To mark 40 years of Hounds of Love we’re putting together a time capsule each day for the month of September – a daily miscellany of the people, events and objects that relate to this momentous work, whether back in 1985 or right up to the present day…
Hounds of Love – person of the day
Kate’s Cloudbusting music video, directed by Julian Doyle, is a stunning visual representation of the song’s hauntingly beautiful lyrics. The video tells the true story of Wilhelm Reich, a controversial psychoanalyst who believed in harnessing the power of orgone energy to control the weather. The video’s striking imagery and captivating storytelling perfectly complement the song’s emotional depth and make for a truly unforgettable viewing experience. Cloudbusting is widely regarded as one of the most iconic music videos of all time and is a testament to Julian Doyle’s creativity and talent as a director.
Kate wrote in the Kate Bush Club newsletter: “I worked with Julian Doyle as director. He was suggested to me by Terry Gilliam. Terry is one of my favourite film-makers, and I was so honoured that he got involved; and we worked very hard for about five-six weeks.” Julian also served as technical advisor on Kate’s 1993 film, The Line, The Cross and The Curve. As well as Julian and Terry Gilliam who hail from the world of Monty Python, Kate also worked with Monty Python costume designer Hazel Pethig and with the late Terry Jones himself in the elaborate visuals that accompanied Director’s Cut in 2011.
Julian spoke to Dazed magazine about making the Cloudbusting video: “Kate came to me with a storyboard, which I remember had the sun coming up with a face on it. She was a lovely lady, with a great smile that she gave generously. I understood her influences…I also knew about Wilhelm Reich…I thought it should look like a real story – like a film, not a pop video. I wanted to point out the story was real, which is why I had Kate take out the book. I also wanted more time so I doubled up a section of the music.
I was pleased we got up early to get the (shot with the) sun rising behind Kate falling down. I was also pleased with the track to close-up (on Donald Sutherland) where he changes from smiling to worried and then I pan into light flare. (When Donald had finished shooting his scenes) I said to him, ‘We have finished with you, thanks – but I just want you to walk away down the hill towards the sun.’ He looked great taking off his jacket. The very last shot of the shoot was the very last shot of Kate punching the air. There are only seven frames before I cut.”
Hounds of Love – happening of the day
Promoting her work by conducting interviews is not something Kate particularly enjoys but feels she must do after the years spent working so hard on her work. For the Hounds of Love interviews, quite a complex album to explain, Kate often had a carefully prepared explanation for each song she was asked about and tended not to stray much from those main points unless the interviewer was particularly engaging!
An example, infamous in fan circles, of how interviews can go wrong, was her interview with Night Flight, a variety television show that originated on the cable TV network USA Network. Kate had made a rare trip to the USA to promote Hounds Of Love in 1985 and this interview, and watching Kate endure it, is cringeworthy indeed.
As fan Ronald Hill described it on the rec.music.gaffa newsgroup in 1991: “…the most excruciating of all Kate Bush video-clips. For more than half an hour Kate sits absolutely still before an unblinking stationary camera, answering with remarkable patience and professionalism an interminable series of asinine and shockingly ill-informed questions…as usual, Kate suffers through all of these indignities with perfect grace.” Amazingly we have the full 37 minutes of raw, unedited footage that you can watch now, but…it’s not an easy watch.
Watch Kate visibly stopping herself laughing at the interviewer describing the songs on the album as “dance songs” (1:44); multiple instances of assistants interrupting the talk to mess around with her mic, clothing and hair (4:16), the interviewer constantly incorrectly referring to her previous album as “Dreaming” (9:07), her obvious bemusement at being asked which male figure she considers a “sex symbol” (32:39), having to repeatedly explain that she didn’t use backing singers on certain Hounds Of Love tracks despite the interviewer’s insistence that she did (in a wonderful Freudian slip, watch Kate say the word “prat” instead of “track” at 18:50) and, most astonishingly of all, a moment at the end of the video where she is asked to record a special clip explaining what “attracts [her] the most” about a man (36:49). She eventually grits her teeth and says “a gently spoken Englishman”. We wonder whether Kate began writing the lyrics to How To Be Invisible during this ordeal…
Hounds of Love – Artefact of the day
(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)
Big thanks to Pekka Hiltunen for sharing this image of a very rare item – an original Running Up That Hill record shop display stand, which would have graced the likes of HMV or Virgin Megastore in the UK in 1985, and offered the 7″ vinyl record to customers as they sent the single on its way the the UK #3 position! Decades-old record shop displays like these often don’t survive in great condition, but in the rare case when they do, they are a wonderful artefact from a pre-streaming, pre-Spotify era in the music industry.
Hounds of Love – trivia of the day!
During its 22 years of operation, the space shuttle Columbia was flown on 28 missions in the Space Shuttle program, spending over 300 days in space and completing over 4,000 orbits around Earth. As we know, tragically Columbia disintegrated on February 1, 2003, during atmospheric re-entry after a 16-day scientific mission, killing all 7 crew members on board.
There is something haunting about the snatches of astronaut audio that lead into the stunning Hello Earth on The Ninth Wave. The pieces of short dialogue that Kate used are from the landing of the very first orbital space flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, with the Columbia shuttle crewed by astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen, on April 14th 1981.
The sections of dialogue can actually be heard in this Youtube clip here – timings are 4:30 “Columbia now at nine times the speed of sound” and 5:10. “Roger that, Dan, I’ve got a solid TACAN locked on, er, TACAN 2 and 3” Other lines heard are: “The, uh, tracking data, map data and pre-planned trajectory are all one line on the block” and “Show your block decode.” TACAN incidentally is the acronym for Tactical Air Navigation System. “Dan” refers to Daniel Brandenstein who the astronauts were communicating with back at mission control.
When Kate performed Hello Earth in her live shows for Before The Dawn, the astronaut audio was extended with dialogue recorded during the take off of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, the first spaceflight to land humans on the Moon.
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