Covers we missed: Beyond the Horizon

 

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

For more details on this new series on cover versions of Dylan songs that were not considered in the last series, please see the intro to the first article in this series.  An index to this series is at the end of the article.  A list of all the cover reviews from the previous series can be found at the end of the final article in that series.

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Covers of Beyond the Horizon

By Jürg Lehmann

What’s wrong with Dylan’s Beyond the Horizon? The classic Red Sails in the Sunset has – among many others – been covered by Bing Crosby, Fats Domino, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Van Morrison and even The Beatles – so why shouldn’t Dylan do it too?

Nobody can be surprised that he borrowed a melody, Dylan does this regularly, and you don’t have to do much research to find the source of inspiration, Red Sails is obvious.

So is it because of the lyrics that barely anyone deals with the song? There are only very few covers, but there is also little interest otherwise. In Still on the Road, Clinton Heylin gives Beyond the Horizon barely a page (…unfortunately, Dylan seems to have very little idea what to say next in this song though he is fully determined to run the full gamut of romantic stereotypes). Philippe Margotin&Jean-Michel Guesdon in Bob Dylan-All The Songs write not much more than that all the musicians are in tune with Dylan’s vocals.

As far as I can see, there are just three serious articles available on the internet, one tries to explain Dylan’s poetry in prose, the other two are by Tony Attwood and Chris Gregory:

“The singer begins by conjuring up an imaginary world ‘beyond the horizon’ situated somewhere …in the long hours of twilight… This is a song written, of course, by a man in his 60s, aware of his own imminent mortality. Yet while on Time Out Of Mind’s Not Dark Yet – his most profound meditation on mortality – he tell us that …Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear… now he seems to look into the face of death with a sly shrug and a playful wink.

“Few Dylan songs express delight in such a way… the wistful Tomorrow Is A Long Time (1963) perhaps, or the pleading Emotionally Yours (1985). But whereas such songs profess great sincerity, Beyond The Horizon is infused with an overwhelming sense of relief and sheer dizzy humility. He presents us with a vision of a kind of Paradise imagined as an ‘all singing, all dancing’ Hollywood musical. The singer has entirely come to terms with his mortality… he is already in Paradise, a place where …life has only begun… Beyond The Horizon is a song about transcending the fear of death. It seems to contain all those romantic, corny songs which tell us about a love which will ‘last forever’, and to stretch their sentiments to the logical extreme. It manipulates cliché to go beyond cliché.”

Tony Attwood, however, is not convinced by Gregory’s reasoning, he finds himself asking, “do I really want to see the next world, the promised land, the eternal paradise, through a bunch of phrases that could have been written into many other songs by modestly decent writers, without actually telling us anything? There are, for me, three problems. First, too many lines that just don’t quite work.  Second, no overall message or idea that makes one think, “ah that’s interesting”.  Third, the melody is so close to “Red Sails” (which surely everyone with an interest in popular song throughout the years knows inside out) that we’re endlessly reminded of the source….

‘When I first heard this song I wanted it to mean something particular, something special, not so much for itself, but because it was written by Bob, and as far as I can tell is what he wrote just before “Nettie Moore”, which is a completely different type of work.  And it was of “Nettie Moore” that Dylan was speaking when he said it was “not just a bunch of random verses”.

‘In fact I think the use of that phrase does tell us about this song.  I think it is just a bunch of random verses.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, because as Bob has shown, it is possible to create intriguing images and thoughts out of just that.  But here, no, it doesn’t work for me….

‘For myself I can’t find any power in this song’s lyrics, nor merit in reworking such a beautiful tune from 60+ years before.’

So here we got a possible answer why so few critics and artists are interested in the song. But then you come across the cover of Jette Torp & Jan Kaspersen and think: well, if you play it like that, then all the objections, criticisms and concerns don’t really matter. It’s just a song –a lovely one.

Torp’s live performance in 2016 is of an amazing simplicity and directness, it’s as if Dylan – contrary to Heylin’s objections – knew exactly what he wanted to say next (although Torp & Kaspersen skipped more than half of the lyrics and didn’t stick to the official version on the Dylan website. Perhaps this helps).

The ending line of the song is also a romantic stereotype, of course, but it’s still great: I’ve got more than a lifetime to live lovin’ you. You would like to hear this over and over again (ask my wife).

Michel Griffin also tackled Beyond the Horizon in 2017.

Previously in the “Covers we missed” series…

•  2×2; Saturday Night Fry
• Abandoned Love
• Ain’t Talkin
• All along the Watchtower
• All I really want to do
• All the Tired Horses
• As I went out one morning
• Baby Stop Crying
• Ballad of a Thin Man
• Hollis Brown

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