Cities Made of Song, 1985

 Cities Made of Song, 1985 - Cloudbusting by Kate Bush

 

"'Cause every time it rains
You're here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen"​

As we pass through 1985, the trajectory of the marathon intersects with the career of one of my favorite artists: Kate Bush. Born to a musically-inclined family in 1958, Bush was just 16 years old when a demo reel of her music caught the attention of David Gilmour (whose music, maybe not coincidentally, I've talked about on here before). With his financial backing, a second demo tape, with more professional polish, would soon convince EMI to sign on the teenage Bush as their newest artist.

Breaking into the UK charts with her single Wuthering Heights off of her debut album "The Kick Inside" in 1978, she cemented a place for herself in the largely male-dominated world of pop music by becoming the first female artist to ever reach #1 with a self-written song.

In 1985, she released the magisterial "Hounds of Love", which for my money is her best. Sort of like a pop music spin on progressive rock, it tells a sweeping story of lost love, dreams, and recurring nightmares. The first song on the album, Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) just recently had a renewed spike in popularity thanks to Stranger Things, which I think is richly deserved. It's astonishing that she never had another #1 single between Wuthering Heights and 2022.

All the songs on "Hounds of Love" are riveting, but Cloudbusting is the one that piques my curiosity the most. With its steady, driving beat and lush orchestral instrumentation, it sounds almost warm and comforting, but the lyrics are very melancholic. It's only recently that I really sat down to research what it was actually about, and boy, was that a rabbit hole.

The song was based on the autobiography of Peter Reich, the son of the immensely influential and iconoclastic psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich. The elder Reich's life and thought are a vast and convoluted topic which is far beyond the scope of this post, but his Wikipedia page certainly made for some fascinating reading. Suffice it to say for our purposes that he was a bit eccentric, particularly in his later years after moving to America, where the young Peter grew up and enjoyed a close relationship with his father. Living together at Orgonon, Reich's estate in Maine, Peter joined his father in several experiments, including so-called "cloudbusting" machines which were meant to induce rain from the clouds.

At first for his communist sympathies, and later for alleged fraud and quackery, Wilhelm Reich came under the scrutiny of the FBI, and was ultimately arrested and imprisoned in 1957. This moment was witnessed by Peter, who was just 12 or 13, something which must have left a deep imprint. Wilhelm ultimately did not survive his imprisonment, passing away mere months later of a heart attack.

"I hid my yo-yo in the garden
I can't hide you from the government
Oh, God, Daddy, I won't forget"​

Normally one expects parents to protect their children and not the other way around, but the way that this song describes the narrator's feelings shows that our relationships to our parents are never that simple. When you're a kid, they seem invincible, but as you grow up, you gradually realize how flawed and complicated they are, and how much they sometimes need protecting themselves. I can only imagine how traumatic it is to have that illusion shattered early, as we see here.

Kate Bush is so good at painting pictures with her words, and her unflinching sureness in her artistic vision has long been one of her defining qualities. There are numerous instances where she fought her record label on certain decisions and was proved right basically every time. She didn't care about any of the marketing BS, she just wanted to put her very best music out there for those who would appreciate it. I find it remarkable that she didn't have a single concert between 1979 and 2014, and seemed to like it that way. The song says that "what made you special made you dangerous", but she wears her uniqueness unashamed. It's an example worth emulating.

Up next, another diversion, as we delve for the first time into the world of fan films. See you then.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 21 May 2024.)