Well, according to Classical Foundation Horsemanship - "When a horse is hollow, the muscles under the neck are flexed and the horse pulls itself along with the shoulders. Therefore legs often stab the ground and the hind legs drag behind as if they are stuck in the mud."
This doesn't seem to help answer the question I have had for almost 35 years, since I first heard of the phrase hollow horse used in music. Although the horsey folk do go on to say that if a horse is hollow it "is uncomfortable and often cannot see where it is going because its head is too high." Hmmm - maybe that is more relevant, musically?
I have often wondered what the hollow horse was, or meant - and over the ensuing years I have only heard of one other musical hollow horse (well, two now, because while researching this, I found a third reference, but a bit more on that later).
So, I came across this first example in 1989, with the album (and title track) Diary of a Hollow Horse by China Crisis, their fifth studio record. It was to be their last on Virgin Records and the second to be produced by Steely Dan legend, Walter Becker. Virgin, by this time, was sinking all their money into just a few bands, like Simple Minds (Street Fighting Years came out around the same time), and the marketing budget was dry for albums like this. In fact, apparently a promo video for lead single St. Saviour Square was filmed but never released. As Matt Phillips said in his 30th anniversary review in MovingTheRiver.com, "CC's album sales diminished as the quality of their work increased." This led to a distinct lack of chart success, which surely puts the album in the 'hugely undervalued' category, because as Phillips concludes, it "still sounds like a minor classic 30 years on."
But what of the horse, you ask? Well, the titular song might well be about infidelity and one comment on songmeanings.com believes that the horse analogy ties into Greek myth. Homer Wells says, "What is a hollow horse? I think of the legend of the Trojan Horse, a false gift that led to destruction and doom. Thus, his [the adulterous husband] marriage was a false promise of fidelity to his wife (a "slave to the veil") as he was 'drawn to the flame' as in the image of the moth drawn to a flame and its own demise."
This seems to be a fairly well reasoned argument and it is, of course, much more likely that a songwriter uses a Greek mythology reference in their work than an actual equine term.
What of the others?
Although the single Hollow Horse by the Icicle Works came out in 1984, it was 1991 and my first year at university before I first heard it. This was probably when I first started to ask myself the question about what it was all about - as that was two hollow horses now, in just a couple of years - and both from Liverpool bands? Is that a clue?
Well, I don't quite know, as I haven't been able to find much out about Ian McNabb's reasoning for using the phrase (I even checked in his excellent autobiography Merseybeast to no avail), but a quick look at the lyrics would suggest there might be a Trojan link here as well.
"In a hollow horse I'll steal my way
inside your guarded heart......
When vanity has played a part
in every leaders downfall.
Wait to storm the gates, what's left
undone to hang around for"
The last Hollow Horse I found was today, and it is (or was) a band from Glasgow. They apparently had three albums out in the 2000s, but there is not a huge amount of info on them, so I can't speculate on why their horse is hollow. But, there does appear to be one interesting connection in all this - I found at least one reference, to their 2005 album Beggarstown, that mentioned the involvement of one Brian McNeil. Now, I'm not sure if he was in the band, or produced the record - but what I do know is, that he was the keyboard player through much of the 1980s with China Crisis!! Is he somehow connected to the band getting their name?
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