Folks who level a blanket criticism of Bob Dylan’s recordings in the 80s aren’t listening closely enough. Sure, it was more of a rollercoaster era than others in his career. But the highs soared to levels that matched even his most celebrated releases.
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“The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar”, released in 1981, represents one of those highs. It found Dylan still heavily referencing the Bible as he’d done in the years immediately previous to it. But worldly concerns were starting to creep into the picture. All this came as he entered yet another transitional phase in his incredible career.
“Altar” Ego
It wasn’t a particularly long stretch. But the era that connected Bob Dylan’s “Born Again” period and his all-out return to secular music stands as an extremely fascinating one. The time period mostly encompassed the albums Shot Of Love and Infidels.
These albums still touched on Christian religious themes. But they came at them with the enthusiasm a bit more measured. It was as if Dylan had been trying to live according to his newfound faith. But he was encountering some difficulty in reconciling that with the pressures of daily life.
“The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar” missed the cut at first when it came to its possible inclusion on Shot Of Love. Dylan struggled at times to identify his best material around that time. (Infidels would even more significantly fall victim to that issue.) He originally included it only on the cassette version of the record. And he also allocated it as a B-side to the single “Heart Of Mine”.
Luckily, reissues of the vinyl version of the album beginning in 1985 included the track, as did the compact disc version when it arrived later in the decade. The track, which included ace instrumentalists like Danny Kortchmar, Jim Keltner, and Benmont Tench to bring it to fruition, now properly serves as the barnburner of an opening to Side Two.
Exploring the Lyrics of “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar” by Bob Dylan
“The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar” veers haphazardly between the narrator’s struggles to keep his faith and his immersion into a world full of unseemliness and frailty. Along the way, he tries to corral a girl named Claudette, who brings him nothing but heartbreak, yet still enthralls him.
Maybe Claudette represents that faith, just as the groom in the chorus could imply some sort of commitment to God. We’d never pretend to definitively know the inner workings of Bob Dylan songs such as this. But we can say for sure that “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar” contains some of the most vivid, wordy, and altogether extraordinary couplets of his career.
The narrator confesses how adrift he feels. “Felt around for the light switch, became nauseated,” Dylan howls. “She was walking down the hallway while the walls deteriorated.” In the second verse, Dylan seems to get confessional about his personal journey. “Got the message this morning, the one that was sent to me/About the madness of becomin’ what one was never meant to be.”
After bringing Claudette and her infuriating demands into the picture in the third verse, Dylan uncorks an all-time couplet to start the fourth: “Put your hand on my head, baby, do I have a temperature?/I see people who are supposed to know better standin’ around like furniture.” Finally, after speaking of war zones and burning cities, he shrugs his shoulders at the paramour’s location: “She could be respectfully married or running a whorehouse in Buenos Aires.”
We can’t say for sure what it all means, but it sure is thrilling to hear it all come together. If “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar” was supposed to be a part of Dylan’s struggling period, well, we should all have slumps like that.
Photo by George Rose/Getty Images
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