The Wedding List

Truffaut's La Mariée était en Noir "Director Truffaut had a well-documented affection for Alfred Hitchcock and set out here to pay homage to him. Moreau plays a driven, almost impenetrable woman who is hell-bent on exacting revenge upon five men who have wronged her. On the day of her wedding, someone shot and killed the groom, her life-long love, and she, after considering suicide herself, sets out to even the score. She methodically enters the lives, albeit briefly, of each man she holds responsible, planning his demise to some degree, yet taking into consideration the surroundings and the devices at hand when carrying out the killings. She then checks them off as though they were items on a grocery list before moving on to the next one..." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061955/usercomments

No, I'll never give the hunt up And I won't muck it up Somehow this was it, I knew Oh maybe fate wants you dead, too We've come together in the very same room And I'm coming for you!

Hmmmm. The darker side of her emotions shows the lady as down-to-earth as her surname befits. In fact, it's more than realistic: it's downright sinister. Hence 'The Wedding List' and its obsession with revenge. What happens here is that at the point two people are about to be married, the bridegroom gets shot. Who by is irrelevant, but the bride's need for vengeance is so powerful that all she thinks about is getting even with the villain. Since his death is the best wedding gift she could have, he goes right to the top of the (wedding) list. KB: "Revenge is a terrible power, and the idea is to show that it's so strong that even at such a tragic time it's all she can think about. I find the whole aggression of human beings fascinating--how we are suddenly whipped up to such an extent that we can't see anything except that. Did you see the film 'Deathwish', and the way the audience reacted every time a mugger got shot? Terrible--though I cheered, myself." "Among The Bushes" http://gaffa.org/reaching/i80_rm.html

Do you think I'd ever let you Get away with it, huh?

"The Wedding List" draws on Truffaut's film, and IMHO, is an incredibly cinematic song, rather like a movie pitch, made up of flashback and newspaper reportage.

In Part One, she goes off to find and confront her groom's killer. Meanwhile, punny headlines are reporting the murder of the groom and the bride's fury. In Part Two, we return to the mind of the killer bride. All she sees is red rum and red Rudi! And her 'passion crime' is to kill the killer! Then we return to newspaper reports, cut with flashbacks of her committing suicide. The crime has been avenged, bodies analysed, and newspapers printed. The chorus, perhaps reading from the tabloid press, is trying to make sense of it all. An eye for an eye!

After she shot the guy She committed suicide And later when they analysed They found a little one inside It must have been Rudi's child...

Now I have not seen The Bride Wore Black, so I do not know if the Jeanne Moreau character actually kills herself or was ever pregnant. But TWL has some of KT's weirdest pop song lyrics. In the darkly humorous 'Coffee Homeground', KT sings down in the cellar of "Pictures of Crippin Lipstick-smeared". Dr Crippen dabbled in all sorts, including the possibility of backstreet abortions. And with 'The Wedding List', KT Bush sings about autopsy long before Dr Gunther von Hagens' Anatomy for Beginners! And long before Tarantino's Kill Bill.

In TWW, did The Bride know she was pregnant before she committed suicide? The "later when they analysed" suggests that she wasn't 'heavy-bellied'. But: "never mind, she got the guy!" [In 'The Kick Inside', KT also chooses to have a pregnant protagonist commit suicide.]

In context, the statement "it must have been Rudi's child" is a supposition. But is it part of the newspaper report, made by the post-mortem examiner, or is it a conclusion drawn by the Daily Newspaper reader?

The "Christmas" TV special, U.K. TV, aired December 28, 1979. This forty-five-minute television programme is the only longform televised performance Kate has given to date. It is by any standard a great success. Not one spoken word is heard--only song and dance. Kate's only guest (aside from the KT Bush Band and her usual dance partners) is Peter Gabriel. [In The Wedding List, Paddy Bush plays Bill, the man who KB is going to kill. The groom is played by Anthony van Laast, the Tour of Life co-choreographer.] The video sections incorporate imagery based on old westerns as well as the Truffaut film. The stage section of the performance is very similar to the live choreography for James and the Cold Gun, in which Kate's character goes on the rampage with a rifle. http://gaffa.org/passing/v79_dec.html

It's based on a movie ('La Mariee Etait En Noir' or 'The Bride Wears Black').