Does anyone have any idea what the lyrics of this song are about? I know that cloudbusting is psychic control of the weather, but other than that, I'm confused.

This song was written by Kate Bush after she read "A Book of Dreams" by Peter Reich. Peter was the son of Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst who also used a machine called a cloudbuster to make rain. In 1954 the FDA ordered that Wilhelm Reich's books be banned and destroyed. Wilhelm died in prison after being arrested for contempt of court.

If you watch the video for this song it appears to be what anais9 says from the perspective of Reich's daughter. I dont even know if he had a daughter but that is what is portrayed in these lyrics and the video.

The video clip to this one is up there with the best videos of Bjork, Janet Jackson or the Talking Heads: beautifully shot, tight on the music, and the interplay between daughter and father (played by Donald Sutherland) brings it alive.
From one point it's a tribute to women as artists, the right to follow your own vision (she succeeds in bringing together the clouds and making them give), but it also deals with overcoming sorrowful things: her dad is distant, and finally taken away from her (the look on Kate's face in the video when he disappears in the agent's car is one you never forget). An amazing song.

Corrections: "Everytime it mins" should be "But every time it rains" and the final line is "Your son's coming out" ( I think ther's a pun here on son/sun just like in Shakespeare's "this sun of York" (Richard III)

W H Reich 'discovered' Orgone energy, and made a machine which he claimed he could collect this energy, an orgone accumulator. It was - I believe - to do with the sale and marketing lciams of this machine that he came to grief with the law. Orgonon was also the name given to a body of Aristotle's works by his followers. So dreams of Orgonon can be understood as an alluision to this new form of energy which Reich claimed to have discovered. It could also be viewed as a reference to Reich's banned opus.

The yo-yo that is buried does seem to be a refence to one of the banned books: it is dangerous to read because it is banned, but this is part of the thrill of it. Why the yo-yo is used as a metaphor is a mystery to me. Anyone have any ideas?

The 'son is coming up': seems to me to suggest that the daughter will continue her father's legacy, or perhaps it is meant to suggest the time when Reich's work will be rediscovered (he stipuiated in his will that his books should be put in a sealed container and left thus for 50 years).

Is there anything in Reich's work? As a student of physics I have to say I am highly dubious of orgon energy. There are plenty of forms of electromagnetic energy, many of which are used in medicine (from X rays, to radiotherapy, even to those wrist bands people wear to stop car sickness) there are sure to be many ways in which known forms of energy can have as yet unknown effetcs on the body. There seems to me to be no independent evidence of organon energy. It seems to have little explanatory power except in some accounts of the positive effect of Reich's machine, which are perhaps better explained by the placebo effect.

But it is a great song and does not need to be seen as an appraisal of Reich's work by Bush, but rather a study in daughter's love for a father.

What previous people have said is pretty much right on, except what some of you have said about the video. The video is about Wilhelm Reich and his son Peter. The song is based on the book by Peter Reich, hence it's a father-son thing, not a daughter-father thing. Kate is playing the part of a young boy in the video,hence the really short hair. Great song, one of the best of the eighties.

I find the backstory on Wilhelm Reich fascinating. It seems the research on him out there is really divided. It seems like most people either think he was a nut or think he was a genious. I'm still researching.

Re: the reference to yo-yo's...
During the early-mid twentieth century, some glow-in-the-dark things such as toys and watch and clock faces were painted with what turned out to be a dangerous radioactive substance. I'm not a physicist so don't hold me to it, but I want to say it was radium. Maybe J R or some one can clarify that point (I'll check into it too). So it's possible that the reference there is to a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo.
There's also the possible symbolic reference to dangerous feelings that the main character feels the need to keep hidden.

I don't know about what the song 'really' means but for me it's just such an positive sounding song. Anytime I feel sick or depressed I just switch this on and it helps me alot.
Probably because of the lines:
"I just know that something good is gonna happen,
I don't know when, but just saying it could even make it happen"

Yes - in the song and video - Kate is playing the part of the son, Peter Reich. I believe it's about being positive, having courage and becoming an adult.

The father is a brave scientist who gets put away because of his rain-machine. The relationship with his son was very close and his son looked up to him. His father was trying to do something good in the world and face up to those in power. To make a new invention you have to struggle against those in power. To do this you need inner-strength, confidence and courage.

As a contrast, the son hides anything that he loves but finds dangerous like his yo-yo. Looking down from the hill from a safe vantage point - he can't understand why his father is a threat to the powers that be. So whilst his father was, in his opinon, on top of the world in terms of greatest - the people in power crawl up below and drag his father back down to earth and imprison him.

Nevertheless his son won't forget the inspiration his father has given him. Although he hid his yo-yo because he thought it was dnagerous when he was younger, he has also put away his childhood and is now ready to grow up and face the world. Therfore instead of hiding away and forgetting his father - his is either going to carry on his father's work or tell the world about his father's work. This will take courage. Therefore he is coming out (from whatever he is hiding behind).

This song is based on Wilhelm Reich arrest. As a scientist he tried to measure the male orgasm and believed this was a type of energy present in all life forms which he called "orgone.". He built cloudbusters which he belived could manipulate streams of orgone energy to produce rain. His 280 acre estate in Maine was called Orgonon. He was banned from orgone-therapy equipment across a state line and was jailed for 2 years when he failed to do so. He died in prison.

this song is just so amazing.

Kate is playing Peter in the song.

This is why she is dressed as she is and her hair is short.

She is not being a daughter; that wouldn't make sense.

Slightly at a tangent, the video was shot at White Horse Hill near Uffington in Oxfordshire, England. The 3000 year old white horse can be seen a few times. It was the perfect place to film this.

Yes I love this song, I love the video. I love the way the song seems long, you can really get into it and the string instruments bound on and on.

To me on one level it's about hero worship and being near your father. Enjoying traditional beautiful moments of fun with Dad's. You know like when Dad made you sledge (our cloud machine) and you went out on the hills and used it with him. Those kind of outdoor adventures kids would traditionally specifically have with Dads. That you can look back on and love.

Also I like the contrast between the individuality and creativity of what the father and son are doing and the faceless beureaucrats of society out to stop them. But do they in fact have good reason?

It's "Every time it rains"
And not "Every time it mins"

On top of the world
Looking over the edge...

I'm on the top of the world
looking down on creation...

"Top of the World" is the name of a 1973 song by the Carpenters. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973, becoming the duo's second U.S. number-one single.
Released: September 17, 1973
Writers: Richard Carpenter; John Bettis

see more:
The Carpenters - Top Of The World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq5pLi0huhw

-----

'Neither science nor fiction, A Book of Dreams inhabits its own special and highly vulnerable reality. The truth of what young Reich says he experienced is rooted in the timeless mysteries of fathers and sons, where the literal and the mythic cannot always be distinguished. Peter Reich the man makes no effort to do so. Molded by the overwhelming fact that the world did not accept and love his father as unquestioningly as he did, he cannot and does not want to intellectualize his past... His book took six drafts and endless soul searches. "My father was afraid that his wives and children would write books about him, and they did," he says. "Talk about guilt." Guilty or not, this book is deeply touching. Nearly every line seems balanced fearfully between devotion and the possibility of betrayal.' - TIME, Monday, May 14, 1973.

Google: Wilhelm Reich was a controversial figure. He believed that traumatic experiences blocked the natural flow of life-energy in the body, leading to physical and mental disease. His work on the link between human sexuality and neuroses emphasized "orgastic potency" as the foremost criterion for psycho-physical health.
Reich built "orgone accumulators" to harness orgone, which he believed was responsible for emotions and sexuality. Wild rumors spread that his "sex boxes" caused uncontrollable erections.

Is Side One of HOL thematically linked?
Is it about the psychopathology of 'lovesickness'?

RUTH - 'Cathy & Heathcliff' - Though RUTH is a much darker version of the classic original... And of course at this time KB also recorded the "Wuthering Heights (new vocal)" version to appear on the TWS (1986);
- see RUTH thread:
http://katebush.proboards6.com/?board=ho....ead=1714&page=2

HOL - 'Hamlet & Ophelia'/Night of the Demon? Ophelia losing her purity?
- "Do you think I meant cuntry matters?"/"I think nothing, my lord!"
- The inside sleeve picture of KB is her as Ophelia (her as "The Hogsmill Ophelia"?) ...
- Kate Bush owns the "The Hogsmill Ophelia" (a painting of a cracked doll drowning in sewage) - http://gaffa.org/dreaming/tnw_gen.html
- In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia will sing some "mad" little songs about death and a maiden losing her virginity. She will say "good night", exit and later be found drowned (TNW);
- See HOL thread: http://katebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi....ead=1715&page=2

MSFC - Psycho (1960)?
- Or a mother concealing 'Child abuse'?;


CLOUDBUSTING

Wilhelm & Peter Reich (father/son)... Child abuse recovery/'coming out' to tell the story?
I still dream of OrgAn-on I wake up crying
You're making rain And you're just in reach...
You're like my yo-yo...
What made it special made it dangerous...
So I bury it And forget... (repression)
Oh, God, Daddy
I won't forget... (therapeutic/associative recall)

The sun's coming out
Your son's coming out... ('Peter Reich' is coming out of the dark to tell his difficult story).

On the sleeve, KB sends "a big thank you to Peter Reich."


KOTE BUSH & THE PHILASAPHER'S STANE... Freudian Slip?

In the documentary COME BACK KATE, Peter Manchester, a Professor of Philosophy and Speculative Theology, tells his story of writing to Kate Bush. Mr Manchester wrote to Kate informing her that Peter Reich followed his father's practice in spelling Orgonon with an 'O' from Orgone energy, whereas her lyrics for Cloudbusting write Organon with an 'A'. Mr Manchester considers that Kate may have perpetuated a deliberate pun with reference to the logical treatises of Aristotle, but concludes that he has probably caught Kate in a spelling error. Kate Bush wrote back to him.

"Dear Peter. Thank you for your extremely interesting letter. I enjoyed it very much. I am afraid the 'Organon' misspelling is a mistake. And we were aware of this as soon as we saw the copy. It is very difficult to correct everything, and this [Organ-on] one slipped through my hands. I'm sorry the spelling mistake annoyed you. It annoyed me painfully, until I got a letter from a 43 year-old Professor of Philosophy and Speculative Theology and he broke the spell! All the best, Kate Bush."

Further, Kate Bush had addressed the letter to "Mr Peter Monchester"
- Mon, not Man...

Peter Manchester: "I got to play with Kate Bush!"

But if CLOUDBUSTING treats child abuse or the psychopathology of lovesickeness, then maybe Kate deliberately made an ironic spelling mistake...

Organ On... Organ Off...
Maybe KaTe was being extremely intentional? ...

John Carder Bush, when asked directly about the spelling, replied, "It could be intentional."
http://gaffa.org/dreaming/hol_clb2.html

see more:
Come Back Kate (Kate Bush documentary pt. 1/6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmloRo5VoOI


THE BIG SKY

HAMLET:
Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? ...
Methinks it is like a weasel... Or like a whale? ...

THE BIG SKY - Psychotherapeutic intermission? Primal Music/dance/Scream? ... Screen? ...reply... ...question... - Free-associative projection...

We pause for the jet...
We're looking at the big sky
Honey!
You want my reply
What was the question
Mm, Yeah!
I was looking at the big sky...

Maybe TBS is a pause for the noise of trauma?
- missing; I never go in now ["orgone accumulator/sex box"/etc?]

Is TBS a need for constant distraction, constant focus on an ever-changing bigger picture? ... Like watching the fish at the dentists' ... Obsessive-compulsive cleaning the cobwebs of the mind? ... The desperate need for fresh air? ...Cloud-busting!
Maybe TBS is psychoanalytical, with slip-references to 'not being understood' while pointing elsewhere?

'That Cloud...' & The Rorschach inkblot test - 'It has been employed in diagnosing underlying thought disorder and differentiating psychotic from nonpsychotic thinking in cases where the patient is reluctant to openly admit to psychotic thinking.' (wiki).
Cloud - Noah - drowning? ... The Ninth Wave?

'It is undoubtedly significant that side 1 ends with Bush making rain in "Cloudbusting," an act in which the waters are at her mercy. In contrast, Bush is at the whim of the drowning pool on side 2, as if her rainmaking got out of hand...' (On Record, Frith & Goodwin, 1990; pg 461.)

CLOUDBUSTING - A Book of Dreams

Kate Bush: "It must have been nearly ten years ago, when I used to go up to the Dance Center in London, that I went into Watkins' Occult Bookshop for a look, and there was this book and it said, A Book of Dreams, by Peter Reich. I'd never heard of his father, Wilhelm Reich, but I just thought it was going 'Hello, Hello,' so I just picked up the book and read it and couldn't believe that I'd just found this book on the shelf. I mean it was so inspirational, very magical, with that energy there. So when I wrote and recorded the song, although it was about nine years later, I was nevertheless psyched up by the book, the image of the boy's father being taken away and locked up by the government just for building a machine to try to make rain. It was such a beautiful book!"
http://gaffa.org/reaching/i85_swa.html

CLOUDBUSTING - Watkins Book Shop

Long established British bookshop specializing in occultism, mysticism, comparative religion, parapsychology, esoteric psychology, and related topics, founded by John M. Watkins in 1894. Watkins was a friend of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and other leading occult figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The shop in Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, London, was a meeting place for such famous and varied individuals as A. E. Waite, William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley. Watkins also published texts in the fields of occultism and mysticism. All through the prewar occult boom of the 1920s and 1930s and the more recent occult explosion of the 1960s, the Watkins Book Shop has been a central focus of occultism, with a strong emphasis on mysticism and Eastern religion. As familiar to British students of occultism and mysticism as the Weiser Bookshop in New York.
http://www.answers.com/topic/watkins-book-shop


Aleister Crowley... Madame Blavatsky... Madame Maria Nanky... Isis Unveiled... The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn... Produced by Golden Dawn Productions...

Lots of occult references... Then to find a quote from Kate remembering and referencing the time and place where she found A Book of Dreams... and that place being an historically recognized hub of mystical and spiritual possession...

And 'Aerial' is of cause a Golden Dawn solar production! ...

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (or, more commonly, the Golden Dawn) was a magical order of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was possibly the single greatest influence on twentieth century western occultism. The Golden Dawn system is based on an initiated hierarchal order similar to that of a Masonic Lodge, however women were admitted on an equal basis with men. Some well known members included William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley, etc...

From http://gaffa.org/dreaming/hol_clb2.html:

The following quotes are more or less reflective of the quotes from Kate on this song. For more detailed quotes see the book Cloudbusting.

KATE: The last song is called "Cloudbusting," and this was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It's about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child's point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a "cloudbuster"; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy - as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then - and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn't allowed to keep it. But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden, so that he would placate his father but could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It's a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo - how special it was - and yet how dangerous it was considered to be. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people); and he loved how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve it whenever he wanted to play with it. But there's nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it's very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child's eyes, but told by a sad adult. (1985, KBC 18)

"A Book of Dreams" is a facsinating book, I read it years ago. One very interesting thing about "Cloudbusting" is that it is not the only song based on "A Book Of Dreams." Patti Smith's "Birdland" (from her first album) is also based on the same book. Smith's song focuses on one part of the book when the boy is walking outdoors on the grounds of the family home after the father's funeral. The boy looks up and sees his father alive in a spaceship. There are many parts in the book that are surreal, even though on the surface it's the son's real memoirs. I recommend that anyone who likes this song check out Patt's song as well.