Rhino unearths Rod Stewart album, featuring a 19 minute run-through of Dylan’s arabesque and obscure gem -check out Dylan himself

The Groom’s Still Waiting At the Altar is a deliciously complex song by Dylan from Shot of Love. A driving blues riff is over-laid with complex and unclear narrative in the lyrics. The song has strong biblical references and was written as Dylan emerges from his “Saved” period.

The groom and the altar are biblical allusions to Christ and his bride. Interspersed is a tumbling vision and humorous lines such as “Put your hand on my head baby, do I have a temperature.” Oh yeah.

The song is of chaos, war, destruction, personal longing, and those themes of alienation that Dylan mines so well. Michael Gray does an exhaustive analysis of the song and live versions, in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia which is worth owning if you are like me and want to know everything Dylan-esque. I love how people diss Gray’s work. He is one of the better authorities on Dylan, if such a thing as “authority” is possible.

A fan has posted his video of the live version from November 15th, 1980 at the Fox Theatre with Dylan’s touring band. With Dylan are “Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Fred Tackett (guitar & mandolin), Willie Smith (keyboards), Tim Drummond (bass), Jim Keltner (drums), Clydie King, Carolyn Dennis, and Regina Havis (background vocals)”

Tim Drummond is carrying the song with his relentless, elemental bass riff. I’ve seen videos of him and he’s mesmerizing. Lead guitarist Mike Bloomfield is of course famous for playing lead when Dylan blew the roof off and minds of the folkies at Newport Folk Festival circa 1965. He was one of the best blues guitarists in his day, soon to pass on. He he died in 1981 apparently of a drug overdose.

The song was the B-side of the single Heart of Mine but dropped from the album. Columbia released the song on the 1985 boxset Biograph.

When Shot of Love was re-issued, The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar was added back into the mix.

Mike Bloomfield had that “wild mercury” sound Dylan tried to achieve in his recordings.

Sony took the song off YouTube – try this cover

It’s the best one I could find. There are a lot of Groom covers but they are junk.

Rod Stewart Cover

I digress, as usual. Rhino has unearthed a 1992 recording by Rod Stewart of The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar that wasn’t released at the time. The CD is called Once in A Blue Moon and the original release was Lead Vocalist. The original is out of print but Amazon have some copies at the link

Rhino are famous for finding and re-issuing great music. In this case, they added bonus tracks including 19 minutes of studio run-throughs of The Groom Is Still Waiting At The Altar, which may or may not have value to you.

“In the summer of 1992, Rod Stewart recorded an album of cover versions now known as Once In A Blue Moon. At the time, however, the project was shelved. One of the songs from the sessions was Dylan’s “Groom Still Waiting At The Altar,” which was eventually released as a b-side in the mid-1990s. Material by the Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, Stevie Nicks, and The Contours, among others, was also interpreted by Stewart at the time.” Harold Lepidus, Examiner. com