a wedding song
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Artist:
The bride comes down the aisle, the singer tells us, "in a gown that her mama wore," modified and modernized. You can imagine it, through his eyes, but in the first verse, we don't know who the singer is. The groom? The best man? Then, in the second verse, we find out, but not really. On the arm of her dad, she approaches the altar, and on her way, she catches the singer's eye and gives him a "secret smile." Still, is he an ex? Maybe, maybe not. He only says that they were "close friends." The chorus comes in, and it's a mental flashback:"Well I can see her now, in her tight blues jeansPumping all her money in the record machineSpinning like a top, you should have seen her goI knew the bride when she used to rock and roll"That's how Nick Lowe's "I Knew The Bride" starts. I think it's a neglected little rock classic. It's a first cousin to Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell," but Berry is a detached observer. The singer of "I Knew The Bride" knew the bride, and evidently knows her still. He's one of 150 guests at her wedding, isn't he?He goes on to describe the proud dad, who's given the couple a down payment on a place to live, and the bridegroom, gainfully employed and smartly dressed. "I remember a time when she never would have looked at him twice." The bride has gone through a transformation, but the singer remembers her as a partying heartbreaker. What does he think of all this? He sounds amused; he's not bragging to a friend that he used to sleep with her, he's not mocking her, really. There's no condescension, except possibly to the shell-shocked new husband.Nick Lowe's original version is kind of boppy and jerky; the Dave Edmunds version on "Get It" is sped-up and Berryesque. I'm partial to the live take by Nick and Dave side by side in Rockpile (ignore the odd psychedelic effects), and to the recent Lowe performance live on the BBC.
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