As has become a habit in recent months, I woke early and lay in bed listening to music. I have found Spotify’s AI DJ to be a useful way to while away the early hours. It produces a mix of songs based on my listening. It can be a bit repetitive, but it’s easy.

 

As I was listening, up came Dire Straits, Romeo and Juliet, a Mark Knopfler song that apparently draws on his failed romance with Holly Vincent. I have always thought it was a captivating and emotional ballad, and while it may not be the critics’ choice, it is head and shoulders above my number one Dire Straits song. 

 

The song’s Shakespearean title sets the scene. To Romeo, it is a tragic tale of unfulfilled love, and although it has gone sour, Juliet is the true love of his life; it is ‘just that the time was wrong’.

 

He, ‘A love struck Romeo sings the street a serenade’,  ‘He’s underneath the window’  and is hit with Juliet’s cutting retort ‘Hey, la, my boyfriend’s back’ showing her love has moved on. She passes him off with ‘Oh, Romeo, yeah, you know I used to have a scene with him’ and he’s ’just one of her deals’. The latter is such a put-down. It is a callous rejection. 

 

Romeo and Juliet has the same bitterness that Peter Sarstedt’s Where Do You Go to My Lovely has. Just as Sarsdent’s Marie-Clare has moved on, Juliet has also moved on to greener pastures, while Romeo and I’d also suggest the narrator of Sarsdent’s song are still very much in love.

 

Like all great songs, the lyrics, singer and instrumentation all fit to tell the story.  The situation in which it is heard also plays a part.

 

Romeo and Juliet is a song that has always stopped me in my tracks. I can’t relate to it personally, except in the opposite. I have been with my favourite person for the best part of half a century. I’ve been truly blessed, unlike Romeo.

 

Romeo and Juliet was released on the 1980 album, Making Movies. It was released about the time we were married. We lived in a flat, and I was working full-time and studying pretty much full-time as well. 

 

 The Making Movies album was a regular listen late at night as I studied for my professional qualification to become a Chartered Accountant. To qualify, I needed to complete the Professional Year, or as we referred to it, the PY. The assessment criteria were brutal. Comprising thirteen three-weekly assignments (a blessing from the previous incarnation, which had two weekly assignments and more of them), presentations, tutorial participation, and two exams. Assessment was secretive, which meant a Doubtful grade on just one occasion throughout the year might cause you to fail. The exams, which were also brutal, also needed to be passed. Assessment was pass or fail only.

 

As I studied, I’d often wave to the doctor intern who lived in an adjacent flat, as he returned from his late-night shift, and say good morning to the jockeys as they left for early morning track work. As I said, it was brutal, not just for me but for my favourite person, who had to endure this in our first year of marriage. 

 

The eerie loneliness of late-night study was a perfect setting for such a poignant love song.  In 1980, I was young, newly married, struggling with my first serious job, and an arduous study routine. I was often up well after my favourite person had gone to bed. It was quiet, except for the music, and I am sure it all contributed to giving Romeo and Juliet the place it holds in my musical memory. Today, more than forty years later, as I listened to the song in the solitude of the early morning, all those memories flooded back. 

 

It is a truly wonderful song and is my favourite love song.

 

 

References:

https://jeremykahn.co.uk/2013/05/22/mark-knopflers-romeo-and-juliet-an-analysis/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet_(Dire_Straits_song)

 

https://thedeletebin.com/2008/07/21/dire-straits-perform-romeo-and-juliet

Picture: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/dire-straits/romeo-and-juliet-solid-rock-4/