Ian Bairnson, the colleague behind “Wuthering Heights”

Alan Parsons singled out something smaller than a spectacular solo when he remembered Ian Bairnson: the sound of each note. In an excerpt published by Guitar World in 2024, from an interview with Guitarist, the producer praised a technique free of fret buzz and small glitches.

Bairnson’s credits ranged from Pilot and the Alan Parsons Project to sessions with many other artists. Kate Bush’s April 2023 tribute offered another measure of that working life. Recording her debut with people she had never met was daunting; “Ian was kind and supportive”, she recalled.

In the same tribute, Bush recalled him playing the “Wuthering Heights” solo with a broken arm still in a cast. She did not establish how the injury affected his playing.

Return to “Wuthering Heights” with an ear for the guitar: when does it sit alongside the voice, and when does it draw your attention? Parsons’s recollection offers a useful focus in the sound of individual notes. Bush leaves a different detail, one the record cannot verify: how the musician beside her treated her.