FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Lionheart at Forty-Five
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the photoshoot for Lionheart, 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
The Interviews
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AS I do with anniversary features…
relating to Kate Bush I am going to bring in some press interviews. It is good to start off getting an idea of how the album was being perceived and what Bush was saying. Two of her albums have big anniversaries coming up. Her seventh, The Red Shoes, is thirty on 2nd November. On 13th November, Lionheart turns forty-five. Released in the same year as her debut, The Kick Inside, Lionheart was a chart success. It reached six in the U.K. I am going to pull in a few press interviews that were published around the time of its release. One of Bush’s albums that is under-appreciated but is actually incredible strong and fascinating, below are some insights into how Kate Bush was feeling about a rushed second studio album. With gems like Wow and Kashka from Baghdad among its ranks, the ten-track beauty still sounds fantastic and offers up new treats! There are not a tonne of interviews about Lionheart from 1978. Some that go into 1979. I am going to end with one that is focused on the album. First, published on 7th October, 1978, Record Mirror’s Tim Lott interviewed Bush about a hectic and successful year. Just over a month until she released an unexpected second album, there was this sense of a unique artist finding popularity and a worldwide audience:
“Her abnormality has never been more apparent than in this setting: a L100 at night, two floor leather-and-flowers suite at the Montcalm Hotel, Marble Arch.
She has just been interviewed by "Ritz" and "Vogue". Attended by two press officers, she is, despite her protestations, a star, a true star, by virtue of her immense success, her pink skin and her Page 3 curves.
A number one single (an international hit) a number one album and immense publicity: Kate Bush is a phenomenon. The fate that befalls such animals - arrogance, self-indulgence, mania - has yet to manifest its symptoms, partially because this particular phenomenon is dedicated to the preservation of her personal reality.
Nervous
"I'm not really aware of being subjected to any starmaking machine."
She tap her fingers on the chrome and glass table in the only nervous gesture she possesses.
"I know that might sound odd, but I've really no idea about it. The record company thought this hotel would be practical. I thought it would be nice. It's quite a trip for me to be here.
"I didn't walk in here and say 'where are the flowers? Where is my champagne?'
"I hope I haven't become a prima donna yet. I really mean that. I really, really resent that a lot.
"It's nice if you're on the road that you should have somewhere nice to sleep. But I'm not into the 'Oh, Dahling!' bit, and everybody having a Rolls Royce."
It sounds almost defensive, but one subject that Bush is totally convincing about is how critical she considers her grasp on her own situation.
She has reached a point already of being such a valuable property to EMI Records that she is at the point of being able to control her immediate destiny.
The interviews she does are her own choice - "I want to get into as many areas as I can. So I did the fashion magazines and "Vegetarian" and "The Sun". I'm testing the water.
She says that she is, quote, into people. People, of course, reciprocate, and therein lies the danger. A surfeit of attention killed Janis Joplin and, more lately, put Ply Styrene into a mental home.
"I have some person principles I stick by, though they are pretty free. They don't just apply to the press. They are my way of living.
"I have tried to avoid an 'image'. If you have an image you intend to maintain, it's going to be very difficult, because you're going to get holes in your image. I may be that animal 'Kate Bush' a bit when I'm offstage, but mostly, I'm me."
Kate spends most of her time with a smile on her face that look straight at you, but she looks away and almost shutters for a moment.
"The things I don't like doing is... is... going to these sort of parties that you hear about. I don't go to parties. I find that sort of thing very unhealthy. In fact I find them disgusting."
She pronounces the word 'parties' like you or I might pronounce some vile disease or weird sin.
"It's not me. I'm basically a quiet person. When I get the time, I like to go home. I clean up the flat - which is a mess, because I'm never there. And I get some friends around that maybe I haven't seen for a long time.
"It's not a question of insulating myself. This is something that is extremely important to me - I'm very much a human being, and I don't want to lose that.
"You don't have to believe all the sycophants. I am aware that in my position I am both vulnerable and very powerful. People are always trying to grab a piece of your pie. But it can only be down to you to get yourself out of... er... a vulnerability situation."
This tiny vision is both unusual and predictable; the first because she is so damn scientific, the second because she is so blatantly optimistic.
She takes a relentlessly practical approach to her career - "I have to look at it in a realistic way" - and admits that she trusts no-one at all. On the other hand she believes like many before her, that she can have her cake and eat it, that she can be a star and not a star, that she can somehow escape the pre-requisite of her job - to give, and give, and still give, at the expense of, at the very least, a part of her personality.
"People might call me it, but I'm not a star," she says, and I think she almost believes it. "I'm just a person who writes songs that, at the moment, people happen to like.
"They might not like anything on the next album: in which case I'll still be the same."
Except that she'll be a failed star. Kate has yet to reach the point of acceptance that things will never be the same. Her family, her friends will inevitably take second place and some will disappear. The blue-print is there, and inescapable.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and Kate has more strength of mind than I dare hope. Maybe. She is certainly convinced, and that's half the battle.
"You don't have to make yourself an island. In your head, you know what you are."
Illusions
"The only person with you all your life is you. Your parents die. Things inside you die - illusions, gushes of personality. Only you can sort yourself out. Yourself may not be all you need, but it's all you got."
Whatever problems have still to hit Kate, she is as mentally well prepared as anyone could be. A precious - in the real sense of the word - teenager, her defenses are rooted in her very successful self-adjustment.
After reading the teaching of the philosopher Gurdjieff, which made an enormous impression on her, she came to the conclusion that human beings were all a load of shit anyway, which is an enormous help with any ego problems that might present themselves.
"Look around you just a little bit and you realise that you're nothing. Look at the world, the universe - this is getting very hippyish, right? - but we are very small.
"And yet everybody goes around thinking how incredible they are - you know, I am it, I am everything.
"People are obsessed by themselves. I am even. I find myself thinking about myself a lot. "
Kate sees this, to a certain extent, as an evil suffered through lack of mental discipline, of which she wishes she possessed more. She wants, she says, to be a "better human being."
"Because I'm in the position I am I have an incredible chance of being able to do that. I'm in a position where I have power to help people - by doing charity shows, spreading the word about whales... I don't know."
With her peace and love philosophies, her conservation ideals, her Gurdjieff satin 'n' tat post sixties glamour, and her vegetarian obsession, it's not surprising that she has been mistaken several times for that anachronistic chestnut, the "hippy".
"I'm not a hippy, though I thought the potential of the movement was enormous. I was too young, really.
"I was never particularly into drugs. I don't even get into alcohol very much. Just nicotine really. I smoked my first cigarette at the age of 9."
She experimented with drugs, though - marijuana and something she never managed to identify.
"I've never taken acid. I don't think I'm into things like that. I've seen a lot of people screwed up through it. The idea of it is really fascinating, though - to be able to see the room breathe, and stuff like that.
"There must be a way for you to do it without drugs."
Kate, nevertheless, has her trite addictions, innocent though they are. She is, for instance, hooked on chocolate, which she says she has a physical craving for. Food is drug enough.
How long that situation holds remains to be seen. Kate is about to experience pressures she can only guess at, by embarking on a major tour, reaching Britain in February.
This, she is told, is not a necessity, the album would still sell without it.
"But I feel it's a really important thing for an artist to do. It's the only chance people who really like you get to see you without media obstruction."
Kate is in the very unusual position of being a young, inexperienced artist who isn't being forced into any compromises. EMI has exerted pressures for her to hurry her new album, something she refuses point blank to do.
"I have to. If you're not ready, then you can't give it to them. There is no way you can rush an artistic thing to meet a business deadline.
"If you blow that artistic," she laughs at her own grammatical gaff, "you're going to lose so much for nothing.
"I've been really lucky, I have. I [It???] often terrifies me, and I wonder, why? I think it's a very karmic thing - what you give you, you get back."
Kate has Good Karma. She does nothing to bely her apparently angelic nature. It gets difficult to stomach that anyone can be so thumper.
"Actually," she jibes, "I mug old ladies. Would you like me to smash a window or something?
"Seriously, I recognise flaws in myself, and try to keep them quiet.
"It's a drag to throw your faults around for other people to see. But I do recognise flaws in myself, of course.
"I don't, for instance, like hearing very truthful thing about myself. It's hard to give examples without giving away very personal things, like within the family, but I get really indignant. I put a lot of defenses up.
"And I can be stubborn. I might have a strong idea in my brain and it's hard to thrash it out with anyone else, though the idea could be wrong."
Emotion
"Also, I'm very soft. My emotion just gets in the way, sometimes at business meetings - my intellect does not have control over my passions.
"Still I don't know anyone who hates me. Why should anyone? I don't do anything to make them. There are, after all, very few people I dislike."
Tread carefully here Lott.
The assumption is very easy after quotes of such a... gentle nature, that Kate Bush is a sort of talented blancmange, determined to be like, a rock 'n' roll goody twoshoes.
I don't think that's true. Though people complimenting people was never one of my hobbies, I went to meet this cherub with some determination to find the brat inside, or at least expose the milky veneer as a good PR. I got a glimpse of neither.
This lead me to suspect that Kate Bush is actually for real. She is not a hippy-dippy altruist or a walking media exercise. She is what she seems: a teenager with a clear head, and obvious talent.
The vision will probably crack as the Biz tightens its grip on her swan-like neck, but at the moment Kate Bush is a creature I thought extinct: a phenomenon with ideals.
This thing of beauty may not be a joy forever, but least acknowledge it while it lasts”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
The second interview moves us into November 1978. One I have highlighted before, Harry Doherty spoke with Kate Bush on behalf of Melody Maker. Clearly fascinated by this true original and wonderful voice, there was this sense of Kate Bush being enigmatic. Not as transparent and predictable as most of her Pop peers:
“The enigma that is Kate Bush--it confuses us all. I've just read a bitter character assassination of Kate Bush (in another paper) and the central area of complaint around which this assault revolves is that Ms. Bush is "nice"
"An hour or so in the company of Kate Bush," this enlightened scribe considered, "is like being trapped for the duration in a very wholesome TV show with definite but unwarranted intellectual aspirations."
I can understand that as a reaction to a well-mannered chance meeting, but really, had the writer listened attentively to her first album (regardless of liking or disliking it), I don't think he would have come to the same rash and puerile conclusion.
Actually, Kate Bush scares me, for a combination of reasons. The first is the diplomatic pleasantness and awesome logic she displays in interviews, but that is only one dimension--she is, in fact, a "nice" person. It is when that initial impact is paired with the multifarious intensity of her music that I start to quiver.
The contrast is eerie, and frightening. In the studio, living out her imaginative fantasies, kate Bush is strickien by a rush of surrealism, and suddenly a range of weird personalities are displayed. It is a subconsciousness that was evident on her first album, The Kick Inside, and it is captured to an even greater extent on Lionheart, the sequel now released.
"Nice" is not a word I'd turn to to describe the consequences. The songwriting, the singing, the arrangements, the production have the mark of a singular personality. Kate Bush's music is more like a confrontation. At times, it makes the listener feel uneasy and insecure. Kate's approach to her work is marked by an obstinate refusal to compromise in any way, so she does not make it easy for the listener to get into the music. To begin with, it's a challenge.
Because, then, it's difficult to appreciate full Kate Bush's music (and who, after all, is she to make such demands?)--compounded with the fact that she seems to have the Midas touch--she is set up for criticism, which must make it all the more fulfilling to carry off two awards in the MM Poll. Even when told of her performance in the Poll, Kate girlishly enthuses: "That's wonderful! Fantastic! Incredible!"
Nice.
The success of The Kick Inside and its hit singles ( Wuthering Heights and The Man With the Child in His Eyes) was as much a hindrance as a help when the time came for Kate Bush to record a second album. As she has said before, the terms of reference were suddenly overturned. Instead of a rising talent, she is now a risen talent--and anything less than an emulation of the initial success will be interpreted as a failure. It's a pressure, though, that she can live with.
There are similarities to the debut album. Lionheart is produced once more by Andrew Powell and, generally, the musicians who did the honours on The Kick Inside are recalled. Kate wants the connections between her first and second album to stop there.
For instance, her own band makes a slight contribution to the new album, being featured on two of the tracks, Wow and Kashka From Baghdad, and had it not been for a mix-up in the organisation, might have made a heavier contribution. It is, it appears, a sensitive situation, and one that Kate doesn't care to dwell upon, but she's still determined that, eventually, her own band--Charlie Morgan (drums), Brian Bath (guitars), Del Palmer (bass), Paddy Bush (mandolin)--will play a more prominent part in the recording proceedings.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the photoshoot for Lionheart, 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
On the subject of producing, it's significant that Kate is accredited as assistant producer and so is acknowledged as playing an active role in mixing the sound as well as performing. She takes an immense interest in recording techniques and states intentions to pursue ambitions in that area. There was, however, a problem in communication when she was involved in the production and her lack of professional lingo for various methods of recording often led to confusion and amusement in the studio.
"I feel I know what I'm talking about in the studio now. I know what I should hear. The reaction to me explaining what I want in the studio was amusement, to a certain extent. The were all taking the piss out of me a bit."
Overall, Bush was concerned that the new album should differ quite radically from her first. Maybe I'm a bit too close to it at the moment, but I find it much more adventurous than the last one. I'm much happier with the songs and the arrangements and the backing tracks.
"I was getting a bit worried about labels from that last album: everything being soft, airy-fairy. That was great for the time, but it's not really what I want to do now, or what I want to do, say, in the next year. I guess I want to get basically heavier in the sound sense...and I think that's on the way, which makes me really happy.
"I don't really think that there are any songs on the album that are as close to .bf ital Wuthering Heights .pf as there were on the last one. I mean, there's lots of songs people could draw comparison with. I want the first single that comes out from this album to be reasonably up-tempo. <The first single was Hammer Horror .> That's the first thing I'm concerned with, because I want to break away from what has previously gone. I'm not pleased with being associated with such soft, romantic vibes, not for the first single anyway. If that happens again, that's what I will be to everyone."
She is acutely aware of the danger of being pigeon-holed, and is actively engaged in discouraging that.
"If you can get away with it and keep changing, great. I think it should be done because in that way you'll always have people chasing after you trying to find out what you're doing. And, anyway, if you know what's coming next, what's the point? If I really wanted to, I guess I could write a song that would be so similar to Wuthering Heights . But I don't. What's the point? I'd rather write a song that was really different, that I liked, although it might not get anywhere."
Have you heard her new single, Hammer Horror ? Now that's really different.
The major changes in the preparation for Lionheart was undoubtedly that Kate, over-burdened with promotional schemes for the first album, was for the first time left with the unsavoury prospect of meeting deadlines and (perhaps) having to rush her writing to do that. It was a problem she was having trouble coming to terms with at our last meeting, when she spoke in obvious admiration of bands like Queen--who came up with the goods on time every year, and still found time to conduct world tours.
But Kate insisted that she wasn't going to be rushed, and eventually the songs came along. In all, it took ten weeks to record the twelve tracks (ten are on the album), an indication of the meticulousness shown by Bush herself in exercising as much control as possible over every facet of the work. "I'm not always right, and I know I'm not," she says, "but it's important to know what's going on, even if I'm not controlling it."
I'll be interested to read the reviews of Lionheart . It'll be sad, I think, if the album is greeted with the same sort of insulting indifference that The Kick Inside met, when Kate Bush was pathetically underrated.
Lionheart is, as the artist desired, a heavier album than its predecessor, with Bush setting some pretty exacting tests for the listener. Kate's songwriting is that much more mature, and her vocal performance has an even more vigorous sense of drama.
Musically, the tracks on Lionheart are more carefully structured than before. There is, for instance, a distinct absence of straight songs, like the first album's Moving, Saxophone Song, The Man With the Child in His Eyes and The Kick Inside . Here, only Oh England, My Lionheart makes an immediate impression and I'm not sure that the move away from soft ballads (be it to secure a separate image) is such a wise one. As Bush proved on those songs on The Kick Inside, simplicity can also have its own sources of complication.
There is much about this album that is therapeutic, and often Kate Bush is the subject of her own course. Fullhouse is the most blatant example of that. <There is no evidence that this song is autobiographical.> On of the album's three unspectacular tracks musically (along with, in my opinion, In the Warm Room and Kashka From Baghdad ), it is still lyrically a fine example of ridding the brain of dangerous paranoias. The stabbing verse of "Imagination sets in,/Then all the voices begin,/Telling you things that aren't happening/(But the nig and they nag, 'til they're under your skin)" is set against the soothing chorus: "You've really got to/Remember yourself,/You've got a fullhouse in your head tonight,/Remember yourself,/Stand back and see emotion getting you uptight."
Even Fullhouse is mild, though, when compared to tracks like Symphony in Blue, In the Warm Room and Kashka From Baghdad, which exude an unashamed sensuality. Symphony in Blue, the opening track, is a hypnotic ballad with the same sort of explicit sexual uninhibitiveness as Feel It from the first album. "The more I think about sex,/The better it gets,/Here we have a purpose in life,/Good for the blood circulation,/Good for releasing the tension./The root of our reincarnation," sings Kate happily.
In Search of Peter Pan, Wow (running together on the first side) and Hammer Horror are are examples of Kate's strange ability to let the subconscious mind run amok in the studio. Wow is tantalisingly powerful and Hammer Horror (the single) is most impressive for the way it seems to tie in so many of the finer points of the first album and project them through one epic song.
That leaves three tracks, Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake, Oh England, My Lionheart, and Coffee Homeground . All of them with totally contrasting identieds but all succeeding in areas that many might have considered outside the scope of Kate Bush.
A few months ago, in the paper, Kate said how one of her musical ambitions was to write a real rousing rock'n'roll song and how difficult she found that task. James and the Cold Gun was her effort on The Kick Inside, and with Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake she has tackled the art of writing a roasting rocker on her own terms. Heartbrake (another piece of emotional therapy) might not be considered a rocker in the traditional sense of racing from start to finish but it's still one of the most vicious pieces of rock I've stumbled across in some time. The chorus is slow, pedestrianly slow. The pace is deceiving. It slides into the chorus. Bush moves into a jog. Then the second part of the chorus. It's complete havoc, and when it comes to repeating that second part in the run-up to the end, Kate wrenches from her slight frame a screaming line of unbelievably consummate rock'n'roll power that astounded me. A rather unnerving turn to Kate's music, I think.
Then there's Coffee Homeground, influenced by Bertold Brecht and inspired by a journey with a taxi driver who was convinced that somebody was out to poison him.
For Oh England, My Lionheart, from which the album title is derived, Kate is expecting a barrage of criticism because of the blatant soppiness of the lyric.
Kate's reasons for writing the song are simple enough. She had always liked Jerusalem, and thought that a contemporary song proclaiming the romantic beauty of England should be written.
"A lot of people could easily say that the song is sloppy. It's very classically done. It's only got acoustic instruments on it and it's done...almost madrigally, you know. I daresay a lot of people will think that it's just a load of old slush, but it's just an area that I think it's good to cover. Everything I do is very English, and I think that's one reason I've broken through to a lot of countries. The English vibe is very appealing”.
A brilliant second album that arrived on 13th November, 1978 – though some sites claim it was 10th November -, I am going to explore Lionheart more before the anniversary. It is interesting revisiting interviews Bush gave around the time Lionheart came out. Someone who is always intoxicating and fascinating, her second studio album spawned a hit single in Wow. An album that was a commercial success but less appreciated by critics, it warrants more love and respect as this album heads to…
ITS forty-fifth anniversary.
