"Wedding Bells (Are Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine)"
John, Paul and George used this song to describe the Beatles breakup. Get Back revealed how the Beatles used songs that meant something to them as a way of communicating with each other, through connotation and association, privately in public. "Wedding Bells" is one of those songs. We know it means something to George, because of his demo tape for All Things Must Pass (below). Paul, in particular, likes to reference "Wedding Bells" to say that the breakup was the inevitable consequence of mature manhood; a quotation of the song he could have looked up in a Social Science textbook. John brought it up (for example) in 1980, screenshot, in a usage very similar to Paul's.
(Screenshot: "McCartney: My Love For Linda," Brisbane, AUS Courier-Mail, December 5, 1998)
Neither John nor Paul were ever service members nor played on a sports team. So what's up with all these goofy analogies? The situation that the song is actually describing, is one of loneliness and regrets, sentiments that run counter to the narrative they use it for. In fact, the song looks like a way for them to convey their honest ambivalence about moving on.
Listening to the song itself, it tells of a singer who feels lonely and sad, watching his male singing group partners get married, because they don't sing together anymore.
An American popular standard, it was written in the 1920s to appeal to nostalgia for a bygone era (specifically, late Victorian Barbershop quartet harmonizing of a generation earlier). It was first a hit in 1929 by the early crooner Gene Austin. Revived in the 1950s in a relentlessly cheery version by the Ink Spots in 1954, it was covered by Gene "Be Bop a Lula" Vincent, a bit more sombre in tone, on his 1956 debut album.
Charted at #26 in Billboard in May 1954. This great recording was overshadowed in the hit department by its #1 hit a-side, "Three Coins in t
(Racist language warning on the 1929 version)



















