Curtain Risin’ On A New Age

Bob Dylan “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar”

“The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar,” written and recorded in the tail end of Dylan’s Christian era, is a chugging, manic blues rock song with scattered images and anecdotes that add up to a sense of impending apocalypse. And not “apocalypse” as we tend to think of that word today, but more in the original sense – apocalypse as the revelation, and the arrival of a new order. The song doesn’t convey dread so much as anxious excitement for what’s about to go down. Amidst the violence and chaos, Dylan tracks his character’s relationship with a woman named Claudette. He can’t make up his mind about her, and she seems just as indecisive about him – “finally had to give her up ’bout the time she began to want me.” By the end of the song he’s lost track of her completely, and in context, pondering whatever had become of her is a stray thought as he’s observing Judgment Day.

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