Song Stories “A Horse with No Name”

Randal C. Hill

50plus Magazine

 

We’ve all been there. You hear a new tune on the radio, and it grabs you by the collar, demanding your attention. Soon it’s burrowing deeply inside your brain, to reside there forever. It’s a song you never forget. But sometimes, when you later get to thinking about its rather puzzling lyrics, you scratch your head, wondering: “What is this really all about?”

A good example is “A Horse with No Name” by UK-based America, three US-born folk singers — Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek — whose military fathers moved their families frequently around the world.

“The song was born out of pure boredom,” admits leader Bunnell, a Neil Young-soundalike who was just 19 when he created the million-seller. “I had just graduated high school in London, and my family moved up to Yorkshire… I wanted to stay in London, so I moved into the home of a friend and his family… I wrote the song alone in this guy’s bedroom that I share… I wanted to capture the imagery of the desert, because I was sitting in this room in England, and it was rainy. I wanted to capture the heat and the dryness.” First called “Desert Song,” Bunnell built his odd tale on a foundation of three guitar chords.

In 1971, the trio released its self-titled debut album in the UK. No issued single had caught record buyers’ attention yet, so sales proved lackluster. However, when “Horse” became a successful British 45 that November, the America LP was reissued to great success, thanks to the Bunnell-composed hit track.

It also proved an overnight winner when released in the States; the Warner Records 45 held Number One for three weeks, and America dominated the LP charts for over a month.

The song’s imagery had emerged from Bunnell’s childhood at an Air Force base on the central California coast. He recalls, “We’d drive through Arizona and New Mexico. I loved the cactus and the heat. [In the song] I was trying to capture the sights and sounds of the desert.”

His free-flowing lyrics were painted with a broad brush and ranged from the elementary-school simplicity of

There were plants and birds and rocks and things

   and

   The heat was hot and the ground was dry

to the Dylanesque denseness of

The ocean is a desert with its life underground

   And a perfect disguise above

Bunnell saw the desert as an existential epiphany but later admitted, “The song was a travelogue with an environmental message in there about saving the planet.”

As to the enigmatic image of the horse? “I see now that this anonymous horse was a vehicle to get me away from all the confusion and chaos of life to a peaceful, quiet place.”

Come to think of it, though, after all that time spent in peaceful desert solitude, wouldn’t the narrator have eventually come up with a name for his steed?

Just wondering.