Bob Dylan / 4:42
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
The Village Recorder, West Los Angeles, California / Studio B: November 9 or 10, 1973
Technical Team
Producers: Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, and Rob Fraboni
Sound Engineer: Rob Fraboni
“Wedding Song” is one of the most touching declarations of love that Bob Dylan ever wrote, a kind of “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” reprise. In this new romantic invocation addressed to his wife Sara, he confesses, “I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love” and “[I] love you more than life itself”; thanks to Sara, he is able to say “goodbye to haunted rooms” and acknowledge that “when I was deep in poverty you taught me how to give”; Sara has given him children, and he sings, “You saved my life.” Another confession, this time about his artistic career, comes when he sings in the sixth verse: “It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large / Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge.”
“Wedding Song” closes Planet Waves. The following album, Blood on the Tracks, chronicles their marital breakdown after eleven years together. It is therefore tempting to perceive in “Wedding Song” the first indication of this separation.
Some claim it is a song about redemption through love, as Dylan paints an idyllic portrait of his wife with ambiguous words here and there (“Your love cuts like a knife”) that can actually raise doubts. In 1978, he explained to Jonathan Cott the line “Your love cuts like a knife”: “Well it’s bloodletting, it’s what heals all disease.”20 But what disease is he talking about? Is he lovesick or ill and not be able to feel the love he thought he could give? As usual, Dylan offers different readings of his songs.
If “Dirge” and “Forever Young” were the last two songs recorded during the first session of the mixing, “Wedding Song” was the last song selected by Dylan for Planet Waves. The recording was done in one take on November 9. The studio sheet mentions November 9, but the master tape box November 10. Dylan returns to the tone of his first records, simultaneously playing guitar and harmonica (in F) and delivering an interpretation of very high quality. Rob Fraboni recalls, “[A]round noon, Bob said, ‘I’ve got a song I want to record later… I’m not ready right now. I’ll tell you when.’… [A]ll of a sudden he came up and said, ‘Let’s record.’ So he went out in the studio, and that was ‘Wedding Song,’ the cut that ends the album… [U]sually he wouldn’t sing unless we were recording. That’s the way he was… [This time] he asked, ‘Is the tape rolling? Why don’t you just roll it.’ So I did, and he started singing, and there was no way in the world I could have stopped him to say, ‘Go back to the top.’ It was such an intense performance. If you listen to the record, you can hear noises from the buttons on his jacket. But he didn’t seem to care.”103 The day of mixing, Fraboni says, “I mentioned re-cutting it to eliminate the button sounds, at one point, and Bob said, ‘Well, maybe.’ But he never said yes, so we let it go.”103 These noises can be easily heard in each harmonica part, especially the last one at 4:13!