Kate Bush’s fifth studio album was Hounds of Love which is considered by many music critics to be her best album, and it’s regularly voted one of the greatest albums of all time. The lead single, “Running Up That Hill,” widely regarded as one of her greatest hits, helped sell more than 1.1 million copies of the album which achieved double platinum status.
The shot of Kate Bush reclining on the Hounds of Love album cover was taken by her brother, John Carder Bush, who included plenty of funny outtakes from the photo session. The ‘hounds of love’ on the album cover were her own two dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, and it took all day to get them to settle down. When the final picture was taken, one of the pooches actually fell asleep on her. On the album sleeve notes Kate gives “A big woof to Bonnie & Clyde.”
Here’s the amazing story behind the Hounds of Love album cover shoot, as told by John Carder Bush:
“There had been quite a few ideas for this cover that we tried out in rough, and then abandoned. The feel of the photo was in the air around the music that was being finalized: color and emotional pace became clear first.
“Elaborate environments, such as forests, mountains, palaces, etc.––places for the Hounds to run that would suit their style––were rejected as too busy. The cover had to have a strong, full image of Kate, as it was the first for three years, and landscapes, however beautiful, tend to dwarf people. It’s fine to use the big outdoors for bands because you can spread them all over it, but for a beautiful solo lady it doesn’t work. So we decided on a close-up of Kate and the dogs, and a made-up background.
“There was a feeling for daylight rather than studio, so we went round and discussed it with the dogs. While Kate was chatting to them in their back garden, I snapped away. But when we looked at the processed results, daylight was too cold, there wasn’t enough diffusion of the shades of color and the environment. It just didn’t feel right. I had been working on a series of “body poems” in which I was writing my poems on people and then photographing them, and it seemed like a good idea, but when we tried it, apart from Kate looking like the tattooed lady from a circus, there was much too much activity in the small frame, and the eye just wandered around too much. But the dogs were wonderful, and did everything they were asked too.
“It was becoming clearer. We had to do it in the studio, without the writing, and with the lights set in a delicate, pastel way. So I constructed a rough, made sure all the cables were well pinned down and anything likely to be knocked over out of the way, and then phoned up the dogs and asked them over for another tryout.
“We let them explore for an hour or so, and then Kate settled down on the floor for an overhead shot.
“An hour later we had managed to persuade them to lie down next to Kate. Not surprising that they took so long, as they are not trained dogs, and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I had a minute to hoover up as much as I could before they were off again, tending to use Kate as a launching ramp for their leaps and cavorting.
“After they had left, we seriously considered trying feline friends, but Cats of Love wasn’t quite the same at all. But on looking at the shots we had, there was potential, and we decided we would persevere. And the best thing seemed to be to take the studio to the dogs, have another rehearsal and, if that was a shambles, think again. Also another rehearsal would mean I could try out more variations in the lighting and the set. So a week later I took my studio to the dogs and constructed a scaffolding for the overhead shot; a bed of lilac net and silks for Kate; and around her, a tent of lilac material to reflect and diffuse. And when I looked through the lens at the little room, it looked like an illustration from Dulac’s Arabian Nights.
“The Hounds had been taken out for a long run and then fed, because we thought that if they felt dozy long enough they would want somewhere to lie down and sleep it off. Kate did her hair in an approximation of how it would look in the final shot, and then settled down in the tent. Up came the lights, and in came the dogs––noses first––and after a few minutes of looking around, yawned and went to sleep next to her. I had all the time I wanted to explore the possibilities.
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