his Inventory series. Miller is primarily a writer and a podcaster second. He co-hosts the brilliant Backlisted podcast with John Mitchinson. You can find their official website here. It is a podcast where older and less-discussed works of literature are dissected. You can subscribe to Backlisted here. The weekly feature published is not only about Kate Bush but ABBA, The Beatles, Stanley Binks, and many other artists. The post I am highlighting starts off by discussing how Kate Bush’s albums are ranked. How there are flaws in that approach. Andy Miller writes about the merits of each of her studio albums. The Dreaming is his favourite album. Sat in Your Lap, the first single from that album, is the one record of hers he treasures above all else. ‘WELL DONE J.B. 1ST DAN’ is etched by hand in the single’s run-out groove. Miller posits a theory about who ‘J.B.’ is and what the connection to martial arts is. I thought it was Kate Bush’s brother, John. He introduced his sister to martial arts (Bush trained at Goldsmiths College karate club where her brother John was a karate instructor). However, Miller’s words are original research and interpretation. It is interesting what he wrote:
“In the early ‘80s, there was much talk of bands incorporating hidden or coded messages in their music. For example, if you played the middle section of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backwards, you would hear a hymn of praise to the Devil. * I never tried this myself, as it was already bad enough listening to the bloody thing forwards. But the concept of ‘backmasking’, as it was called, ignored a secret hiding in plain sight, which was that artists had been concealing messages within the grooves of their records for years, by scratching a few words into the shiny circle of vinyl between the playing surface and the label. These messages would range from the cryptic to the cheery and were usually spotted by only the keenest of fans. The most famous exponent of the form was mastering engineer George Peckham, many of whose singles and LPs were signed “Porky”, his nickname, or “A Porky Prime Cut”.
* “Here's to my sweet Satan / The one whose little path would make me sad whose power is Satan / He'll give you, he'll give you 666 / There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan”. When played backwards, it is alleged these lines come out sounding something like this: “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now / It’s just a spring clean for the May queen”. Which just shows you the whole ‘backmasking’ thing is nonsense, as this is obviously complete gibberish.
Back to ‘Sat in Your Lap’. For over forty years now, I have wondered why the words WELL DONE J.B. 1ST DAN are etched by hand in the single’s run-out groove. Who was J.B.? And what did he have to do with martial arts?
It seems I am not the only one. During another of those radio phone-in shows, this one broadcast on Radio 2 in September 1982 to publicise the release of The Dreaming, eagle-eyed Colin Home from Harrogate called in to ask Bush to reveal the identity of J.B.. “J.B. is a guy called John Barrett,” Bush replies, laughing. “He certainly deserves to be congratulated, because he did something very clever!” Pressed to disclose the nature of John Barrett’s achievement, which had after all earned him a black belt 1st Dan in whatever it was, Bush declines to say more, and the interview moves on. But I believe I have the answer.
In the late 1970s, John Barratt was a young recording engineer at Abbey Road Studios who worked with Bush on Never for Ever and The Dreaming – and, presumably, ‘Sat in Your Lap’. This was a happy and creative period for KB. Those around her recall a lot of fun and general hilarity during these sessions. But in 1981, John Barratt was diagnosed with cancer. While he was recuperating, EMI gave him the administrative task of cataloguing everything in their archive pertaining to the Beatles; in due course, Barratt’s notes and tape dubs would form the basis of several bootlegs of the group’s unreleased studio recordings. Sadly, John Barratt never fully recovered from his cancer and in February 1984, he died.
Now we jump forward by a decade to 1993 and KB’s seventh album, The Red Shoes, one of the highlights of which is ‘Moments of Pleasure’, the gorgeous orchestral ballad in which Bush pays tribute to loved ones she has lost or is in the process of losing: her mother, the filmmaker Michael Powell, session guitarist Alan ‘Smurf’ Murphy, and so on. “Just being alive, it can really hurt,” she sings. “And these moments given are a gift of time.”
I treasure this song, which I find terribly moving but also sweet and funny. One line near the end has always stood out to me. In her final roll-call of remembered names and places, Bush sings, with the hint of a melancholy smile, “Hey there, Teddy, spinning in the chair at Abbey Road”. There is something particularly evocative both in the image and the way she delivers it, the veteran recording artist watching in her mind’s eye her friend sitting behind the mixing desk at Abbey Road, both of them giddy, young, excited to be there. To avoid confusion with her co-producer Jon Kelly, Bush’s nickname for John Barratt had been ‘Teddy’. Would it be too much to suppose that Barratt attained his 1st Dan – WELL DONE J.B. – not in judo or taekwondo, but in the art of chair spinning, a silly late-night game played by a bunch of pals in the studio? Perhaps the goal was to achieve a certain number of revolutions with one spin? Could this be the “very clever” something Jon Barratt had succeeded in doing and that Bush had duly had memorialised, etching it into vinyl forever? We may never know, and we don’t need to. But every time someone spins ‘Sat in Your Lap’, somewhere John Barratt is spinning in his chair with it. And in the background of the remarkable music that he and Kate Bush recorded together, if we listen closely enough, we may catch the faint echoes of their laughter”.
There is a lot to love and expand on Andy Miller’s post about Kate Bush. Not least about critics’ rankings of her albums and why it is more constructive and beneficial to approach them in a less hagiographic and best-worst manner. I think that point and curiosity about initials and Bush including these little details is intriguing. How far does that extend? There are so many different minor characters in Bush’s songs. Andy Miller also talks about John Barrett in the context of Moments of Pleasure (from 1993’s The Red Shoes):
“One line near the end has always stood out to me. In her final roll-call of remembered names and places, Bush sings, with the hint of a melancholy smile, “Hey there, Teddy, spinning in the chair at Abbey Road”. There is something particularly evocative both in the image and the way she delivers it, the veteran recording artist watching in her mind’s eye her friend sitting behind the mixing desk at Abbey Road, both of them giddy, young, excited to be there. To avoid confusion with her co-producer Jon Kelly, Bush’s nickname for John Barratt had been ‘Teddy’. Would it be too much to suppose that Barratt attained his 1st Dan – WELL DONE J.B. – not in judo or taekwondo, but in the art of chair spinning, a silly late-night game played by a bunch of pals in the studio? Perhaps the goal was to achieve a certain number of revolutions with one spin? Could this be the “very clever” something Jon Barratt had succeeded in doing and that Bush had duly had memorialised, etching it into vinyl forever?”.
Reading these words compelled me to dig deeper and think differently about Kate Bush. Apart from the ‘J.B.’ etching into Sat in Your Lap and the ‘K.T.’ appearing on her album covers, what other symbols and treasures are we missing? Bush’s lyrics blend in famous figures, mythology, love, horror, dreams, the wilderness and so much more. There are some notable people in her work, though there are also these minor characters. The ‘Emily’ from the very start of Wow (from 1978’s Lionheart). A saxophonist from The Kick Inside’s The Saxophone Song that Bush encounters in a Berlin bar. The eponymous James from James and the Cold Gun (also from The Kick Inside). The bank robbers of There Goes a Tenner (from 1982’s The Dreaming). Who was the inspiration behind Aerial’s eponymous heroine in Mrs. Bartolozzi?
Do we discuss Kate Bush more in literary terms? How she writes these songs with plots and cast of major characters and minor ones? How she wants to provide something extra? Adding messages and initials to a vinyl? It is clear that she remains someone who stands out from her peers. In the way she brings people fictional and real, into her music. Fascinating by the physical product and going beyond the ordinary. Whether that is reissuing her albums and designing the vinyl colour/image or including an etching, it does get you to think about her artistry and creativity in a new way. I have been going on a bit of a hunt on message boards and websites to see whether there are more examples of Kate Bush adding messages or codes to her work. Whether, like The Beatles, if you play a record backwards then these eerie lyrics appear. Looking beyond the ‘K.T.’ symbols on her covers to see if there are these background objects that create enigma or tell their own tale. The Lionheart cover, for instance. Why only include a pair of feet (Bush’s feet) for the cover of The Red Shoes? I know that fits the title, though the decision not to include Bush’s gave always fascinates me. The meaning of The Sensual World cover where Bush holds a flower to her mouth. I don’t think we really dissect her music in that way. Talking about the characters and going deeper into lyrics. Exploring these puzzles and messages or little details that people might pass by. That is why Andy Miller’s words affected me. Inspiration to view Kate Bush’s albums, songs and covers in a different way. Rather than repeat the same sentiments and lines and paint in broad brushstrokes, these finer details and hidden symbols and less discussed characters can lead us down interesting paths. Give us a broader and more original look at her work. It will be an interesting trek. One that, for me, starts with…
THE great John Barrett.