"Am I only dreaming? Is this burning an eternal flame?"

The aforementioned Wookie movie has dragged me kicking in screaming into confronting love ballads. I chose the great Buddy Holly "True Love Ways" somewhat because Buddy Holly kind of sounds like a wookie (that's not a bad thing) and mostly because I have gushy feelings for that song and its complex view of the world where one can learn "true love ways" (whatever the hell those are.) What, you say? Complex? Isn't this just a simple little love song that (like all love songs) intention is to stir the emotions of a potential mate for either either emotional or sexual purposes? (I won't go into the pantheon of love songs here, but think of "Put your Head on my Shoulders" or "Eternal Flame" and you'll get the idea of what I am talking about.)
The melody of "True Love Ways," of course, quite pretty and yearning yet peaceful (like all love songs), so let's look at some of the words:

Just you know why
why you and I
will by and by
know true love ways

Ok, easy enough--simple meter--simple rhymes, but what odd repetion of words: "why" "by" and "know." Then one is left with the perplexing "true love ways." Which "you" seems to only one to understand. What, you might think, are "true love ways" and what (by implication) do these simple yet mysterious lovers know about them? There is also the implication that this is all going to take some time. All is not happy in Hollywood, in other words (sorry).

The next verse is a bit easier, perhaps:

Sometimes we'll sigh
sometimes we'll cry
and you'll know why
just you and I
know true love ways

Ah the ups and downs of love. We all know about them. The bitter fights on Valentines day. The secret desire for your mate's friends. The desire for someone else. The little complaints representing the bigger issue. The feeling of hopelessness in the absolute need to hold on to someone yet the equally absolute need to pursue something else. ("Don't take my heart don't break my heart, don't throw it away." "I can't stand this indecision/married with a lack of vision/say that you'll never never need it/everybody wants to rule the world. All for freedom and for pleasure/nothing ever lasts forever." (God I am quoting Tears for Fears lyrics again. Forgive me.) The tears of the pain caused one another. The sighs of regret? The sighs of guilt? Or is it a more hopefuly sigh of missing someone? I doubt that.

Note that in this section instead of the soaring violins, Holly introduces the saxophone. Now I don't need to explain the relationship of the saxophone to sex as a musical analogy. We all know it. It is the instrument of pure lust, if you will, right down to its use in the famous stripper theme that comes to mind to, say, the Benny Hill theme which is good-natured comic libertinism incarnate. In the grammar of music, saxophones are sexy, if not pure sex itself. It is a sex, however, without the "true love ways" that seems to start off the song--that represented by sobbing violins. In other words, I think that Holly is implying the singer's (perhaps his own) infedelities are the cause of all the sighing and the crying here. This, of course, is also true love ways: lovers are often not constant.

The next verse continues this theme in a natural fulfillment of where the song is going in the minor key:

Throughout the days
our true love ways
will bring us joys to share
with those who really care

But hey, wait a minute, these are good things. What's up with the minor key, Buddy? Yes, yes we know that the expectation for the song is that it will go minor at this point to reach a transition that will make everything all better in the long run. This is where its all supposed to be bad--not with the happy sax/sex in the second verse that is ruining your "true love ways." He, of course, undercuts this weird minor key with an insistent violin rush in the second lines of the verse. "will bring us joys to share/with those who really care." The intensity here emphasizes that these "true loves ways" are not just the simple interaction between the lovers, but a broader aspect of care for others, and a need to have people who understand.

Suddenly, however

Sometimes we'll sigh
sometimes we'll cry
and you'll know why
just you and I
know true love ways

has become the refrain, this time not accompanied by the lusty sax, but those true love violins, echoing the sighing and the crying. Suddenly you begin to suspect that Holly gets it; that love is not that easy; that you fuck up; that "true love ways" is a metaphor that love, indeed, is not just the easy little thing that kids think it is, but it is a sort of shared secret that only people who do love each other really understand.

Wait a minute! Our friend the sax is back in a long extemporaneous interlude. I would note, however, that the soaring violins have somehow repressed the sax. The violins themselves are louder than the sax, and the sax only has ascending descants (or are they called ascents?) to add to the mix. Seemingly the relationship has controlled it. No more philandering for you, Mr. Sax!

Holly then repeats the second verse and the refrain. Has he run out of energy? Nah. The point is in that couple, and he has to emphasize it. That is the resolution of the odd phrase "true love ways."

In all is it a "little help from my friends" kind of strange little love song? What do other have to do with it? Why bring in those others into the simple diad of the lovers?

There is a strange appeal due to its murkiness, don't you think? But isn't that the way of it? Isn't that true love ways?

Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find
Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find
(The Church, "Under the Milky Way.")