Why Kate Bush wanted Donald Sutherland in her ‘Cloudbusting’ video: “One of the greatest actors”
It may not be the most famous example of a Kate Bush song or video inspired by a book, but ‘Cloudbusting’ does showcase just how much more cultural cachet Ms Bush had earned in the seven years since announcing herself to the world with ‘Wuthering Heights’.
One of the singles off her now lionised 1985 masterpiece, Hounds of Love, ‘Cloudbusting’ was never going to be a chart topper. For one thing, it’s nearly seven minutes long and a bit of a slow build. The subject matter, similarly, isn’t exactly as broadly familiar as the characters and plot of Emily Brontë’s gothic romance tragedy. ‘Cloudbusting’ was inspired, instead, by Peter Reich’s slightly more obscure 1973 memoir, A Book of Dreams, which explored the life of Reich’s father, the controversial psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich.
While the word “cloudbusting” sounds more like a fun, metaphorical concept, Bush was actually singing about something quite literal—Wilhelm Reich’s bizarre cloudbusting machines. These devices, made using copper tubing, were invented by Reich in the 1950s as a means of mining “orgone energy”, or the supposed universal life force, from the atmosphere. Nobody ever saw a cloudbuster actually work, but it could supposedly double as a rain-making weather device while it was doing its thing.
It’s not clear if 27-year-old Bush was a genuine believer in Reich’s pseudoscience, but she was definitely inspired by Peter Reich’s story, and particularly the sense of loss he felt as a child when his father was imprisoned for fraud and contempt (Wilhelm died in prison in 1957 at 60). She based ‘Cloudbusting’ on that narrative, and approached the accompanying music video with a similar reverence for the source material, including the casting of the two Reichs.
“We’re treating it as a piece of film,” Bush told the Toronto Star in 1985, shortly after the video debuted, “and it really came down to choosing the right actor for it”.
Kate had already decided that she would play the young boy version of Peter Reich herself. For Wilhelm Reich, the brilliant and complicated innovator/madman, someone with considerable onscreen gravitas was needed.
“I couldn’t think of anyone better than Donald Sutherland,” Bush said. “I think he’s a very sensitive actor, as well as extremely professional and patient”.
Bush managed to find a contact for Sutherland and sent him a script for the video idea. She was thrilled when the then 50-year-old actor said he was interested, and even more pleased when she got to work with him.
“It was easy for me to act in ‘Cloudbusting’ because with Donald Sutherland I had one of the greatest actors there to inspire me,” Bush said, noting, “All I had to do was react to him. To me, he was the father, and I was the kid. As soon as we stopped acting, I didn’t know him anymore.”
The video/film for the track takes some definite liberties with the original story, as Kate/Peter reacts to the arrest of Donald/Wilhelm by “running up that hill” to the cloudbusting machine and activating it as his father is driven off to prison by the feds. The machine works fantastically, hoovering up all that life-force from the heavens in a big radiant burst of energy that catches Sutherland’s eye from the back of the cop car, inspiring him to pump his fist in defiant celebration.
“Sometimes a single, chosen for its musical value, can be very hard to put a visual to,” Bush admitted, adding, “Sometimes you have to compromise between what’s seen and what’s heard. In my video, we had such a strong story to tell that it was the perfect one to view as a short film and not a promotional device.”
