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Background on Lyrics to Too Many Weddings
Written by Jimmy
This is all Ed’s fault. And Kathy’s.
The lyrics started because Ed kept missing our Saturday sessions because he and Helen were going to weddings. We complained about Too Many Weddings! So the song was pretty simple – in first verse he would be at the wedding with all folks looking at him and Helen wondering when they were going to be walking up the aisle. The second verse would be the two of them getting married. The chorus needed to be over the top and that is where Kathy comes in. She bought the family a Panini maker and nothing is more romantic then Kathy making you a panini. So ‘you’re meltin’ my panini’s’ was there all along. Worked backwards to ‘You frost my flakes… you French my toast.’ The final part of lyric came together when I decided to play with the idea of a verse starting with number one and counting — so ‘Won the Wedding Lottery, Too Many Weddings, Three A long in June. For the Sake of the two of us, Five more couples have written to us…’ For the second half of first verse I repeated this with A, B, C, D… And then did the same for second verse. I thought it was very clever and sat back waiting for the band to notice and shower me with praise. They never did notice and when I finally showed them — after about 80 takes – they went … ‘Hmm, wondered why it was so awkward to sing.’ Great! all part of the general trend of lyricists not really ever being appreciated (see the humiliating story of King of the Biosphere)
Musically, we’ve had a massive row as a band on which way to take this one. Andy and i wanted big band from outset! It was a show tune and we wanted to take it over the top. Ed and Mike wanted to do the opposite — since the lyrics were such an obvious show tune, we should take the music in a different direction. Starting very slow and moving into a mini little rock thing. We’re posting both versions but the CD is ‘big band’. Martyn and Rob couldn’t care less, to be honest, finding this little song a bit naff. Louise mostly just sat on the floor and waited for the boys to resolve things. But secretly she really wanted Big Band…
Now the final bit of the story. We wrote this and recorded it on one of the rare Satudays in May/June when Ed wasn’t at a wedding. At end of session, I rushed to explain to him that I had written this about him and the pressure was now on to ask Helen to marry him. He said, ‘well that’s funny, becuase I was just going to tell all of you that after last weeks wedding I asked Helen to marry me.’ (And she said yes, for those of you who wondered whether chord boy would ever find a partner!) so this is really their song. And more importantly, our second ever live gig will be the full band playing this at their wedding — hopefully during the ceremony itself, when phrases like ‘A big slab of misery between us…’ seems perfect. Ed and Helen don’t know this, we figured we’d do the All you Need is Love scene from Love Actually (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h89BbqoPAcM ). And please keep quiet it will be quite a shock. Still wondering who will play the trumpet.
Jimmy