The story of how Kate Bush enlisted her mother for ‘And Dream of Sheep’
There are many reasons why Kate Bush is deemed one of the most influential modern musicians. Her fifth album, 1985’s The Hounds of Love, is one of the most potent examples of her brilliance. Whilst songs such as ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)’, ‘Cloudbusting’ and ‘The Hounds of Love’ all rank among the finest pieces of art pop, the album is brimming with other significant moments of note.
One of these is ‘And Dream of Sheep’, the first track on the album’s second side, a seven-song concept piece called ‘The Ninth Wave’. In a 1987 article for KBC, Bush explained the song’s origins: “The song is about someone going to sleep in the water, where they’re alone and frightened. And they want to go to sleep, to get away from the situation. But at the same time, it’s dangerous to go to sleep in water, you could drown.”
An introspective piano-guided moment, the track is unique for the spoken line “Come here with me now”, voiced by none other than Kate Bush’s mother. Bush said of her mother’s involvement on the track: “When I was little, and I’d had a bad dream, I’d go into my parents’ bedroom round to my mother’s side of the bed. She’d be asleep, and I wouldn’t want to wake her, so I’d stand there and wait for her to sense my presence and wake up.”
Continuing: “She always did, within minutes, and sometimes I’d frighten her—standing there still, in the darkness in my nightdress. I’d say, ‘I’ve had a bad dream,’ and she’d lift bedclothes and say something like ‘Come here with me now.’ It’s my mother saying this line in the track, and I briefed her on the ideas behind it before she said it.”
As fans of Kate Bush will be aware, she re-recorded ‘And Dream of Sheep’ for the 2016 live album Before The Dawn. Bush captured the vocals while filmed in a big water tank at England’s Pinewood Studios. This was done to echo the themes of the lyrics. However, it was a punishing experience for the singer, and she spent so long in the water during the first day of filming that she contracted a mild bout of hypothermia.
“I’d never worked in water before, and we didn’t know, purely from a technical point of view, if we could find a microphone that could cope with being submerged,” Bush told The Independent later that year. “So a lot of research went into that.”
“Also, lying on your back, it’s a different way to sing, and we weren’t sure we were going to achieve what we wanted, certainly from an audio point of view,” she continued. “What was probably most difficult, particularly on the first day, was that I was in the tank of water for so long that I actually got really cold. Hour by hour, it was becoming more realistic!”
Listen to the original ‘And Dream of Sheep’ below.
