FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty
ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Marius Herbert (from the book, Finding Kate, written by Michael Byrne)
Fourteen: Hello Earth
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THE penultimate song…
on Hounds of Love, I am now at the incredible and epic Hello Earth. After I have focused on the tracks and have come to the end of the album, there are a few other features that I want to cover. For now, I am going deep with one of the standout moments from Kate Bush’s fifth studio album. A track that shows her true skill as a producer. I am going to refer to Leah Kardos and her book, 33 1/3 Hounds of Love. She goes into detail about this track. Before then, there is some interview archive from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, where Kate Bush talks about the song. It sounded like it was a real challenge realising this amazing song. One that comes at a crucial moment in The Ninth Wave. Following Jig of Life and this spirited number where the heroine is urged to stay awake and survive, here we have this vision of the woman floating above Earth. Or someone looking down on her. It is atmospheric and cinematic:
“‘Hello Earth’ was a very difficult track to write, as well, because it was… in some ways it was too big for me. [Laughs] And I ended up with this song that had two huge great holes in the choruses, where the drums stopped, and everything stopped, and people would say to me, “what’s going to happen in these choruses,” and I hadn’t got a clue.
We had the whole song, it was all there, but these huge, great holes in the choruses. And I knew I wanted to put something in there, and I’d had this idea to put a vocal piece in there, that was like this traditional tune I’d heard used in the film Nosferatu. And really everything I came up with, it with was rubbish really compared to what this piece was saying. So we did some research to find out if it was possible to use it. And it was, so that’s what we did, we re-recorded the piece and I kind of made up words that sounded like what I could hear was happening on the original. And suddenly there was these beautiful voices in these chorus that had just been like two black holes.
In some ways I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth. And it was the idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from completely above. You know, that image of if you were lying in water at night and you were looking up at the sky all the time, I wonder if you wouldn’t get the sense of as the stars were reflected in the water, you know, a sense of like, you could be looking up at water that’s reflecting the stars from the sky that you’re in. And the idea of them looking down at the earth and seeing these storms forming over America and moving around the globe, and they have this like huge fantasticly overseeing view of everything, everything is in total perspective. And way, way down there somewhere there’s this little dot in the ocean that is them.
Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”
I am going to come to what Leah Kardos notes about Hello Earth. She notes how the song draws together all the music, sonic and lyrical themes ad layers of the album. At over six minutes, it is the longest song on Hounds of Love. It also has the most players on it. If some feel that Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is the most epic song, it really is Hello Earth. Almost like a climax. The biggest moment in the film where the action reaches its peak. We have “drummer Stuart Elliott, guitarist Brian Bath, bassist Eberhard Weber, pipes by O’Flynn and bouzouki by Lunny, in addition to a choir (by Richard Hickox Singers), orchestral strings, horns and percussion, arranged again by Kamen”. Michael Kamen and his orchestral arrangements is crucial to the swell and epic nature of Hello Earth. As Bush’s heroine looks down on the seas from way above, she is “helpless to stop a destructive storm she sees forming over America and moving out to sea (‘Can’t do anything…’)”. Leah Kardos observes how “Bush calls back to ‘Hounds of Love’ (the declarative ‘Here I go, don’t let me go! becomes a regretful ‘Why did I go?’), ‘Waking the Witch’ (‘Get out of the waves, get out of the water’), with keyword nods to ‘Mother Stands for Comfort’ (‘Murderer!’) and ‘Cloudbusting (‘Out of the cloudburst’)”. It is, as Kardos writes, like a Broadway musical. Bringing all the themes that have gone before into this big number. All coming to the surface of the narrative. All the pieces fit together. The only problem is the gaps. Where the chorus should be, there was the decision as to what would be there. Composer Michael Berkley transcribed and arranged a Georgian folk song, Zinzkaro – for the Richard Hickox Singers –, which needed to be similar to the Werner Herzog/Nosferatu piece that Bush had heard and wanted to use. Michael Berkley “characterized Bush’s creative approach as ‘zany (and) ambitious’, later recalling how he was sent a cassette with copious colourful notes, adding ‘she talked of the sound quality in the most graphic terms … indeed, she was thrilled when I suggested we create our own new language for this chorus of the spheres”. “With the lowest strings oozing down from F to C# and the highest strings inching upwards from high C to C#, is a spine-tingling musical manoeuvre, a panoramic aspect radio shift”.
There is a slow-motion portamento that slides to this widescreen drone. There are moments of whale song and sonic blips. Suggestions that the heroine could be sinking. Bush whispers in German “Tiefer, Tiefer, irgendwo in der tiefe gibt es ein licht”. This translates to “Deeper, deeper, somewhere in the depths there is a light”. Maybe this is the moment of death where Bush’s stranded woman – whether she truly casts herself in this role or someone else – or a psychological awakening. It almost comes full circle. And Dream of Sheep was when she wanted to sleep and drift to rest after being lost at sea. Kardos notes how Hello Earth “fulfils the promise of ‘And Dream of Sheep’, with Bush finally soothing the ‘little earth’ to sleep after the long struggle to stay alert”. Whatever your interpretation regarding the fae of the heroine, one cannot deny what a pivotal and huge moment Hello Earth is. You can also hear why it would have taken so long to put together. Bush, as producer and songwriter, having to realise her vision and provide this suitably epic song that also keeps the narrative moving and stands alone in its own right. Completely different to the songs either side of it (Jig of Life and The Morning Fog). The Morning Fog could be the death-dream of the heroine as she envisions a happy rescue, or it could actually be the rescue after so long struggling to stay alive. The realisation of that hope and bravery. Hello Earth truly showcases Bush’s gifts as a producer and composer. Few other artists in Pop in 1985 were writing songs like this. I am looking forward to moving to The Morning Fog. This conclusion of a wonderful album. You never really know what occurred at sea. If ush/the heroine escaped and was rescued. I think it is left in the minds of the listeners as to….
WHAT really happened.