Gary Moore got an international hit with the strongly Celtic-themed hard rocker Over the Hills And Far Away (hereafter shortened OTHAFA) released on 8 December 1986. In his native UK (Moore being from Northern Ireland) it reached a modest #20 on the charts, but did better in most other countries, going all the way to #1 in two countries – Norway and Finland.
The style of OTHAFA and the rest of the Wild Frontier album (1987) that it came from was a homage. Having played in Thin Lizzy on three different occasions, Moore was part of one of their best studio achievements with the Black Rose album and song. The title track is a longer epic consisting of several traditional Irish songs as well as many original parts, filled with Celtic-themed twin guitar sections and riffs, telling dramatic folk stories. It was important to Lynott (who was Irish) to embrace his cultural heritage. He had already done this some years prior with tracks like Emerald. Moore was happy to go in that direction, welcoming the chance to connect the dots between his own musical heritage and the more guitar-based approach he was known for.
After Thin Lizzy disbanded in 1983, Gary Moore and Phil Lynott released the single Out In the Fields about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It has a sound that was updated for the 1980s, with light Celtic touches and influences from both artists’ wide musical palettes. It would go on to be the biggest success either of the two ever reached in their solo careers and the highest UK singles chart position of Lynott’s entire career, including Thin Lizzy. It was also one of the last recordings made by Phil Lynott before his death on 4 January 1985, along with the b-side Military Man.
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Those two songs were included on Gary Moore’s album Run For Cover. The success of Out In the Fields gave the Run For Cover album a lot of momentum. Lynott was part of that, and his death made a deep impact as his footprints continued to be felt in Moore’s life. Moore’s thoughts would keep returning to Lynott and their shared musical heritage. He decided that he wanted to pay tribute to his friend, and knew he would delve further into traditional music this on his next album.
“I really wanted to get back to my musical roots,” Moore said in a 1987 interview with Guitar World. “The impulse for this change was a trip to Ireland last year. There a lot of famous musicians appeared for the benefit of the unemployed in Ireland. And it was suddenly clear to me how much talent cities like Dublin and Belfast have produced: people like Van Morrison, Rory Gallagher, the Chieftains, Bob Geldof and U2. I wanted to remember the music I grew up with.”
In an interview on Finnish TV the same year, he added “I decided to go back to my musical roots this year having been back to Ireland for a short visit last year, and partly because of the death of Phil Lynott I was inspired to write in this very Celtic tradition. So that was really what inspired me to do that.”
The Wild Frontier was Moore’s sixth solo studio album, released in 1987. It is dedicated to Phil Lynott with the words “For Philip” on the rear cover. The usual guitar-based hard rock that Moore had been championing in the 1980s was now being fuelled by Irish/Celtic traditional music and themes. Celtic-flavoured rock music was somewhat in vogue at the time, with popular acts like Big Country, Kate Bush, and Slade incorporating traditional Celtic elements in their music and having hit singles with them. The Pogues and The Waterboys were waiting in the wings. Paul McCartney’s biggest solo hit in UK is still the bagpipe-heavy Scottish paean Mull of Kintyre. In Ireland, bands like Horslips had mixed folk and guitar-based rock for a long time, Clannad had started adding rock elements to their music, and let’s not forget that Thin Lizzy’s first ever hit was their cover of Whiskey In the Jar.
Gary Moore’s band was in reality a three-piece at the time, with Bob Daisley (bass) and Neil Carter (keyboards) joining the guitarist for the album and tour. Eric Singer, who later would become KISS’ longest serving drummer, would complete the touring line-up. In the studio, however, other tricks were being deployed.
OTHAFA kicks off with a huge drum track which retains its grand scope throughout the song. It also sounds very much like the times it was recorded, largely due to the fact that what we hear is a drum machine. After trying this solution for a few demos, the greater part of the drum tracks were set down in the Marcus Studio in London with a Linn 9000. Nobody is credited in the liner notes for programming them, but after most of the tracks were finished, electronic drummer Roland Carridge (of the band Re-Flex) came in and did some overdubs. He would also appear in the music video for the song.
Another familiar face in the video is Paddy Moloney of the legedary Irish folk group The Chieftains. He is playing a bagpipe in the video, but has never been credited with actually playing anything on the song or album, so was likely just around/available to pop in. He certainly adds a lot of clout to the Celtic credentials of the song!
The song is a good slice of dramatic storytelling in the style of the classic Boy’s Own adventure tales. It plunges us straight into the action, as it tells us the story of a man who gets wrongly accused of armed robbery.
They came for him one winter’s night
Arrested, he was bound
They said there’d been a robbery
His pistol had been found
They marched him to the station house
He waited till the dawn
And as they led him to the dock
He knew that he’d been wronged
The man is innocent and has been framed. He even has an alibi, as he spent the night in question with the wife of his best friend. This is something that he refuses to divulge, and without being able to account for his movements, he gets sentenced to prison “over the hills and far away, for ten long years.”
He knew that it would cost him dear
But yet he dare not say
Just where he’d been that fateful night
A secret it must stay
He had to fight back tears of rage
His heart beat like a drum
For with the wife of his best friend
He’d spent his final night of freedom
The song ends with him in jail and the woman waiting for him, sending him letters where she prays he will return to her one day. He pledges to do just that, and that is the point where we leave this would-be couple – at the peak of their initial feelings of separation, amid swirling declarations of love, intense pledges to wait, and life-affirming intentions to be back in each other’s arms – all suitably accompanied by intense and dramatic music on an epic scale. It makes for good song material!
Who knows if it turned out well for this couple? We may have some idea if we judge by the music video. It starts with a young boy carrying a story book to a man, who sets out to read the story as depicted in the song. This leads to scenes being played out featuring the capturing and jailing of the innocent man – played by Mark Ryan, who was well known in the UK at the time from the hit TV show Robin of Sherwood – and the woman who waits for him. At the end of the song, that woman sits next to the boy and holds around him, while the man who reads for them is revealed to be the man from the story. They got together, and by all accounts, had a son. A happy ending!
In addition to the scenes where the story of the song is acted out, the video is otherwise full of dramatic imagery to suit Moore’s new musical direction as well as the drama of the story. We have rows of militaristic drummers, foggy and brooding (studio) highland scenery, castles in the distance, a lone violinist playing dramatically on top of a hill, Moore playing in foggy ruins with lightning striking in the background… you get the picture.
As befits lyrics (and a video!) of this type, the vocal delivery matches the intensity and passion of the words with the music pushing it even further towards the melodramatic. This is not a song with peaks and valleys – it soars out the gate, and keeps going from there. Militaristic drum rolls are used for effect. Celtic-flavoured jigs are effectively used for transitions. And bagpipe parts have rarely been played more dramatically.
The guitar solo deserves a special mention. Gary Moore has always been razor-sharp in his delivery, and while he was fully able to shred with the best of them, he was often more tasteful and moderate in his approach, never giving the songs more than he felt they should have. This suits the OTHAFA solo especially well, leading to a solo which almost manage to tell a story in itself. His notes are full, the sustain is impeccable, and there are fast sections and slower sections. You can swear there is a cry, you can hear the anger, and it ends with a build-up to a high-pitched climax which carries into the big lyrical finale which ends with the band taking a backseat to the choir of voices pledging that he would be back in her arms one day. The song has a near perfect arrangement as far as building drama and delivering some impact.
Interestingly, this song comes very close thematically to Big Country’s hit Look Away which was released some nine months earlier. Both songs share the theme of the outlaw being separated from their lover, although the outlaw in Look Away is on the run rather than jailed. He is separated from his lover through other means, but pledges to find and return to her. Big Country were also known for releasing rock songs with a strong Celtic flair. Interestingly Big Country had toned down that aspect somewhat on the Look Away single compared with what they did before, whereas Gary Moore was just getting into those influences and turned them up to eleven.
It should be noted that Over the Hills And Far Away is also the title of a well-known traditional British song, dating back to at least the late 17th century. The words have changed over the years, with the only consistent element in early versions being the title line and the tune. Most versions refer to lovers, one specifically referring to fleeing overseas to join the army. One version was included in the ballad opera The Beggar’s Opera, where it becomes a duet between the antihero (accused?) Macheath and his lover Polly, being a romantic dream of escape without military references.
Obviously Moore’s song is his own creation, but by using a well-known folk title as well as traditional folk jigs as spice in the music, he tapped even deeper into a public consciousness that placed this song within a certain tradition. The song gets an extra dimension from having those links, even if they have little to nothing to do with the song as such.
Moore died of a heart attack in February 2011. He had largely abandoned the Celtic-themed music in favour of blues from 1990 onward, expressing that he needed to remove himself from the hard rock genre that he increasingly found himself trapped in. The blues had been his first love, and he would emerge as a blues artist with great success. In the time before his passing he reconnected with his Celtic roots and the folk-inspired part of his career, and was talking actively about how his next album would revisit his Celtic roots after too long an absence. We can only wonder what that would have been like, but it is nice to know that he felt good about that part of his career again.
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