FEATURE:
Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow
ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush
Agent Orange: Never for Ever to The Dreaming…
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THIS is a point…
in John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow where there are a lot of photographs and not a lot of text. So we are going from Never for Ever to Hounds of Love in this section. I will cover five more sections of the book before finishing off. We have reached the ‘orange’ of the rainbow. This is where he began photographing his sister more extensively. This would continue up until 2011. That professional relationship lasting to her most recent album. I do think that what we get from page seventy-one onwards is a section of photographs that people have not seen. We pick up from the Army Dreamers video. You can see the single cover for Army Dreamers. Kate Bush drinking a cup of tea in one image. She is sort of dressed like a force’s sweetheart. This cross between a pin-up and a soldier. John Carder Bush notes how, like all of her videos, Army Dreamers was rehearsed extensively. The soldiers in the video were her band and friends. Paddy Bush, her brother, appears as one of the soldiers. There were run-through at their parents’ house. How the neighbours must have been shocked and confused to see these people dressed as soldiers running through the street. I did not know that they bought toy rifles from Harrods. Laurence Corner in Camden supplied the uniforms. Creating this authentic-looking feel. I do think that Army Dreamers is one of Kate Bush’s best videos. One that she rightly feels very proud of. What John Carder Bush observes is how it was important that the soldiers did not look like British soldiers as at the time (1980), The Troubles in Northern Ireland had its strongest profile. It would have caused controversy if Bush was in a video dressed as a British soldier. In the song, Bush does adopt an Irish accent. I get the feeling that there was this nod to The Troubles. Young men who were murdered. However, there were conflicts happening around the world, so Bush was not necessarily referring to one particular war.
John Carder Bush writes how the unforms were Eastern European surplus. “To set the right concentrated attitude to the video, Paddy and two other musicians in army unfirm set up a roadblock to the entrance to the site and stopped all the crew cars going into get them to show their identity papers. This was done very professionally and it did not seem like a joke. The crew’s revenge was the constant repetition of some of thew takes, especially when the soldiers had to run forward and roll over in helmets”. I did love these insights into the rehearsal and video. I did not know any of this. There was also this counter-revenge from the cast, as these guns from Harrods had a loud and irritating ‘clickety-click’ when the triggers were squeezed. How there was this sense of fun and joking on the set. Almost like two factions warring, the cast and crew pitted against one another. What you get from the video is real tension, power and horror. I don’t think it could have been a jokey video. You feel this sense of seriousness. A single – the third and final from Never for Ever – where Bush was proving she was a ‘serious artist. Press and critics still very much defining her as this parody-worthy artist who was not as deep and important as artists around her. Someone who could not engage with politics and world events. The shoot seemed quite intense. The sun noises and this sense of irritation. Although Keith Macmillan (Keef) directed the video, Kate Bush was also assisting. Bush was also helping. Getting a taste of directing, she would direct solo during the Hounds of Love period. One of the most powerful images of the video is the ‘jerk jacket’ shot. That was completed just as it was getting dark. The harness that Kate Bush wore came with risks. It was a harness that pulled Bush backwards quickly and was not the safest thing. Even if there is a chirpiness in Army Dreamers, Bush wanted the video to be heavy.
John Carder Bushy recalls how it was getting dark and in a clearing in Black Park, next to Pinewood Studios, Kate Bush got the shot she wanted. That was the one depicting Bush being blown up. That caused issues. The video was going to be shown on BBC during a children’s show. However, as it showed Bush being blown up, the BBC said they could not show it. John Carder Bush noted how the show came just after the news, which often depicted people being killed and blown up. The argument did not work on them, as it was not common for Pop videos to be this explicit. This beautiful young singer being blown up was quite dark. It was very uncommon. I do love the book and all the photographs that were taken during the Never for Ever section. A lot of the behind-the-scenes images from the Army Dreamers video. The Babooshka video and the images taken there. It was a busy and important year for Kate Bush. What we see if this blooming and blossoming relationship. John Carder Bush much more involved in her career. If there was a slow and building portfolio up to 1980, by the time Never for Ever arrived, there were a lot more collaborations. So many incredible images that you can enjoy in the book. Let’s move to The Dreaming. John Carder Bush took the cover photo for the album. A slightly cloudy day outside in the kitchen garden behind their parents’ house, “Apart from Kate looking very beautiful, the ivy behind her is wonderfully textured and full of hidden spaces and shadows amongst the glossy leaves themselves”. In ancient times, as John Carder Bush writes, a poet’s crown was made of ivy. It strangles trees that it lives on. However, there is a romance to it. Buhs wrote a song called Under the Ivy. That was the B-side of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). We learn that, “Because there was so much white involved in the cover of ‘Sat in Your Lap’,. We went for natural evening light through a big, east-facing window”. It is harder to shoot objects rather than people, John Carder notes. Hard surfaces reflect rather than absorb. The single cover for The Dreaming (the title track from the 1982 album) is a stone that Del Palmer painted very convincingly in the style of native Australian art. There was resistance when it came to the video for The Dreaming. It was a headache for the record company. “The album was a shock for those hoping for another The Kick Inside, yet for the many true connoisseurs of her music, it ranks as one of the most artistically daring”. I do love how beautiful the cover shot is for Ne T’Enfuis Pas. John Carder Bush said how these shots were fitted in after The Dreaming cover session.
“We used our mother’s washing line with white bed sheets on it of the background, with the sun going down, so that the light on Kate’s face was parallel to the earth, like the greatest spotlight ever”. The cover shoot for Night of the Swallow is where I want to end up. John Carder Bush regrets not learning how to play the uilleann pipes and not the accordion, concertina and guitar. These days, the world is getting a bit tired of these pipes popping up to evoke sadness and longing in Celtic films and shows. That cliché association with anything Irish. The shot that we see on that cover utilises the polystyrene rocks from The Dreaming’s video to go at the top of the waterfall. The waterfall itself was a shot he took of a mountain waterfall in Wales. “The printing was tricky (again, pre-digital) and took hours to get right so that the transition from waterfall to rock and Kate was seamless. Again, we were playing in the Celtic twilight of Cathy, but this time the tools were so much more sophisticated”. I am going to come to the Hounds of Love cover and period for the ‘yellow’ part of the spectrum. It was quite an intense period for Kate Bush between 19780 and 1982. John Carder Bush seeing his sister take control of her work and push further away from her early sound. It was also stressful and exhausting for her, so he would have seen her stressed and low a lot. Quite a challenge to balance the professional and personal. His sister pushing herself to the limit and working around the clock. Things would change for Hounds of Love. We will explore that more in the next section. From the video for Army Dreamers and how it was quite a challenge right through to the single covers, so many beautiful and brilliant shots of Kate Bush. In full glory through the book. I would advise people to buy a copy so that they can see these incredible photographs. Even if a copy of Kate: Inside the Rainbow costs about £50, I think that the investment is worth it, as you get these photos that you cannot see anywhere else. From candid and behind-the-scenes shots to these very beautidul compositions, we see that transition period for Bush. Going from her third to fourth studio albums. A big step in terms of sound and ambition. Hounds of Love is perhaps her happiest period. John Carder Bush capturing his sister for the album cover and a lot of photos he took in 1985. We can discuss that soon. For now, let’s reflect on the brilliant photos he took between 1980 and 1982. A master…
IN full flight.