How I unlocked a withering memory of Wuthering Heights

There's an old phrase which goes like this: "The past is a something-or-other, they thingummy differently there." I can't quite remember the quote. Which is ironic considering the topic of this blog post.

I have grown up with a particular memory of watching something on television. Something that deeply impacted the child Fat Roland because of its stark, haunting style. I recall a shimmering ghost of a woman singing in darkness. Echoes of her image rippling around her like a hall of mirrors. I have never been able to pinpoint what the video was, but it stayed with me.

The title of this blog post is a spoiler. The video was a promo for the UK release of Kate Bush's 1978 single Wuthering Heights. In it, she dances like an apparition amid a haze of filters and fog. I was a wee bairn, and I would have been staring hypnotised at the moving images, with little concept of who Kate Bush was, nor indeed what pop music was. And since then, I think I've only seen a different promo video, produced for the US market, with Bush in a red dress fannying about in a field.

It was perhaps the first pop video I ever paid attention to, despite its details eluding me until now. For years, I had misremembered it as a video by Mary Wilson from the Supremes. I'm sure she sang in spangly costumes in dramatic stage lighting, a similar effect for a child's mind – but it never felt quite right.

It was 808 State's Graham Massey talking at a book launch that helped unlock the memory. He also was impacted by the song, and it was while he was describing the images that the memory of the video finally properly resurfaced. We won't be the only people awed by the video: it spent four weeks at number one, after all. The single was replaced at the top of the charts by Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs, a song which ruffles the same nascent memory feathers as Bush.

So there you go. This is a blog post about nothing much. I remembered something. Big deal. But it goes to show the power of the pop video, and there's a bigger thinkpiece to be written about the loss of that culture in a world of streaming. But no-one comes to this blog to do thinking. That would be silly.

Now if I could only recall where I put my house keys and/or remember to use WeTransfer links before they expire and/or call to mind my purpose in life, then I'd be sorted.

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Further Fats: Eight tracks that deserve a Running Up That Hill revival (2022)