FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Tour of Life
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a publicity shot for 2014’s Before the Dawn/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
The Regret of Missing the Life-Affirming Before the Dawn
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THERE is no telling…
IN THIS PHOTO: Florian Hynam from Bristol with her Kate Bush ticket/PHOTO CREDIT: David Levene
what the atmosphere was like on 26th August, 2014 around Hammersmith. I have written an anniversary feature about Before the Dawn. I wanted to publish a second, as it was a major event that took a lot of people by surprise. This was Kate Bush’s first extensive and big live event since 1979’s The Tour of Life. I do think that Before the Dawn is among the greatest live events in the past couple of decades. A residency that saw Bush perform twenty-two dates in the Eventim Apollo, one of my greatest regrets is not being there. I would not make that mistake again. If there was an announcement of any live outing – most probably a one-off -, I would make sure that I got a ticket. I often have these dreams that I made it to Hammersmith on that opening night in 2014. Being the first one there – as I would turn after just after lunch -, I am at the start of the queue and hanging around. Eventually, people would trickle in. Other hardcore fans who are keen to soak in as much of the day as possible. Then, just before doors open in the evening, there would be this jostling and exciting energy. A lot of fans from around the world flocked to Hammersmith. In terms of those who attended Before the Dawn, major artists like Lily Allen and Paul McCartney alongside broadcaster Lauren Laverne. Bjork and Peter Gabriel were there. Fans of her work and artists who have influenced her. I can imagine there was this sense of expectation on her shoulders. However, Bush delivered this incredible performance across the twenty-two dates. Whilst some reviewers pointed to the odd flaw here and there, the abiding takeaway was Before the Dawn as this incredibly powerful and memorable gig. As we mark twelve years since the start of the residency, I did want to write about it once more.
For this feature, I am going to look at the opening night. As I have referenced this feature from The Guardian before, I do think that it warrants repetition. We get excites about sports events and the build up to them. The action as it happens. On 26th August, 2014, there was this sort of anticipation and fever around Before thew Dawn. People did not know what to expect. Bush insisted that people did not take photos and record during the show. One of the first artists to insist on doing this. More and more artists adopting this approach. This was to be a shared experience for the ages. One where There was this incredible reaction from people inside the venue. Rather than just include reviews and repeat what I have done a lot, there are some takeaways and sections from The Guardian’s live-blog report of the opening night. Rumoured celebrities like David Bowie and Madonna (who were not there). Others in tears and completely overwhelmed by the performance.
“Yes, you read the headline correctly: This here is the Guardian music Kate Bush Before The Dawn live blog. Tonight is the artist’s first show in 35 years. Her last tour took place back in 1979 and featured 17 costume changes, 6 dancers dressed as violins, 1 large egg, loads of fake blood and 24 songs packed with pure, celestial majesty. Hopefully her opening night at London’s Eventim Apollo will follow an even more elaborate set up, but unfortunately I won’t be there to witness it. Instead, will be sat in the Guardian building trying to piece together as much information as possible in order to bring this very special show straight to you at home.
As the show begins, here’s Hannah Ellis-Petersen’s report from the venue so far:
They lined up quietly and obediently in the rain, a mood of hushed anticipation hanging in the air. No-one jostled, no-one pushed in, no-one even really spoke. After all, for the hundreds of Kate Bush fans gathered outside Hammersmith Apollo for her opening show, this was simply the final moments of what has been a 35-year wait.
Returning to the same venue where she played her first and last shows in 1979, aged just 20, Bush, now 56, will perform 22 dates over the next month. Yet what the thousands of fans, many of whom have travelled from as far as the USA and Australia, can expect from the enigmatic performer remained a mystery, even as the ticket-holders began filing into the venue.
For Chad Siwek, 30, who flew over from Los Angeles, California, for the concerts and has ticket for all three of Bush’s opening nights, described standing at the venue on Tuesday night as “like a dream.”
“Kate Bush just means everything to me, she cares more about her work and pleasing her fans than the commercial value or just making money off it” he says, stopping as his voice breaks with emotion. “I’m sorry, i’m getting choked up but it’s just my whole life I’ve been a huge Kate Bush fan. I’ll cry when she comes out and I think i’ll just be in awe that it’s really her as I’ve never seen her in person. It’s going to be really special and to be here means more than any other moment of my life.”
Siwek was not the only member of the patiently-waiting crowd who had flown from Los Angeles, with Daren Taylor, drummer for band The Airborne Toxic Event, among those right at the front of the queue.
He said: “I’ve flown in from Los Angeles, California today just to see Kate Bush. It’s not easy to express what Kate Bush means to me. Her music touches me, and I’m sure everybody here, in very unique ways. I don’t think any two people will tell you the same thing that her music means to them.”
The setlist for the show has been kept completely under wraps, though the performance itself is expected by many to include similar theatrics to her 1979 show, which included 17 costume changes as well as combination of mime, flamboyant dancing and poetry. For this series of shows, the influential singer is reported to have spent three days in a flotation tank at Pinewood Studios to create the special effects.
While some many fans have speculated the show will include include The Ninth Wave, a seven-track concept piece from her bestselling 1985 album Hounds of Love about a woman drifting alone in the sea, others said they would be content even with something low key.
PHOTO CREDIT: Noble & Bright/REX Photograph
“It’s not going to be a straight up gig is it?” said Susie Martin, 28, a teacher from Barnsley and lifelong Bush fan who said she had cried when she heard that the singer was ending her 35-year moratorium on touring. “But equally I’d like to just see her up on stage, one piano, one spotlight, Moments of Please and Under the Ivy, This Woman’s work. Because I think she’s at her absolute best, she’s peerless, when it’s just her and a piano and that voice. Today is quite overwhelming.”
Asked what Bush meant to her, Martin added: “Her music is so original, so stunning, so beautiful but it’s not just the music it’s the visual aspect of it, it’s the lyrics, she puts everything into it and never compromises. Every emotion in your life, whatever you are feeling there’s a Kate Bush song for it to help you get through things or dance wildly round your bedroom.”
Tim Jonze has just fed back some information, possibly from the toilet, but I didn’t want to ask.
So far there’s been a standing ovation after every song. They are patrolling for phones in a very intense way. Some guy stood up and did wavy Kate Bush dancing and got told off.
Kate is bare foot and keeps doing a slow spinny dance. The crowd are going completely mad. She’s already played Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill.
She thanked her lighting guys and son Bertie who is singing in the choir.
It sounds like quite a strict and yet magical affair”.
You do get a sense of all of the emotions and commotions. Fans who were taking pictures and defying that request not too. Most were completely immersed in what was happening on the stage. I cannot think of many opening nights quite like this one since. Maybe tours from Taylor Swift or Charli xcx. Nothing that brings so many high-profile names and such a wide range of fans to the same place. There was something historic about Before the Dawn’s opening date of 26th August, 2014. Rumours that David Bowie was going to join Kate Bush on stage for a number. That obviously never happened, but it was a night when nobody could be sure. All this excitement and wondering.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX Photograph
“Breaking Bush update: One man claims that Kate stopped the set to eject someone using a camera. Grace Jones and Bjork are also apparently in attendance. There is a very strong rumour going around my desk mainly that Harriet Gibsone has cracked open her second can of sparkling apple and blueberry juice. She is feeling optimistic and nauseous.
So far the costumes look pretty sombre. Here’s an extract from Graeme Thomson’s account of her previous tour attire:
For Them Heavy People she was a trench-coated, trilby-hatted gangster. On the heartbreaking Oh England, My Lionheart, she became a dying second world war fighter pilot, a flying jacket for a shroud and a Biggles helmet for a burial crown. Every song offered something new: she moved from Lolita, winking outrageously from behind the piano, to atop-hatted magician’s apprentice ; from a soul siren singing of her “pussy queen” to a leather-clad refugee from West Side Story. The erotically charged denouement of James and the Cold Gun depicted her as a murderous gunslinger, spraying gunfire – actually ribbons of red satin – over the stage. There was no room for improvisation. The band was drilled to within an inch of its life and Bush never spoke to the audience, refusing to come out of character. “She was faultless,” says set designer David Jackson. “I don’t remember her ever fluffing a line or hitting a bum note on the piano.”
After we last spoke to Tim Jonze, the show went from stripped back and simple to a full onslaught of theatrics. As previously speculated, Bush has performed The Ninth Wave, the conceptual suite from her 1985 classic album Hounds of Love. Here’s Tim’s account...
She created sea scenes through using bits of cloth, she was on video in a life jacket, there was one bit where a lounge was wheeled on stage, and you got to watch a conversation between her husband [Danny McIntosh] and son [Bertie] who are watching Liverpool v Chelsea on the TV. She disappears behind them as if she is haunting them. There’s a sea horse skeleton walking around the stage.
...And that’s it so far. It makes about as much sense as the half-awake ramblings of Noel Fielding.
As we slowly glide into the last part of Kate Bush’s first show, here’s a quick update of some of the well known names in attendance. Three of which are made up. If you can guess which ones are false, you can win an egg (This is a reference from earlier on in the live blog, but I wouldn’t bother scrolling down to find it, just play along in order to win an exclusive egg!).
Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Holly Johnson
Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour
Marc Almond
Axl Rose
Frank Lampard
Frank Skinner
Michael Ball
Terry Christian
Everyone’s favourite Before the Dawn roving reporter Hannah Ellis-Petersen been speaking to some fans during the interval:
Ben McMullen:
“It’s been fantastic. I was quite nervous. I’ve never come to a gig feeling nervous before but I was just thinking, ‘Oh no, this is going to be a letdown because the hype was so huge.’ But actually, it really was fabulous. What was really interesting I thought was the tribute she paid to her son. In the programme there’s a passage where she talks about how he’s really pushed her to do this and how without his support she couldn’t have done it. He’s been on stage with her the whole time as a backing singer and has been involved in some of the acting as well. There’s been a helicopter flying overhead and there’s been a huge sea-buoy on stage which she climbed onto to be rescued. They’ve not held back in terms of staging. But it’s completely worth it. You kind of think, ‘I should have booked a second night’.”
Mikey Walsh:
“It’s been wonderful, theatrical. It was everything I wanted it to be. The theatrically of it has been incredible - lots of surprises but she also included the hit songs you hope she would do. Just hearing those classic songs live from her and seeing the way the audience have gone mad for her, it’s mental. What’s absolutely crazy is how respectful they are - everyone has respected that message she sent out about no camera phones, I haven’t seen one. Just seeing Kate walk out in her bare feet and say hello was the most surreal moment and her voice is fantastic, she sounds excellent, so confident and so beautiful. Water has really been a motif of the show, there are lots of sea effects and helicopters. It’s nothing like I’ve any concert ever been to, it’ more like watching a West End show. It’s phenomenal.”
As Alexis hurtles back to write his review for the Guardian, here’s a quick look at what some of the other papers are saying, starting off with The Mirror:
Bush’s long time away from the stage has evidently left her determined to add something more than song performance to the live experience. A lighting rig amplified with the sounds of helicopter rotor blades soars over the audience belching more smoke, Bush’s drowned character appears in a drawing room theatrical scene as she and actors play out mimed exchanges harking back to her earliest dramatic roots. But at the heart of the artful contrivance and outlandish effects the assertion of the simple verities of love longing, domesticity and family life were given full reign. There was undoubtedly only one artist who would have had the bloody mindedness, nerve and beautifully skewed imagination to pull it off.
And Jan Moir for the Daily Mail:
Some over-enthusiastic dancers were also told to sit down – middle class ‘rawk and roll’ at its best. After all this time, Kate Bush remains that rare thing, a performer who is truly original and fully realised. Her panoply of crazy women, all those wild-eyed kooks she used to haunt the Top Of The Pops studio with, have gone, along with her mini-kimonos or thigh-high sheepskin boots. Her music is still audacious and weird, but sometimes spellbindingly beautiful, too. Hers is a large-scale spectacle, vividly realised and unlike anything else in town”.
I don’t think we can ever recreate that sense of build and excitement that happened at the Eventim Apollo, London on 26th August, 2014. If Bush was to ever perform again and there was either a residency or a one-off gig, you can imagine that there would be similar ecstasy. Perhaps not quite on the same level, I am not sure whether Kate Bush will perform live. It makes it all the more upsetting that I was not there. I would love to have been there during that opening night. As part of this adoring crowd that were witnessing something truly special. I do want to end with a review that I don’t think I have used too often. Drowned In Sound were in attendance on the opening night and shared their thoughts:
“It’s tempting to speculate on how Kate chose the six songs that make up this first act, drawn as they are from just three album eras: ‘Hounds Of Love’ and ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’ from 1985, ‘Lily’ and ‘Top Of The City’ from 1993, ‘Joanni’ and ‘King Of The Mountain’ from 2005. ‘Lily’, a song based on an occultist protection spell, opens the show with references to the Golden Dawn and a circle of fire, providing a thematic link for what is to come in act three. Lights flash red and orange as the song passes by in a blur of mental processing… Kate freaking Bush! In real, actual life! Then, almost without pause for breath, everything is jolted into focus – “It’s in the trees, it’s coming!” – and we’re racing through one of the greatest pop songs ever written. Kate slightly over-sings it, caught up in the glorious moment, but it still feels like a fresh and staggering milestone in passion. All this on only the second song of the night. Before The Dawn is not for the fainthearted.
From there, Kate’s vocals never stray far from perfection. ‘Joanni’ and ‘Top Of The City’ confirm that the brittle purr and fierce-fragile sensuality of her youth are still very much within her reach, making the most of the bespoke surround sound system newly installed at Kate’s behest, while ‘Running Up That Hill’ loses not a fragment of its power. But perhaps the biggest highlight is ‘King Of The Mountain’, her mid-tempo comeback single from 2005, transformed brilliantly into something altogether more urgent and vital than the studio version. Wide-eyed and energised, we arrived abruptly at what could be described as the staging’s clickbait moment: “This woman sang in public for the first time in 35 years, and you’ll never guess what happened next…” To be honest, it was at this point that I stopped taking notes. I could labour over the details of how The Ninth Wave is staged, but to do so from my crow’s nest view at the back of the Apollo would be a terrible disservice to the incredible amount of work that has gone into this production. Readers, I was rapt.
What I can say for certain is that I have never seen anything like it before. Kate’s commitment to the project extended to floating in a tank at Pinewood Studios for several hours to create the astonishingly effective video backdrops that underpin the twisted tale of a woman lost at sea. The agitation in her face may have been aided by the cold that, according to her own essay in the programme, left her effing and blinding by the end of the shoot, but the acting was as note-perfect as the voice. For some of these segments, the vocals had been recorded in the tank itself – a logistical nightmare that ended the life of more than one mike – and it’s to Kate’s immense credit that she took this extra step to ensure we really believed in the story. ‘And Dream Of Sheep’ brings a lump to the throat, as Kate’s character comes to terms with her predicament and hopes for an early demise. The deliberate tremble in her voice cuts like an axe, both pathos and payoff, and resurfaces again in the chilling ‘Hello Earth’ – the story of a rescue… or is it?
Between those two songs comes a melee of action, where dark, twisted drama is leavened with a few endearing nods to Kate’s enduring love of British comedy. ‘Under Ice’ and ‘Waking The Witch’ are fearless evocations of Kate’s visual imagination, loaded with creative innovations that bring the storytelling into vivid, 21st century realness. Lasers and projections are used to extreme effect, creating all manner of light trails across the stage. Images flood into the brain; in one gorgeous moment, wild white horses can be seen running through sheets of rippling fabric, returning into waves as dramatically as they had changed. As ‘Jig Of Life’ plays out beneath her, the stranded woman on the screen starts to draw strength from her surroundings, wiggling her fingers in time to the music. She wants to live, to be saved. She has to, doesn’t she? With her little light still shining.
Act three is all about light, a chronicle of day as it turns into night. This act belongs to A Sky Of Honey, the nine-song suite that fills the entire second disc of Aerial with chirrups of birdsong and abstractions of domestic bliss that give way to some of Kate’s more out-there leanings. It’s true that nothing much happens in these songs, with a couple of notable exceptions (the flamenco breakdown in ‘Sunset’, the crescendo of ‘Nocturn’ that leads into the wheeling, madcap finale of ‘Aerial’), but, as with everything we’ve seen so far, it’s marvellously and inventively staged. As the light transforms, so does Kate herself as a wicked spell abounds. Perhaps the most moving element of A Sky Of Honey lies in the skilful puppetry that brings to life what may or may not represent Kate Bush’s son at the age he was when Aerial was born. It would certainly explain why Kate hugs his short wooden frame several times throughout the set, and why Bertie himself, while playing the character of The Painter, gets to tell him(self) to “Piss off!”. Keep an eye on that puppet, if you go. He’s not as hapless as he seems.
[Notes: Uproarious applause. Standing ovation after standing ovation. Oh God, it’s almost over.]
The first song of the encore visits Kate’s most recent body of work, 50 Words For Snow, in the shimmering form of ‘Among Angels’. For this, Kate sits alone at her piano, exposed and, I suspect, feeling rather triumphant. “There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it, you might feel it and just not show it…” – a perfect summation of what has been exchanged between this most singular of artists and her singularly patient admirers. Both sides are showing it now, as the full band returns for the thundering consummation of ‘Cloudbusting’. “On top of the world, looking over the edge…” Kate Bush has finally seen her people looking right back up at her. With 21 more shows to go, will she then retreat once more? Her face as she leaves is framed by an expression of deep gratitude, suggesting perhaps she will not”.
I did want to mark that opening night. 26th August, 2014 is a date that has gone down in music history. The unveiling of the life-changing Before the Dawn. And it did seem to be an experience that changed lives. People I knew who were there saying what an impact it made on them. I do think back and regret not being there. That said, there is the live album - which turns ten in November -, and there are the shared memories from those who were there. What were people thinking traveling to Hammersmith to see Kate Bush? The conversations and that balance of nerves and excitement. That stunning Before the Dawn opening night is…
HARD to replicate.