FEATURE:
Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Crippen (Coffee Homeground)/G (Strange Phenomena)
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I am pairing songs…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Japan in June 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Koh Hasebe
from Kate Bush’s first two albums, as I still have characters to explore afterwards. It would mean no album bar The Kick Inside and Hounds of Love have more than one character. I will pair them down the line. However, focusing on two songs that were included in albums that came out in 1978, you can see a real diversity and range. Very different tracks that have their own narratives. The second character might not be one at all. They are so mysterious. Referred to as ‘he’, they are known by an initial, but they arrive in a song that is deeply fascinating. I will start with a standout track from Lionheart. Coffee Homeground is one of three new songs Kate Bush wrote for her second studio album. I cannot imagine what Kate Bush was facing in the second half of 1978. The Kick Inside came out on 17th February. She was promoting it heavily and travelling around the world. It would have been enough for her to promote the rest of the year and think about a second album the following year. As The Kick Inside struck a chord and Bush was this unique artist, EMI wanted to get another album from her before the year was done. That is an insane ask of a new artist! She had to go back into the archives to get songs for a second album. I guess the aim would have been that she would have time to write from scratch. The debut album obviously was going to feature songs written before she started recording. Older tracks. She would not have been keen to look into the archives for a second album. She was forced into a corner. Even if Lionheart does surprisingly have a leap and different sound, I think that is a conscious decision. The songs selected for The Kick Inside had to have some sort of similarity and arc. A cohesiveness. Not songs that sound exactly the song, though they are not widely separate from one another. Lionheart is more eclectic and genre-hopping. The new songs that Bush wrote demonstrate this. Symphony in Blue is tis gorgeous piano-led song that discusses sex, love, passion and death. Bush associating red and blue with different emotions. Fullhouse (changed to Full House for future editions of Lionheart) is full of paranoia. The overwhelming psychological stress, paranoia, and self-doubt she experienced following her sudden, meteoric rise to fame. This was her most revealing song to date. Very open and raw.
I feel Coffee Homeground also shows this fearful and paranoid aspect. Bush wary of outside forces. People trying to poison her or create harm. Many assume Kate Bush first visited the U.S. in December 1978 when she was on SNL. Her only performance on the show. It seems she was there in May 1978. I am not sure whether this was promoting The Kick Inside. Her 1978 was exhausting. It must have been a strange trip. It is worth looking at Kate Bush’s April and May 1978. Coffee Homeground written during a trip to the U.S. She was back and forth to the country it seemed. I don’t think she ever really enjoyed it:
“April 4, 1978
Wuthering Heights moves down to number 3. The Kick Inside reaches its chart peak at number 3.
Kate is off to Europe to promote single and album in the Netherlands, West Germany (a second time) and France. In The Netherlands, Kate makes a 25-minute promotional film of six tracks [Peter inexplicably writes "seven", though only six tracks were filmed] at De Efteling is in Kaatsheuvel, a gothic horror theme-park. Her visit is commemorated by a new gravestone. She performs on the Voor De Vuist Weg television programme. In Germany Kate appears on the television programmes Scene '78 and Top Pop, performing Wuthering Heights on both shows. Other guests on the former programme include Dr. Feelgood and The Boomtown Rats.
During this month Kate also makes a brief trip to the United States for promotional purposes, arriving back in the U.K. by April 21st.
Tour plans are put back to the end of the year.
May, 1978
Kate makes her first promotional trip to the U.S.A. and Canada (although she gives no performances and makes no U.S. television appearances), and then takes a short holiday. [This must be the same trip which is mentioned immediately above, for April. The U.S.-made interview album Self Portrait may have been cut during this trip.]
Wuthering Heights goes gold in the U.K. (500,000 sales). Kate presents the disk to Tony Myatt. For four years it hangs in the foyer of Capitol Radio's London base.
EMI allow Kate to have her way over the choice of the follow-up single in the U.K. It is to be The Man With the Child in His Eyes, which Kate had always wanted to be a single, as she felt it showcased her real songwriting talent. It is less of a novelty, and more of a standard. Dave Gilmour (executive producer on the track, which actually dates from the June, 1975 demo-sessions) is also pleased. In Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere the follow-up later in the year will be EMI's first choice, Them Heavy People”.
I do think that Coffee Homeground refers to some of her doubts and stresses. A hectic year where she had to record a second studio album. She mentioned Crippen. That is Dr. Hawley Crippen, who gained infamy after poisoning his wife. Is he a representation of the industry? Bush casting herself in this song and avoiding this coffee homeground. This brew that could poison her. In a café or coffee shop where anything on the menu could kill her. They have a picture of Crippen on the wall. It is sort of a mix between Sweeny Todd and the demon barber and the idea customers would be killed. One potential influence is a 1959 short story by Roald Dahl, The Landlady. In terms of its synopsis: “A young man named Billy Weaver arrives in Bath, England, and finds a cozy, seemingly innocent bed and breakfast managed by a pleasant but slightly eccentric older woman. While drinking a cup of tea she serves him, he notices it tastes faintly of bitter almonds—a classic sign of cyanide poisoning. The Twist: It is heavily implied she poisons her guests, kills them, and then stuffs their dead bodies to add to her collection of taxidermy pets”. It would have been fascinating having a video for this song. If Fullhouse is a more overt expression of the horrors and turmoil Kate Bush was experiencing being pushed and pulled, I do think that Coffee Homeground is another glimpse into her psyche.
Let’s get to some background about Coffee Homeground, so that we can learn how Dr. Crippen features. It seems like a trip the U.S. and a time when Bush was in a cab that inspired the song. It gets me thinking about a young Kate Bush in the U.S. and how she took to it. Here is where we learn where Coffee Homeground came from:
“[‘Coffee Homeground’] was in fact inspired directly from a cab driver that I met who was in fact a bit nutty. And it’s just a song about someone who thinks they’re being poisoned by another person, they think that there’s Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it’s got poison in it. And it’s just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of German [vibe] to try and bring across the humour side of it.
Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978”.
No stranger to the U.S. in 1978, it would have been an overwhelming experience. She was promoting there, in a country that she did not want to break and was not a major focus. Going to New York and traveling around, a girl from Kent who was used to London but still very much not a city dweller, it would have been head-spinning., Having this cabbie rant on or tell weird stories could have put her off the country. Instead, it influenced one of her best early songs. I still think there is something of her in there. It is interesting considering the music of the song. That Germanic influence. Nothing like it on The Kick Inside. Bush eager to add something fresh and bigger. Going beyond the piano. It does have this jaunty and comedic tone. Though I sort of feel it is a companion to Get Out of My House from The Dreaming. That is inspired by The Shining. Bush inhabiting the spirit of this hotel. This was the manifestations of Bush pushing herself to the limits producing The Dreaming. Mixing a known source to what was in her head. A feeling that she was maybe going mad or had to fight for autonomy and respect. Few people discuss the psychology in her songs. What we can detect about Bush’s mindset and psychology. Coffee Homeground is a polar opposite in terms of mood. Less percussive and more oddly romantic, there is still plenty of horror and hazard in Coffee Homeground. Bush is in this coffee house, and poison is being made in the basement. A glass of wine set aside where the poison will reside. The mantra is “And I don’t want any coffee homeground”. I shall end this section by discussing how that name had a life beyond this song. It is very Sweeny Todd-esque. Bush notes how were plumbers who went missing. A tall man and his companion. Never seen again. They no doubt were poisoned and disposed off. The line about Crippen is very vivid. I do think that the traps and tainted treats is Kate Bush singing about the lure of the music industry and how promotion and things that might seem positive are not. That they cause harm. “Well, you won’t get me with your Belladonna – in the coffee/And you won’t get me with your arsenic – in the pot of tea/And you won’t get me in a hole to rot – with your hemlock/On the rocks”. Is this her talking about interviews and now saying the wrong thing? Having to tread carefully or fear hurting her career?
“Pictures of Crippen/Lipstick-smeared”. That is an odd and intriguing vision. The proprietor kissing those pictures. A murderous idol, they are following his lead. If a cabbie in the U.S. planted the seeds, no doubt the tale of Dr. Crippen was known to her early. It is worth knowing about more about Dr. Crippen and why he is so notorious. A story and horrible unfolding that would no doubt have made Kate Bush curious:
“In September 1905, Dr Crippen and his wife took a lease on 39 Hilldrop Crescent in Holloway. Part of the thinking behind this move was that the pair could now have separate bedrooms. Belle had never really been a sexual person and according to what Crippen would later say, all physical relations between them ceased in 1907. Crippen, meanwhile, had fallen in love.
The object of his desire was Ethel Le Neve, a typist who worked for him. At about the same time that Crippen stopped having sex with Belle, he and Ethel became lovers. This situation continued until 1910.
On the evening of Monday, 31 January 1910, the Crippens threw a dinner party for two close friends of Belle’s: Paul and Clara Martinetti. The meal passed pleasantly enough, except for one incident. Paul Martinetti had asked to use the toilet and because Crippen didn’t escort him upstairs to show him where it was, Belle berated him. By the time the Martinettis finally left, it was around 1 a.m. on Monday, 1 February. It would be the last time that anyone saw Belle Elmore alive.
Over the next week or so people began to ask where Belle was. Crippen said that she had gone to America. As the days passed, this story was amended and now she had fallen ill. Finally, Crippen told people that his wife had passed away. There was, however, one problem with this. Ethel Le Neve had started wearing some of Belle’s jewellery and, by the end of February, she had moved in with Crippen at Hilldrop Crescent. Friends grew suspicious and in due course those suspicions were passed on to the police.
On 8 July, Chief Inspector Walter Dew called at Hilldrop Crescent where he found Ethel alone. Crippen, it seems, was at work, so Dew visited him there and the two returned together to Hilldrop Crescent where Crippen happily showed the officer around the house. He also told Dew a different story. Belle had left him for another man, almost certainly Bruce Miller, an American she had met in late 1903. Dew told Crippen that it would be better if Belle contacted him to confirm this story and Crippen said that he would place an advertisement in certain newspapers, asking for her to make contact.
Things now moved very quickly. The next day, 9 July, Crippen shaved off his distinctive moustache and with Ethel Le Neve disguised as a boy, travelled to Brussels. There they bought tickets for passage to Canada, travelled on to Antwerp and there boarded the SS Montrose, travelling as father and son.
At about the same time, Chief Inspector Dew returned to Hilldrop Crescent. He was surprised to find Crippen and Ethel missing and decided to make another routine search of the house. In the cellar he noticed some loose bricks in the floor. Officers were ordered in to make a more thorough search and beneath those bricks they found the remains of a body. The body was headless, limbless and boneless – little more than pieces of flesh, but it was female. It was time to find Crippen.
Aboard the Montrose, the father and son were watched with interest. They seemed to be unduly affectionate and were constantly holding hands. Added to that, the boy’s clothing seemed to be very ill-fitting. Captain Kendall had his suspicions and telegraphed a message to Scotland Yard. Dew, now determined to intercept the ‘father and son’, boarded a faster ship, the SS Laurentic, and the hunt was on.
On Sunday, 31 July, Dew and other officers boarded the Montrose as it sailed up the St Lawrence. The father and son were identified as Crippen and Ethel Le Neve, both were arrested and, after three weeks, were escorted back to England to face trial.
It was decided that the pair should not be tried together. Crippen would face his trial first and, once that verdict had been determined, Ethel Le Neve would take her turn in the dock, to be tried as an accessory. So it was that on 18 October, Crippen stood alone in the dock at the Old Bailey before the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Alverstone. The proceedings would last until 22 October.
Crippen’s defence was simple. The body found in the cellar of his home was not Belle’s. The body must have been of some poor unknown woman and been placed there before he and Belle had moved in. It was, therefore, crucial to the prosecution to prove that the body was Belle’s.
One piece of the flesh found in the shallow grave had borne a scar and medical records showed that Belle had such a scar on her lower abdomen. More conclusive was the fact that the remains had been wrapped in a pyjama jacket and a tag inside that jacket led to the manufacturers: Jones Brothers. They confirmed that this particular cloth and pattern were not issued until late 1908, proving that the body must have been placed there after that date. This, and the scar, was consistent with the body being that of Belle Elmore”.
I do think that this lipstick-smeared figure in a coffee house of poison and murder is much deeper than this being something fictional. I do read more into it. Dr. Crippen representing something bigger. It is also worth thinking about the victim, Cora Crippen, as she is under-discussed and misunderstood. Though it is not strictly relevant to Coffee Homeground. This song would become Homeground, a Kate Bush fanzine, that started in 1982 and ran until 2011. I do love how it fitted. It was a homemade fanzine, so that title is apt. Also, a Kate Bush song that not a lot of people talk about. Brilliant that it had a life beyond Lionheart. I have said before how we do need a Kate Bush fanzine today. I do love how Coffee Homeground is much more fascinating than people imagine. Dreams of Orgonon spotlighted Coffee Homeground in 2019. There are some observations that I want to highlight: “Her play at a German accent is willfully funny, one of the silliest things on Lionheart. Bush was often mocked for her gurning and high-pitched vocals (by such comedians as Faith Brown and Pamela Stephenson), and “Homeground” suggests she’s in on the joke to some extent, or least just as capable of having fun with it. On the track she engages in Sprechgesang, a kind of singing in which a singer rapidly moves back and forth between speaking and singing”. They go on to say how “The decrepit house of “Homeground” is as much a stage for the song itself as it is for Bush. In a period where she’s torn between the obligations of touring and her desire to give her songs the time they need, “Coffee Homeground” is the sort of song Kate Bush is bound to produce. Her shortcomings and her ambition clash violently, and the result is as fascinating and vexed as anything she’s ever made”.
Let’s move to the second side. From her rushed-but-brilliant second studio album, Lionheart, we go back a few months to The Kick Inside. I have covered a few songs already from The Kick Inside. I think there are three more tracks on the album I will write about. Moving, Wuthering Heights and Them Heavy People. The latter song is the final one I will include, as the title of this series takes its name from that song. The mysterious and enigmatic G is spoken about Strange Phenomena. Let’s get some background from Kate Bush about a gem from The Kick Inside:
“Strange Phenomena” is about how coincidences cluster together. We can all recall instances when we have been thinking about a particular person and then have met a mutual friend who – totally unprompted – will begin talking about that person. That’s a very basic way of explaining what I mean, but these “clusters of coincidence” occur all the time. We are surrounded by strange phenomena, but very few people are aware of it. Most take it as being part of everyday life. (Music Talk, 1978)”.
I am going to reference Dreams of Orgonon again, as they are a really useful and comprehensive source when it comes to getting to the core of songs. Even if you do not think of him as a character, G is a ‘he’. “A day of coincidence with the radio/And a word that won’t go away/We know what they’re all going to say/“G” arrives–“Funny, had a feeling he was on his way!” We don’t know if G is God, or someone else whose name starts with that letter. Kate Bush never revealed the source. Maybe we imagine him as a spirit. This lifeforce that brings about these coincidences. This is a case of Kate Bush going beyond the obvious girl-meets-boy Pop. The Kick Inside is as much about human experiences, psychology and subjects that go deep. Make you think.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Fievez/ANL/REX/Shutterstock
I do wonder who this G is. I feel this is a case of Kate Bush being influenced by Steely Dan. The sort of thing they would sling into a song. Not that the themes excluded on Strange Phenomena are comparable to Steely Dan! However, they would drop a G into their songs (Daddy Gee is a character in Countdown to Ecstasy’s My Old School). It might be God. Someone or something that is like this lifeforce. A thing inside people, especially women, that is an institution. This is one of two songs on The Kick Inside that mentions mensuration. “Every girl knows about the punctual blues/But who’s to know the power behind our moods?”. The punctual blues is obviously about periods. This was not taboo in 1978, though it was definitely not common for women in music to discuss this through music. Kite starts with a line where Bush says, “Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o”. I have included this song in this feature but never associated the aching with period pain. Bush never says this is specifically what it was, but Laura Snapes reviewed The Kick Inside and this is how she interpreted the line. These cycles and coincidences. A rare case of Bush lifting women. In the sense of this positive message about their powers and strength. Bush not often seen as a feminist, you can read many of her songs as feminist. I think Strange Phenomena is one where women, these “Soul-birds of a feather”, flock together. The lines “You hear your sister calling for you/But you don’t know where from”. I never quite knew the meaning there. There is spirituality and philosophy on The Kick Inside. It is definitely present in Strange Phenomena. Bush repeats the line “Om mani padme hum”. “Om mani padme hum is the most famous and widely revered six-syllable mantra in Tibetan Buddhism. Associated with Avalokiteśvara (the Bodhisattva of Compassion), it embodies universal love, wisdom, and the ultimate transformation of the mind, body, and speech into the pure state of a Buddha”. The closest English translation is “praise to the jewel in the lotus”. In a song where God could be this G, Bush also brings in Buddhism. As we learn, “In Tibetan Buddhism, this is the most ubiquitous mantra and its recitation is a popular form of religious practice, performed by laypersons and monastics alike”.
Dreams of Orgonon looked inside Strange Phenomena. They muse that the ‘G’ could be David Gilmour. He was a mentor and a big reason why she got signed and got to where she is. He supported her work and paid for her first recordings at AIR Studios. Knowing that Bush was a very special talent, maybe this is her honouring him. Though many feel The Man with the Child in His Eyes is about Gilmour. I don’t think either song is. Bush might have been inspired by a 1972 novel. Written by English author John Berger, G is set in pre–First World War Europe. Its protagonist is named G. They are a Don Juan/Casanova-like lover of women who gradually comes to political consciousness after misadventures across the continent. It would be fascinating if this was the source. How it changes our perception of Strange Phenomena. There is mysticism and religion. There is philosophy and wonder. Beautiful twists of language. This passage from Dreams of Orgonon stood out: “In addition to her quasi-musical coinage of “the punctual blues,” she calls a period the phase “where people tune in.” To be sure, menstruating a subject people discuss in private, bringing discomfort to cisgender women and often triggering severe bouts of dysphoria in transgender men. It’s an aspect of life that unites lots of people in their unease by widespread patterns and, more importantly, rhythms of nature. Bush dignifies menstruating by making it a musical process. If there’s a central idea to The Kick Inside, it’s that everything is music”. The website is run by a transgender woman, Christine Kelley. Not just because Bush dignifies a subject that would make people uncomfortable. Even though menstruation is a key part of the menstrual cycle, it is not something many women brought into their music pre-1978. Not that it is common in modern music through, through the decades, there have been cases of women bringing the menstrual cycle and PMS into music. Princess Nokia’s Period Blood. Heavens to Betsy’s My Red Self. Perhaps Melanie Martinez’s MOON CYCLE (2022) is closest to Kate Bush’s Strange Phenomena. I guess one of the challenges for Kate Bush was how to mount this for 1979’s The Tour of Life. It was on the setlist, though it is quite hard to conceptualise. Though a lot of her songs are easy to perform live, visualising them was a bit harder. Bush’s lyrics are often quite complex and changeable in terms of subjects and themes. Threading everything together would have been a challenge.
Prior to finishing up, I do think that there are those who feel Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside is defined by this hippy-dippy vibe. That image that stayed with her. Like she was more drawn to music and attitudes of the 1960s than the time she was living in. Strange Phenomena gets lumped into similar-natured The Kick Inside songs and are written off. This review lumps a few cuts together. Thinking they are a bit hippy-like and lack depth: “In some quarters, due to songs like “Room For the Life,” a reductive paean to the “Earth Mother” archetype, and the reggae-ish “Them Heavy People,” which namechecks spiritual gurus like George Gurdjieff, Kate was dismissed as something of a starry-eyed, modern day hippie (the tabloids liked to poke fun at her use of the words “wow” and “amazing”). “Strange Phenomena” is of similar ilk, casting a glance at the “other world” with a somewhat obvious checklist of supposedly otherworldly happenings (the power of the full moon, ESP, synchronicity), though the somber chanting of “om mani padme hum” in the fade out does add a spooky touch”. Many do pass by Kate Bush’s earliest albums, as they get this idea that there is this woo-woo kind of thing. Lots of stuff about spirits, mysticism. Music that would connect with hippies of the 1960s. However, if you listen to the songs and give them your attention, there is so much more to them. It is also nothing to be seen as a negative. It is important that people listen to albums like The Kick Inside. Strange Phenomena is an amazing song. So much packed in there. Not least who G is. I still think it is God, which would take us to angles around religion and how God made his/her way into Kate Bush’s music. Bush, whilst not devout, was and is a believer. She said making an album was a mission from God. Something that was a divine calling. Not a shock that she would bring God into her music. It is nice that there is something of the unknown about this man in Strange Phenomena. Less an immortal thing or spirit, there is that personal connection. Kate Bush wanted to keep him anonymous. Though you can sort of feel and sense an image of who the man is. Lots to dig into. Each listener will have their own theories. Pairing this unknown G together with Dr. Crippen. Showing, once more, how varied Kate Bush is regarding characters and inspirations. It gives new dimensions and layers to her…
IMPRESSIVE and district catalogue.