Nick Lowe's "Cruel To Be Kind Video": Their Actual Wedding?

Cafe Society
1

In the video for Nick Lowe’s Cruel To Be Kind video, there’s footage of him marrying a woman…Carlene Carter (June Carter Cash’s and Carl Smith’s daughter, and Johnny Cash’s stepdaughter), to be exact, his real-life wife around that time. Is the living-room wedding footage from their actual wedding? Not that I expect anyone here to know personally, but I wondered if there was some definite knowledge about it that someone might have.

You can tell the photographer/baker/little old minister footage wasn’t from the real thing (because all three of those people are obvious characters), but the living room footage looks like a real wedding…no wacky hijinks, no mugging for the camera, etc.

I came across the video tonight and was curious.

2

Yes it is real wedding footage. Dave Edmunds plays Lowe’s chauffeur the fake minister was Carlene Carter’s neighbor.

3

I don’t care if Nick and Carlene ever get back together, but I would die happy if I could see Lowe and Edmunds play together just one more time.

4

And of course the Textones are Rockpile.

5

Thanks! I was just like, “That looks like a real home wedding. I wonder…”

6

Yes, some is actual wedding footage, as already answered. The band was in town for the wedding, so Terry didn’t have his drum kit. He borrowed one from the Textones, a great L.A. band co-founded by Kathy Valentine, later of the Go-Gos.

7

I love this song so much. When I saw him open for Wilco in December at the Civic Opera House here in Chicago, he came out during Wilco’s encore and sang this w/ the band behind him. It was fantastic.

8

And the song was pretty representative of their relationship. She was a coke fiend at the time and treated him poorly.

9

I do know that 2:48, Nick’s dad, Drain Lowe, is on the far left, and I believe the woman in the long-sleeved blue dress was Mrs Dave Edmunds. There is a “Pop Up Video” style version of this out there somewhere (I can’t find it, dammit) that gives a lot more information

And wordwordWORD to blondebear. One of my nightly prayers; when I got to meet Nick Lowe for the first time after a show, I asked him about Dave Edmunds…he said they were not in regular contact. I think Edmunds has had some health issues, but he looked really good on the Jools Holland NY shows in the past years.

UT

10

I’m feeling all 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon:

My drummer was in Carlene Carter’s band at that time and tells me stories about how Lowe was a great guy and Carlene skanked around on him and inspired that song…and my bass player was in a band called the Boyfriends back in the day and, um, partied with Kathy Valentine (who grew up in Texas, hence the Textones) when the Go Go’s were in London.

Jeez, where was I? A pimply-faced college student in California; oh, waitaminnit - I went to college the same place as Jane Weidlin’s (rhythm guitarist of the Go Go’s) brother - but that’s all I got.

11

Nick also adopted her daughter, Tiffany Anastasia, from her first marriage.

UT