FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Twelve: The Influence of Ireland and East Wickham Farm
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I am continuing…
my twenty-feature run celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Hounds of Love. Kate Bush’s fifth studio album is forty on 16th September. I am making my way through the song on the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave. I am going to move to Jig of Life. That has Irish instrumentation and spirit. It features John Sheahan, Dónal Lunny and Liam O’Flynn. Bush recording at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin for the Irish Sessions. It is clear that both Ireland and East Wickham Farm were instrumental when it came to influence for Hounds of Love. Her family home was a real draw. I wrote in a previous feature how 1983 was the year when she recharged and rebuilt. A bespoke home studio was built at East Wickham Farm and there was this new connection to her family. The space where she spent her childhood and wrote her earliest songs, it obviously had this personal and spiritual pull. I am going to start out by dropping in this article about the making of Hounds of Love. A passage that discusses Watching You Without Me and Jig of Life caught my eye:
“Double bass accompaniment by the legendary Danny Thompson. The gifted musician has nothing but compliments when talking about Kate Bush as a person and a musician: “She is a dream person to work with. People assume that these iconic people are beyond touch. You pull out to her house and she says ‘Hello Danny, want a cup of tea?’ Then you go in the studio and it is the other person that is serious about the music. It is a great profession to be in when you work with great artists who are also really fine people.”
The grim story takes a slight positive turn by offering hope in the form of the floater’s future self, asking them not to give up. After all, to paraphrase what Dizzie Gillespie said about Louis Armstrong: no you, no me. But it goes farther to explain that the future holds a family, kids, something to live for.
The song was written in Ireland, the clear influence of the country manifested in the arrangement: “It was a tremendous sort of elemental dose I was getting, you know, all this beautiful countryside. Spending a lot of time outside and walking, so it had this tremendous sort of stimulus from the outside.” A multitude of Irish folk instruments are played by John Sheahan (Fiddles, whistles), Donal Lunny (Bouzouki, Bodhran) and Liam O’Flynn (Uillean pipes). As in another Irish-influenced tune, Night of the Swallow from The Dreaming, Bill Whelan is responsible for the arrangement”.
We can see there what it was like for artists who recorded at East Wickham Farm. It is no surprise that Kate Bush wanted to return to East Wickham Farm. Not only is there the stability of home and family. There is that comfort of having that support at her feet. Whereas The Dreaming (1982) saw her work at various studios and it was intense and unhealthy, at home, she could spend time in her own studio and not worry about costs. Hounds of Love is an album defined by nature and the natural world. Water especially prevalent. East Wickham Farm offered this calm and bucolic beauty. There were the gorgeous flowers and the landscape. However, I think it was the working routine and the hospitality of East Wickham Farm that was most important. Paul Hardiman and Kate Bush continued sessions from April 1984 after she had spent a month in Ireland. The sessions, which were about six months, were idyllic. Hardiman remembers walking into the kitchen at East Wickham Farm and there being conversation flowing. Paddy Bush (Kate Bush’s brother) was always there. The dogs, Bonnie and Clyde – who appear on the album cover –, were there. Copious tea and food being prepared. Pigeons and doves were all over the place. Although it was very relaxing and happy, it was also hard work. Bush was producing on her own and wanted to prove to EMI that she was right to produce. They had doubts after The Dreaming was released. She would throw musicians curve balls or ask for something a little unorthodox. She wanted to add another percussive layer to Jig of Life, so she handed Charlie Morgan various Irish percussive instruments (including the lambeg) and asked him to fill twenty-four tracks with “clacking, beating and booming”, as Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. Bush did not have a glass wall between the live room and control room. It meant she relied on microphones and this two-way communication. It made her less self-conscious but also saved time.
It was family and that familiarity that helped infuse Hounds of Love with this sense of wonder and confidence. Sounding far more relaxed as a producer than previously, East Wickham Farm enforced the songwriting but it also allowed Bush to produce an album to her own specifications and to her own timeframe. Not being surrounded by smog and loads of people in a city allowed her the flexibility and quiet to concentrate. Even if the album was tough to record and there were some stressful times, she still recounted how it was the happiest time of her recording career. Connecting to childhood memories and times at the farm. Thinking back to her childhood years. Also, as I explained in my 1983 feature, Bush built her own dance studio and committed to a healthier diet. It was a magnificent time. Also influential was Ireland. Not only in terms of songs like Jig of Life. Quite a bit of Hounds of Love was written there. If the inspiration of Ireland can be heard in Jig of Life, the country and its people runs right through Hounds of Love. The landscape and its views. Bush very much moved by the sea and the land. Valleys and hills. The beautiful expanses that no doubt enforced the narrative of many of the songs. The Ninth Wave especially. Also, The Big Sky nicely references Ireland (“This cloud, looks like Ireland!”). I will talk about Ireland more when I discuss Jig of Life next. Bush’s mother Hannah was born in Ireland. She had family there. Having not spent a lot of time there since childhood, it was an overdue return. She would go back to record again for 1989’s The Sensual World. Nature, warmth, family and the views from both East Wickham Farm and Ireland were a big factor in terms of Hounds of Love’s writing and genius. These essential elements and lifeforces emboldening and defining…
HER greatest work.