Music out of the spotlight
QUESTION Are there many famous musicians who never performed live?
ALTHOUGH it would not be fully accurate to say she has ‘never’ performed live, the Donegal-born singer Enya very seldom does so. The musician, born Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin, toured during her time in the band Clannad, but does not do so as a solo artist.
This has certainly not had a detrimental effect on her popularity, as she is one of the most successful recording artists to have emerged from these shores. It is estimated her record sales have topped 80million worldwide.
Enya has occasionally played at events and ceremonies throughout her career – including a performance at a 1995 Christmas concert in the Vatican, with Pope John Paul II in attendance. So why does she not go on tour? One factor may be the complexity of her recorded work – the layered, lush, New Age sound would be difficult to recreate live.
Back in 1997, Enya explained her reluctance to get out on the road, saying: ‘I do get a lot of requests from around the world about when we will be touring. It would be wonderful to get to that stage... but when I finish albums I always run over time. So, the time I have for various other things runs out.’
Another hugely successful artist who has been very reluctant to play live is the English singer Kate Bush, of Wuthering Heights fame. Back in 1979, she embarked on her first (and so far only) tour, titled The Tour of Life. It consisted of a warm-up show and 28 concerts, and was rapturously received by critics and fans alike. However, Bush revealed in 2011 that she found the experience tiring.
‘It was enormously enjoyable. But physically it was absolutely exhausting,’ she remarked.
She must have needed a long rest afterwards, as those were her last concert dates for 35 years. In 2014, Bush delighted fans by performing live once again; however, she didn’t go on tour, instead performing a 22-date residency entitled Before The Dawn at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. The response from fans and critics was again overwhelmingly positive.
Bush attempted to explain the long hiatus, commenting in 2016: ‘I really enjoyed the first set of shows we did [in 1979]. The plan at the time was that I was going to do another two albums’ worth of fresh material, and then do another show. But of course, by the time I got to the end of what was The Dreaming album, it had gone off on a slight tilt, because I’d become so much more involved in the recording process.’
Bush also told The Independent: ‘Every time I finish an album, I go into visual projects, and even if they’re quite short pieces, they’re still a huge amount of work to put together. I started to veer away from the thing
of being a live performing artist to one of being a recording artist with attached visuals.’
Thomas McCarthy, Dublin 13.
QUESTION Was the US Bell X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, invented in Britain?
THIS is a sad tale of a missed opportunity. Plans for the M.52, a turbojet-powered supersonic research aircraft designed by Miles Aviation, were handed over to the US. Senior figures at the British firm believed it was this that led to the Americans pioneering supersonic flight.
In 1943, the UK Ministry of Aircraft Production awarded a contract to Miles Aviation, based at Woodley Aerodrome near Reading, Berkshire, to design and manufacture an experimental aircraft capable of taking off from a conventional runway, climbing to 36,000 ft in 1.5 minutes and exceeding the speed of sound in level flight. Power was to come from a Whittle jet engine.
Miles designed a sleek aircraft with a fuselage shaped like a rifle bullet. The wings were shorter than on subsonic planes and had a sharp leading edge to minimise drag at supersonic speeds.
Crucially, the entire tailplane moved in pitch to provide longitudinal control. The centre of lift moves rearwards at supersonic speeds and the aircraft becomes nose heavy, so needs downforce from the tailplane to maintain level flight and to pull out of a dive. Conventional elevators on a tailplane are ineffective at supersonic speed. Their effect may even be reversed if forces on the elevator make the tailplane flex in the opposite direction.
A Miles Falcon, a conventional piston-engined aircraft, was modified to test the thin wing and allmoving tailplane. Called the Gillette Falcon after its razor-sharp wing, its only problem was that, as expected, landing speed was increased. The aircraft was almost complete when the project was cancelled in February 1946.
Various reasons were given, including pilot safety. It was felt future supersonic research should be done using rocket-propelled model M.52s, also cheaper than a piloted aircraft. The British government handed over to the Americans all the information and calculations that Miles had generated. Dennis Bancroft, chief aerodynamicist at Miles, claimed Bell Aircraft was given access to the M.52 drawings and research, but reneged on an agreement to share its knowledge and data in return.
Bell began designing the X1 in 1944, which strongly resembled the Miles M.52, except it was powered by a liquid-fuelled rocket motor instead of a jet engine.
It had conventional elevators on the tailplane, but the pilot could vary the pitch of the tailplane in flight, emulating the one fitted to the M.52. Test pilot Chuck Yeager used this to maintain control when he broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
Is there a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents,
Irish Daily Mail, DMG Media, Two Haddington Buildings, 20-38 Haddington Road, Dublin 4, D04 HE94. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles. legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.