How ‘The Day of the Jackal’ inspired Kate Bush song ‘James and the Cold Gun’ and defined her career
Kate Bush is rightly being given the flowers she deserves. Despite preferring to keep her spotlight time limited to the odd moments of pure joyful artistic brilliance, the singer has once again found worldwide fame as her song ‘Running Up That Hill’ swept the globe thanks to its inclusion in the Netflix series Stranger Things. While the 1985 hit is undoubtedly worthy of such a phenomenon, focusing only on that track does a massive disservice to Kate Bush.
Throughout her career, Bush has adopted a sense of creativity that few artists can keep up with. To find contemporaries in the visual, sonic and theatrical spaces that she so clearly dominated from her emergence in the 1970s is difficult in itself. Still, artists such as Andy Warhol and her hero, David Bowie, are two who can possibly join her mantle. Perhaps what is even more impressive, and casts a shadow on the former visionaries, is that Bush had this command of her own artistry almost from the very beginning.
In fact, before she released her landmark debut single ‘Wuthering Heights,’ Bush was already perfecting her unique take on pop music with her song ‘James and The Cold Gun’. Not only was the track lyrically dense and flecked with the kind of performance that is usually reserved for dramatic societies, but the song was also a precursor to that debut release as it took inspiration from The Day of the Jackal. While many have suggested the song was inspired by James Bond, perhaps owing to the title’s closeness to the famous tagline ‘Man with the Golden Gun’, it was actually inspired by the film from 1973. While many people thought it might be Bond, the actual identity of James is a non-starter, as Bush once revealed in her fan club newsletter: “The answer is: nobody. When I wrote the song, James was the right name for it.”
Using cinema would become a unique standpoint that Bush would employ again and again in her songwriting, in particular, using the film adaptations of her favourite books to provide a sense of imagery for the track. The film sees Edward Fox, the would-be assassin of French President Charles De Gaulle, attempting to take the leader’s life. The film clearly made an impression on the young Bush, as she would note this as one of her very first compositions to be played on stage with the KT Bush Band.
Such vivid sonic pictures would become a mainstay of Bush’s work. Right through her musical journey, including ‘Hounds of Love’, Bush would make many references to the films she loved. But it wasn’t only on record that Bush flexed her cinematic muscles, on stage too. Even before the help of legendary choreographer Lindsay Kemp, Bush was keen to enact her vision on stage. Bandmate Brian Bath remembered of the original stage production for the song: “Rob got a dry ice machine from somewhere. We used that on stage for ‘James And The Cold Gun’, and it looked great. We had a bit of a show going! Kate did a costume change, she’d put on a bloomin’ Western cowgirl dress for the second set! The theatrical thing was starting to get there.”
Another bandmate, Del Palmer, recalled: “She was just brilliant; she used to wear this big long white robe with coloured ribbons on or a long black dress with big flowers in her hair. She did the whole thing with the gun, and [the audience] just loved it. She’d go around shooting people.” Perhaps owing to the audience reaction, the song was initially tipped by EMI to be Bush’s debut single, but the singer protested and ensured ‘Wuthering Heights’ would be her first mark on the world.
While ‘Wuthering Heights’, rightly, will be forever remembered as Bush’s defining moment of explosive introduction, ‘James and The Cold Gun’ was the foreword in Bush’s entire career.
