Old Saint Nicholas up the chimney,
Just a-popping up in my memory…
The white city, she is so beautiful
Upon the black-soot icicled roofs…
A Merry Christmas to everyone who might have found something interesting here at WhistlesintheWind, followers old and new, and the faithful. It’s much appreciated!
Two or three years before Kate Bush’s imagination was fired by the Brontes, another songwriter had woven Charlotte Brontë’s Villette into a wonderfully understated folk song. Catherine Howe now has some well-deserved recognition – thanks to the reissue of her classic 1971 album ‘What a Beautiful Place’ in the mid-2000s. She has written some exceptional songs, and here’s one she revisited for the album ‘An English Tale’ in 2010 (the original version on the 1976 album Silent Mother Nature has a harpsichord accompaniment).
My brother loved Kate Bush. I remember the first album, The Kick Inside, arriving in our house sometime in March 1978, and no older than the decade itself, for the next few years I was fascinated, confused and enlightened by a stream of images and lyrics that drifted round the house like an intoxicating mist. Of all the images, it was the ones by Nick Price which I liked the most, particularly ‘December Will Be Magic Again’, but that’s no good for Spring.
Nick Price designed the artwork for the Tour of Life programme – the ‘Sky Lady’ image.
He also did the Bosch-like cover for Never for Ever, explained here in Kate’s own words from an interview in 1980:
On the cover of Never For Ever Nick takes us on an intricate journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people and things with our desires and problems. These black and white thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it’s for you to bring them to life…
‘Lord of the Reedy River’ was a b-side and the single sleeve had a fantastically enigmatic swan on the reverse. I can’t explain why, but I always associate this image with Midsummer’s Eve.
I’m a little pleased to find this blog subconsciously linking things up for me – having searched out the Sky Lady images today, I can see where a seed of the Blodeuwedd post came from…
