The Ninth Wave Quotes

[rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)]

        Someone asked for info on THe Ninth Wave.  Here are a few of 
the quotes about it.  More quotes are available in the electronic book 
Cloudbusting - Kate Bush in her own words.  (The FAQ at the beggining o 
f the month explains how to get this). 




THE NINTH WAVE (2nd side of Hounds of Love)

        That takes us to the second side, which itself had two or three 
drafts.
        It was very different for me working conceptually across half 
an hour's worth of music, rather than five minutes optimum in a song, 
and it was very interesting but more demanding.  The whole was changed 
by anything you did to one part of the concept.  Once the piece was in 
context with what was happening before and after it, it would change 
its nature dramatically, and it was important that the whole side kept 
a sense of flow and yet kept the interest and kept building and ebbing 
in the right places.
        The side is about someone who is in the water alone for the 
night.   (1985, KBC 18)

        I think, even though a lot of people say that the side is about 
someone drowning, it's more about someone who's not drowning.  And how 
they're there for the night in the water being visited by their past, 
present, and future to keep them awake, to keep them going through 
until the morning until there's hope.  [Big smile]   (1985, MTV)

*       ...a journey for a woman asleep on the water:  There are people 
trying to keep her awake and not let her fall asleep ["And Dream of 
Sheep"]. Then she falls asleep and has a dream -- but wakes up from the 
 dream only to find herself underwater ['Under Ice'].  And then she has 
hallucinations where people are saying 'Wake up, wake up, don't sleep 
anymore,' and trying to get her out of the water.  Except a witch 
finder pushes her right under because he assumes she's a witch ['Waking 
the Witch'].  Soon she travels home and sees her loved ones but they 
can't see her ['Watching You Without Me'] and hopefully it all leads to 
the hope and salvation of the morning ['The Morning Fog'] where 
everything comes to life again.  The sense of loneliness is taken over 
by the sense of someone saving them.   (1985, Pulse)
  
        [Dreams -] that's what the whole second side of Hounds Of Love 
talks about?
        More the struggle brought about by the need to stay awake, when 
it would be so easy to fall asleep.  It's the story of someone who is 
in the sea, at night, and the experiences through which they pass in 
order to emerge a better person by morning.  I'm making a long story 
short.   (1985, Guitares et Claviers)

        It's about someone who is in the water for the night.  Alone in 
the water.  And it's really about their past, present and future coming 
to keep them awake to stop them drowning, to stop them going to sleep 
until the morning comes.
        It isn't immediately obvious, is it, if you listen to the 
album?
        No, I don't think so.  I don't know if that's relevant or 
important though.  I think the most important thing is that people that 
listen to it get something out of it, that they enjoy it.
        Alright.  Now, you seem to have a fascination with water.  I 
noticed that a couple of your favorite movies, Don't Look Now and Cruel 
Sea, which are very much on a watery theme.  So have you a fascination 
for water?
        Yes, yes I do.  I think that everyone does really.  I think 
that Cruel Sea was one film that I particularly mentioned though as 
being a very influential force for this side.  So, it would have to do 
something with water.  [Chuckles]
        And also, there's the Tennyson poem, isn't it?  "The Coming Of 
Arthur"?
        I think, um, a lot of people tend to presume that the whole 
side was written from that quote and, in fact, that it was completely 
the other way around, where, I just needed a title for the whole piece 
and there was nothing within any of the songs, any of the titles that 
was right for it.  so I just started looking through some books to try 
and find a title and found that quote, which seemed to be saying, more 
or less, what I wanted to say, so it was used to express the title.   
(1985, Profile 6)

*       The last album contained a lot of different energies.  It did 
take people to lots of different places very quickly and some people 
found that difficult to take.  I think this album has more of a 
positive energy.  It's a great deal more optimistic.
        I rather think of the album as two separate sides. The A side 
is really called Hounds of Love, and the B side is called The Ninth 
Wave.  The B side is a story, and that took a lot more work - it 
couldn't be longer than half an hour, and it had to flow.  This time 
when you get to the end of one track, what happens after it is very 
affect by what's come before.  It's really difficult to work out the 
dynamics within seven tracks.  The concept took a long time.
        It's about someone who comes off a ship and they've been in the 
water all night by themselves, and it's about that person re-evaluating 
their life from a point which they've never been before.  It's about 
waking up from things and being reborn - going through something and 
coming out the other side very different.
        Sounds suspiciously like The Ancient Mariner revisited...
        Oh no!  It's completely different.  It ends really positively - 
as things always should if you have control.   (1985, Melody Maker)

        Last year we went to Ireland to do some recording in Dublin, 
and took a couple of weeks out.  It was brilliant, because I was 
writing lyrics, and we were right by the sea.  A lot of the time that I 
was thinking about putting this album together, I was right there with 
the water.
        I love the sea.  It's the energy that's so attractive - the 
fact that it's so huge.  And war films, where people would come off the 
ship and be stuck in the water with no sense of where they were or of 
time, like sensory deprivation.  It's got to be ultimately terrifying.  
 (1985, ZigZag)

---
rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)
NetRunner's Paradise BBS, San Diego CA