KATE BUSH – “Wuthering Heights”
I’ve never read Wuthering Heights, though I like to imagine its heroine does a pushy-arm dance at some point. Looking it up on Wikipedia, however, I was shocked to realise that Kate Bush is singing this song as a ghost, but really that’s just another oddness on a teetering pile of them: in a really excellent article on Bush for the late Stylus magazine, Marcello Carlin (hi dere!) points out that she is “the last musician to be allowed to do what she likes, as and when she likes”, and the precocious, precious “Wuthering Heights” is both evidence and justification for this indulgence.
On a parallel Earth somewhere, though, she never did anything else that anyone bought, and this is a one-hit-wonder, another in the seventies’ cavalcade of novelties. After all, we’ve already considered a hymn played on bagpipes, a tribute to Van Gogh, a mother-and-son barrelhouse piano romp, a spoken-word treatise on cosmic annihilation, a disco vision of the future, and a three-part rock opera, at least two of which are routinely ranked among the best singles ever. So a pop adaptation of a Bronte novel is unprecedented, but only as unprecedented as anything else thrown at the wall in this oddest of eras. Its ‘weirdness’, in other words, is not exactly why “Wuthering Heights” ought to be treasured.
To understand why this record is so brilliant, it helps to understand what it is: a power ballad. Like all great power ballads, it has a stonking big guitar solo, but that’s the least of its affiliation with the genre. It also has an absolutely steely conviction in its own seriousness and worth; it stares down even the merest notion that it might be ridiculous. And it continually raises its stakes: just when you think “Wuthering Heights” has peaked it pushes up somewhere higher, grander.
It starts off playful, Bush just revelling in how scrumptious words like “temper” or ”greedy” sound when she’s singing them. Then – “bad dreams in the night” – she starts pushing things on a bit, and then rolls into the chorus, showing her range and melodic skills off. And then she really starts moving – “ooh it gets dark”, whipping up more of a storm, still playful enough to throw out that pine/find almost-rhyme though. The storm breaks on the second chorus, and Bush is imperious, working the song’s newfound groove. Still only halfway through, when she takes things up another notch, no longer singing as a character but letting song and story dissolve into one another, “let me have it!” – the tingliest point in a record full of them. “You know it’s me”. It’s one of those rare, liminal moments in pop when a performer seems to be trying to will a change in reality itself, to make our world simply swap places with the one her song’s creating. The piano strains at its upper limit, and then the strings come in, the moment of crisis passes, Kate Bush retires from her song in triumph and Dave Gilmour’s solo is a meandering, heartfelt round of applause.
And that, as far as we’re concerned, is that. Better one Kate Bush number one than none, and better this one than many, but it’s still a shame. After such an introduction, it’s us she’s haunting, a face pressed at pop’s casement window, mouthing a message: be this remarkable.
10
Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 3,357 views • Share/Save
Of course Dudley Moore did have Wagner in the back of his cab once but had to turf “Richie” out after the composer, who had previously been whistling snatches of “Tristan and Isolde”, told him (in English) to “Fuck off, c**t”. Surely no further proof of the similarity to WH is needed.
Game, set and match, Rosie und Waldo!
Would necessarily agree with the mark, but I wouldn’t necessarily argue with it either.
And check out the China Drum version for 90s Brit-Rock (as in yer actual rock that rocks, not rock that mimbles) goodness.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OBviQXfuu3c
I never got her…
Yes, I was trying to remember who did that fucking godawful Steve Lamacq pseudo-indie rock totally missing the point cover version and it was MVE favourites China Drum. Almost as bad as the Futureheads’ slaughter of “Hounds Of Love.”
are you some sort of lex-ist?
i heard china drum do their cover at a gig. it was really really awful. i can’t believe they actually liked the song.
Number Two Watch: “Denis” by Blondie, with Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” in third place. Them wuz the days, eh?
..ah, yes, back in the days when you actually liked the sax on “Baker Street”, before years of constant repetition made you wish the instrument had never been invented!
Almost as bad as the Futureheads’ slaughter of “Hounds Of Love.”
Oh god don’t remind me – this is down there with the very worst covers ever, sitting alongside the Stereophonics doing ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Truly vile. Except no one defended the latter, and…far too many people defend the Futureheads :/
KB covers are thin on the ground. I guess most people know not to, ahem, “try it”.
I am not a fan of the recent Chromatics version of ‘Running Up That Hill’ tho. it just seemed a rather pointless, desolate rework.
Waldo #21 – you’re a bit off geographically with the Medway! She was from within the M25, my present home town of Bexleyheath to be precise – also the birthplace of that well-known Irishman Andy Townsend a few years later. And Mark G #25 – the definitive impression was surely Pamela Stephenson on Not the Nine O’Clock News: “They’re really trying hard to get inside my leotard…”
It was Dave Broddle in our class who was raving about this one when nobody else had heard it. “Kate who??” Eventually he sneaked a transistor radio into the class during a free period and let us hear it, and we were pretty underwhelmed given that the sound reproduction wasn’t quite what was needed to reveal its full magnificence. But yes, it wasn’t long before we all knew and loved it (or perhaps merely “admired it” in a few cases) and it stands as an essential part of the late 70s pop-fan experience.
I’m going to come up with a pretty odd analogy here, that came to mind when watching DJ Pattinson make his England debut last week (!) Anyone know the story of “Spedegue’s Dropper”, by Arthur Conan Doyle? It’s about an asthmatic schoolmaster who practised in the New Forest by lobbing a cricket ball over a cord slung between two 50-foot-high trees directly onto the wicket. He was plucked from obscurity to win the deciding game of an Ashes series. At a crucial point in the story he sends his first ball wider than Harmison, such is his nervous state about performing this extraordinary delivery.
It’s this (by a roundabout route we’re back to Kate) that set me thinking, what must Kate Bush’s state of mind have been when this extraordinary piece of work was about to be unleashed? Imagine coming out to perform it live to an audience for the first time. Many would have quailed, but no doubt she knew what she was doing after years of preparation. As Tom says, it’s one of a number of novelties in the 70s roll-call (I hear what you say about “power ballad”, but isn’t that a bit anachronistic?) – but few novelties were as great as this
As I recall, the record was well on its way up the chart before we saw any pictures of her – remember that photo of her in the leotard, showing a very impressive cleavage, which reputedly caused road accidents when it featured on buses? Hence these reactions:
Jeff Green: “Kate Bush was like all five Spice Girls rolled into one with a Flake on the top”.
Letter writer in Record Mirror: “You – yes you reading this letter – buy Kate Bush’s single. God she’s ace. I’d crawl a hundred miles over broken glass to gargle with her bath water…”
And yes, personally I preferred “The Man With The Child In His Eyes” or the later singles off “Hounds of Love”, but as a signature tune it’s hard to beat this.
Well, she only ever did the one tour, in 1979, and took considerable persuading to do even that.
Her A&R man at EMI wanted to go with “James And The Cold Gun” as the first single and Kate got in a state, virtually begging him in tears that it had to be “WH” – he thought it would be way too leftfield to sell in a world filled with disco and punk but eventually he yielded, though warned her that it wouldn’t get radio play and would flop and then she’d see what he meant.
The week it got to number one he bought her a new grand piano as a token of apology!
YES!!!
10! 10! 10!
I have long admired Kate Bush as one of the underappreciated geniuses of pop music. She is the embodiment of that precious sort of eccentricity without whom we shall eventually fall apart through our addictions to conformity. Lord knows there is a paucity of artists (pop or otherwise) who would stick so adamantly to her own vision and never pander to a business who demands constant touring and the courtship of publicity.
As far as I’m concerned, The Dreaming is her masterpiece, the maturation of artistic depths that “Wuthering Heights” can only hint at. Nonetheless, it’s an extraordinary accomplishment in its own right.
Though it’s been a while, I’ve certainly read–indeed taught–”Wuthering Heights” a number of times, and I’d have to say that KB clearly understood the ferocious emotionality and passion intrinsic to the Heathcliff/Catherine Earnshaw relationship, an intensity that tends to overwhelm or intimidate faint-hearted readers. I could go on and on about KB and Emily Brontë as kindred spirits (but I’ll spare you that).
“Wuthering Heights” is evidence that “high” culture can influence popular culture, but the opposite is true in this case as well. I once heard that bookstores in the UK couldn’t keep enough copies of Brontë’s novel in stock in the year or so after the song hit the charts. I don’t have a copy of the redoubtable Penguin edition on hand–though, knowing that the song was about to come up for discussion soon, I almost snatched the GF’s old copy from her office last week–but long ago I checked the history of printings of the Penguin edition, and, yes, it’s true! An unusually high number of printings were done in 1978-80.
Bravissima, Kate!
Re: Wagner and Kate:
Kate is more somewhere between Mozart and Verdi, I would say, than Wagnerian, although a Wagnerian case could be for The Dreaming, particularly its ending in “Get Out of My House,” as a young woman’s Götterdämmerung. Tristan? Perhaps. But if I were to place KB in Wagner, I’d be inclined to cast her as Elsa in Lohengrin (a visionary girl much misunderstood) or double cast (as sometimes is the case) as Elizabeth/Venus (the two extremes of female sexuality) in Tannhäuser.
As a side note to Lohengrin, there’s Kate’s long-ago b-side cover of Donovan’s “Lord of the Reedy River,” which suggests to me that there’s a number of girls out there who’ve been in love with a swan, Elsa and Leda among them.
Ah, Doctor Mod, since you are here – how did WH go down in the US?
I actually liked the Futureheads version of Hounds of Love.
Gah, it’s tough being into mid90s Britrock sometimes!
Rosie–
WH made barely a dent on the US consciousness. My own first conscious memory of KB was an appearance on Saturday Night Live some time in the late 70s. (Yes, she really did come to the US–once.) The recollection is quite vivid as she sang two songs, “Them Heavy People” and “The Man with the Child in His Eyes,” which were unlike anything in the pop music being played in the US. And, oh yes–my mother was watching, too, and she almost had a seizure when Kate when into some simulated coital writhing on top of a grand piano while singing the latter song. It was a priceless moment.
I didn’t hear a single word about Kate Bush for at least another five years, though all her albums were released here and, as far as I can tell, she gained sort of a cult following. Then, in 1985, just after my mother had passed away and I was preparing to begin graduate school (about a decade late), one of my hip younger friends (one accumulates those, if one is lucky, as an “older” undergraduate) gave me a cassette and said I had to listen to it. It was The Hounds of Love. I was blown away.
“Running Up That Hill” was a hit big enough to get played on alternative radio stations–I listened to KROQ in Los Angeles back in the day–and the video was shown on MTV, but I suspect it wasn’t a mega-hit, but I couldn’t say for sure as I virtually never consult the charts. (I’ve long stopped caring about how well recordings sell. I only care about their aesthetic attraction–or lack thereof–in my thoughts about them. Or, to put it more mundanely–dare I say it?–after all these years it’s a matter of whether I like them or not.)
I know Pat Benatar did a cover version of WH that, I think, might have been a hit of sorts, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard it. And, by now, why would I want to having heard the original? I mean, I can’t imagine PB, a girl from Long Island, as Catherine Earnshaw on Yorkshire moors.
About ten years ago–strange to think that WH was thirty years ago–I was teaching a course in feminist/gender theory in the humanities at a rather well-known West Coast university. I had the students critique everything from opera and Virginia Woolf to rock videos and just about every sort of art form in between. I gave them all the freedom in the world to pick any work or any artist to whom to apply the theoretical readings for their final project. I had so many young girls bringing in Tori Amos CDs for my benefit–to the point that I brought in my own copies of The Dreaming and The Hounds of Love. “Perhaps you’d be interested in hearing this,” I’d tell them, and they’d swear I had some rare disc by their idol. No, I would tell them, my CD was about fifteen years old and, with all respect to Tori, the original is still the greatest. One young woman got extremely emotional about it. I asked her why. She said, “Because everything we try to do the British do better.”
Well, what could I say to that?
#45–Lex quotes someone as saying:
no not wagner — way too compressed, and the singing is modernist not romantic! more like pierrot lunaire!
(Sorry, I’m jet-lagged after the adventure Down Under, have some pretty bad eyestrain, and need to get back to work on my proposal if I’m going to go back to Oz on a fellowship next year, so forgive my laziness.)
The point is well taken. Yes, yes, yes. Don’t get me going on this. Kate Bush is a Modernist. At least a neo-Modernist. I came to that conclusion back in 1986 while undergoing the grueling “Readings in British Modernism” curriculum for the first level PhD exams. I was listening to HoL side two and reading T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets at the same time while my brain was on overload. The two have been fused in my mind ever since, even to the point that when someone mentions “Dry Salvages,” I automatically think, “All you sailors, get out of the wind, water / All you fishermen, head for home/ Go to sleep little earth.”
Or am I thinking of Phlebas the Phoenician Sailor?
“Fear death by water.”
Now as to musical Modernism . . . I’m going to think about Schoenberg and Pierrot Lunaire. Someone is on to something . . . .
Ask me again when I’m not so tired and stressed out.
pierrot lunaire was me — i actually more associate PL (and expressionism) with siouxsie (giraud’s original poem is like bad banshees lyrics), but i also always associate siouxsie with kate… both of them do the suburban-girl-playing-crazy-lady-dressup dance, different flavours of same
people are stressing the lushness to get this back to wagnerlike, but it’s the siren-like wildness of the wail — the way it just cuts through everything and says here i am, you can’t pretend this isn’t here and isn’t me — that’s unwagnerlike: his characters are all doomed robots in the opulent machinery of the vast masterwork (haha the version of die walkure i saw in strasbourg a coupla months back actually togged the valkyries as girl-cybermen which was very awesome); the expressionists as a generation were all teen wagner-fans going yes yes i love opulence too but what about ME and my emo-goth passions; so klimt has this suffocating richness AND these hard knotty muscle-lines; kate’s a dancer — i think that’s pretty important
[...] “I’ve never read Wuthering Heights, though I like to imagine its heroine does a pushy-arm dance at some point. Looking it up on Wikipedia, however, I was shocked to realise that Kate Bush is singing this song as a ghost, but really that’s just another oddness on a teetering pile of them: in a really excellent article on Bush for the late Stylus magazine[5], Marcello Carlin (hi dere!) points out that she is “the last musician to be allowed to do what she likes, as and when she likes”, and the precocious, precious “Wuthering Heights” is both evidence and justification for this indulgence.” –Tom Ewing at Freaky Trigger[6] [...]
#68 – alias p^nk
Sorry I didn’t catch the attribution last time around.
[Wagner's] characters are all doomed robots in the opulent machinery of the vast masterwork
Well, that’s spot on–and what’s most infuriating about them and often makes them seem as if they’re completely empty-headed (e.g., Siegfried–can’t stand that part of the Ring). Perhaps Brünnhilde is the exception, but a lot of good it did her. I like the Rheinmaidens–they don’t care, so they’re the only ones in the whole bloody cycle to escape unscathed. And they get the gold back in the end.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Kate, who creates an interesting array of personae (if not exactly characters), isn’t at all Wagnerian in that sense. Hers almost always struggle against the “machinery” (or fate, if you will), particularly in the songs in Never Forever,The Dreaming, andHounds of Love.
I would have to take all three albums if I were bound for a desert island–but first I was struggle against going in the first place.
Addendum: The pic sleeve shown for this thread was, as I recall, banned in the US as the cover for The Kick Inside because of the crucifixion motif–a photo of Kate, in red boots and posed in a “crotch shot” position, was deemed more suitable.
Quoth Doctor Mod
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Well there’s a link between Wagner and Modernism!
As, of course, would be
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind
Wo weilest du?
I’m much more a Tristan fan than I am a Ring fan.
Let me be completely honest about this – I fell in love with Kate Bush. Having said that, it wasn’t an immediate moment for me when I initially heard Wuthering Heights on the radio and somehow I managed to miss her early TOTP performance instead catching her performing WH seated at the piano, which, although still entrancing, didn’t hit the heights of her dance routine. My generally rockist agenda at the time, prevented me from fully embracing it but I was charmed by the simple beauty of ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’, it’s follow up, and I was finally able to dive in fully clothed with the slightly more rocky (but still weird & wonderful)’Hammer Horror’. From there it was swiftly onto ‘The Kick Inside’ & ‘Lionheart’ and beyond. Wuthering Heights, though, finally unleashed it’s full fronted emotional rollercoaster on me when I was lucky enough to see Kate in a one off show on her Tour Of Life in 1979, when she appeared with Peter Gabriel & Steve Harley. WH was the final song before the encore and ended with Kate, standing atop a bed of dry ice, ecstatically waving to the audience whilst flowers and gifts were thrown onstage from her adoring fans. The whole performance had been extraordinary and the climactic ending brought a large lump to my throat and a tear to the eye. She was at once gorgeous, incredibly sweet and outrageously talented and I fell heavily. I met her a few times but was never able to utter anything more than polite drivel and get a couple of autographs. I am still a fan of her early work which I find more eclectic, varied and emotionlly raw than the later more refined albums. Although, obviously, I am horribly biased, WH gets one better than a 10 from me. An amazing 11.
Was this actually the first Popular entry to be written and performed by a woman?
Marcello @ 73: It depends how rigorous you are in your definitions. Jackie Trent had a hand in writing Where are you now but had help from hubby Tony. Kate was the first to do it unassisted.
What a shame nothing of Carole King’s from Tapestry or elsewhere made the cut (but then everybody had the album.) Popular is even more depressingly short of women writers than it is of women performers.
yeah I should have specified “solely.”
Thus Spake Rosie:
Well there’s a link between Wagner and Modernism!
Indeed–and quite an extraordinary one! Most of the major Modernists eventually found it necessary to deal with W eventually.
I could suggest an interesting book on the topic. (And, no–I didn’t write it.)
intothefreak:
Let me be completely honest about this – I fell in love with Kate Bush.
No need to be embarrassed about that! (So did I!)
Well, didn’t we all! And in my case, got unbelievably jealous as well.
Just a complete answer to a question asked earlier (64)about its chart status: According to Wiki this went #1 in Ireland, New Zealand and Australia and was a top 10 in four other European countries. In the U.S.? It peaked at #108. Also: on a mostly British site, I’m stunned nobody has yet brought up the seminal version of “Wuthering Heights,” the one done in flag semafore….
doctormod @ 66:
I entry to Kate Bush was via Tori, too – as a teenager I was a Tori obsessive, probably much along the lines of your students, and I think in around 1997 someone nudged me towards the Kate back catalogue – but I’ve never thought their aesthetics overlapped all that much, bar their similar vocal range. To be slightly reductive, I’ve always felt that Kate’s work is situated more in the realm of the imagination (not a million miles from the fantasy genre) whereas Tori focuses on personal experience and catharsis, albeit viewed through a very fractured prism at times. Plus, the work of both is really heavily informed by their nationalities.
(I think Tori’s gone on the record as saying she’d never heard Kate Bush until after she’d written most of Little Earthquakes, as KB never really hit big in the US.)
Wonderful record, even though we all did “hilarious” Kate Bush impressions in the playground for weeks (years?) afterwards. Loved ‘The Man With The Child I His Eyes’ too, obv, and not just because six-year-old me thought she was naked in the video. For me, as a kid, she dropped off the radar completely (save, maybe, more terrifying stuff on ‘Babooshka’) so when she reentered my sphere in 1985 as an NME darling, I was somewhat surprised. I suppose she’d always been a heroine of the inkies, but was still a figure of fun (fear?) among my peer group.
I’ve been proper hooked since Hounds Of Love, of course.
Lex #80:
I quite agree that KB and TA are the products of their respective nationalities, but I think there’s greater aesthetic overlap, particularly musically, than you would suggest. (By the way, most of the students to whom I presented KB thought them kindred spirits.) Kate can be ferociously cathartic in some of her work, and I think it valid to say that she employs the “fractured prism” technique to great effect, particularly in her “concept albums” (if one chooses to see them as such) The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. (I’ve actually lectured on this topic–so I can go on and on. But I’ll spare everyone the long-winded discourse.)
I think what you’re implying is that KB’s subject matter lies more in her imagination and TA’s more in her personal experience. Yes and no. I grant you that KB has never done anything as unnervingly personal as “Me and a Gun,” but there’s no shortage of violence and grittiness in her work, even if it is presented in a more–what?–metaphorical manner. (This, too, could be a US vs UK thing).
This is not to disparage TA by any means. Like KB, she is a genuine eccentric gifted with the extraordinary sort of vision few others possess. But I do think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that there’s no influence there. (TA’s disavowal notwithstanding, KB wasn’t completely unknown in the US–she actually had some chart presence in the 80s.)
It’s interesting to note, though, that when VH1 did their “100 Most Important Women in Rock” programme (or something to that effect) back in the late 1990s), KB placed somewhere in the middle range of the list, despite this being a US-based project. And what artist do you think they interviewed about the significance of her work? TA!
BTW, TA nowadays occasionally sings “Running Up That Hill” in her live shows.
now, that’s gonna confuse some of the audience..
I can’t really imagine it – I knew she was doing it, but it’s a v recent development and my days of obsessively downloading every live cover TA did are at least 5 years in the past. She’s a lot better at covers these days tbh, though her last album wasn’t bad at all.
KB has always struck me as a lot more…performative, I guess, than TA, and far less prone to being inappropriate or crude; thematically, TA is a lot more confrontational, the violence in KB’s work seems to occur most when she’s being overtly theatrical, playing roles and characters which are not her (‘Get Out Of My House’, ‘Houdini’, ‘Wuthering Heights’ too I guess!), and her most cathartic, traditionally confessional tracks are some of her most gentle (‘This Woman’s Work’, ‘Man With The Child In His Eyes’, ‘Moments Of Pleasure’). Whereas TA’s catharsis is often this raging, angry thing (‘Precious Things’, ‘Crucify’, Blood Roses’) which often seems like it’ll spiral out of control, were it not for TA’s songcrafting talents and technical chops; it was actually when I first heard Fleetwood Mac that I thought “oh so that’s where Tori got her inspiration from.
I look forward to discussing Tori in her own right in approx. 20 years’ time!
Yes, its as if the spoiler bunny was scared off by the confrontational Kate.
Bun scared no.
I think you’ve missed the point with this one, although i certainly agree with the mark. The strength of the song lies with its naive narrative pushed up against her most incredible voice and arrangement. That’s its beauty: her childish song about a book, the sort of lyrics you write when you’re at school getting in to Hardy or something. It tells a story so blatantly like few other decent songs. Telling this story is the most pure, unheralded voice which understands which words to emphasise or wail. Oh it’s so good i’m thinking about it now!
So in conclusion: the naivety of a silly song about a Secondary School Novel combined with astonishing vocals and arrangements make this 10/10.
And she turns 50 today!
Where’s the stork when you need it?
Naturally, I’m pleased that it’s such a momentous record, even though I obviously can’t claim any credit – it is indeed the first self-penned Number One by a solo female. Technically speaking, we will eventually hit a song from Tapestry, but let’s say no more for the nonce. Oh, and apparently ‘Running Up That Hill’ was Number 30 in the US.
As regards this one, I do feel a bit of distance from it just because I’m a bloke, but I wouldn’t give it less than maybe 9.5 – I deduct half a mark for that guitar solo which never feels like part of the song to me. Mind you, I don’t actually own the proper version of the track, which seems a bit of an omission on my part.
Oh, and I like the Futureheads, who found their own point even if it wasn’t the one originally intended. That China Drum cover is terrible though – meatheaded “Oooh look there’s a slow song let’s play it fast” rubbish.
Just a small point – the guitar solo in WH is played by Ian Bairnson, not Dave Gilmour..
Lex, I may have missed this on some other thread, but has anyone pointed you towards Laura Nyro, the Godmother of them all? If not, you’re set for a brand new box of piano-straddled femme treasures. I’d recommend New York Tendaberry for starters.
[...] >> katebush Club écoute entrée libre: n°48 (divers) Saved by potato794 on Thu 11-12-2008 KATE BUSH – “Wuthering Heights” Saved by KingPrawnBalls on Sat 22-11-2008 What Kind of Language is This? Saved by kaptinCoke on [...]
*“let me have it!” – the tingliest point in a record full of them*
I can’t hear this record without thinking that this is my favourite pop moment of them all.
Re: “the last musician to be allowed to do what she likes, as and when she likes”
Bjork?
No disagreement with the rating on this one, even if wasn’t a brilliant song, it’s fantastic to see such an odd piece of music at the top of the charts. I remember my Dad saying that the moment where the full orchestra stuff comes in halfway through is the best moment in any song ever – he’s not far wrong!
You may be right about Bjork, but does she still engage with the mainstream? But them I am not sure Kate does either (though a new Kate Bush album is big Radio 2 news, a new Bjork album these days would be scrutinised for poppiness before even 6 Music palyed to too much).
don’t think it was gilmour who played guitar on “Wuthering Heights” as the author ststes. Initially thought it sounded like (Mike) Oldfield but I heard somewhere it was Alan Parsons axe (forget his name – sorry.)
No – it wasn’t – someone corrected this mistake somewhere in the comments thread but I forgot to change it.
Somebody mentioned earlier about reading and listening to music at the same time, and their brain kind of “fused them together”. I’m just wondering if a young 18 or 19 year old Kate might have been reading Wuthering Heights while listening to “Johnny Remember Me”?
There’s something about the female vocal in the latter, that has me thinking surely Kate Bush must have heard this. Also I wonder how might Joe Meek have taken this song and played around with the arrangement?
Maybe producing something a little more Wagnerian perhaps?
More thoughts on WH…Bauhaus formed in 1978 and from that lil acorn we have a whole genre right there (hello goths!). The whole gothiness of WH harks back again to those Shangrila’s songs and their Bronte-esque doomed love stories.
My cousin was a goth and she skirted around the whole punk thing concentrating on the fashion and make-up. I misunderstood the point completely and bought her an Exploited 7″ for her birthday, while all the time she was listening to Phil Spector’s back catalogue and Iggy and the Stooges. Then she phoned me and asked me to buy her Kate Bush’s album for xmas. That’s when I realised she was no more punk than I, but instead something else.
I never really bought into this tribalism thing as a teenager, but I now know that my cousin was one of the first goths, bless her.