“Extraordinary”: Kate Bush on the most emotionally demanding song she ever made
It’s important to remember that even the weirdest and most whacky music can be imbued with rich emotion. In the world of Kate Bush, she was never going to sing a straight song about love or heartbreak or slip into using cliches to describe vague, common feelings. She’s a storyteller interested in creating strange worlds for characters as she lends her voice to them. But even still, she handles the emotional core of her songs with care and tenderness, especially in the case of this love song.
When thinking of Bush’s love songs the first that come to mind are probably ‘Running Up That Hill’, ‘Hounds Of Love’ or even ‘This Woman’s Work’, with it’s tender lyricism on parenthood and care. But ‘Houdini’ deserves to be on that list as Bush saw the romance within that song as utterly extraordinary.
However, because of its subject matter, which is off-kilter instrumentation, it’s all too often forgotten. Sitting on her 1982 album, The Dreaming, it was at the peak of Bush’s sonic experimentation. Following the 1980’s, Never For Ever, the artist enjoyed taking control of her music from the songwriting through to the production. She no longer wanted outside input affecting her vision. She wanted to be able to zone in on the world she was building or the story she was telling and allow that to colour every decision. The result is an album like The Dreaming, where the production of the record feels like moving between a series of different vignettes.
On ‘Houdini’, it’s all painted with a visceral seduction and tenderness. From her girlish vocal delivery to the gorgeous piano grounding that bursts into something magical and somehow brutal, it was Bush’s own way of translate a tale of love and danger. It was the only way she could think to tell the story of Harry Houdini and Wilhelmina Beatrice ‘Bess’ Rahner, his wife and stage assistant.
“With a kiss, I’d pass the key,” she sings in the chorus, “And feel your tongue teasing and receiving / With your spit still on my lip / You hit the water.” It’s the story of Houdini’s wife, her faith in her husband and the public speculation that she would pass him secret keys through a kiss on stage, allowing his escape.
“It is such a beautiful and strange story that I thought I had very little to do other than tell it like it was,” Bush said of the track. In this instance, she merely felt like a mouthpiece attempting to do their tale justice. However, that mission and responsibility was a tough task to handle, as she added, “But in fact, it proved to be the most difficult lyric of all the songs and the most emotionally demanding. I was so aware of trying to do justice to the beauty of the subject, and trying to understand what it must have been like to have been in love with such an extraordinary man, and to have been loved by him.”
She managed it, as she always does, through nuance and subtly. On the surface, the song is about their love during his life and career. But in reality, the song deals with Bess’ life after her husband’s death as she tried, year after year, to contact him through séances. During their marriage, they’d created a secret code, promising to try and reach each other after death by using it. The code was, “Rosabelle – answer – tell – pray answer – look – tell – answer answer – tell.”
“Rosabelle” was taken from the name of a song Bess was singing when the couple met and endured as her pet name to him. Then, each word coordinated to a single letter, with the message Houdini’s ghost would send Bess spelling out “believe”.
Through the song, Bush repeats “Rosabelle, believe” as if Houdini is speaking to his wife from beyond the grave. In reality, all of Bess’ attempts during her séances failed, but in her song, the musician allows them a happy ending.
