(*) guitar solo played by Fréderic Ost on the demo 2004-2005 version,
by Geert Fieuw on the “Castles in The Sand” version
For Eternity is the first song ever co-written by Geert Fieuw and Jo De Boeck - somewhere in 2002. Hearing Geert try out a new, rather hypnotical keyboard melody, Jo quickly grabbed the booklet from the CD that was in the player and began to sing to it. He recorded a rough demo and the song was left sleeping “until necessary”.
When Geert and Jo decided to turn Beyond The Labyrinth from a studio project back into a genuine band in 2004, For Eternity was put on the list of songs “to learn”. Half an hour prior to starting rehearsal for the song , Geert delivered the lyrics ... as usual.
The version of the demo “2004-2005” actually featured the recovered keyboard parts from the 2002 demo takes, with the keyboard sound mostly coming from a custom patch on Geert’s old Kawai K1 synth .
Geert : “The synth was so old that I bought a spare copy (of the synth) and then another one in rack, just to ensure that I would have the self tailored custom sound fro “For Eternity”. Using this sound would hog most of its 8-voice polyphony, so I had to use 2 K1 at once in the studio for the mix . On top of that we layered the same performance into Danny (Focke, BTL’s official keyboard player then) ‘s XP-50.”
Filip Vinck laid down drum parts on August 13th 2004 and some time later Fréderic Ost was summoned to come up with the guitar solo.
Jo : “We pushed and pushed and pushed. This guitar solo was, actually composed out of 3 parts in 3 different keys, and for the middle one we were telling Fré to come up with something bluesy - and so he did !”
Not happy with the flow of the song, Geert then decided to cut up the drum parts in Cubase - much to Filip’s amazement who suddenly found his rolls and snare hits in quite some different spots then where he’d left them.
The song was not included on the 2005 “Signs” album because Geert had a special goal for it : it was destined as an entire part of the “Castles in the Sand” concept album. .... that took until 2008 to record.
...
When the band started to record “Castles in The Sand”, a bit of the musical climate had changed, and Geert had abandoned his K1 collection in favor of a Korg Triton LE. Amazingly, one of the sounds only need a bit of tailoring to fit the sonic needs of “For Eternity” and Geert’ s keyboard takes of the demo 2004-2005 were quickly recovered and slightly rearranged with some added instrumentation.
The band recorded a harder version than the initial one, with a Rothery-like guitar solo, but still there was something missing : the song sounded great by itself, but did not do its job in the context of the album. (Drum Player) Bruno Goedhuys suggested to strip the song to its bare essentials again, and drums, bass and guitars were muted. Now the song sounded slightly underproduced so Bruno came up with a percussion track, and to top it all up, Geert recorded a guitar solo on his Spanish guitar.
...Yes, yet another different solo, and not just any one....
The first 4 bars of the acoustic guitar solo of “For Eternity” are the first 4 bars from the Al Stewart’s “Year Of The Cat” guitar solo, albeit in a different key as an homage to song, that is Geert’s favourite song of all times.
Actually Geert, Jo and Fré used to play a cover version of it in 2-acoustic guitars/1Voice version under the name of “Back To Life” (yes, abbreviation : BTL)
This was the version that ended up on the album. Live, when and if included the band would play the electric version, that was used as the B-side fot the “Pure Sabotage” single...
And that would have been the end of the story if not, by ways of myspace, keyboard player Lisa LaRue came to notice Jo’s vocal talent , discovered the gem called “For Eternity” on Beyond The Labyrinth‘s Myspace page and fell in love with it.
She asked Jo to participate in her “World Class” project and if he’d mind to rerecord the song together with her and some more, better-known musicians, a.o. (Asia vocalist) John Payne, who ‘d end up adding vocals to the song and mixing it.
The rerecorded version features Gerry’s bass takes from the CITS album , so he is credited for playing bass, and even Geert is credited for additional (albeit inaudible) keyboards,...
For Jo, the collaboration with his hero John Payne was a dream come true, and for Geert it was yet another proof that the circle is round .... after all, it all started when Jo picked up ... an Asia booklet ...
Geert :
“Thematically, this song fits into the Castles in The Sand concept where the edge between land and sea is an ever changing, undefined border.
This part of the story is where the album’s main character, who sees himself and his life as a failure, decides to step into the water in an effort to commit suicide - or is he merely trying out to walk on the water ? He fails at killing himself - but can that really be seen as yet another failure ?
And is not the sea considered the source of life, not death ?
The lyrics of the song were also inspired by an experience when I was on holiday in L.A. in 1997.
On the last day of my stay, me and some friends decided to go scuba diving. The sea was quite rough, and it was my first-ever attempt at scuba-diving but I was not going to let that influence my partaking in the fun.
I never made it past the surf.
While my friends paddled on, oblivious for the fact that I was struggling, I went down, panicked, inhaled quite a bit of water, came up , went down, came up , went down...
and decided for myself that this was a crappy way to go and fought with all of my might.
Struggling through the surf for what must have seemed an eternity, I pulled myself on land with the last of my powers and lay there exhausted, recovering for the next -who’ll say ?- half an hour ? three quarters of an hour ? My friends came back and told me they had had a great dive and wondered where I’d stayed...
Ever since, I will not take uncalculated risks anymore, and it takes me quite some courage when my daughter asks me ‘Daddy, let’s go in the wild water slide once more’ in the local swimming pool.
“
