Cloudbusting

This is one of my all time favourite songs:

Did you watch the video? It was filmed on the hill with the Uffington White Horse.  Anyway, I loved it back when it was released in 1985 (back when I was barely a teenager) and it’s been a constant song on my playlist.  After 25 years I’ve finally learnt what it’s all about.

Kate wrote this song after reading A Book of Dreams by Peter Reich which she picked up at Watkins Esoteric bookshop in London (this is one of the best shops in the world!!).    In the book Peter recalls memories of his  father, Wilheim Reich,  a colourful Austrian/American psychiatrist who influenced the field of psychoanalysis.  However, Wilheim went on to claim he had discovered a universal energy which he called ‘orgone’.   He engineered ways to harness the ‘orgone’ and produced an  orgone accumulator to help bring people back to health and a cloudbuster, a device to make rain by altering the streams of ‘orgone’.

It was Wilheim’s orgone accumulators which lead to his downfall. The US FDA made investigations into his orgone devices and they found Reich to be making unproven medical claims.  This led to his books and orgone accumulators being destroyed plus Wilheim serving a prison sentence.   Wilheim died in prison from ‘sudden heart failure’ just days before he was due to apply for parole.

In the video Kate Bush plays Peter with Wilheim being played by Donald Sutherland.