Itsacon's Log

You may or may not know the song ‘Over the hills and far away’ by Gary Moore (there’s also an excellent cover by Nightwish). Instrumentally, this is a very enjoyable song, with good tempo and some great guitar bits. The lyrics however, are slightly odd, and the more you listen to them, the less sense they make.

Let’s start at the beginning:

They came for him one winter’s night.
Arrested, he was bound.
They said there’d been a robbery,
his pistol had been found.

This part is pretty clear. Our main protagonist is picked up by the cops, after his weapon has been found at the scene of a crime. It goes on to tell us that this person is worried, because he has no alibi for the evening in question. But then:

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 spent his final night of freedom.

So the guy does have an alibi, he just doesn’t want to tell the cops about it. This is pretty odd, since in the UK^[1], adultery isn’t a felony, unlike armed robbery. But ok, maybe his best friend is very dear to him, (though apparently not so dear that he’d keep his hands of his old lady), and he’d rather do time than lose his friend. I’ve seen people choose their daily smoke over food for their children, so questionable priorities exist.

But then we get the next refrain:

Over the hills and far away,
he swears he will return one day.
Far from the mountains and the seas,
back in her arms again he’ll be.
Over the hills and far away.

Followed by:

Each night within his prison cell,
he looks out through the bars.
He reads the letters that she wrote.
One day he’ll know the taste of freedom.

So, while he’d rather go to prison than have his best friend find out who’d been keeping his wife warm at night, he’s still planning to get back with her after his time is done. And judging from the letter-writing, so is she. Now, if they both want to be together that bad, surely dumping the cuckoo’d husband now would be better than her playing mommy and daddy with the poor sod for years while he is in prison?

Nonetheless, so far we’re still only talking about people with a lot of trouble getting their priorities straight. They’re mostly hurting themselves: The guy is in prison and the wife is getting it from a man she doesn’t love. While the husband is being betrayed, right now he is blissfully unaware, and ‘no harm, no foul’ is certainly appropriate here, considering the guy who betrayed him is actually doing time for it.

But we’re forgetting one thing: A crime was committed. From the first verse, we already learned there was an armed robbery, but shortly after that, we got this:

Over the hills and far away,
for ten long years he’ll count the days.
Over the mountains and the seas,
a prisoner’s life for him there’ll be.

Looking at the British sentencing guidelines for robbery, we see that 10 years for robbery is in the heaviest category of verdicts for that crime, meaning either someone was seriously injured, a very large sum was stolen, or both.

So while the subject of the song is languishing in jail for being too much of a coward to own up to his best friend, a very violent criminal is on the loose, enjoying his ill-gotten gains.

But it is even worse than that. Remember why the guy was arrested? His weapon was at the scene. Now, I don’t own a gun, but I imagine it’s not something you leave lying around. Call it a hunch, but I dare suggest that, should the bloke cooperate with the police, there is a good chance they’d be able to find out how and by whom the weapon was stolen, thus leading the police to the real criminal. This could, quite probably, even be done while keeping his real whereabouts of the night a matter between him and the police, in exchange for his help in getting the real felon, something the police will probably prefer over sending an innocent man to gaol.

So, to recap, we not only have two persons with considerably twisted priorities, one of them serving time for the wrong crime (I’d submit that while he might be innocent of robbery, he should still be persecuted for obstruction of justice), we also have a violent criminal walking free because of the illogical actions of those two. Well done!

Making sense of it all

In the title, I promised I’d make sense of it all, so now I will. I have devised a small script that is, according to me, the only reasonable explanation for the story described in the song.

Our main characters:

Bob: A hapless video-rental clerk with the approximate IQ of a Venus Flytrap, but without the killer instinct. Bob spends his days watching the store’s porn collection and dreaming of one day meeting a woman who’ll fall hopelessly in love with him.

Clyde: A slick con-man and part-time crook. Took Bob under his wing during childhood, as a sidekick who does as he’s told was a good thing to have around when appointing blame for one of his failed antics. Bob in turn was honoured by being included, and has always looked up to Clyde.

Debbie: Clyde’s voluptuous wife. She knows what she wants, and is not afraid of getting dirty to get it. Debbie is one of the many reasons for Bob’s hopeless adoration for Clyde, as well as the subject of many of his wet dreams.

The movie starts with Debbie and Clyde planning their retirement. The following evening, Debbie knocks on Bob’s door, dressed in her skimpiest outfit, and upon being let in, explains to him how she’s always been turned on by the fact that his manhood is bigger than his brain (which Bob mistakenly takes as a compliment). She proceeds to undress herself in a sensual manner, until Bob’s pants burst open from arousal, at which point she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. On the way there, she slips into his closet and takes his firearm. In the bathroom, she opens the window where her hubby is waiting outside, and passes him the gun, as well as one of her stockings. She then returns to Bob and proceeds to take one for the team, after which she pressingly reminds him that Clyde can never, ever, ever find out about this.

Meanwhile, Clyde pulls the stocking over his head and uses the gun to stick up the local bookkeeper. This being the night before the Derby, the bookie is understandably pissed off, and responds to Clyde’s request for the contents of the safe by saying ‘Over my dead body’, to which Clyde wittingly replies by shooting him twice through the frontal lobe. Clyde busts the safe, leaves the gun and makes his way home, where he joins his wife in the shower.

The following day, the local constabulary, having successfully looked up the weapon’s serial number, knock on Bob’s door, and, concluding that his intelligence matches that of someone who would leave a registered firearm at the scene of a murder, take him in.

Bob’s brain, being slightly out of its depth, latches on to the last thing said to him that made sense: Debbie’s persistent demand that Clyde never finds out about their (very brief) liason. Clinging to that like a drowning sailor to a piece of driftwood, Bob keeps his mouth shut and is soon escorted off to the local slammer.

Meanwhile, Clyde and Debbie have caught the earliest first-class flight out to paradise, and are enjoying the spoils of Bob’s sacrifice. Together they send Bob the occassional letter to remind him how much Debbie loves him, and can’t wait for his sentence to be over so they can elope together, thus making sure all Bob’s blood remains in his pants, and not in his head where it might cause his brain to work long enough for him to wonder why the letters are postmarked in the Bahamas and realize he’s being played.

The movie ends with Clyde and Debbie toasting their Margaritas overlooking an idyllic sunset on a white beach. Credits roll^[2].

There you have it, next time you hear the song, you finally know what is going on.

1. ^[1]Gary Moore is from Northern Ireland↩
2. ^[2]For casting I was thinking: George Bush Jr. as Bob, Pierce Brosnan as Clyde, Jessica Rabbit as Debbie, Robert De Niro as the bookie and John Cleese as the detective to arrest Bob. As director I was hoping to get Michael Bay, though that might mean replacing Bob’s revolver with a bazooka.↩