[ed. I watched an interview yesterday with Kate Bush talking about, among other things, the making of this video (Cloudbusting). I knew it was in some way related to Wilhelm Reich (written by his son Peter), but couldn't remember the title, so did a little Googling (A Book of Dreams). Wilhelm Riech was definitely an interesting guy and way ahead of his time:]
"If you’ve seen the video for “Cloudbusting”, released 30 years ago this month, you’ll know that it’s a cinematic, oddly moving tale of a young boy, played by Kate Bush in a ragamuffin wig, and his idyllic adventures with his dad, played by Donald Sutherland, who is working on a giant ray-gun contraption that can shoot at clouds to make it rain. At some point in the video, a group of men in suits arrive to snatch the boy’s father away, but not before the boy can reach into his dad’s jacket pocket and pull out a slim volume called “A Book of Dreams”.
It sounds like fiction of the most fanciful kind, but in fact, the video – and book – are drawn entirely from life. Written by Peter Reich and published in 1973, A Book of Dreams is an extraordinarily touching account of a father, one Wilhelm Reich, as seen through the eyes of his doting son. Reich senior was a controversial figure in the field of psychoanalysis. On the one hand, his pioneering work laid the blueprint for the sexual revolution of the 1960s, attracting interest from Albert Einstein and Norman Mailer, among others. On the other, his ‘orgone accumulator’ invention – a metal box which Reich claimed harnessed the sexual energy of his patients for alleged benefits to their health – brought an injunction from the US authorities that would eventually land him in prison, where he died at the age of 60 in 1957. It’s the moment of his arrest that provides the book and the video with its heartbreaking focal point, as a child’s love for his father bumps up against the impassive forces of McCarthy-era moral panic.
“(My dad) was the father of body therapy and the sexual revolution,” says Reich of his father. “In Germany in the 1930s, he led a political movement that called for, among other things, the abolition of laws against abortion and homosexuality, free birth-control advice and contraceptives, health protection of mothers and children, nurseries in factories and in other large employment centres, the abolition of laws prohibiting sex education and home leave for prisoners.”
Another of Reich’s inventions, of course, was the Cloudbuster, the fantastical rainmaking machine that features in Kate Bush’s video." (...)
Peter Reich: “At one point in the video, the federal agents in black suits pull from a file cabinet a newspaper article about a rainmaker. In fact, during a drought in 1953, blueberry growers hired Dr Reich to make it rain in blueberry country along the Maine coast. I was along for that rain-making operation in the summer of 1953 and helped crank the levers. No rain was forecast. A most vivid memory: being aroused in the early morning hours just before dawn and led to an open door to observe a steady rain. The incident with federal agents coming on our property occurred a couple of years later, that day in August 1956 when I ran up that hill. That was the summer the government burned several tonnes of Wilhelm Reich’s books and equipment.” ~ The story behind Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting video (Dazed).
[ed. See also: Inheritance: Peter Reich's A Book of Dreams (1973). Also, if you enjoy playing guitar a little (as I do), here's an excellent instruction video that I found. It's not particularly hard but a little tricky in spots, especially at tempo. Enjoy:]
[ed. See also: Inheritance: Peter Reich's A Book of Dreams (1973). Also, if you enjoy playing guitar a little (as I do), here's an excellent instruction video that I found. It's not particularly hard but a little tricky in spots, especially at tempo. Enjoy:]
