Cloudbusting

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 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.

Interesting to note that the final phrases have the son 'coming out' (of the closet as possibly homosexual)

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.

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"