A teenage Kate Bush spent three years putting together the piano driven poetry of this fulgent flower of feminine force. She started composing when she was a schoolgirl and her family helped her make a demo tape with over fifty songs. The tape found its way to David Gilmore who produced a professional demo of three songs that led to a record deal with EMI. The label put her on retainer for two years while she continued school, took interpretive dance classes, played gigs with the KT Bush Band, and recorded demos for over two hundred songs. When it came time to record 'The Kick Inside', studio musicians were brought in for the sessions, including several members of the Alan Parsons Project including producer Andrew Powell. The recordings featured Kate Bush on piano, keyboards, vocals, and background vocals; Ian Bairnson on guitar, vocals, background vocals, and bottle; Paul Keogh and Alan Parker on guitar; Paddy Bush on harmonica, mandolin, and vocals; Duncan Mackay on organ, synthesizer, keyboards, electric piano, and clavinet; Andrew Powell on synthesizer, keyboards, and electric piano; Alan Skidmore on saxophone; David Paton on bass and background vocals; Bruce Lynch on bass; Barry DeSouza and Stuart Elliott on drums; Morris Pert on percussion; and David Katz on violin.
Bush would reveal: "The album is something that has not just suddenly happened. It's been years of work because since I was a kid, I've always been writing songs and it was really just collecting together all the best songs that I had and putting them on the album, really years of preparation and inspiration that got it together. As a girl, really, I've always been into words as a form of communication. And even at school I was really into poetry and English and it just seemed to turn into music with the lyrics, that you can make poetry go with music so well. That it can actually become something more than just words; it can become something special... another interesting thing about this album is that two of the tracks, ' The Man With The Child In His Eyes' and 'Saxophone Song' were recorded about three years ago. This was in fact my initial plunge into the business, as they say, with the help of Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd. I managed to get through to him through a contact of my brothers' and at that time he was looking around for unknown talent. He came along and heard me and we put some things down and he put up the money for me to make my first demo in a proper recording studio with arrangements. I owe to him the fact that I got my contract and that I'm where I am now. Two of these original tracks that we had on the demo are on the album, so maybe that helps with the variation...There are thirteen tracks on this album. When we were getting it together, one of the most important things that was on all our mind was, that because there were so many, we wanted to try and get as much variation as we could. To a certain extent, the actual songs allowed this because of the tempo changes, but there were certain songs that had to have a funky rhythm and there were others that had to be very subtle. I was very greatly helped by my producer and arranger Andrew Powell, who really is quite incredible at tuning in to my songs. We made sure that there was one of the tracks, just me and the piano, to, again, give the variation. We've got a rock 'n' roll number in there, which again was important. And all the others there are just really the moods of the songs set with instruments, which for me is the most important thing, because you can so often get a beautiful song, but the arrangements can completely spoil it - they have to really work together...On the whole I was surprised at the amount of control I actually had with the album production. Though I didn't choose the musicians. I thought they were terrific. I was lucky to be able to express myself as much as I did, especially with this being a debut album. Andrew was really into working together, rather than pushing everyone around. I basically chose which tracks went on, put harmonies where I wanted them...I was there throughout the entire mix."
'The Kick Inside' found its way to number thirty-seven in Japan; twenty-one in Germany; eight in Sweden; five in Denmark; four in Norway; three in Australia, France, and the UK; two in Belgium and New Zealand; and number one in the Netherlands. She was nineteen when the album was released.
'The Kick Inside'
full album:
1. "Moving" 3:01
2. "The Saxophone Song" 3:51
3. "Strange Phenomena" 2:57
4. "Kite" 2:56
5. "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" 2:39
6. "Wuthering Heights" 4:28
7. "James and the Cold Gun" 3:34
8. "Feel It" 3:02
9. "Oh to Be in Love" 3:18
10. "L'Amour Looks Something like You" 2:27
11. "Them Heavy People" 3:04
12. "Room for the Life" 4:03
13. "The Kick Inside" 3:30
"Wuthering Heights" took the world by storm, going to seventeen in Austria; eleven in Germany; eight in Switzerland; seven in Norway; six in Sweden; four in Denmark and Finland; three in the Netherlands; and number one in Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, and the UK, where it made her the first female singer-songwriter to reach the top of the charts with her own composition. In the US, the song stalled at number one hundred and eight (number eight on the bubbling under hot 100 list). The song was inspired by the classic novel by Emily Brontë. Bush confessed: "I didn't read it until just before I wrote the song. I'd seen the television series years ago. I just caught the last few minutes where she was at the window trying to get in. It's one of those classic stories that you vaguely know. I knew there was Heathcliff and Cathy and that she died and came back. It just fascinated me. What an incredible situation that people should want something so much that even when they die they won't let go. It is a greed of some kind...or a greedy-need, that's the word. It was just fascinating me so much, it kept coming into my brain. I thought the only way to get rid of it and stop it bothering me was to write it down. So I read the book and it amazed me. It was such a beautiful story. I made sure that I had read it as I was doing it as a tribute to Emily Brontë and anytime you do a something with somebody else's work, you should take care with it because you might well be abusing their expressions. But I found the book more than I had hoped for because for a girl so young it was beautiful that she had the strength to do it. Quite an interesting coincidence between Emily and myself, that I didn't find out until much later, is that we have the same birthday, 30 July. I thought it was a nice tie-in."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW3gKKiTvjs
Out On the wiley, windy moors
We'd roll and fall in green
You had a temper, like my jealousy
Too hot, too greedy
How could you leave me
When I needed to possess you?
I hated you, I loved you too
Bad dreams in the night
They told me I was going to lose the fight
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in in-a-your-window
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in in-a-your-window
Oh it gets dark, it gets lonely
On the other side from you
I pine alot, I find the lot
Falls through without you
I'm coming back love, cruel Heathcliff
My one dream, my only master
Too long I roam in the night
I'm coming back to his side to put it right
I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in in-a-your-window
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in in-a-your-window
Ooh let me have it, let me grab your soul away
Ooh let me have it, let me grab your soul away
You know it's me, Cathy
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy come home
I'm so cold, let me in in-a-your-window
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy come home
I'm so cold, let me in in-a-your-window
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy come home
I'm so cold
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1pMMIe4hb4
"The Man with the Child in His Eyes" made it to number eighty-five in the US, thirty-six in New Zealand, twenty-three in the Netherlands, twenty-two in Australia, six in the UK, and three in Ireland. Bush considers: "The inspiration for 'The Man With the Child in His Eyes' was really just a particular thing that happened when I went to the piano. The piano just started speaking to me. It was a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic. I, myself, am attracted to older men, I guess, but I think that's the same with every female. I think it's a very natural, basic instinct that you look continually for your father for the rest of your life, as do men continually look for their mother in the women that they meet. I don't think we're all aware of it, but I think it is basically true. You look for that security that the opposite sex in your parenthood gave you as a child."
http://vimeo.com/30249077
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F5XHZ0NPGc
'The Kick Inside'
I've pulled down my lace and the chintz.
Oh, do you know you have the face of a genius?
I'll send your love to Zeus.
Oh, by the time you read this,
I'll be well in touch.
I'm giving it all in a moment or two.
I'm giving it all in a moment, for you.
I'm giving it all, giving it, giving it.
This kicking here inside
Makes me leave you behind.
No more under the quilt
To keep you warm.
Your sister I was born.
You must lose me like an arrow,
Shot into the killer storm.
You and me on the bobbing knee.
Didn't we cry at that old mythology he'd read!
I will come home again, but not until
The sun and the moon meet on yon hill.
I'm giving it all in a moment or two.
I'm giving it all in a moment, for you.
I'm giving it all, giving it, giving it.
This kicking here inside
Makes me leave you behind.
No more under the quilt
To keep you warm.
Your sister I was born.
You must lose me like an arrow,
Shot into the killer storm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-76x06vfCtk
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