‘Moments of Pleasure’: How Kate Bush transfigured grief in style
Kate Bush is best known as a weaver of narratives. Her albums are rich with stories borrowed from folklore, mythology and Bush’s own vibrant imagination. But for ‘Moments Of Pleasure’, the singer brought her music back to the world of fact, dedicating one lyrical ode to the act of remembrance amidst a period of grief.
There are glimmers of this throughout her discography. In rare instances, Bush seems to suddenly peel back the veil and allow her listeners in. As a famously private musician, and now an utterly and infamously-impossible-to-reach one as she’s retreated out of the public sphere, these momentary glimpses of her life feel like a tender touch and a total privilege for her fans. Hearing about her family life on ‘Bertie’ or her dedication to her dance teacher on ‘Moving‘ are the moments fans get to connect with their audience.
But even if her life doesn’t find its way into her lyricism, her music has always been a deeply personal affair when it comes to her collaborators and team. From her debut album to her last, Bush’s music is crafted by her and a tight-knit circle, including her brother, Paddy Bush, her guitarist and old boyfriend, Del Palmer and her husband, Danny McIntosh. Even when her albums feature big names, they’re always friends first, such as David Gilmour who was a family friend before he agreed to help her out with her first record.
This means that the behind-the-scenes world of her music is a deeply sentimental realm, with her albums not only holding her talent but capturing moments in the lives of her, her family, her friends and her relationships. Some of her most beloved memories are attached to her music, bringing together all of her favourite people in service to her craft.
On ‘Moments Of Pleasure’, Bush flicks through these memories like a kind of sonic photo album. “Some moments that I’ve had / Some moments of pleasure,” she begins as if it stands as a title ahead of a bullet point list of images that have stuck in her mind.
However, specifically, ‘Moments Of Pleasure’ exists as a kind of memory box for Bush’s grief. In the final moments of the song, she calls out into the beyond, recounting lost friends by name as a beautiful dedication. “Hey there, Bubba / Dancing down the aisle of a plane,” she sings, remembering Gary ‘Bubba’ Hurst, a dancer on her 1979 tour. She recalls her frequent guitar player “S Murph, playing his guitar refrain,” after his passing in 1989. She thinks about her Never For Ever sound engineer John Barrett, referring to him tenderly through his nickname as she thinks of “Teddy, Spinning in the chair at Abbey Road.” Another member of her collaborative team remembered is Bill Duffield, who inspired the track ‘Blow Away’ after dying in a tragic accident during Bush’ 1979 tour, singing “Hey there, Bill / Could you turn the lights up?”
There’s also a call out to Michael Powell, the influential British director who co-created the film The Red Shoes, which inspired the record. Powell was a fan of Bush’s and had stated that he wanted her to create the music for one of his films before his death in 1990. As if calling out to her inspiration for approval, she sings, “Hey there, Michael / Do you really love me?”
There’s also another person who now presides over the song’s dedicated remembrance. Bush’s mother passed a year before the album’s release. However, the singer said that she’d already recorded the track and played it to her. “There’s a line in there that mentions a phrase that she used to say, ‘every old sock meets an old shoe,’ and when I recorded it and played it to her, she just thought it was hilarious! She couldn’t stop laughing. She just thought it was so funny that I’d put it into this song,” she explained.
But even after her mother had passed, adding another element of grief to the track, it remained a beloved number to Bush, who saw it as a perfect way to remember these lives and moments that moved her. “I don’t see it as a sad song,” she said, “I think there’s a sort of reflective quality, but I guess I think of it more as a celebration of life.”
