The Secret Marriage

With 1987's "The Secret Marriage" (from . . . Nothing Like the Sun) Sting attempted to answer [the question of marriage]. However, as the couple's children grew older, it became apparent that the kids wanted a formalization of their parents' relationship. And so, on August 20, 1992, the couple exchanged vows in a small, civil ceremony. Two days later Mr. and Mrs. Sting celebrated their official union with a full-blown private ceremony—an occasion so festive that even The Police reformed for a two-song set. Sting later called the ceremony "[t]he most romantic thing I've ever done. [. . .] We got married Aug. 22 in a 900-year-old Saxon church in England. It was a fabulous day. It rained until we made our promises, then the sun came through the stained-glass window." After years of bad blood between the two, Sting and Frances eventually came to amicable terms. "I'm lucky. I have a very good relationship with all my kids and my ex-wife. I think we've done rather well. We're still good friends and we have something very important in common." And on 1995's "All This Time" CD-ROM, Sting discussed his taking the plunge a second time: "'The Secret Marriage' is my way of trying to justify or rationalize why I wasn't married to the woman I had lived with for 10 years. My justification was that we were already married in a way—that we expressed our vows to each other every day, but not in a big public ceremony. It wasn't until our kids got to around the age of 9 or 10 that they needed to have some sort of public demonstration that we were married, and it was their idea that we got married in a public way. Our marriage is a secret no longer."

In the liner notes to “Nothing Like the Sun,” Sting wrote "'Secret Marriage' was adapted from a melody by Hans Eisler. Eisler was a colleague of Bertlot Brecht, who like him, fled to America to escape the Nazis who hounded him for the rest of his life in various disguises."

The song is featured in the soundtrack to Four Weddings and a Funeral.

[Bill Bredice] I did a little research and found the following passage from the November/December 1987 edition of SPIN magazine, with Sting on the cover, as told by Vic Garbarini, the interviewer:

During a break he plays me a simple vocal and piano piece that he wants to add to the album. It's called "The Secret Marriage," and it's about the inner joining of two people without the official sanction of the church or state. I enthuse about it being the most gorgeous Bertolt Brecht song I've ever heard. He grins shyly. "Actually, I completely rewrote Brecht's original lyrics -- it was originally called 'The Little Radio' -- and I just kept his collaborator's music." I remind him that in Jungian psychology, as well as American Indian lore and other mythologies, the "inner, secret marriage" refers to the balancing and joining together of the male and female parts of oneself to achieve a state of wholeness.

"The Secret Marriage" was adapted from a melody by German composer Hans Eisler.