FEATURE:
Kate Bush: Something Like a Song
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Watching You Without Me (Hounds of Love)
__________
I have recently…
written features around Hounds of Love, as it turned forty-one on 16th September. I did want to focus on one of its songs. Even though it is part of a suite, The Ninth Wave, it has this haunting quality to it. Bush no strange to writing about the supernatural, spirits and ghosts. From her 1978 debut single, Wuthering Heights, to her most recent album, 50 Words for Snow, she has discussed the ghostly. There is something especially sobering about this song on The Ninth Wave. Following a woman who falls overboard and is in the water, Watching You Without Me is about her loved ones waiting for her to come home, knowing she might never do so. Or unaware of what has befallen her. Even if Bush said in interviews about The Ninth Wave that there was a rescue and the woman may have come home, there is that possibility she died on the water and Watching You Without Me is her ghost looking at her family, but not being able to communicate with them. I first wanted to collate words about this song. Starting out with Bush speaking with Richard Skinner in an interview for BBC Radio 1 that was broadcast in 1992:
“Now, this poor sod [laughs], has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they’re kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home. And, you know, watching the clock, and obviously very worried about where they are, maybe making phone calls and things. But there’s no way that you can actually communicate, because they can’t see you, they can’t you. And I find this really horrific, [laughs] these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song. And when we started putting the track together, I had the idea for these backing vocals, you know, [sings] “you can’t hear me”. And I thought that maybe to disguise them so that, you know, you couldn’t actually hear what the backing vocals were saying”.
I had always assumed that Watching You Without Me was the woman thinking of her family back home and missing them. However, this feature from last year that was about Hounds of Love offered some extra words about the song: “Providing much-needed relief, ‘Watching You Watching Me’ is built from feather-light synth lines and mellifluous vocals, but its lyrics tell another story. Most of all, Bush’s heroine wants the security and comfort of home and her partner; though she finds herself there with him she realises that she’s not real and can’t interact with him. "It’s more of a nightmare than anything so far," Bush explained to her fan club. "Because this is the closest she’s been to any kind of comfort, and yet it’s the furthest away”. That idea that the woman in peril things of her family and that closeness, and yet she is miles away in the ocean and they do not know she is there. The mystery of how the woman got into the water, where she was going, and whether she actually got out. The final track on Hounds of Love is The Morning Fog. That relief of being rescued and how she will tell her loved ones how much she loves them. I like to think that this was how the ordeal ended, though those who saw Before thew Dawn in 2014, when Bush performed The Ninth Wave in its entirety, say how there was a sad ending. That The Morning Fog was more of a dying vision. She could not get out and fulfil her wishes. People talk about Hounds of Love, though there is not as much attention on The Ninth Wave as the first half. The heaviness and psychology of Watching You Without Me.
People have their own perspectives on Watching You Without Me. The Quietus mentioned this in their essay which looked at Kate Bush’s music beyond the hits. Curious what they say of Watching You Without Me: “Hounds Of Love is arguably Kate Bush’s creative pinnacle, critically acclaimed, wildly commercially successful, self-produced and ubiquitous because of its clutch of hit singles. It is forgotten by some maybe that there were a great many other beautiful moments on The 9th Wave side of the album. ‘Watching You, Without Me’ is one of them. Bush has always had an incredible knack of telling a story using few words, whilst leaving the listener with room to make their own interpretation of the song. This is a song about love and loss, has she left him? Or is he being haunted? Time ticks by, with her silent but pleading…and ultimately unheard. Bush is a vortex of creativity. Each song a story in it’s own right. The second side of this album is worth yet another listen… and another… and another. – Lisa Jenkins”. Among those who have covered this Hounds of Love gem are Theo Bleckmann, Ehrfrucht Observatory, Heidi Harris, and Isadar. For PROG last year, Susanna Wallumrød shared her thoughts on a song which is beautiful but also really affecting and thought-provoking: “The sound of Kate Bush’s voice is so special: angelic and fierce, a totally unique tone. Her performances are always interesting. I like Watching You Watching Me, the soft feel of it, the way she sings; in some parts it’s hard to understand the lyrics. It reflects the dreamlike universe of her music, which to me is vivid and floating. “I’m so lucky to have heard her live as well, being on the first row at her first performance in 35 years at the Hammersmith Apollo [in London]. That was wild. She is a true pioneer, and I hope she will keep inspiring new generations like she has with me. Her inheritance is immense”. I did write extensively about Watching You Without Me last year when marking forty years of Hounds of Love. Though I want to come back to parts of that feature, as it contains exerts from Leah Kardos’s brilliant 33 1/3 Hounds of Love book:
“Watching You Without Me “blinks awake in a different realm”. Leah Kardos notes how there is “a minimal LinnDrum rhythm, augmented with side-stick backbeat and a syncopated floor tom by Stuart Elliott, Bush’s voice mumbles a quick oscillation across a 5th, sounding like a car engine that won’t start – a trapped utterance glitching between repelling magnetic fields”. I will talk more about the lyrics to end. However, the composition is fascinating. So different to anything else on Hounds of Love, it is an album so varied, yet it all hangs together! “The music rocks back and forth between B♭ and C (the same chord relationship, ♭VII to I, of ‘The Big Sky’) like a hypnotist’s swinging watch”. Leah Kardos writes how Stuart Elliott’s percussion has this ticking motion. Simulating a watch. A family waiting for their daughter to return maybe. The percussive pulse is just slightly below sixty beats per minute. A wonderful consideration that adds this sense of urgency and anxiety. Of time ticking and there being this infinite wait and sense of the unknown. Seconds seem like hours to the family! For the woman on the water, she is longing to be safe and rescued. She would love the boredom or familiarity of being in that house – where people wait not knowing the fate of their loved one. Leah Kardos notes, before the main vocal starts, that we are “in a liminal space between life and death, wakefulness and sleep; Bush is trapped in limbo”. The lyrics are heart-aching and painful. That sense of stress and uncertainty. Not knowing where this woman is.
Little do they know the extent of the drama she has already faced! Bush does not deliver the lyrics in this strained and hyperactive way. The fact that she sings in this almost resigned or wistful way adds extra punch and gravity to Watching You Without Me. Consider these lines: “You watch the clock/Move the slow hand/I should have been home/Hours ago/But I’m not here/But I’m not here/You can’t hear me/You can’t hear me/You can’t feel me/Here in the room with you now/You can’t hear what I’m saying/You don’t hear what I’m saying, do you?”. Words that might seem personal to this situation, but I think we can all relate to in some form or the other. That sense of loss. When someone dies and you notice the space left vacant. Bush sings “There’s a ghost in our home/Just watching you without me/I’m not here”. This is the point when some theorise the heroine died at sea and that mention of a ghost relating to death rather than an absence. That Jig of Life is either dying thoughts or happened after she had passed. And it is a futile rally cry for strength and survival. One of the most mysterious, intriguing and compelling songs Kate Bush ever wrote, Leah Kardos explains how “With the soft whine of radio static and morse code ‘SOS’ message, the song bursts out of its trance at 2’19” to a bright Hindustani teental rhythm, complete with hand cymbals (a rare exception to Hounds Of Love’s no-cymbals rule)”. The lead vocal where Kate Bush sings “Don’t leave me/Don’t Leave Me” is sung backwards and double-tracked at the octave. The tutti strings by Michael Karmen are especially striking and stirring. Kardos says how the backwards singing recalls The Dreaming’s backwards vocals on Leave It Open. “and the spoken South Indian taal rhythm (konnakol) across the coda of ‘Get Out of My House’ (performed by Esmail Sheikh)”. I think some of the backwards vocals was inspired by The Beatles and how they would often put in backwards vocals with messages in them that, when played forward, would provide this treat for listeners (or a shock in some cases!). Around about the 2’48” mark, there is this backwards vocal that is hard to discern. Bush might be singing “We really see” or “releasing”. Leah Kardos has played it forward and opinions that it could be Bush singing over and over “be silly”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during The Ninth Wave photoshoot in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
In a wider sense, Watching You Without Me is this moment in a battle to stay alive where the woman perhaps drifts into a dream. And Dream of Sheep, the opening song on The Ninth Wave, is the woman lamenting how she would love to be at home asleep, dreaming of sheep. Though she has to stay awake. Now, there is this drift between the water and needing to stay awake, and almost like someone dying thinking of something comforting. That seems really bleak but, as I said, I like to think that The Ninth Wave had a happy resolution. That a helicopter saw the woman at sea, got her to land, and she was able to look back at that dark time when she was in the ocean. Others have their own theories, but that is what Kate Bush wanted to achieve. From icy and scary songs to the energy of Jig of Life, though to the bounce of The Morning Fog to something more moving and heavier on Watching You Without Me, The Ninth Wave is one of the most accomplished, fascinating and compelling things ever committed to tape. It was brought to the stage in 2014 by Bush, though the songs really do seem made for something else. You do not need to be stuck in the ocean and waiting rescue to relate to Watching You Without Me. It is a song that resonates with those distanced from their family and friends. Those who may have lost them or live in other parts of the world. That is why it will travel through the generations and to all people. And Kate Bush’s exceptional production means this track will continue to compel interpretation and discussion for years to come. I may revisit Watching You Without Me next year but, for now, I wanted to revisit it for this Kate Bush: Something Like a Song. It is a brilliant song, from a wonderful suite, on a truly…
GENIUS album.