The Wedding Present: Like a poem or a book or something
"The boy Gedge has written some of the best love songs of the 'Rock 'n' Roll' era. You may dispute this, but I'm right and you're wrong." - John Peel.
I’m continually surprised that when writers are asked about their early influences almost all of them seem to have been entranced by Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or Hungarian poets I’ve still never heard of while none suggest that their earliest literary awakenings were brought on by the lyrics of their favourite songs as children or teenagers. I find it all very hard to believe. Good writing is good writing, however it’s packaged.
Although I read quite a lot as a teenager, the words which mattered most to me aged 17 were those set to jangly indie guitar music and performed by the likes of The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Woodentops, and – rather inevitably – The Smiths.
Another favourite was The Wedding Present. After listening to them on and off since their remarkable 1987 debut album George Best (an album largely about failed relationships, the meat and drink of teenage experience), I finally went to see them live with my oldest schoolfriend at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London last week.
Dave Gedge is the only remaining member of the original lineup of the band that featured on the iconic C86 tape, but I’m happy to say that not only has its guitar-led wall of sound not changed, nor has Gedge’s enthusiasm for performing and writing fine songs. The best of them lie somewhere between performance poetry and micro fiction, vignettes of life that work just as well as something padded out into full novella form. Gedge once told an interviewer: “I’ve always thought that The Wedding Present was an inappropriate name for a pop group, more like a poem, or a book or something” but I think that’s exactly how his songs come across, like a poem or a book or something.
While lyrics written on a page can sometimes feel a bit flat away from the roar of live or even recorded performance, nevertheless I think the best do bear comparison to a lot of the finest short stories I’ve read and enjoyed. As an example, here is my favourite song by The Wedding Present, My Favourite Dress, sung exhilaratingly at top volume by the entire audience (and not just those of us who have a little less hair now than in the late 1980s) of Shepherd’s Bush last Friday. It’s the last four lines that really make it work for me. Peel got it absolutely right.
Sometimes these words just don't have to be said.
I know how you both feel. The heart can rule the head.
Jealousy is an essential part of love.
The hurting here below and the emptiness above.Oh, there's always something left behind.
There's always something left behind.
Never mind. Oh, never mind.
The tender caresses that brings out the man.
I can't still be drunk at five.
Oh, I guess I surely can.
Slowly your beauty is eaten away
By the scent of someone else in the blanket where we lay.
Oh, there's always something left behind.There's always something left behind.
Maybe next time
Uneaten meals.
A lonely star.
A welcome ride in a neighbor's car.
A long walk home.
The pouring rain.
I fell asleep when you never came.
Some rare delight in Manchester town.
It took six hours before you let me down.
To see it all in a drunken kiss.
A stranger's hand on my favourite dress.That was my favourite dress, you know.
That was my favourite dress.
Magnificent! Much as I love that song I've never really paid attention to the lyrics and you are quite right about the last 4 lines. I saw them once in a tunnel of a venue on the Exeter quay, I guess mid 80s, and they were just as you'd hope