FEATURE:
Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980
The Kid (Ran Tan Waltz)/The Beekeeper (You Want Alchemy?)
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THIS is the first time in this series…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush, in 1993, rehearses The Red Shoes while the crew are setting up lights and camera/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
where I am heading away from Kate Bush’s studio albums and including a couple of rarer songs. I shall come to You Want Alchemy, which appeared as an extra track on the European and Australian C.D.-singles for Eat the Music. The first song I am bringing in is Ran Tan Waltz. Most non-Kate Bush fans do not know this song. In fact, many people who love Kate Bush do not know about this song. It is a rarity. If you watched her 1979 Christmas special, Kate, then you would have seen it. In terms of the outfits and staging, it was a little peculiar! Gender-switching, Kate Bush was dressed as what looks like a chimney sweep. It is worth reflecting on that as a point. I am looking at The Kid from that song. The baby of this couple whose mother is out philandering, Bush does switch gender roles for this song. Normally, it would be the man out having sex and leaving his wife/girlfriend. Instead, Bush puts sympathy with the man and the child. This is something that Bush has done through her music. Not to say Bush lacked sympathy for women and could not be seen as a feminist. Earlier in her career, she would refute that term. Not sure what a feminist entailed to an extent, she was one without proclaiming it. However, when it came to her music, she did write a lot about men and placed sympathy with them. The usual narrative for Pop artists might have been to pour scorn on the opposite sex or write songs of break-up and dissolution. Tense and angered, Kate Bush was rare in that sense. I have written about this before. Bush having this fascination with men. The Man with the Child in His Eyes about men who retain a child-like wonder. Something women do not do as much. Wuthering Heights portraying Catherine Earnshaw as this ghoulish evil. A ghost trying to get through the window to grab the soul of Heathcliff.
Through her career, we saw cases of Kate Bush not criticising men. Ran Tan Waltz is comical and Bush being playful. It was the B-side of Babooshka in June 1980. Perhaps understandable. That A-side is about a wife not trusting her husband. Thinking her is being unfaithful, she lures him into this trap and is proven wrong. I am going to come to that song in a future feature. Ran Tan Waltz a more extreme and explicit version of that. In both songs, the woman coming off worse. Is Ran Tan Waltz making the wife/woman look loose and immoral? I think a lot of Rock songs glamourise men sleeping around and having sex with anyone. It was no doubt a staple of music when Bush wrote Ran Tan Waltz. This idea that men would be out bedding women and their other halves would be at home. It is interesting how there is this baby. The Kid. Not sure how old they are, though it is interesting that this relationship has this air of infidelity. A new mother not satisfied with her man. Out and about every night getting with someone new. Is Bush rare in the sense of not only sympathising with men but also somewhat showing a bit of bite towards women? She wrote about women and put them at the front of some of her songs, though there are occasions where she is painting them as either hugely flawed or bad. Does this impact her legacy as a trailblazer? I don’t think so. It is not Kate Bush being anti-women. Instead, she is changing things up and being balanced in her music. Female artists often writing about men in a negative way. Bush not wanting to do that. When we think of Ran Tan Wlatz, it is clear that this is not based on personal experience or Bush trying to turn the tables on women. Instead, rather than repeating what has gone before in respect of men being cheats, Bush reverses that. Women also cheat and are unfaithful. The Kid that is referred to in the song is left crying: “Where is she/When the little thing cries?/She lies in a bed/With a friend of mine”. Although it is a slight song in Bush’s cannon, it is notable because it is perhaps her most sexual and explicit. Lines like “If she picks on a dick/That’s too big for her pride” are not what you would expect from someone like her. Perhaps trying to show that she was not as the press saw her. A hippy-dippy or soft artist who was writing these weird songs. Bush showing some edge and bawdiness here.
Ran Tan Waltz is about this wife ‘ran-tanning’ – I guess having sex – all night and then being bent double over the sink after drinking too much. “And the key’s in the lock/And she’s been on the win/And she’s stinking of drink”. I do love the comical nature of the song. Many do not credit Bush as being humorous. A few of her songs have this side to them. It seems like this young marriage was ideal and there was hope. They had a baby, The Kid, and it was looking promising. It is not said why things went sour. Perhaps they were too young and it was misguided. Ran Tan Waltz was covered by Baby Bushka and I do love that the sole live performance by Bush was during a Christmas special. You can’t imagine a song less appropriate for Christmas! Again, it shows the humour and cheekiness of Kate Bush. People have noted how Bush dressed as a man in the video is quite progressive. In terms of gender-swapping in music, a lot of male/female artists did that, though I am trying to think of female artist before Kate Bush that did. Whether you see this as genuinely pioneering and a nod to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community of Kate Bush merely adopting a persona without thinking about its wider significance, Ran Tan Waltz does need to be discussed more. I am going to come to an article that does look at the song. The most words written about a rack that virtually nobody knows about or discusses! What I wanted to explore is the variety of her B-sides. She did often have album tracks as B-sides but, as her career progressed, she wrote tracks specifically as B-sides. With Babooshka in mind, Ran Tan Waltz is this odd pairing. You have all this sympathy for The Kid. Whether a new-born or a couple of years old, little do they know what their mum is up to. The husband lamenting the fact that he has been exploited: “She saw me coming for miles/She saw me open wide”. Going back to B-sides, there was this amazingly broad collection. Some rather forgettable ones, but I am going to get to another great B-side for thew second half. Under the Ivy as the B-side for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) the best example of her genius. Passing Through Air the B-side to Army Dreamers from Never for Ever. Warm and Soothing the B-side of December Will Be Magic Again in 1980. 1980 an especially fertile year for Kate Bush. In terms of the depth and brilliance of B-sides. Not many people will rate Ran Tan Waltz as a great Bush B-side, though I think that they should.
Kate Bush often gets inspiration from poems, literature or T.V. I sort of wonder if there was anything Bush was watching or reading that influenced Ran Tan Waltz. How this new song made it into the Christmas special. As that was broadcast at the end of 1979, it was the premier of a track that would not be heard on a single until the following year. Those who bought Babooshka not expecting Ran Tan Waltz on the other side! I do think it is a clever and eccentric song that has a good composition. In Ran Tan Waltz, is Bush portraying herself as a man and stepping into his shoes or switching the narrative or a lot of songs? It is a fascinating thing to discuss. Some could argue, at a time when Bush was being criticised for not being political, Punk or edgy, this was her showing a middle finger to snobs in the Rock press who thought she was this silly girl. Dreams of Orgonon examined this song for a feature in 2019:
“There’s a lot to this. This is a blatantly negative song about relationship dysfunction, which is in part the bread and butter of Never for Ever, which has tracks like “All We Ever Look For” and “The Infant Kiss.” It deals with a marriage break in a material way: sex is referred to entirely as a rough act, one that’s driving a family apart rather than keeping a relationship’s magic alive. The husband is getting nothing at home: he is, in Internet fuckboy lingo, getting cucked.
The mother is a playgirl while the father stays home and takes care of the baby. This is Bush’s model of desire-from-a-distant played through a Feydeau farce: everything becomes dirty and obscene, even romantic relationships. Kate Bush is doing an anti-Kate Bush song. The magic of the universe has been lost to these characters. There’s not enough sex in their lives”.
It does seem that there was not a lot of sex in this relationship. The woman looking for excitement and something better than she has. Again, you think about the loss that this child faces. The Kid is being held by the father but knows nothing of the disintegration of a new family. One of the criticisms I have seen of this song is the music video. How Bush chose to visually represent this song. I think Graeme Thomson dismissed it in his biography, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. Indeed, it is probably the oddest thing Bush ever filmed. Showing just how unpredictable, cool and out-there she was and is, Ran Tan Waltz has a lot more depth than people credit for, as the article continues. It does note how unusual it is too:
“Ran Tan Waltz” has one of the strangest videos of Bush’s career. It’s a three-dancers-on-one-stage setup that’s not atypical of Bush in this era, but the costuming tips it into what-the-fuck-are-we-looking-at territory. Bush is decked out in Tevye-like garb, boasting a chinbeard, waistcoat, and bare feet, an exemplary sample of how middle-class English girls think the working class looks (à la some cabaret). To her left and right are dancers Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst dressed respectively as an upper class woman in purple and, I swear to God I am not making this up, a fucking baby in a diaper”.
Bush is tapping into modes of working class theater to touch on how sex locks into struggle. To be sure, it’s a romanticized vision of the working class, but it’s not a judgmental one. Beneath the surface, there’s some genuine probing of proletariat circumstances and how it shapes people’s sex lives. It’s not the optimistic romanticism that underpins The Kick Inside, but it’s more mature and wide-reaching”.
You listen to a song like Ran Tan Waltz and you can connect it with major Pop artists of today. Those that are accused of being too sexual or revealing. The boldness in their music. However, could you ever see Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae, Chappell Roan or even Lady Gaga filming a video that is like Ran Tan Waltz?! It would be attacked or met with such confusion. You could look at it and say it is Kate Bush being wacky and the video is stupid and weird. Look more closely and there is a lot more depth and nuance. What could have been this throwaway song is instead a gem that people need to discuss more. Who do you emphasise more with in this song? The wife could be seen as villainous and bad. Doing what men glamorise in songs and is celebrated, can we attack the character without being seen as sexist and having double standards?! Maybe the man at home should get pity, though you don’t know the domestic situation and whether it is justified. If a relationship is not working then it can be a two-sided thing. He might not want sex or is a boring partner. Even so, that does not justify someone cheating, but you do feel the woman did not get to liv her youth and got married too young. The most helpless and innocent person in the situation is The Kid. A young observer who might learn about this explosion and sordidness years later. Dreams of Orgonon noting how Ran Tan Waltz is part of a “loose trilogy” of songs that follows Coffee Homeground (from 1978’s Lionheart) and The Magician (a song written by Paul Webster and composed by Maurice Jarre for the film, The Magician of Lublin. Kate Bush recorded vocals for this song in February 1979 with music performed by the London Symphony Orchestra). The fact that Ran Tan Waltz has this gloomy nature of a Kurt Weillesque waltz. The fascinating insight that “Bush’s interest in this aesthetic is grounded in musical theater rather than Marxist class consciousness, but there’s still a latent political base to it, consisting of warped gender politics and domestic life”. Whereas we often see Kate Bush’s B-sides as good or not as substantial and layered as her singles and album tracks, Ran Tan Waltz has long been dismissed and seen as this empty sex farce with a crazy video. A song that need to be given some new love.
In terms of the next B-side, there is a dramatic shift in terms of its tone and mood. If Ran Tan Waltz stinks of booze, deceit, sex and lies, then You Want Alchemy? Smells of honey and the wild. Something far more pleasant and pleasing. Highlighting Kate Bush’s broad musical asnd lyrical palette when it came to her B-sides. was written and recorded after the completion of The Red Shoes and The Line, The Cross and the Curve in 1993. Quite a while after Ran Tan Waltz, can we say that it was a B-side? Technically, You Want Alchemy? appears as an extra track on the European and Australian C.D.-singles for Eat the Music. Last year, Kate Bush put out Best of the Other Sides. This is what Bush said of the song: “You Want Alchemy? was meant to be one of the tracks on The Red Shoes album, but because there was already so much material, it ended up as a B Side. I love Michael Kamen’s orchestral arrangement in this song. It really takes us to that lovely afternoon, up in the hills with the mad beekeeper”. In terms of this song, the character in focus is The Beekeeper. The alchemy of honey. This is what the Kate Bush Encyclopedia say: “She doesn’t get it, this fascination with bees. She seems to take a tender step into this man’s private world, to open herself and feel and respect this lonely man’s joys. She approaches with sympathy, and for a brief moment, she can share his vision, and see the alchemy”. This is another song where Bush shows sympathy for a man. In this case, someone seen as eccentric and weird. You could read this as someone criticising an artist for being odd or unusual when they are actually making something wonderful and golden. Bush was receiving a lot of criticism and being dismissed around The Red Shoes and The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Although not writing about herself, I sort of see Bush as this beekeeper that people had this impression of. In fact, they are a compelling and kind character that is doing a lot of good. The Beekeeper is a wonderful character.
In the first verse, Kate Bush not only referencing one of her own songs – which appeared on 1985’s Hounds of Love -, but also The Beatles: “What a lovely afternoon/On a cloudbusting kind of day/We took our own ‘Mystery Tour’/And got completely lost somewhere up in the hills”. Ran Tan Waltz with its odd smells, vomit, cheating, scandal and debauchery. Here, we get flowers, the sunshine and the beauty and tranquillity of the open air. I think about this song as being set somewhere in England. Bush perhaps the protagonist who is wandering along and sees this man on the hills. She happens upon this beekeeper. You may think they are a loner or this eccentric. However, there is this form of natural alchemy happening. “And he said, “Did you know they can change it all?”. Bees blessing the flowers and making honey. Something wonderful is happening: “They turn the roses into gold/They turn the lilac into honey/They’re making love for the peaches”. It seems that there is a group of people around that goes up to The Beekeeper. Whilst he does not have a name in the song, that is the title that I am giving him. Thinking that he is some kind of nut, The Beekeeper says “ZzzzZzzzz… Sun’s gone down/“When’s my cloud of bees coming home?”. Bringing this man so much pleasure, You Want Alchemy? Is one of Bush’s most splendidly pleasing and evocative tracks. One that I think would have made a great single. You do wonder whether she considered that. It would have been amazing to see a video for You Want Alchemy? “Making love for the peaches. (what they gonna do…?)/Daaaaaamaaaaakiiiiindaaaaa honey/(they do it for you)/They do it for you”. What this track proves is how broad Kate Bush is as a songwriter. I started by discussing a song that was about a wife cheating and having sex with a man’s friends and leaving a kid at home with the husband. Here, we go as far from that as possible. It is about this man who might be seen as odd but has this passion for bees and the wonder they can create. Classic Pop called the song “a breathy reverie, a delirious exhalation of joy” when they reviewed Best of the Other Sides last year.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for Eat the Music in 1993
What is notable is how this song was a B-side for a couple of singles. Whilst it did feature as a B-side on Eat the Music, it was also a B-side on The Red Shoes, the 1994 title track. On the 7” and cassette single, this was the B-side. It does make me think about B-sides and how these various songs made their way to where they did. In the case of songs from The Red Shoes, it was a bit weird and random. The first single, Rubberband Girl, had Big Stripey Lie as its B-side. That is an album track from The Red Shoes. Depending on the territory, Eat the Music had Candle in the Wind, Big Stripey Lie, You Want Alchemy?, Eat the Music (12” mix) and Shoedance (The Red Shoes dance mix). Moments of Pleasure has, among the B-sides, Home for Christmas and Show a Little Devotion. The Red Shoes has This Woman’s Work as one of the B-sides. And So Is Love includes Eat the Music (US Mix). Quite scattered and unusual in terms of some of the songs included as B-sides. However, this golden original, You Want Alchemy?, deserved more life than being buried. Bush did give it a new lease when it was included on Best of the Other Sides. UNCUT said this when they reviewed Kate Bush’s Remastered in Vinyl I-IV in 2018. That is when many heard You Want Alchemy? for the first time: “You Want Alchemy”, the B-side of “The Red Shoes” single, reveals the very soulful capabilities of Bush’s voice in its delicious hook: “You want alchemy/You turn the roses into gold”. Remastered in Vinyl IV contained all these rarities and B-sides and does also include Ran Tan Waltz. I do love the power of You Want Alchemy? It does share characteristics with Prince music of that time. Bush was a fan of Prince and the two did work together on Why Should I Love You? from The Red Shoes. I love The Beekeeper. This misunderstood hermit. Someone who is dedicated to his bees and does not meet many people. Bush is so sensual and captivating through this track. Sort of tipping to 2005’s Aerial. You could see this song appearing quite appropriate in the second disc, A Sky of Honey. It would slot right in that conceptual suite of the course of a summer’s day.
The strings are amazing. The late Michael Kamen creating something shimmering, grand and romantic. This is one of Kate Bush’s best vocal performances. Think about the near-orgasmic noises she makes. Almost contorting her face to get those sounds, it would have been amazing watching her sing it in the studio! Such a great noise that she makes! If Bush was unhappy with some of the production on The Red Shoes, thinking it was tinny, over-compressed or lacking warm and depth, then she must have been happy with You Want Alchemy? I don’t think it suffers from any of that. Instead, you get this rich and hugely atmospheric song that would have made a successful single. It does make me yearn for something I have pitched before. Videos being made for Bush songs that were never singles. Maybe casing actors in them or doing animated videos, it would be terrific having You Want Alchemy? come to life. You listen to the song and imagine yourself in this scene. Changing upon this beekeeper that is maligned or seen as a creep. Instead, when you get to talk to him and discover more, you realise that the judgemental people are the ones wrong. They lack his curiosity and passion. It perhaps is a wider commentary on how we judge people. The joy of nature and appreciation of insects like bees. So much to unpack regarding You Want Alchemy? Away from the tracks we find on her studio albums, there are these fascinating characters on B-sides. I am going to bring in a few more in future parts. Maybe also look at Lyra from the single of the same name. That was including on The Golden Compass Soundtrack in 2007. Before that, I am coming back to her albums. When it comes to the variety and depth of the characters she weaves into her songs, Kate Bush really is an artist…
LIKE no other.