Please explain the lyrics of "$1000 Wedding".

Incidentally, I don't MIND if the lyrics don't make sense ... it's just that if a coherent meaning CAN be extracted, then I'd like to know about it.

is the third verse a non-sequitir? is it the reverend officiating at the wedding. the "same beasts" thing just seems like an elliptical way of describing a fire-and-brimstone sermon. but it does seem as though he's actually referring to a funeral in the third verse, doesn't it?

crazy gram.

much of it is a riff on that cliché "hey, cheer up, everyone, this isn't a funeral!"

And he felt so bad when he saw the traces
Of old lies still on their faces

perhaps there were things his friends thought they should have told him before the wedding, but didn't? did the girl run off with someone else? somehow despite all the missing info my picture of the night of the wedding (the bender) is unusually vivid, with this self-destructive groom being trailed by guilty-looking friends concerned for his safety.

it's pretty straightforward, at least to me. she's gone and the groom showed up anyway. maybe the bride had some history with the groom's friends, hence "old lies." the reverend don't get the score--his proscriptions are "silly" and he doesn't get the fact that the bride-to-be needed to get out and see the world. I think Parsons is comparing the funeral scene, which is a different event, to the wedding, and points out that the platitudes of the Rev don't get at why the bride needed to not show up to the funeral. Parsons shows compassion for both bride and groom.

it's a masterpiece--Parsons's masterpiece, as far as I'm concerned.

xpost

Amateurist, I think what your mishearing as an "octave jump" is Emmylou's harmony (I don't have the song with me, but that's how I hear it in my head).

faulkner is a good comparison. i'm sure gram was familiar with faulkner too.

Couldn't "went away" in the first verse be a euphemism for "she died"? With the notes being passed around the church before anyone even gets round to telling the groom up at the altar, the use of the euphemism heightens the sense that people aren't being strictly truthful with the groom - a theme which continues in the second verse, with the "old lies". In fact, I sense that no-one thinks much of the groom (including the bride's "mean old" mother) - maybe it WAS a shotgun wedding, and maybe the bride died during pregnancy?

So the bride is dead, the wedding is cancelled, the groom goes out and gets drunk that night instead of getting married - during which time he realises that the bride has probably been sleeping with his friends. Maybe it wasn't even his child? Maybe he was duped into the marriage?

This means that Verse Three is the bride's funeral, set at a later date.

I agree that we're meant to find the reverend's platitudes fairly lame and inadequate. Take "she only knew she loved the world" - isn't that a mealy-mouthed reference to the bride's pre-marital sexual history? And then, note the plainness of the funeral: no flowers, no music, barely a worthy send-off at all. It seems that she has died in disgrace, pregnant out of wedlock in a conservative rural community.

In which case, the song's sympathies lie primarily with the groom.

Does that all add up?

It wasn't even a bad song, though I don't claim that it was another '$1000 Wedding'.

The thing I like about Parsons at his best is how he never quite comes out and says it, you know? Like in "Big Mouth Blues." "So you just tell me what's the sense of me sittin' here leavin'/When any old day I might get even." That's beautiful, so sly.

"$1000 Wedding": I don't think the bride is dead, I think she's just gone, which is maybe even worse. Parsons asks how come there isn't a funeral if you're going to act that way, and then I think he turns the whole thing into a funeral, why the hell not? The implication is that the girl was wild anyway and that the groom's buddies all had suppressed some information about her wild days, but it all showed on their faces anyway. Which again, in the world of Parsons, is just as bad as death, if not worse. Lying. I think it's possible he saying that if you're going to pontificate about the dead and how "death can be put to sleep some silly way," why not talk about the *living*, like the girl, who just wanted to live, get out of New Orleans or Macon or Waycross? Why give flowers to the dead and not to the living? That's my reading of it anyway. Shit, I love this song.

I want to know what kind of trouble we're in...

Also we can't be sure that 'old lies' refers to the girl's hidden relationships with his friends. They may refer to the cliches that people regurgitate to try to provide comfort when bad things happen.

in other worse, what "peepee" said.

And as to a line no one else addressed:

"And why ain't there one lonely horn and one sad note to play"

The grieving process--perhaps this song itself--is about coming to this place or this perspective, summing it up and moving on. Grief and emotions (at least according to Sartre) were about not being about to put things in perspective. Grief is a response to something we have not figured out how to respond to. I think this song was highly personal to Parsons (he went through something like it himself) and this is a result of long years commiserating over it.

I believe that's a reference to Kierkegaard's Repetition:

The young man sank down sadly
Bright tears from his eyes did rain
He sat him down upon a stone
And his heart it broke in twain

Long live the post-horn! It is my kind of instrument for many reasons, but mainly because you can never be sure of getting the same note out of it twice... If oyu give your friends post horns instead of an answer, you will have told them nothing but explained everything. Praised be the post-horn!

Parsons studied Kierkegaard at Harvard.

I mean, yeah, wow, Jesus Christ. This song is absolutely killing me lately.

i've always loved this song, it reads like Faulkner.

That's gotta be why I like it so much. The religious shift in the third verse is hell of Faulknerian.

Is there ANY other country music with lyrics that can be "read" to this extent? The Flatlanders come close but this song is like totally in a class of its own.

"I hate to tell you how he acted when the news arrived
He took some friends out drinking and
It's lucky they survived"

^love that part

Here's my $1000 worth - one way to look at it.

He's waiting at the altar and the atmosphere isn't right - "Well, why ain't there a funeral, if you're gonna act that way?" He's the last to know that his bride isn't going to show, and when he finds out, he tries to drink her off his mind.

But after pouring out his soul, he finds out that his friends are somehow involved - the final kick in the teeth. If the whole world's against him, someone might as well just do him in. This was supposed to be the 'funeral of his wedding' but instead he finds that he’s been betrayed by his friends.

Now cut to what would appear to be her actual funeral - we can't know how long after - and the only person that seems to have forgiven her is the protagonist. Everyone else feels some kind of shame or guilt relating to her; no one’s even concerned about her at all: “where are the flowers for the girl?” They’re busy dwelling on their individual mistakes or hers, when they should be together in their sadness: "why ain't there one lonely horn and one sad note to play?"

In all the situations, people are tangled up in their guilt instead of offering their sympathy or sharing their feelings.

That's how it seems to me, more or less.

I’d never analysed the narrative of this one in great depth before – I was always intrigued by the fact that he sings “It’s supposed to be a funeral” when it was clearly supposed to be a wedding. And I love the fact that the flowers for the girl come into it twice. I guess you can read it slightly differently to the way I’ve described above but really the specific details are unimportant. It’s an incredible song.

^^^

the way I see it, the bride-to-be ran away with another man, vowing never to return, and the friends/wedding guests quietly condoned her infidelity and maybe even aided her in her flight. the groom is totally oblivious. his friends feel guilty knowing that they'll be implicit in his suffering when he finally hears the bad news. for some perverse reason, they think he'll be less miserable believing that his fiance is dead than knowing that she's smashing another man.

therefore they devise a plan. they let the wedding run its course, feigning happiness but acting nervous and shifty in spite of themselves — hence the note-passing and the groom's curious "funeral" remark. when it's clear (to the groom; everyone else already knows) that the bride is a no-show, someone enters the church and announces, according to plan, that the bride died tragically while preparing for the wedding. perhaps the story goes that the limousine crashed, killing the bride but sparing her "mean old mama" and whoever else rode with them. the groom is devastated, and the wedding guests force out a few tears.

the groom tries to drink away his grief before (or maybe even during) the funeral, and his friends nearly kill themselves trying to keep up with him. he tells them "everything there was to tell", i.e. he repeats all the lies he was told about the bride ("the coroner said she didn't suffer", "she's in heaven now"). he can tell from his friends' expressions that they're not being completely straight with him, but he certainly doesn't realize that the bride isn't really dead. some of his friends, however, suspect that the groom is onto their scheme, and they toy with the idea of murdering him before he gets a chance to exact revenge. it's a miserable day for the groom and an unpleasant one for his friends as well.

the funeral is, by necessity, a closed casket affair. the preacher tries to comfort the groom with images of angels and baby Jesus. but he knows that the funeral is a sham, and he can't help but insinuate, in coded biblical language, that the groom's friends deserve to be punished for their deceitful ways. the line about putting beasts to sleep may be a reference to 2 Peter 2:12, in which dishonest false prophets are condemned to die like cattle at the slaughter. in spite of his moralizing, the preacher is no less guilty than the rest of the conspirators.

the groom is upset that the wedding is such an empty, half-assed gesture, lacking the tender music and decorations his beloved deserves. his plea for flowers parallels the same plea he made at the wedding. here the flowers represent honest, unselfish compassion, which his friends lack. the fact that the groom expects his friends to supply the flowers suggests that he is utterly dependent on them for emotional support at the best and worst moments of his life. they, of course, have let him down completely.

I don't know if "$1000 Wedding" bears any relation to "Hundred Dollar Funeral", which Porter Wagoner released seven years earlier. for what it's worth, here are the lyrics to the latter.

My favourite part:

So why don't someone here just spike his drink
Why don't you do him in some old way

Is there ANY other country music with lyrics that can be "read" to this extent? The Flatlanders come close but this song is like totally in a class of its own.

Porter Wagoner's 'George Henry Chickashea' stands up to hella analysis, but a "Please explain the lyrics of 'George Henry Chickashea'" would probably turn into a race-related clusterfuck within half an hour, assuming that a good number of ilxors have heard it.

(the "George Henry Chickashea" lyrics I linked to above are full of dumb mistakes. there's a better transcription here, not that it really matters)

Stupid question but did Gram (or Emmylou) ever offer their thoughts on the lyrics?

nowhere that i've seen

fwiw wikipedia sez: "$1000 Wedding", about Parsons' aborted plan to wed the mother of his daughter in ostentatious style, had been recorded in a plodding arrangement with the Flying Burrito Brothers circa 1970;"

lol @ "plodding"

has that "plodding" version ever been released, bootleg or otherwise? i haven't heard it. there's a sweet solo piano demo tacked on that burrito bros. live thing that came out a couple years ago.

Did a little googling and saw this:

After the Byrds:

Back home, Nancy Ross had recently given birth to a daughter, Polly Parsons. Parsons had planned a large wedding -- a Hank Williams-style media event -- and commissioned a $1,000 wedding dress from Nudie's Rodeo Tailors. Despite, or perhaps because of, the birth of their child, Parsons and Ross had drifted apart. The dress was never used, though it was immortalized years later in the Parsons song "$1,000 Wedding."

Everyone is discussing Faulkner and Kierkegaard and failed weddings, but the way I interpret the song all the verses make sense and the message is just a sad story about everyday life. Maybe I'm missing something, but back in the sixties there was a moral question about telling others about a terminal illness. Should a doctor tell you there is no hope or just cover up how bad things really are. That was back when doctors and hospitals had some sense of morals and ethics and didn't hype the nonsense that they could deal with anything and make it all better for several hundred thousand dollars. Anyway, as I see it the girl probably had a terminal illness and either didn't know it or else didn't want the groom to know it. However, it seems everyone else knew it and she died before making it to the wedding. Maybe I'm making it too simple, but looking at it this way it all makes sense. He loved the girl and she loved him and couldn't bear to tell him that they wouldn't have very long together and nobody else wanted to tell him either, even though they knew it. Everything was done out of caring about the couple and it broke his heart. It is a genuine heartbreak country song as only Gram could do. That is how I see it.

Something just hit me.

Look at the third verse only, as if it were the only verse. It sounds like a sermon being held for a dead child, a baby girl. “She only knew she loved the world” could describe an infant – no complex thoughts, just love of life. The “same silly way” is a phrase fit to a child. “All about the sweet child’s holy face” is self-evident. And maybe the notion of “supposed to be a funeral” is because there is no funeral due to the way the child died (miscarriage?, stillborn?).

Now look at verse 2 by itself. This could surely be about a girl who left him, and his friends covering for “old lies.” Or that the girl died. And it also could be about the death of a child or the child and mother.

Finally, verse one. Given the above explanations for verses two and three, verse one could again be as much about the child as the bride. “Where are the flowers for my baby” could really mean a baby. “I’d even like to see her mean old mama” could be the bride.

I’m not sure I believe the above, but it’s an interesting twist.

"By now Gram had married Nancy Ross and she had become pregnant. Gram didn’t relish the responsibility of being a father and unlike his character in Blue Eyes, he wanted Nancy to have an abortion. She refused and Parsons’ only child, Polly, was born in late 1967. Shortly afterwards, they split up and Nancy moved to Santa Barbara. Gram had revealed himself to be not safe at home and the poor sales of the album led to the submarine sinking."

i think i will probably never figure this out.

I think that the line:
So why don't someone here just spike his drink
Why don't you do him in some old way
is a reference to how his mom suddenly died in the hospital, leaving him feeling abandoned while others passed notes and gossiped in order to "protect" the naive young man. Later in his life, Bob Parsons told Gram that he had smuggled booze into the hospital and given Gram's mother a drink. Bob's actions killed her. Gram mother's death was on the day of his high school graduation from the Bolles Academy in Jacksonville. If you look at it this way, celebrations mixed with gossip, abandonment and funerals makes sense.

Tis a thing of beauty. For me it works better if the bride has died. It seems to be about living and dying; and coping with loss. The third verse where the rev spits out his euphoric diatribe juxtaposed with the grooms absolute disconsolation magnifies the grief and mourning. Gram plays with other parallels that seem incongruent like a death and a wedding, a funeral and a party,euphoria with abject loss. Hence it's the saddest song ever. he makes harmony from disharmony. The irony of the line supposed to be a funeral, it's been a bad bad day sums up the lack of empathy and understanding that surrounds him. We sense profoundly his distance. The key changes and the shifts in perspective all lend to the grooms loneliness and loss. It is a work of art. An epic. I doubt there is a better song out there!

And why ain't there a funeral, if you're gonna act that way

The first time I heard this song, out for a lunch date, time stopped, teared up. Maybe not the saddest song ever but close enough

I was only familiar with an outtake version of "1,000 Dollar Wedding" from Gram Parson's Archive Vol. 1: The Flying Burrito Brothers Live at the Avalon Ballroom,, and I only came across this message board after hearing Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield's version and thinking I'd heard Dando sing a different lyric from the one in which I was familiar. On the archive version, Parsons sings, "and with all the invitations sent, / the young bride passed away." Having assumed the whole time the song was about the young bride's death, I searched the lyrics and found the much-more-common "the young bride went away." I think, though, that Parsons himself obviously considered the bride dead and gone,considering the Archive Vol. 1 version. I did enjoy reading everyone's theories and Faulkner/Kierkegaard comparisons, which remain apt.

i think it's more likely that he played with it

And re-reading the lyrics closely, it seems to be that a $1,000 Wedding has literally turned into a $1,000 funeral, and the bridegroom is not impressed with the service. The bride's mom isn't in attendance, there are no flowers, and the guests are gossiping about the cause of death (passing notes to eachother.) Dr. William Grace even remarks that she died in some silly way. Overdose? Suicide? Accident? Regardless, his platitudes aren't a comfort for the bridegroom. I'm trying to actually analyse the lyrics themselves, although I admit there is enough ambiguity to bring doubt to any anlysis.

Actually what this song makes me think of literature-wise more than anything is Ford's The Good Soldier - the unreliable narrator, the layers of deception, the odd moments of humor, the declarations of great sadness, etc.

JON WHITE IS CORRECT: THE BRIDE DIES ON HER WEDDING DAY. (I'll cite my source at the bottom of this note.) I think it's probably a drug overdose or a suicide. The groom doesn't know what happened & shows up. The bride's family isn't at the wedding because they are dealing with the tragedy at home. The word gradually reaches the people in the crowd -- but not the groom. When the groom sees everybody looking so grim, he makes a joke about it looking like a funeral. Finally, his buddies (who clearly know a lot more about his fiancee's past than he does) tell him what happened. He goes out drinking with them, & as they all get soused, the buddies tell the groom a lot of bad stuff about his intended that he never knew. He can still see the lies on their faces from all the times they could have told him about this stuff but they chose to cover for her instead. The last verse is not a non sequiter: Meanwhile, back at the wedding, it has morphed into an ad hoc funeral. (Hey, they paid their $1,000, right?) It's been a bad, bad day.
My source: I think there are now several official recordings of $1,000 Wedding out. ONLY THE ONE on the Gram Parsons studio album that most of you know doesn't make it clear what's going on.
I recommend the album called: Gram Parsons Archives Vol. 1: The Flying Burrito Brothers Live At The Avalon Ballroom April 4th, 1969. The Burritos were opening for hometown heroes the Grateful Dead, & the recording is from Owsley Stanley's archives. Stanley designed the Dead's sound system (when he wasn't designing perfect LSD, as explained in Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne," which is about Owsley). It's a board tape, so you can't hear the audience. The vocals are mixed very loud, so you can the lyrics very clearly. Parsons sings:
A thousand dollar wedding was supposed to be held the other day.
And with all the invitations sent, the young bride passed away.
The groom saw people passing notes..."
There are other tiny differences in the lyrics. I think that by the time Parsons recorded the version on his solo album, he wanted to blur the story just a little bit -- possibly so that all of us would be discussing the song for seven years decades after he wrote it!
One thing that makes the song even sadder when you do understand it is that it foreshadows Parsons' own death (as does Long Black Limousine, which he also performed). Like the bride in the song, he died suddenly & too young. (Interestingly, Elvis Presley also recorded Long Black Limousine. If I were a country rock star & I identified with that song, I wouldn't dare record it! I'd check into Narcotics Anonymous instead!)

Thank you Slade Barker.

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I believe the song is autobiographical - that it relates back to the feelings he had as a 12 year old child when his father failed to show up in Winterhaven for Christmas. The adults decided not to tell him or his younger sister that his father had shot himself back in Waycross until after the holidays. He could tell something was wrong but no one would level with him. There was no funeral. It was a bad bad day. Later on in his life, after all the invitations had been sent, his mother failed to show for his boarding school (high school graduation). Again he could sense something was wrong and was ultimately told of her death in a Winterhaven hospital from alcoholism. Not until several years later did his stepfather confess to having provided the alcohol to Big Avis in the hospital that killed her. Lots of old lies still on their faces in this man's young life. Probably very difficult for him to reconcile his parents' tragic deaths to the religious upbringing he would have had in the Deep South at that time. Hard to accept the oft held belief that a father who commits suicide would not have been accepted into heaven. That, coupled with the singers own spiraling descent into alcoholism and drug abuse led to his irreverent views toward religion (I hope you know a lot more than you're believing in "Song for You" and the reverend "Swore the fiercest beasts could all be put to sleep the same silly way"). The beasts that took his mother, father, and soon the singer were not so easily dismissed. And, with all the saints singing, why can't there be one single horn with one sad note to play. There was supposed to be a funeral. It's been a bad bad day.

Rob is my new hero.

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2014/10/lyric-week-gram-parsons-return-grievous-angel/

this song is inexhaustible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkuf4VzBAUI

here he sings 'passed away' instead of 'went away'.

https://youtu.be/ZJ_zkGtOAQg?t=1m5s

I'm almost relieved --- no, definitely relieved --- that this textual evidence points to the bride having died unbeknownst to the groom.

I've been scared for years that the real meaning of the song was that the groom found her after "he went out drinking" and heard all those stories and killed her himself - making this song something rather fearful to approach, and I suppose it still is.

One piece of lyric that pointed in this direction was the part where it is suggested that it would have been better if the groom had had his drinked spiked and been "done in some old way." Because at least then the bride who "only knew she loved the world" would not then have been killed. Hmmmm. I think I'm still scared. Not like life doesn't provide us with lots of these kinds of awful stories anyway.

Maybe this song just sucks? I mean, it isn't intended to be inscrutable, I don't think. It's just a mess.

No need to worry your pretty head over that mess.

I think the 'meaning' of the song is easier to discern if part of the lyrics are moved (as below). As well, there are 2 different perspective during the song; the objective narrator, and the boyfriend who has been stood up.

The first 5 lines are an objective description [by the objective narrator] of what happened that day. The next 3 lines show the meaning of the day has changed [seen from the boyfriend's perspective] from a wedding to a funeral...She's gone (for whatever reason, be it that she died, left him, ran off with someone else etc.), and the day is now like a funeral for him.

It was a $1000 wedding supposed to be held the other day
And with all the invitations sent
The young bride went away
When the groom saw people passing notes
Not unusual, he might say
But where are the flowers for my baby
I'd even like to see her mean old mama
And why ain't there a funeral, if you're gonna act that way

The next section (moved forward a little) is just a description of what the reverend said [from the perspective of the objective narrator] after the bride didn't turn up. His words were probably an religious allegory re the death / failure to turn up of the bride, and don't make much sense, or seem silly to the objective narrator.

The Reverend Dr. William Grace
Was talking to the crowd
All about the sweet child's holy face and
The saints who sung out loud
And he swore the fiercest beasts
Could all be put to sleep the same silly way

The rest of the song – the other 2 bits joined together, and which seem to fit together - is about what happened after the bride failed to turn up [from the perspective of the objective narrator]...The boyfriend took some friends out drinking, and they obviously tied a big one on. He told his friends everything, but thought they weren't really telling him everything...(he was probably a bit paranoid / sensitive). He was obviously upset enough that the objective narrator thought he should be put out of his misery. The last 4 lines just reiterate that the day turned into a funeral / wake, whether literally or figuratively.

I hate to tell you how he acted when the news arrived
He took some friends out drinking and
It's lucky they survived
Well, he told them everything there was to tell there along the way
And he felt so bad when he saw the traces
Of old lies still on their faces
So why don't someone here just spike his drink
Why don't you do him in some old way
Supposed to be a funeral
It's been a bad, bad day
And where are the flowers for the girl
She only knew she loved the world
And why ain't there one lonely horn and one sad note to play
Supposed to be a funeral
It's been a bad, bad day
Supposed to be a funeral
It's been a bad, bad day

thanks for that

why wasn't her mean old mama at the wedding?

Hi...Re "Mean old mama". That would be the prospective mother-in-law. In common 'mythology', mother in laws are often depicted as being difficult / mean. If the (prospective) bride had turned up, the groom would have even been happy to see his (mean old) mother in law at the wedding. In this case, the 'mean old mama' / mother in law didn't turn up, because the wedding did not go ahead.

Re the possibility of the (prospective) bride having died / been killed. The song works because she didn't turn up for the wedding, whatever the reason for that might be. However, it is unlikely she is dead. The lyrics say...

"With all the invitations sent
The young bride went away"

'Went away' clearly indicates she left of her own accord.

Later lyrics state...

"Where are the flowers for the girl
She only knew she loved the world"

I think this should be taken figuratively, in that the wedding has effectively turned into a wake (emotionally) for the (stood up?) groom.

Listening to Dirty Mind today it occurs to me that "Head" gives a pretty reasonable explanation of what happened.

hahahaahahahahaaha

Supposed to be a funeral. It's been a bad, bad day.

"And he swore the fiercest beasts
Could all be put to sleep the same silly way"

I'm just a little drunk and am jamming this right now but just really i want to bump this thread becauseI i have always found this line so beautiful