Saxophone Song

Saxophone Song
Tour of Life performance, Stockholm
Tour of Life Performance, London
Live cover by Cloudbusting

We’re hopping forward in time. Canonically, it’s been about two years since the last post. This sort of thing happens when you choose a counterintuitive path like “a chronological analysis of Kate Bush songs.” Cathy’s demos to date had received little attention, and she’d had to resort to exerting herself on her studies for her last year before her O-levels. But she hadn’t given up on her music, and neither had Dave Gilmour. The newly canonized rock star graciously paid for her to record a session at London’s AIR Studios, with a professional arranger and everything. The session happened in June 1975, and at it were laid down the first ever tracks of a Kate Bush album.

I’ve tried to avoid being proleptic with this blog, so as to evaluate songs as they may have sounded to a listener upon their initial creation. Sometimes that’s impossible. Later developments will demand we recontextualize a song. The public first heard “Saxophone Song” after “Wuthering Heights” caught everyone’s attention. Behind the scenes, “Saxophone Song” is the earlier track—recorded almost three years prior to the release of The Kick Inside. The take recorded in the 1975 session is the one that shows up on the album. It’s not quite one-of-a-kind—only this and “The Man With the Child in His Eyes” made it from the ‘75 session to the album, and their anomalousness is noticeable when they’re separated from the LP’s other crisper tracks. “Saxophone Song” seems like a simple Cathy demo at first glimpse—it’s loaded with the same obscure attempts at poetic phrases abundant in the early songs (“a sturdy lady in tremor/the stars that climb from her bowels”). The singer is once again excited by a mysterious stranger in a magical place, in this case a warm tavern in Berlin (which, incidentally, was the song’s original title). That Elton Johnesque fascination with showbiz as foreign spectacle isn’t gone. For a professional (and “canonical”) song, it’s not too far removed from Cathy’s juvenilia.

Yet “Saxophone Song” is unmistakably a Kick Inside track, one that arguably signals the transition from the central character of our blog from being Cathy to becoming Kate Bush. That’s not just because it’s on the album—it clearly fits with the general style which permeates the record. In part, this has something to do with Andrew Powell, the producer/arranger/keyboard player who oversees this track and rest of Kate’s first two albums (the song also features the first appearance of guitarist Alan Parker,  previously of the band Blue Mink and a Kate Bush mainstay).

 More broadly, the song’s themes gesture to both the past and future. Long-term concerns of Kate’s music such as spectatorship, place, and the tangible effects of music surface in “Saxophone Song”—the singer is captivated by this cool stranger in Berlin playing a saxophone. Yet it’s not simply a matter of watching a performer—the artist is interested in the relationship between audience and performer as a partnership, one in which the spectator participates as much as the player, as evidenced by the song’s framing of the listener’s experience (“there’s something very real in how I feel, honey”). The person playing the saxophone is fantastically talented, but they’re a vessel. What matters here is the magic their music awakes in the listener, and just as importantly, the source of the magic.

Kate always said “Saxophone Song” was about the eponymous saxophone (this kicks off a tradition of Kate Bush songs prominently featuring objects—see “Violin” and “Mrs. Bartolozzi”). “I wrote the Saxophone Song because, for me, the saxophone is truly an amazing instrument. Its sound is very exciting—rich and mellow. It sounds like a female.” She’s not singing about some virtuoso hotshot guy (she’d later say it hadn’t occurred to her that the saxophone was a phallic instrument)—her jazz intake seems to consist of more Billie Holiday than Ornette Coleman. “Saxophone Song” zeroes in on the listener. The magic is strongly felt by the person whose heart is captured by the music—“it’s in me/and you know it’s for real/tuning in on your saxophone” (interestingly using the terminology of radio rather than live performance). But still she holds back—she gives herself to the music, but not its player, keeping herself to herself. She anthropomorphizes the saxophone (“I think of a beautiful sax like a human being, a sensuous man being overtaken by the instrument,” as she puts it in an interview). The joy of the music can’t be totally shared: “you’ll never say that you had all of me/you’ll never see the poetry you stirred in me.” Mr. Saxophone Man never really understood her; he never really tried.

Kate has honed her skills as a composer as well. “Saxophone Song” showcases her propensity to create sprawling melodies, even if she hasn’t figured out how to discipline them with a hook. Nevertheless she’s properly pushing herself, constantly throwing out new chords and shifting time signatures. Par for the course of her songs, the verse and chorus are in different keys with no orthodox relationship to each other. The verse is in F with a chord structure of vi-IV-I-vi (D minor-Bb-F-D minor), followed by vi-IV-I-V (D minor-Bb-F-C), and wrapped up with some conflicting D, G/D, and G chords. The chorus moves to D, weaving a progression of I-IV-ii (D-G-Em) before hitting on a C chord, followed by a IV-ii-vi progression (G-B minor-B minor), and resolving into F. The song doesn’t stay the same from there—the first verse’s C is swapped out for Cadd9. The rhythm is wild as well, filled with triplets and time signature changes. The song coasts along in 4/4 throughout the verse and half the chorus, but halfway through the chorus it slips in a bar in 3/4 before slipping into 4/4 again and briefly shifting into 5/4. In short, the song is batshit, and while it’s not the must hummable song of the period, it’s nothing if not striking.

Regrettably, the production muddles things a bit. Kate’s great strength in her later work will be her aesthetic maximalism, but it’ll be controlled, maximalism rooted in her creative and personal agency. Here, the composition is hers, but the production and arrangement are Andrew Powell’s. Andrew is a vital figure in Kate’s early career, producing two fine albums with her, but, well, let’s just say things will only go uphill after he’s out of the picture. He’s a born musician and already a veteran producer, having worked with John Cage, Stockhausen, and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel by this point in his career. As you may have garnered from that description, he’s very, very Seventies. This isn’t inherently bad (indeed, it often works in favor of Kate’s songs), but it really dates some of his production work. Prog rock is certainly an influence on Kate’s music, but note the key word—influence. Andrew tries to turn “Saxophone Song” into straight prog, and it doesn’t quite pay off. The keyboard loops and guitars make the song sound more messy. The saxophone playing by acclaimed player Alan Skidmore isn’t the song’s strong suit either—it’s not weak playing by any means, but Skidmore isn’t given room to breathe in the busy production. The best version of the song is from the 13 May Hammersmith Odeon concert of Kate’s Tour of Life, which cuts down on the number of instruments and has saxophone work by Kevin McLea who, while no Charlie Parker, is freed from the restraints of recorded production. In a charming bit of ham-fisted literalism, the production of the concert casts dancer Stuart Avon-Arnold’s silhouette on the stage as he mimes playing the sax, paralleling the song’s lyric “the candle burning over your shoulder is throwing shadows on your saxophone.” It’s blunt, and it’s as fun and captivating a version of the song as exists (less lucky is the same tour’s Stockholm performance, in which someone accidentally leaves the whale song tape meant to transition between “Moving” and “Saxophone Song” on too long, leading to the first verse being entirely accompanied by whale song).

It makes sense for “Saxophone Song” to come alive on the road. The song happens in what Kate imagines Berlin is like—she conjures up a culturally nurtured image of the city rather than a real experience of it. Before David Bowie established his residence in Germany, Kate Bush had already taken Berlin by recording this song (although she skipped taking Manhattan, and indeed the rest of America), and she didn’t even have to visit the place. In her music, Kate can pluck from whatever sources she wants, and go wherever she likes. Her artistic power is rooted in her focus on the listener—several of her songs are about the experience of loving music (it seems like she’s writing the songs her characters hear). Kate is thrilled to be both listener and player. She’s synthesized the two parts by becoming the player to sing about being the listener. This is key to Kate’s musical approach, and she won’t ditch this style anytime soon.

Recorded in July 1975 at London AIR Studios. Released as an album track on The Kick Inside on 17 February 1978. Performed throughout the Tour of Life 2 April-13 May 1979. Personnel: Kate Bush—vocals, piano. Barry de Souza—drums. Bruce Lynch—bass. Paul Keogh, Alan Parker—guitars. Alan Skidmore—saxophone. Andrew Powell—keyboards, production, arrangement.
Images: Ludwig Meiner’s “Figure in the Street at Night” Pts 1 & 2 (1913); Kate performing “Saxophone Song” on the Tour of Life; Ornette Coleman (photo by Jean-Pierre Roche, 1971); Kate’s lyrics. Thanks to Ilana Correa for suggesting the Meiner portraits.

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Passing Through Air

Since this essay covers the earliest recorded instance of Kate Bush collaborating with other artists, now seems like a good time to thank the people who’ve helped me out on this blog. So infinite thanks to William Shaw, Michelle Coats, and the author of this nice article for proofreading these essays, and also thanks to Tomer Feiner for straightening me out on the music theory for this one. Y’all are fantastic.

Need Your Loving (demo)
Passing Through Air

Having a professionally recorded song makes our job much easier. What nuances are lost in the lo-fi recordings of, say, “Queen Eddie” or “Sunsi” are picked up in the clean sound of “Passing Through Air.” This is largely due to Cathy recording with professional equipment for the first time. She didn’t need it to shine before, of course—she’s simply honing her best work to date for a really, really important moment.

Artists rarely get a big break. A 15-year-old artist’s home demos getting picked up for professional recording was pretty much unheard of in the pre-Soundcloud age. For a young artist to be discovered by a musician coming off the back of releasing one of the bestselling albums of all time seems colossally unlikely. Yet this is an exaggeration—plenty of people had heard Cathy’s demos by this point, and she wasn’t the only artist David Gilmour had taken under his wing at the time. Coming off The Dark Side of the Moon’s massive success, Gilmour was nurturing about eight protégés, the luckiest of whom would hit #1 on the UK singles charts five years later. He’d found Kate via her brother Jay’s friend Ricky Hopper, who played Gilmour some tapes which struck him. Maybe it was the undercurrent of ethereal strangeness in Kate’s songs or her musical aptitude which struck him. After he’d worked on “The Great Gig in the Sky,” no wonder he was into this sort of thing.

Another Gilmour ward was the band Unicorn, featuring the rhythm section of bassist Pat Martin and drummer Pete Perrier. The two musicians readily agreed to record the Bush sessions (they did so without immediate payment, although they’d receive royalties when the song was released seven years later.) They proceeded to play a number of songs (the exact song count is lost to history), including “Maybe” and “Passing Through Air.” The accompaniment of Gilmour, Martin, and Perrier, while not daring or spectacular by any means, lends some musical texture to “Passing Through Air.” To date, Cathy’s songs have sounded like they were recorded in a vacuum, not just because of their sound quality, but in how they’re completely isolated from any human contact. Gilmour’s home studio is a huge step up for her—being able to work with an 8-track recorder, a 16-channel mixing desk, an upright piano, and a Wurlitzer electric piano must have been thrilling for her. She immediately takes advantage of the equipment—she seems to record her vocal with automatic double-tracking (two tracks of audio will be recorded simultaneously, but one will have a slight delay, giving the recording a thick, rich sound. John Lennon used this technique often). Cathy steps into the world of professional recording with impressive ease, and so she makes our job a little easier as well. Not only do we know the exact circumstances under which “Passing Through Air” was recorded and have a high-quality recording of the song—there’s even sheet music for it.

The seminal book Kate Bush Complete helps us out enormously here. Published by EMI in 1987, the text eschews the erroneous notation which plagues most sheet music books in favor of transcribing the song as heard on record. A cursory scan of Complete’s entry for this song shows that “Passing Through Air” is a weird composition. The verse begins with a single bar in A before walking through the VI and i chords of A minor (F major and A), followed by the III chord (C), a slash chord (C/B), and resolving to the tonic of A minor before segueing in A to the chorus. Here the key changes to G and descends through a series of slash chords (G, G/F, G/E, G/D) and reuses the C and C/B of the verses, and the song repeats itself. It’s an unconventional song, one with a patchwork melody that creates conflict between keys—it’s not often you’ll see see a juxtaposition of A major and A minor. Some may call it unruly. I’d call it the work of a songwriter who knows her way around the piano. Rhythmically it’s quite nice too—it breathes and moves organically (fun detail: while the majority of the song is in 4/4, the segue to the chorus sneaks a bar in 2/4—an early use of the hidden Kate Bush time signature change.) It’s not hard to see why Cathy decided to professionally record this one—it’s too good to pass up. Some good ol’ Elton John-y pop for the nice man from Pink Floyd.

Lyrically, “Passing” isn’t a great departure from the demoed songs. Its subject is much the same as “Something Like a Song” or “Queen Eddie”—an elusive figure who makes things magical and exciting. Yet Cathy has honed her skills as a wordsmith to write her best lyric yet. The verses seem to take a spiritual walk through a green moor—Cathy spins poignant phrases like “you mix the stars with your arms” and rhymes them with stuff like “the doom of eternity balms.” The song briefly walks through phrases like this before exploding into G and realizing that what Cathy needs to write is a pop song. “Oh, don’t you throw my love away/I need your loving, I need your loving” is the remedy to the lugubrious tunes she’s composed to date. Finally she’s allowing herself to have fun within a song.

Seven years later, Kate clearly retained a soft spot for “Passing Through Air” that lead her to include it as a B-side to the less cheerful “Army Dreamers.” It’s an odd choice of B-side—”Passing Through Air” has no musical, aesthetic, or thematic resemblance “Army Dreamers”. Why release “Passing Through Air” so long after its recording, when she’d moved forward creatively and become a national treasure? Maybe the track reminded her of a happy time. The excitement of adolescence may have been a sorely needed antidote to the story of early death related by “Army Dreamers.” Even a dark Kate Bush song clings to hope, and a brighter one doesn’t work without anxiety. If you need hope, there’s an abundance of it in Cathy’s demos.

Recorded in 1973 at David Gilmour’s home studio; released as a B-side in 1980. Personnel: Bush—vocals, piano. Gilmour—guitar. Martin—bass. Perrier—drums. Pictures: Hook End Manor, possibly the where the demos were recorded. The studios in Hook End. Kate Bush in Abbey Road.

Cussi Cussi/Sunsi/Atlantis/You Were the Star/Maybe

Quick note: I made a mistake in the last entry—the release of the Cathy demos isn’t shrouded in mystery. We know the songs were leaked in 1997. Sorry for the error.

The act of performing a critical analysis of the Cathy demos has a tinge of historical revisionism. It inherently goes against how these songs were meant to be heard. These are home demos which became audition tapes—recordings which were circulated to impress record labels (and for a while didn’t.) These songs weren’t recorded with thoughts of royalties and press eventually coming into the picture. Cathy wasn’t writing for an audience (arguably, she never has been), although the praise of her family was welcome. While the tapes were shared for the purpose of getting an audience, they weren’t written with this in mind. These songs give us a snapshot of the mind of a young creative finding her voice. So what did Cathy sing about at home?

Cussi Cussi

Let’s listen to “Cussi Cussi,” which demonstrates that these songs are a learning experience for their creator. “Cussi Cussi” is a sprawling thing, less coherent than the songs we’ve previously covered. It’s a schizoid song, afraid of losing someone—is the singer trying to keep their identity in the face of adversity? Rather than pitch straight empathy, “Cussi Cussi” has a slightly despairing tone — its melody is tumultuous and complex, never committing to a single mood and always in conflict. The singer is begging the subject not to leave them, not to waste their life. “And I’ve noticed in your eyes/a sadness I don’t like/to recognize/you are feeling a heavy side of your ecstasy” is suggestive of a star being eaten away by their commitment to excess.

Yet the song itself also gets caught up in excess in messy ways which don’t quite land, albeit the tone remains pleasantly bemusing. The “cussi cussi” of its refrain is a bit hard to decipher. “Cussì” appears to be a word in the Romantic language Friulian for “so” (perhaps bringing the song’s title close to Spanish’s “así- así” for “so-so”?) It’s an interesting, obscure little track, but it’s not hard to see why it doesn’t have a second take in the Phoenix sessions. To be sure, it’s not boring—it’s an intriguing hot mess, and melodically it’s astonishing. If your weaker compositions at 15 sounded like this, you were in good shape.

Sunsi

With “Sunsi”, we have another cryptic song with a title consisting of a phrase from a Romantic language. In this case, we have a song which possibly gets its name from… an archaic Italian preterite verb for receiving the Eucharist (let me know when your fave writes a song like that). It’s not the first time Cathy has explored Christian imagery. She was raised Catholic and attended a nun-run school. Her first published piece of writing, from St. Joseph’s Convent Grammar School magazine, was a piece of blank verse poetry called “The Crucifixion,” which includes such lugubrious words as:

The man weeps and his forsaken tears fall,
Slipping down the trembling and battered body onto the dust.
He collapses down onto the ground.
His head bruises past the stones, scarring his tear-stained face.
He staggers to his feet, groping towards his fate.

Any recovering Catholic could tell you “well yeah, that’s just the experience of attending Catholic school,” but the poem seems less like a confession and more like some grimdark Gospel. In later years, Bush would describe the impact of Catholic imagery on her (if not the theology): “such powerful, beautiful, passionate images! There’s a lot of suffering in Roman Catholicism.” There’s little here which foreshadows Kate’s future work—it’s dark and painful in ways only adolescents can be (the poem ends, perhaps heretically, with its protagonist’s death, skipping his resurrection). Its impact doesn’t seem to extend beyond having a tenuous extension in “Sunsi.” As is par for the course in these demos, the lyrics are cryptic enough that it’s tough to make out what Cathy is trying to say. It seems to be another love song (how quickly those vanish when Bush becomes a professional musician), but a worshipful one. It’s a pop hymn—a song whose subject is addressed variously as “Lord” and the possessor of “the key” and a “mystery.” It dabbles in Christological imagery rather than committing to it. Perhaps this is Cathy’s last shout as a practicing Catholic—a final attempt to reconcile with the faith of her upbringing.

Atlantis

With Atlantis, we’re closer to the future than we were before. Cathy is nominally exploring mythical and literary spaces through music, which is a trend we’re going to see in her work for a long time (indeed, it’s how she broke into the popular consciousness.) Yet the song isn’t exploring a single work—it’s gazing into a popular image. Cathy isn’t writing about the Atlantis which had the nerve to be an adversary to Plato’s ideal Athens in the Dialogues (and thank God, because really, who wants that song?) She’s writing about Atlantis as a ruin—a city buried underwater, where it was never meant to be. The song could equally be about a shipwreck—it captures the haunting beauty and melancholy of photos of the sunken Titanic (and this was over a decade before that wreck was found.) It’s beautiful to look at, and it’s sad because there should be people in this city. Cathy expresses that simply but effectively; it’s a child’s song, but one written by an astonishingly mature kid. “But in the city/where there is no one/what’s the point of being free, eh?/when there is nothing to tie me down,” she coos. There should be people living and dancing in this city, even though it’s submerged. “There is nobody/to count the soldiering meandering whales/with a shoal of herring amongst the sails.” Only a child could write so beautifully and poignantly about a place that never existed. We’re never going to hear another song like this anywhere. Cathy herself couldn’t have written it after leaving East Wickham Farm. It’s a relic of adolescence, and it’s lovely.

You Were the Star

Yes, it’s weird even by the standards of these demos. But it’s good too. The piano in this song is pulsating; Cathy is pushing herself musically. “You Were the Star” is another frantic song about admiring someone massive from a distance, but it’s less somber than “Something Like a Song” and more positive than “Cussi Cussi.” “You have fallen, oh my star/and you have lost your faith,” but it’s okay, because “for tomorrow/will be/half a genius shining.” God knows what she’s singing here. Making out the lyrics in these earliest songs is always tough. But not quite getting them is inherent in the exercise. These are truly private songs, compositions never expected to leave their writer’s home. They don’t capture a widespread mood—they only reflect what’s in Cathy’s imagination. She’s learning how to write songs, and really, she’s doing pretty well so far.

Maybe
Humming
Two takes back-to-back

Extraordinarily, Kate did revisit this song after she became successful. You can catch this fleeting moment in the first link of this post, an audio clip from a 1979 appearance on the BBC Radio One program Personal Call. Uncharacteristically, Kate, not one for looking back, brings a tape which she admits was recorded when she was 15. She’s embarrassed that it’s being heard, but in her typical good nature is perfectly happy to have a laugh at her own expense. “I’ll shut my ears, okay?” she says before a snippet of “Maybe” is played. After the track fades out, Kate explains the look on her face (described, potentially incorrectly, as “wistful”) by saying she was “waiting for the flat note in the middle.” The flat note may not even be there, but Kate’s perfectly happy to be self-deprecating, demanding perfection of even her earliest work.

To be sure, Bush demanded a lot of herself in writing all these songs, but particularly in this one. There are two tapes of it, a solo piano recording called “Humming” and a second take called “Maybe.” Unlike some of these early songs with two recordings, the track evolves significantly between demos. The lyric certainly evolves—“Humming” is addressed to someone called “Davey,” a name Bush will revisit later. The singer seems pretty taken by Davey, and his many words and many songs. By the time she revisits Davey in “Maybe,” things have livened up a bit. The website Dongrays hears the lyrics as “I’m searching for any revolutionary open/caused him to light a nerve.” Bush is using significantly different language here, giving the sense she’s pushing herself as a songwriter.

“Maybe” is different enough from “Humming” that there’s some debate over whether the two are different songs, which is silly. “You may have many words and many thoughts” is in both songs—the lyrics are phonetically similar with some alterations in word choice. The melody is largely the same in both songs, although “Maybe” has a more clear-cut verse-chorus structure, whereas “Humming” has a verse and chorus which awkwardly spill into each other. But the two tracks are definitely the same song. Yet we’ve overlooked the huge, startling part of “Maybe” so far—Bush is playing with a band. This is a drastic change. Bush hasn’t collaborated with anyone in the previous recordings. Where did the band come from? Clearly someone outside East Wickham Farm had noticed her talent. In the Personal Call interview, Bush says EMI signed her not too long afterwards, not on the strength of “Maybe” but the song after it. Things are changing for her. Luckily for us, Kate Bush is happy to change them.

Songs recorded c. 1973; released via bootleg in 1997. Personnel for Cussi Cussi through Maybe: Kate Bush-vocals, piano. Images: B&W from Cathy by John Carder Bush; Elton John in 1973; Kate c. 1979.

Queen Eddie

Also called “The Gay Farewell” and, plainly, “Eddie.”

Queen Eddie (Cathy demo)
Queen Eddie (Phoenix demo)

“I found [gay people] more simpatico. A year ahead of everybody else. Being so close for so long to the art world, my friends have nearly always been gay. …It’s your fashion-society type scene, who I happen to get on with very well… because they’re interested in style…”

-Bryan Ferry, 1974 interview with Gordon Burn.

It remains astonishing that we have 31 of Cathy Bush’s demos. This is the happy product of some tapes changing hands several times. The first person to circulate these songs was music publicist Ricky Hopper, a friend of Cathy’s brother Jay, who was given between twenty and thirty songs to send to record companies. No luck was had attracting labels, although Bush would eventually get lucky via other avenues. None of Bush’s demos were publicly available for years until tapes made their way into the hands of DJ John Dixon, who had acquired them at EMI around the time Bush signed to the label in 1976. Six years later, he broadcast twenty-two of the songs from his Phoenix-based KSTM radio station (this was around the time Bush was putting out The Dreaming. For David Bowie fans, this would be like hearing “The Laughing Gnome” when Scary Monsters came out). Gradually, the earliest demos were released, with the Cathy demos surfacing in 1997. So there’s our point of origin.

There is no First Kate Bush song. We established off the bat that “Wuthering Heights” is not the beginning of the Kate Bush story by choosing to begin the blog with “Something Like a Song.” This is designed to give a fuller picture of her music. In its beginnings, the Bush story is tumultuous and malleable. It’s reasonably well-documented for what it is, but still trying to shape itself like any young person trying to express themselves for the first time. Recording dates are uncertain — we have a small handful of demos recorded in 1973 called the Cathy Demos, and several more dating from around 1976 dubbed the Phoenix Demos (after the aforementioned broadcast). There’s an overlap in material from the two sessions, leading to us having two demos each for some songs that were never professionally recorded. Even the titles of the songs were applied retroactively, and not by Bush herself. To navigate this labyrinth of obscure music, the Bushologist must choose a trajectory and follow it. I chose “Something Like a Song” for the first post because of its relative malleability and accessibility; there’s not a lot to unpack in it, which allowed me to sketch out the approach of the blog. With “Queen Eddie” (or “The Gay Farewell,” whatever you wish to call it), another early Cathy song from both the Cathy and Phoenix sessions, we’re free to play around a little with ideas.

“Queen Eddie” is a surprisingly sharp and melancholy song. It’s multifaceted in its thematic concerns and has a grasp of rhythm and melody that “Something Like a Song” doesn’t quite. In “Something,” we had a singer who admired someone from a distance, who they didn’t quite understand. “Queen Eddie” is more mature: it’s about the singer finding out that someone they already know is more complex than they previously realized. In short, it’s a song about learning to empathize.

And Eddie in dire need of empathy. “I’ve never seen/such a sad queen as Eddie,” ponders the singer. “I’ve seen him raving/maybe even in pain/but never weeping like a baby.” Eddie isn’t some macho hero to sweep the damsel off her feet (indeed, he may not even swing that way). He’s a frightened young person whose life is falling apart for reasons not specified in the song. He’s a person who’s noticeably pretty, and on Saturday evening transforms into a drag queen. Bush’s music often displays a strong interest in the feminine side of men, and this is the earliest musical manifestation of her concern. Eddie is someone with no time for masculinity. Everything from the effeminate adjective of “pretty” to the fact he’s saying goodbye to “his boy” points to that (who’s his boy? Is he breaking up with a boyfriend, or is he transitioning?) Even the song’s varying titles, in all probability not penned by Bush, point to a queer reading of the song (“The Gay Farewell” is a pretty wretched pun even by my standards). There’s an element of fetishization here — Eddie is denied an identity outside of his gender and sexuality in a way that’s genuinely harmful. For all that the empathy on display is genuine, so is the singer’s privilege.

Yet for this song’s flaws, it feels like something that needed to be written in 1973, even if it wasn’t heard outside 11 East Wickham. An LGBT rights movement was booming in the UK at the time — The Gay Liberation Front was new and alive, and the First British Gay Pride Rally had been held in London, not too far from the Bushes, a year previously. But these movements were responded to by things like the Nationwide Festival of Light, a puritanical attempt by notorious professional bigot Mary Whitehouse and others to suppress the existence of gay people, as well as any expression of sexuality that didn’t pertain entirely to procreation. The LGBT community needed some allies, and Kate was willing to step into the ring early on. Kate’s complex championing of the queer community has begun. Thus we get “Queen Eddie,” her first camp song.

Ah yes, camp. We may as well define it now, as this won’t be the last instance of discussing camp on this blog. Turning to Susan Sontag’s classic but controversial essay “Notes on Camp,” we discover that camp is the ultimate reification of style over substance. It’s not so much a coherent style as a sensibility; one that revels in the debasement of established tradition. Sontag rightfully comes under fire for her backwards idea that describes camp as something gay people were drawn to, rather than something they shaped from the beginning and used as an engine for sociopolitical change. Still, for flaws, the essay is a good starting point for discussing the camp aesthetic.

So how did Cathy, an ostensibly well-behaved young person bred by a respectable middle-class family and educated at a nun-administrated Catholic school, discover camp? She was unlikely to be hitting London’s gay clubs where camp culture flourished. It’s possible there was some gay literature sprinkled around the house (she was always an Oscar Wilde fan), but it’s far more likely Cathy got in tune with the gay world via her brothers’ record collections. Jay and Paddy were Cathy’s first dealers, bringing home a variety of records — everything from prog rock like King Crimson to contemporary folk music by A. L. Lloyd. Cathy was always by captivated the music, and eventually started independently developing her own taste (the first album she ever bought was Bridge Over Troubled Water).  But what really seemed to stick with her was the glam rock she heard, particularly the more baroque artists — David Bowie, Roxy Music, Elton John (some of you might dispute how glam John is, but come on, “Philadelphia Freedom” is unquestionably draped in glam trappings). Their often melancholy but always glamorous sound clearly caught her ear, and made their way into her songwriting.

So “Queen Eddie” ends up as a mellow glam rock song, closer to “In Every Home a Heartache” than “Get It On.” It’s a song about a glamorous man whose life is falling apart (arguably a Goth rock song in that sense), and thus is mid-tempo and quiet, as such collapses often are (the vocal livens it up though —young Cathy’s vocal model is Elton John. That swinging pop voice is reminiscent of “Tiny Dancer,” which this song is arguably a spiritual successor to). The 1976 re-recording is a bit livelier and more urgent; it sounds like a halfway point between the Cathy demos and The Kick Inside. Cathy can’t be entirely sad — if Eddie is sad, she must dance with him. Thankfully, the song does little to explain just what’s happening to Eddie. The singer is quick to listen to his story but not to speak for him. Instead, they’re Eddie’s friend and ally. In the intervening years, Kate has become a guiding light for queer people. There are plenty of reasons for this. There’s a Guardian article in which singer Rufus Wainwright calls Kate “the older sister that every gay man wants,” and points out that she “connects so well with a gay audience because she is so removed from the real world.” Being removed from material reality in this sense is a product of privilege. The song doesn’t refrain from tokenizing Eddie. Its approach to the reality of queer people is flawed, but the fact that a 15-year-old is already attempting to empathize with minorities and being at least partially successful is impressive. Already, this is an impressive body of work. Let’s keep exploring it.

Recorded 1973; re-recorded 1976. Personnel- Kate Bush: piano, vocals. Sources- Ferry interview quote from Simon Reynolds’ Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy; Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp”; as always, thanks to the indispensable Gaffaweb for their help on all matters Kate, particularly their history of the demos. Pictures: David Bowie and a French railway guard (photograph by Joe Stevens); The Coleherne, the UK’s first leather bar (recovered by Charlie Dave); Cathy and Paddy Bush dressed to the goddamn nines (from Cathy by John Carder Bush.)

Something Like a Song

Also called “Garden by the Willow” and “In My Garden.”
Something Like a Song (Cathy demo)
Something Like a Song (Phoenix demo)

Let’s establish off the bat what “Something Like a Song” isn’t: it is not a Kate Bush song. It’s an AKAI tape machine-recorded home demo of 15-year-old Cathy Bush, daughter of Robert and Hannah and sister of John and Paddy, playing on the family piano at 11 East Wickham Farm in Welling, Kent. This song has never had a commercial release: it’s a bootleg from the vaults of an upper-middle class English family. Perhaps this is an inauspicious starting point for a critical exegesis of an important artist. But to get where we’re going with this story, we must understand the shape of its prologue.

Before we dive in, I’ll provide a brief explanation for why we’re starting off with “Something Like a Song.” Simply, it’s just a smoother point of impact. It’s accessible and fairly simple; the lyrics are easily made out and the whole thing’s pretty easy to decipher. It also introduces a number of long-running themes in Kate Bush’s music, so we’re eased early on into her writerly concerns. Now we can start. Our story begins, as any half-decent story does, in the imagination of a teenage girl. Indeed, the creative mind of a 19-year-old woman was what eventually got the public hooked on Bush. She created a space where strange folks could dwell. These early posts are going to explore that space when it housed more or less a single inhabitant: young Cathy of St. Joseph’s Convent Grammar School. What we’re listening to isn’t a pop song, but a look into Cathy’s world with no expected audience except for whoever happened to be in the house at the time of recording. Indeed, this is as close to the real Kate Bush as we ever see, before she gains a sophisticated idea of spectatorship and how to subvert it.

So what is Cathy’s world like, and more importantly, what kind of music exists in it? Removed from all context, “Something Like a Song” is a surprisingly good composition from a young person with a very nice voice. In historical context, it’s a bit more complex than that. Its composer who hasn’t yet quite figured out how to shape a song: the melody is nice, but every time the song starts to build to something, it tapers off and fails to deliver (she hasn’t yet learned the art of building anticipation and decimating expectations.) There’s a shapelessness to the vocal as well: the singer is clearly in that early stage of her career where she has to essentially sing the piano melody rather than singing in harmony with it (she swallows up “in my garden, by the willow/a piper” in a way that makes it hard to decipher, depriving the line of its punchline shape.)

But really, what kind of awful person would begrudge a song written by a precocious teenager for being a little clumsy? This is a perfectly fine tune; listenable enough, and with a strong gasp on the piano as a musical object (the song seems to be played in C minor, with some possible modulation in there.) Kate must have liked the song well enough herself; she recorded two takes of it a couple years apart (with the second take mercifully lopping the song in half, greatly improving it.) And there’s plenty of foreshadowing to be found: “Something Like a Song’s” melody points to “Oh To Be In Love,” and its cooing to… well, everything.

So what’s to be said about “Something Like a Song?” Well, it sets up Bush’s long-running theme of distance: the singer sees someone or something fantastic and transcendent, and cannot reach them; “I’ve called him by every name I know/by every name I know/but he won’t answer me.” The poetic voice is trapped within their own world- their own head- and cannot move outside it. They try to name it, calling it many things, attempting to trap and pin it down with language, but the stranger leaves nothing but an aura. Thus is the central dilemma of this music. But who is it they’re trying to reach? I’ll point to one of Cathy’s childhood favorite books, Kenneth Grahame’s classic novel The Wind in the Willows, and in particular its famous chapter The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (and yes, its fame is due in no small part to being the namesake for one of the greatest psychedelic rock albums of all time.) In this chapter, the aptly named characters Mole and Rat encounter the Greek god Pan, who is alternatively called the Friend and Helper. Pan strikes profound adoration and fear into the hearts of Ratty and Mole, leaving them in tears when he departs. It’s easy to imagine this scene stuck in Cathy’s head, as it’s stayed in the imagination of many generations of young readers. Admiring someone from a distance is a theme we’re going to revisit, as it’s one every living person can understand. And in becoming a theme of her music, Bush seemed to predict the artist she’d become too: an artist people would hear and admire but never quite reach.

Recorded in 1973; re-recorded c. 1976. Personnel: Kate Bush- vocal, piano. Released: 1982; KSTM radio broadcast by DJ John Dixon. Pictures: John Carder Bush from Cathy; Pál Szinyei Merse, “Faun and Nymph.”