Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (12/27/86)
Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU The following appears in Love-Hounds at |>oug's request. IED has transcribed this article, written by Kate, from the Kate Bush Newsletter Issue No. 12, 1983, pp. 3-7. It is Kate's only step-by-step, song-by-song explanation of The Dreaming, and may be of interest to L-Hs throughout the world. Part one today, later sections to follow. It's been a very long time since I spoke to you. It was last year -- can time really keep going faster? I would like to apologise for the long gap since the last magazine and fill you in on what's been happening. It seems that every time I do something, it takes me longer to do. This album has taken one year to record and I have never done anything so involved before. After all this time, I do feel happy with the results and I just hope that you will too. I have had a lot of help with this album. I never could have done it alone, and each person has contributed something very special. We worked between several studios, getting time where we could at the studios with the facilities we required, eventually settling in at Advision Studios, where we finished all the overdubs and mixed the tracks. We also worked at The Townhouse and The Odyssey, and at Abbey Road Studios, where all the backing tracks were recorded. I used several engineers, working with Hugh Padgham, Nick Launay, Haydn Bendall and Paul Hardiman. All of them were very important and all played major parts in how the album has ended up sounding. Hugh worked on "Sat In Your Lap", "Get Out of My House", and "Leave It Open". Hugh was a lot of fun to work with and as the first engineer on the album, he started it off in a very productive and positive way. I met Hugh when I had the pleasure to sing some backing vocals for Peter Gabriel, and I was very impressed with the sounds and the creative atmosphere. Hugh has worked with The Police, Genesis and XTC, just to mention a few. We felt very pleased with the backing tracks and were excited at the results; however, Hugh was too busy to continue, and so I worked with Nick Launay, who had been trained by Hugh. Nick worked on "Houdini", "All the Love", "There Goes a Tenner", "The Dreaming" and "Suspended in Gaffa". The majority of the backing tracks were recorded with Nick at The Townhouse. We were working through the warm summer last year, and much dedication was required from all to stay in the studio all day without succumbing to the sun. Nick is a very young engineer and has already worked with Public Image, Phil Collins and John Martyn. Again there was a great working relationship and we were all sad that Nick was too busy to continue and that the time at The Townhouse had run out. I moved on to Abbey Road, working with Haydn Bendall. I met him on the last album when I was working with Jon Kelly. Haydn was co-producing Sky and I found him a very patient and understanding engineer. Haydn also engineered Roy Harper's last album and among many other artists, helps up and coming writers to get their ideas securely on to tape, often securing record contracts at the same time. Haydn worked on "Night of the Swallow" and "Pull Out the Pin". Our assistant engineer Danny Dawson, affectionately known as Dan-Dan, became part of the working team on the two tracks, and it was really enjoyable. It always is fun when you work with nice people. The two tracks are finished and Haydn's time runs out too, so... I find Paul Hardiman, with a lot of help from Hugh Padgham. Paul has worked with a great variety of acts, from Slade to Keith Emerson and Soft Cell. We worked at Odyssey Studios up until Christmas (1981, |>oug? -- ed.), and by then Paul and I had a great working relationship. I felt I could communicate with him very easily and he could get the sounds I needed to hear, very quickly. We ran out of time at Odyssey and Paul suggested Advision, studios he knew from experience. He took me around there one afternoon on a Sunday. The studio was deserted and we went down to a small control room that proved to have a brilliant sound. We were sitting listening to tapes at full blast and I was falling in love with the room when the door slowly opened and a rather anxious looking studio manager edged around the door. He saw Paul and sighed with relief, and explained how he'd expected a gang of thugs to be tearing up the studio while listening to tapes of their choice -- as far as he had known, the studio was empty. We asked him if there would be any time for us to use the studio, and the three weeks we booked were to turn into more like three months. Paul and I were very excited about settling in to one studio, and Paul had some wonderful effects for sounds that he'd put away for a rainy day. I'm pleased there was a lot of rain to come. Although all the engineers were invaluable, Paul was of special value. He became a constant companion during the album and I would often ask he advice, knowing I would get an honest answer. He is also a very funny man, so he kept us all laughing -- donning silly hats and pulling funny faces. At Advision we met Dave Taylor -- he was the assistant engineer, and he worked with us for months until the album was finished and mixed. Dave was also the maintenance engineer, and on quite a few nights, when we went home to bed, he would be up all night twiddling inside machines or trying to figure out why the digital machines weren't working. Every night we ate take-away food, watched the evening news and returned to the dingy little treasure trove to dig for jewels. Now it's all finished, I think of the beginning. Twenty demos, ten of which became the album. In these demos all the moods and sounds were captured, and all the way through the album these demos were referred to. Often the session would stop, we'd dig out the 1/4 inch tape of the track we were working on, and with the original flavour and sounds strong in our heads, the session would begin again. In many ways it would have been interesting to have used the demos as masters, they were so spontaneous. Del Palmer engineered all the demos and every night he would sit up in the cramped little control room, getting different sounds for each track. He sat through hours of harmonies and takes of lead vocals, replying "I'm not bored" as many times as there were cups of tea, and nodding "Yeah, Kate, I think it sounds great!", a phrase to be echoed by Hugh, Haydn, Paul -- Bless you all. Perhaps I could now walk you through the album, track by track, starting with: PART TWO TO FOLLOW SOON