Heads We're Dancing

[Lori]

You talked me into the game of chance
It was '39, before the music started
When you walked up to me and you said
"Hey, heads we dance"
Well, I didn't know who you were
Until I saw the morning paper
There was a picture of you
A picture of you 'cross the front page
It looked just like you, just like you in every way
But it couldn't be true
It couldn't be true
You stepped out of a stranger

They say that the Devil is a charming man
And just like you I bet he can dance
And he's coming up behind in his long
Tailed black coat dance
All tails in the air
But the penny landed with its head dancing

A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform
Standing with your head held high
Hot down to the floor
But it couldn't be you
It couldn't be you
It's a picture of Hitler

He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do
Do you want to dance?"

Well, I couldn't see what was to be
So I just stood there laughing

A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform
Standing with your head held high
Hot down to the floor
But it couldn't be you
It couldn't be you
It's a picture of Hitler

He go "Mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh"
He go "Mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh"
He go "Mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh
"Heads we're dancing"

[brillo69]

You talked me into the game of chance.
It was '39, before the music started,
When you walked up to me and you said,
"Hey, heads we dance."
Well, I didn't know who you were
Until I saw the morning paper:
There was a picture of you
A picture of you 'cross the front page.
It looked just like you, just like you in every way.
But it couldn't be true.
It couldn't be true.
You stepped out of a stranger.

They say that the Devil is a charming man.
And just like you I bet he can dance.
And he's coming up behind in his long
Tailed black coat dance,
All tails in the air.
But the penny landed with its head dancing.

A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform,
Standing with your head held high,
Hot down to the floor.
But it couldn't be you.
It couldn't be you.
It's a picture of Hitler.

He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do--
Do you want to dance?"

Well, I couldn't see what was to be,
So I just stood there laughing.

A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform,
Standing with your head held high,
Hot down to the floor.
But it couldn't be you.
It couldn't be you.
It's a picture of Hitler.

He go "Mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh"
He go "Mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh"
He go "Mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh--
"Heads we're dancing."

[~Passion~]

But it couldn't be you.
It couldn't be you.
It's a picture of Hitler.


What is the matter with me? Why did that lyric strike me as humorous? Must be all the caffeine talking. LOL

Kate has a way of words like no one else, however, I am certain this has already been clarified.
You know what it reminds me of? Like the wicked man who always gets the chicks. Take Severus Snape for example. He's my personal favorite character from Harry Potter because he's so incredibly gorgeous and wickedly charming. *drool* We all have a little evil within our souls.

Heads, you're it!

[CopyOfCpt (just say Cor)]

erm... I'm not sure if I should take Passions reaction seriously...

The song is about how the view on a person can change radically once you get more background information. She once told in an interview the idea for this song came from a story told to her about somebody who had a wonderfull evening at a party with a person. She thought he was intelligent, witty, had a good humor and spent a good evening talking with the guy.
A few days later she was told that that man was in fact Oppenheimer... and she found that thought revolting.

[mizzshy]

That's an interesting idea...

[suntorytime]

passion said:

But it couldn't be you.
It couldn't be you.
It's a picture of Hitler.


What is the matter with me? Why did that lyric strike me as humorous? Must be all the caffeine talking. LOL

What strikes me as humurous is what comes next:

He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do
Do you want to dance?"

Can you imagine Hitler singing that? xD

[Al Truest]

suntorytime said:

passion said:

But it couldn't be you.
It couldn't be you.
It's a picture of Hitler.


What is the matter with me? Why did that lyric strike me as humorous? Must be all the caffeine talking. LOL

What strikes me as humorous is what comes next:

He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do
Do you want to dance?"

Can you imagine Hitler singing that? xD

I believe he was a stutterer.

[suntorytime]

altruest said:

suntorytime said:

What strikes me as humorous is what comes next:

He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do"
He go "Do-do-do-do-do
Do you want to dance?"

Can you imagine Hitler singing that? xD

I believe he was a stutterer.

Ha ha ha yeah

[tannis]

Kate Bush on HEADS WE'RE DANCING

KB: "It's the darkest track on the album and not the sort of song I'd write now [Defensive Pessimism?]. The devil's task is to tempt and temptation has to be attractive. Hitler is the closest personification of evil and I mention him not to glorify but to point out he was a man who fooled a tremendous amount of intelligent people and there's no way you could blame anyone for being fooled by that man..."

"Love, Trust and Hitler" (1989)

gaffa.org/reaching/i89_tr.html[/right]...Nuremberg found a way! ...

The Trial of the Major War Criminals sentenced twelve defendants to death by hanging.
The Doctors' Trial sentenced seven defendants to death by hanging.


THE ULTIMATE ONE: Kate Bush or The Devil?

"That's a very dark song, not funny at all! ... I wrote the song two years ago, and in lots of ways I wouldn't write a song like it now. I'd really hate it if people were offended by this...But it was all started by a family friend, years ago, who'd been to dinner and sat next to this guy who was really fascinating, so charming. They sat all night chatting and joking. And next day he found out it was Oppenheimer. And this friend was horrified because he really despised what the guy stood for.
"I understood the reaction, but I felt a bit sorry for Oppenheimer. He tried to live with what he'd done, and actually, I think, committed suicide.*
"But I was so intrigued by this idea of my friend being so taken by this person until they knew who they were, and then it completely changing their attitude.
"So I was thinking, what if you met the Devil? The Ultimate One: charming, elegant, well spoken.
"Then it turned into this whole idea of a girl being at a dance and this guy coming up, cocky and charming, and she dances with him. Then a couple of days later she sees in the paper that it was Hitler. Complete horror: she was that close, perhaps could've changed history.
"Hitler was very attractive to women because he was such a powerful figure, yet such an evil guy. I'd hate to feel I was glorifying the situation, but I do know that whereas in a piece of film it would be quite acceptable, in a song it's a little bit sensitive."
"In the Realm of the Senses" (1989)
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_nme2.html

* Oppenheimer, "the father of the atomic bomb", died from throat cancer in 1967, at age 62. His daughter, Toni, committed suicide on the island of St John in the US Virgin Islands in 1977, at age 33. Despite Oppenheimer's remorseful, or at least conflicted, attitudes, Oppenheimer was a vocal supporter of using the first atomic weapons on "built-up areas" in the days before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (wiki).

[tannis]

A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform,
Standing with your head held high,
Hot down to the floor.
But it couldn't be you.
It couldn't be you.
It's a picture of Hitler...

The protagonist sees a picture of the man she danced with in the morning paper, standing with his head held high. He is dressed in [Nazi] uniform, which the protagonist regards as "hot down to the floor". 'Allo 'Allo! It's a picture of Hitler...

On "Heads We're Dancing," a young girl meets a charming stranger at a dance in 1939 and discovers she is conversing with Hitler.
KB: "I was thinking of the devil incarnate, the ultimate evil," she said. "It was inspired by a friend of mine who had been to this dinner and sat next to this guy and found him absolutely fascinating, intelligent and well-educated. He asked the next day, 'Who was that?' and was told it was (atomic bomb developer) J. Robert Oppenheimer. My friend went back in horror. He said he would have behaved completely differently if he had realized who it was."
Valley Herald, Nov. 17 1989
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_ap.html

When speaking of HWD, KaTe often mentions Oppenheimer and Hitler. But is KaTe singing "It's a picture of Hitler"? Of course, the printed lyric is "Hitler". But she could be singing "It's a picture of Himmler". Is HWD a case of killing two Nazis with one song?! ...

"A proper man loves a woman on three levels: as a dear child who is to be chided, perhaps even punished on account of her unreasonableness, and who is protected and taken care of because one loves her. Then as wife and as a loyal, understanding comrade who fights through life with one, who stands faithfully at one’s side without hemming in or chaining the man and his spirit. And as a goddess whose feet one must kiss, who gives one strength through her feminine wisdom and childlike, pure sanctity that does not weaken in the hardest struggles and in the ideal hours gives one heavenly peace..."
~ Heinrich Himmler.

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazi National Socialist politician and head of the Schutzstaffel (SS). He was one of the most powerful men in Hitler's entourage, together with Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels. As Reichsführer-SS he oversaw all police and security forces, including the Gestapo and the massive growth of the SS. In 1933, Himmler ordered the SS to begin wearing black uniforms. To Himmler, the SS was at one and the same time the resurrection of the ancient Order of the Teutonic Knights with himself as grand master.

KB: "So I was thinking, what if you met the Devil? The Ultimate One: charming, elegant, well spoken..."
NME, "In the Realm of the Senses " (1989)

The small, diffident man who looked more like a humble bank clerk than Germany's police dictator, whose pedantic demeanour and 'exquisite courtesy' fooled one English observer into stating that 'nobody I met in Germany is more normal', was a curious mixture of bizarre, romantic fantasy and cold, conscienceless efficiency. Himmler was the main architect of the Holocaust. In 1933, he had set up the first concentration camp in Dachau and in the next few years, with Hitler's encouragement, greatly extended the range of persons who qualified for internment in the camps. Himmler's philosophical mysticism, his cranky obsessions with mesmerism, the occult, herbal remedies and homeopathy went hand in hand with a narrow-minded fanatical racialism and commitment to the Aryan' myth.

As overseer of concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen (death squads), Himmler coordinated the killing of millions of Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma, many prisoners of war, and perhaps another three to four million Poles, communists, or other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live.

From the outset of his career as Reichsfuhrer of the SS, Himmler had introduced the principle of racial selection and special marriage laws which would ensure the systematic coupling of people of "high value." His promotion of illegitimacy by establishing the State-registered human stud farm known as Lebensborn, where young girls selected for their perfect Nordic traits could procreate with SS men and their offspring were better cared for than in maternity homes for married mothers, reflected Himmler's obsession with creating a race of "supermen". [Many high-ranking Nazis admired parts of Nietzsche's philosophy and sought to adapt it to fit their own visions of super-human beings and an Aryan "master race" (Herrenvolk).]

Shortly before the end of the war, he offered to surrender to the Allies if he were spared from prosecution. After being arrested by British forces, he committed suicide before he could be questioned.

Heads We're Dancing
KT: This is the darkest song on the album and I think, in some ways, it's not a song I would write now. But I had a friend who went to this dinner, years ago. He was sitting next to this guy all evening and they were chatting --- they had some of the most incredible conversations: he was so impressed with this guy. He was so intellectual and charming; so well-read, you know. He just thought this guy was perfect --- the chemistry between them... wonderful! They talked all night. And the next day, he went up to his friend who had arranged the evening and he said, "Who was that guy I was sitting next to last night? He was fascinating!" And the guy said to him, "Oh, didn't you know? That was Oppenheimer!" And my friend's reaction was absolute horror, because he had no idea.
And if he had known, he said he would never have behaved like that. He's not even sure he would have spoken to the guy because he had such strong feelings of hatred for everything that man represented. I thought that was really a bizarre and interesting situation, that he should really have liked this guy. He was sitting there with this person and he really liked him. But as soon as he knew the guy's name, he almost wanted to throw up in absolute disgust, he was so turned off by what this guy represented. And I thought, in some ways it must have been a wonderful relief for Oppenheimer that night.
I think he himself perhaps paid the price --- you know what I mean? He did not have an easy conscience, that man. And I was thinking this was very interesting: the idea of someone you found so charming, and later you find out they're the most horrific thing you can imagine. And I thought, well, this is kind of like the devil, isn't it? Where the devil is meant to be very sweet-spoken, very charming, very good looking! Everything that's kind of attractive in order to tempt --- temptation is an attractive thing. And I thought, what about the idea of someone who dances with the devil? And then I thought, you can't, you know --- it has to be a human.
Who is the nearest thing to the embodiment of the devil? It's Hitler: he is the personification of evil, as far as you can think of a single being out of history. It's a very dark idea, but it's the idea of this girl who goes to a big ball; very expensive, romantic, exciting, and it's 1939, before the war starts. And this guy, very charming, very sweet-spoken, comes up and asks her to dance but he does it by throwing a coin and he says, "If the coin lands with heads facing up, then we dance!" Even that's a very attractive "come on", isn't it? And the idea is that she enjoys his company and dances with him and, days later, she sees in the paper who it is, and she is hit with this absolute horror --- absolute horror. What could be worse? To have been so close to the man... she could have tried to kill him... she could have tried to change history, had she known at that point what was actually happening.
And I think Hitler is a person who fooled so many people. He fooled nations of people. And I don't think you can blame those people for being fooled, and maybe it's these very charming people... maybe evil is not always in the guise you expect it to be.
Radio One Interview by Roger Scott, 14th October 1989
gaffa.org/reaching/ir89_r1.html

[tannis]

DANCE WITH A STRANGER

Heads We're Dancing opens with a game of chance, and our protagonist is chatted up by a flirtatious, charming man. It was '39, before the music started... Music made for pleasure... Music made to thrill... Well, I couldn't see what was to be...

So what was appearing in "the morning papers" during '39? ...

1939 Jan 17, The Reich issued an order forbidding Jews to practice as dentists, veterinarians and chemists.
1939 Jan 20, Hitler proclaimed to German parliament his intention to exterminate all European Jews.
1939 Feb 14, The Reich launched the battleship Bismarck.
1939 Mar 16, Germany occupied the rest Czechoslovakia.
1939 Mar 31, Britain and France agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade.
1939 Apr 5, Membership in Hitler Youth became obligatory.
1939 Apr 20, The Kehlsteinhous, aka the Eagle’s Nest, a mountaintop teahouse located in the Kehlstein mountains near Berchtesgaden, was given to Adolf Hitler as a 50th birthday present.
1939 May 13, The SS St Louis departed Hamburg with some 937 passengers including over 900 Jewish refugees. They sought refuge in Cuba, but only 22 were allowed to disembark there. No country in the Americas would take them. It returned to Germany where a number of the Jews were later murdered. [see Jun 4]
1939 May 23, Hitler proclaimed he wants to move into Poland.
1939 May, The Ravensbruck concentration camp opened in northern Germany.
1939 Jun 4, During what became known as the "Voyage of the Damned," the SS St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast. Also denied permission to dock in Canada and Cuba, the ship eventually returned to Europe. The passengers were divided among England, France, Belgium and Holland and a number of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps. By 2003 efforts to track their fates identified 935 out of the 937 passengers. Some 260 ended in Nazi killing centers.
1939 Jun 28, Richard Meinertzhagen (1877-1967), a British army colonel, met with Adolf Hitler to plead on behalf of the Jews in Germany. He later claimed to have smuggled a pistol into the chancellery but lost his nerve and failed to shoot Hitler.
1939 Jul 6, Nazis closed the last Jewish enterprises.
1939 Aug 27, Nazi Germany demanded Danzig and Polish corridor.
1939 Sep, 1, At 4:40 a.m., World War II began. The Germans attacked Poland with their strategy of Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. The war started at dawn with salvos from the cruiser Schleswig-Holstein at the Polish garrison in Gdansk.
1939 Sep 1, Hitler ordered the extermination of mentally ill.
1939 Sep 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland. After Germany ignored Great Britain's ultimatum to stop the invasion of Poland, Great Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Europe. France follows 6 hours later quickly joined by Australia, NZ, South Africa & Canada.

By the time "the music" stopped, the total estimated human loss of life caused by World War II was roughly 72 million people, making it the deadliest and most destructive "music" in human history. The civilian toll was around 47 million, including 20 million deaths due to war-related famine and disease. The military toll was about 25 million, including the deaths of about 4 million prisoners of war in captivity. The Holocaust took the lives of between 5.1 to 6.0 million Jews. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945.

see more:
Timeline Germany 1939-1944
timelines.ws/countries/GERM1939_1944.HTML

Well, I couldn't see what was to be,
So I just stood there laughing.

Heads We're Dancing is surely black comedy. The protagonist remembers a dance with a stranger who turns out to be Adolf Hitler. She is attracted by the uniformed picture, hot down to the floor. Not being able to see what was to be, she stands there laughing. But the song is constantly addressing the other as [the personal] "you". So is HWD a letter to Hitler? And does the song address the perverse attraction of evil?

Hitler are you out there somewhere
Looking like a happy man?
In the snow with Rosebud
And king of the mountain...

[othon]

Yes, the parallel Elvis/Hitler figure was exactly my thought, interesting analysis.

[tannis]

A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform,
Standing with your head held high,
Hot down to the floor...

And check out the uniformed Del dancing for The Big Sky (1985)...

Kate Bush The Big Sky
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C88yb-OVNmw
3:10-3:39 ~ "Hey, heads we dance."

[othon]

Why isn't this discussed way more, the mystery remains
"It's the darkest track on the album and not the sort of song I'd write now"
...this also is interesting.
Or isn't it ?
( Thank you Tannis for this great work )

[tannis]

Aug 10, 2008 15:11:36 GMT othon said:

Why isn't this discussed way more, the mystery remains
"It's the darkest track on the album and not the sort of song I'd write now"
...this also is interesting.
Or isn't it ?
( Thank you Tannis for this great work )

^ Thank you...

KB: "In The Warm Room is written for men because there are so many songs for women about wonderful men that come up and chat you up when you're in the disco and I thought it would be nice to write a song for men about this amazing female."
"Personal Call", BBC Radio 1, 1979
gaffa.org/reaching/ir79_pc.html

Heads We're Dancing is a song about a wonderful man who chats the protagonist up in a disco but who turns out to be Hitler...

You talked me into the game of chance
It was '39, before the music started
When you walked up to me and you said
"Hey, heads we dance"
Well, I didn't know who you were
Until I saw the morning paper
There was a picture of you
A picture of you 'cross the front page
It looked just like you, just like you in every way
But it couldn't be true
It couldn't be true
You stepped out of a stranger...

In HWD, the first verse implies that, had the protagonist kept abreast of the morning papers and knew who Hitler was, etc., then she would never have behaved like that, would never have danced with him, etc. Instead, the naive protagonist is impressed, fascinated, flattered. She doesn't know who this charming man is, so the man is free to be someone else, to step outside of himself, to play a game, to let his sieg heil and hair down. "It all goes to show how you can know a person and not really know him at the same time..."

A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform,
Standing with your head held high,
Hot down to the floor...

Elsewhere, Heads We're Dancing seems to address the perverse attraction of evil and power as the ultimate aphrodisiac...

Some say that heaven is hell.
Some say that hell is heaven...

Adolf Hitler: ‘By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell, heaven ... The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed’ (Mein Kampf).
see more:
'experimenT-4'
katebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi?board=tww2&action=display&thread=1819&page=2

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. ~ 1 Peter 5:8

I call'd the devil, and he came,
And with wonder his form did I closely scan;
He is not ugly, and is not lame,
But really a handsome and charming man.
A man in the prime of life is the devil,
Obliging, a man of the world, and civil;
A diplomatist too, well skill'd in debate,
He talks quite glibly of church and state.
~ Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), Pictures of Travels--The Return Home.

[Among the thousands of books burned on Berlin's Opernplatz in 1933, following the Nazi raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, were works by Heinrich Heine. To commemorate the terrible event, one of the most famous lines of Heine's 1821 play Almansor was engraved in the ground at the site: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.")]

"When you're between any sort of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting." ~ Hester Collyer in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, 1952.

Heads We're Dancing was written c.1987, not long after KaTe's experimenT-4 and ninth wave venture into the deep blue sea. And KaTe told NME that Love and Anger was the first song to be written for The Sensual World (1989).

Heads We're Dancing (bleak and scary and menacing): "It's the darkest track on the album and not the sort of song I'd write now..."
Tracks, "Love, Trust and Hitler", November 1989
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_tr.html

"I wrote the song two years ago, and in lots of ways I wouldn't write a song like it now."
NME, "In the Realm of the Senses ", October 7, 1989
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_nme2.html

LOVE AND ANGER: "This song! This bloody song! ... It was one of the most difficult to put together, yet the first to be written. I came back to it 18 months later and pieced it together. It doesn't really have a story. It's just me trying to write a song, ha-ha... Obviously the imagery you get as a child is very strong. This is about who you can or cannot confide in when there's something you can't talk about. 'If you can't tell your sister, If you can't tell a priest...' Who did I have in the lyrics? Was it sister or mother? I can't remember."
NME, "In the Realm of the Senses ", October 7, 1989
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_nme2.html

Some say that Love and Anger (1989) is instrumentally and tonally similar to The Big Sky (1985)... You never understood me. You never really tried... And on The Sensual World, KaTe finds a Deeper Understanding on the worldwide web. Then there's the similarity between The Fog and The Ninth Wave. So is The Sensual World as "bleak and scary and menacing" as The Ninth Wave? ...

I wonder if 'The Fog' off 'The Sensual World'--was that originally written for 'The Ninth Wave'? Because I feel there is a similarity between that and 'The Ninth Wave'?
KB: "Yes, I think you're very right. It does sound like a song that's come from that side. It wasn't written as part of 'The Ninth Wave', but it was probably one of the first songs that I wrote for 'The Sensual World' album. And it's when you hit moments like that that you think, 'Well, I haven't quite found where this next album is meant to be.' Because I--I worry if it's sounding like the last album. In a way there's a natural sense for you to want to just carry on writing in the same style of writing that you did before. And uh, I really feel each album should be somehow a new expression of something. But yes, I thought that, too."
I don't think it sounds anything like 'The Ninth Wave', it's just theme of the girl trying to swim...
KB: "It is, it's a lot of water imagery again. Uh, I felt that, when I was writing it, that it was...And I think in some ways I haven't really let go of 'The Ninth Wave'. Maybe this is it. The song is about letting go, so..."
Convention 1990
gaffa.org/dreaming/chat_90.html