In the rich tapestry of Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves, nestled like a reflective turn on a winding road, we find “Wedding Song.” Just as the album Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid harbored the seeds of Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, Planet Waves contains within it this acoustic gem, a song born from the same creative burst as “Dirge,” and positioned as its poignant counterpart.
While “Dirge” arrived with anecdotal context – a response to lighthearted jabs about Dylan’s evolving sentimentality – “Wedding Song Wedding Song” emerges without such explicit backstory. Yet, its placement and character within the album strongly suggest a deliberate artistic choice, a balancing act within the emotional landscape Dylan was crafting.
It’s believed that “Dirge” initially took shape on guitar before being reimagined on piano. “Wedding Song wedding song,” in its raw, guitar-based form, feels like the antithesis, the necessary counter-melody to its album companion. Where “Dirge” begins with the stark admission, “I hate myself for loving you,” “Wedding Song wedding song” opens with an affirmation of enduring love: “I love you more than ever.”
Accounts from Heylin’s Revolution in the Air suggest a spontaneous creation, a song seemingly poured out and captured in a single take. The recording’s unpolished edges – the shifting chord progressions between verses, the slightly uneven line lengths, Dylan’s almost stumbling delivery – all contribute to a sense of immediacy, a raw and honest outpouring. This is music that embodies the adage “tell it like it is,” a singular, unrehearsed expression.
However, to equate this rawness with personal confession would be a misstep, much like assuming “Dirge” is a purely autobiographical lament. Instead, “Wedding Song wedding song” functions as an artistic rejoinder, a deliberate act of equilibrium following the darkness of “Dirge.” It’s as if, having explored the depths of self-deprecation in one song, Dylan needed to affirm the enduring power of love in another, proving to himself, and perhaps to his audience, his continued mastery of this contrasting emotional terrain.
Like “Dirge,” “Wedding Song wedding song” echoes Dylan’s earlier acoustic work, not only in its instrumentation but also in its strophic structure. It adheres to a verse-verse-verse form, eschewing the bridge or middle eight common in classic rock. The variation, as noted, lies in the subtle shift of the chord structure in the third line of each verse, adding a layer of nuanced musicality to its seemingly simple framework.
The lyrics unfold in a stream of potent imagery, thoughts cascading upon one another, yet a central vision remains unwavering: Dylan, the songwriter, not as a leader or a sage, but as a man simply expressing profound emotion.
It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large
Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge
This sentiment resonates with the earlier Dylan of “It Ain’t Me Babe,” not as a rejection of love, but as a declaration of personal limitations. He is not a messianic figure, but a man capable of immense love, a love “more than ever, more than time and more than love,” culminating in the powerful closing line, “I love you more than ever now that the past is gone.” This last line itself is worthy of reflection, perhaps even inclusion in an index of Dylan’s most potent closing statements.
To read “Wedding Song wedding song” as straightforward autobiography would be to misunderstand Dylan’s artistic process. Novelists rarely cast themselves as protagonists in every narrative, actors don’t embody their own personas in every role. Dylan, in “Wedding Song wedding song,” is crafting a character, an emotional landscape, not necessarily a direct reflection of his own life.
If a personal element exists, it might reside in the palpable sense of liberation, of shedding the burdens of the past, symbolized by “haunted rooms and faces in the street, To the courtyard of the jester which is hidden from the sun.” This could be interpreted as a farewell to self-torment, to the artifice explored in the Basement Tapes era. “Wedding Song wedding song” then becomes a declaration of renewal, of a new beginning, underscored by the line, “I love you more than ever and I haven’t yet begun.”
However, even this interpretation should be tempered. The figures populating the “Million Dollar Bash” are not necessarily literal figures from Dylan’s life. “Wedding Song wedding song” isn’t striving for poetic perfection in every line. “Your love cuts like a knife,” while a well-worn trope, serves its purpose within the song’s raw emotionality. It is the cumulative power, the relentless outpouring of feeling, that makes the song resonate.
The music itself, beginning in A minor and resolving to G at each verse’s end, evokes a sigh, a sense of reflection on the immensity of the emotions expressed. The listener is drawn into this expansive feeling, unsure of the song’s duration, carried along by its emotional current. The verses conclude on a downbeat, positioning the speaker as humbled, overwhelmed by the love he receives. Consider the weight of these closing lines:
I’d sacrifice the world for you and watch my senses die
But happiness to me is you and I love you more than blood
And if there is eternity I’d love you there again
And I love you more than ever with that love that doesn’t cease
‘Cause I love you more than ever now that the past is gone
He portrays himself as insignificant in the grand scheme, swept along by time, his existence defined by this profound love. The world outside fades in importance; he has been gifted everything he needs. As he declares in the first verse, “I love you more than life itself, you mean that much to me.”
Musically, “Wedding Song wedding song” bears a resemblance, in its stripped-down essence, to “Dark Eyes,” the closing track of Empire Burlesque. Just as Empire Burlesque ends with:
Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside.
“Wedding Song wedding song” provides a contrasting image to much of Planet Waves, although the album itself is characterized by emotional juxtapositions, most notably with “Dirge.”
Planet Waves as a whole delves into a spectrum of emotions, from the depths explored in “Going, Going, Gone” to the starkness of “Dirge” and the hopeful affirmation of “Wedding Song wedding song.” Even “Forever Young” gains a new layer of meaning in this context – a yearning to remain untouched by the complexities and potential darkness explored elsewhere on the album.
While the title “Wedding Song wedding song” might initially suggest a direct link to Dylan’s own marriage, such a literal interpretation overlooks the song’s placement within the album’s narrative arc. Following “Dirge” and concluding the collection, “Wedding Song wedding song” must be understood within this broader context.
To dismiss the recording as “slapdash,” as some commentators have, is to miss the point entirely. The raw, unpolished quality of the recording amplifies its emotional impact. It’s the sound of unfiltered feeling, akin to a man standing exposed, buffeted by the wind, struggling to articulate the immensity of his love. In an era of polished production, “Wedding Song wedding song” offers a glimpse of raw, authentic emotion, all the more powerful for its imperfections.
The mention of “three children” shouldn’t be over-analyzed for hidden meanings. Dylan is crafting a powerful piece of fiction, an emotional narrative with which listeners can connect. Just as a science fiction writer doesn’t need to have journeyed to space to create compelling stories, Dylan doesn’t need to be literally recounting his own wedding to evoke the profound emotions within “Wedding Song wedding song.”
Was “Wedding Song wedding song” a desperate attempt at reconciliation with his wife, as some have proposed? Unlikely. Why would such a personal plea be placed on an album alongside “Dirge,” a song that begins with the line:
I hate myself for lovin’ you and the weakness that it showed
Instead, “Wedding Song wedding song” emerges as an artistic necessity, a counterpoint to “Dirge,” a testament to Dylan’s ability to navigate the full spectrum of human emotion within a single album, and to create a timeless “wedding song wedding song” that transcends personal context to resonate with universal feeling.
All the songs reviewed on this site
The songs in chronological order
Dylan’s opening lines: an index
