Simon & Garfunkel part 2

As Simon & Garfunkel considered their previous effort (the Sounds of Silence album) a "rush job" to capitalize on their sudden success, the duo spent more time crafting the follow-up. It was the first time Simon insisted on total control in aspects of recording. The result was Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, issued in October 1966, following the release of several singles and receiving sold-out college campus shows.

The album was their first to hit the US Top 10, peaking at #4 and going 3x Platinum. It also went Platinum in Canada. The first single off the album was The Dangling Conversation, a mature look on failed communication between two lovers who are intellectuals. It peaked at #25 in the US and #27 in Canada.

Here's a very good cover by Joan Baez:

Their next single contained two sides that were pure diamonds. It peaked at #13 in the US. The first side, A Hazy Shade of Winter, follows a more Rock-tinged sound, with a fairly straightforward verse-refrain structure. Author and disc jockey Pete Fornatale considered the lyrics evocative of, and standing in contrast with, those of John Phillips' California Dreamin'.

The Bangles did a great cover, which went all the way to #2 in the US.

A Hazy Shade of Winter didn't appear on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. It showed up on their following album, Bookends. The single's B-side however, did appear on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her is one of my favorite S&G songs. It has been called an "ethereal showpiece for [Art] Garfunkel," containing a "mystical quality, created not only by the timbre of the guitar, but also by some of the rhythmic and pitch elements."

This is a live version that I love as much, if not more than the original:

Scarborough Fair/Canticle, another favorite of mine, wasn't originally a single, but it became one, after being included in The Graduate soundtrack. It would peak at #5 in Ireland, #9 in the UK, and #11 in the US.

Scarborough Fair is a traditional English ballad about the Yorkshire town of Scarborough. The song relates the tale of a young man who instructs the listener to tell his former love to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt once he has finished.

As the song spread, it was adapted, modified, and rewritten to the point that dozens of versions existed by the end of the 18th century, although only a few are typically sung nowadays. The references to the traditional English fair, "Scarborough Fair" and the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" date to 19th century versions, and the refrain may have been borrowed from the ballad Riddles Wisely Expounded, (Child Ballad #1), which has a similar plot.

Paul Simon learned the song in London in 1965 from Martin Carthy, who had picked up the tune from the songbook by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Simon & Garfunkel set it in counterpoint with Canticle - a reworking of the lyrics from Simon's 1963 anti-war song, The Side of a Hill, set to a new melody composed mainly by Art Garfunkel.

Let's move on to other tracks from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Cloudy employs a "breezy, almost jazzy musical style," with its title serving as a "point of departure for [its] scattered, whimsical text." It was co-written by Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley of the Seekers; that band later covered it on their 1967 album Seekers Seen in Green. The Cyrkle released a version of the song on their 1966 debut album, Red Rubber Ball. The title track, Red Rubber Ball, was also written by the duo of Woodley/Simon.

Here's The Seekers' version:

Since we've mentioned this good song, here's Red Rubber Ball sung by The Cyrkle:

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) is one of the album's highlights. A happy, relaxed song, in tune with the times, and with great harmonies, it features Dave Brubeck Quartet members Joe Morello (drums) and Eugene Wright (bass).

The song was made a hit in the US (#13) by Harpers Bizarre:

Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall combines an upbeat melody with very pessimistic lyrics:

A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission) is generally considered a parody of Bob Dylan's writing style, especially that of It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding).

The last track in the album was an inspired juxtaposition of classic Xmas song Silent Night with the 7 O'Clock News on TV. The news are all about murder, mayhem, war, and violence, demonstrating that the message of Silent Night is (permanently?) lost to modern society.

Since the duo had no plans of releasing a new album soon after Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, singles were released that would later find a place in Bookends. We've heard A Hazy Shade of Winter, here's a fun song called At the Zoo, which was another great value-for-money single, as the B-side was The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy). The single peaked at #16 US.

Their next single was Fakin' It (US #23). The song's lyrics stem from Simon wondering about his occupation and life had he been born a century earlier. Radio stations at the time resisted playing songs lasting longer than three minutes, so Paul Simon had the time "faked" to read 2:74 on the label.

Meanwhile, director Mike Nichols, then filming The Graduate, had become fascinated with the duo's past two efforts, listening to them nonstop before and after filming. After two weeks of this obsession, he met with Clive Davis to ask for permission to license Simon & Garfunkel music for his film. Davis viewed it as a perfect fit and envisioned a best-selling soundtrack album. Simon was not as immediately receptive, viewing movies akin to "selling out", creating a damper on his artistic integrity. However, after meeting Nichols and becoming impressed by his wit and the script, he agreed to write at least one or two new songs for the film. Leonard Hirshan, a powerful agent at William Morris, negotiated a deal that paid Simon $25,000 to submit three songs to Nichols and producer Lawrence Turman. Several weeks later, Simon re-emerged with two new tracks, Punky's Dilemma and Overs, neither of which Nichols was particularly taken with. The duo offered another new song, which later became Mrs. Robinson, that was not as developed. Nichols loved it.

He wasn't the only one; Mrs. Robinson was the duo's second #1 hit single in the US and a Top 10 in most major markets. It wasn't Oscar eligible, so it didn't suffer the ignonimy of losing to Talk To The Animals, as others did. It was however awarded two Grammy Awards in 1969. It became the first Rock song to win Record of the Year, and it also was awarded the Grammy for Best Contemporary-Pop Performance - Vocal Duo or Group.

Simon's inclusion of the phrase "coo-coo-ca-choo" is an homage to the Beatles' I Am the Walrus. References in the last verse to Joe DiMaggio are perhaps the most discussed. In a New York Times op-ed in March 1999, shortly after DiMaggio's death, Simon explained that the line was meant as a sincere tribute to DiMaggio's unpretentious heroic stature, in a time when popular culture magnifies and distorts how we perceive our heroes. He further reflected: "In these days of Presidential transgressions and apologies and prime-time interviews about private sexual matters, we grieve for Joe DiMaggio and mourn the loss of his grace and dignity, his fierce sense of privacy, his fidelity to the memory of his wife and the power of his silence." Simon subsequently performed Mrs. Robinson at Yankee Stadium in DiMaggio's honor the month after his death.

Frank Sinatra had a popular cover; instead of using the word Jesus, he used Jilly instead, so as not to infuriate religious radio stations. He also added a pedestrian verse that messed with the song's poetic concept. I love Frankie, but this wasn't well thought of.

The B-side to Mrs. Robinson (the Simon & Garfunkel single) contained two short songs that would also appear in Bookends, The songs are musically and thematically connected, as if they were one. I just adore them. Here are the lyrics:

Old Friends
Old Friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
Newspaper blowin' through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends

Old Friends
Winter companions the old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy...

Old Friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears

(Musical Interlude)

A time it was

And what a time it was
It was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you

Old Friends was also a song that inspired a lot of gay people. While doing my research, I stumbled into this, in a blog called The Film Query:

"Okay this song is devastating enough by itself but I made it into a gay tragedy in my own head so if that’s something your into - and as a Known Gay I know it sucks that everything gay has to be a tragedy, and we’re moving away from that fortunately but I can’t help myself, I love evil gays and I love tragic gays, what can I do - then come with me on this journey. Old Friends is about two old guys sitting in the park together. Friends forever and forever is kind of running out because, you know, mortality. But there’s a kind of a bridge that seems to be sung by a young man and oh no, it inspired this tragedy. Okay. So the line is “Can you imagine us, years from today? Sharing a park bench quietly. How terribly strange, to be seventy.” And the scenario took shape okay. So it’s World War II or some shit and these two best friends since they were kids are soldiers. And at least one of them is in love with the other one. It could be mutual if you want. Unspoken or not, there’s something gay going on. Unspoken is more tragic in a way isn’t it? Tragedy. And they’re in a battle and oh noo, one of them gets hit and is lying in the snow bleeding out (I feel like it’s winter? I don’t know!) and the other one is panicking but is trying to comfort the other one and is like, we’re gonna be old friends, you know? We’re gonna be seventy years old sitting around on park benches all day reading the newspaper. But it’s all a lie. The gay one is dying in the snow and they’ll never get to be old men who love each other and spend their lives together. They’ve already spent their lives together. Basically I have a heartbreaking Act II death scene/musical number for my Simon & Garfunkel musical that I will never actually write. Think A Little Fall of Rain. Except gay. Sorry this song can destroy a person with or without my addition you choose your own adventure buddy."

I have practically exhausted the songs from Bookends before discussing the album itself. It's not my fault; the album already had four hit singles before it was even released. When it was finally out, it was only logical that it would go all the way to the top, in the US as well as in the UK.

Disc jockey and author Pete Fornatale writes that Bookends represents "a once-in-a-career convergence of musical, personal, and societal forces that placed Simon & Garfunkel squarely at the center of the cultural zeitgeist of the sixties". Rolling Stone credited the record with striking a chord among lonely, adrift young adults near the end of the decade, writing that a lyric in A Hazy Shade of Winter - "Time, time, time, see what’s become of me..." - "defined the moment for a generation on the edge of adulthood". Many viewed Bookends as the band's most accomplished work at the time, a breakthrough in production and songwriting. "Bookends was our first serious piece of work, I'd say", said Simon in a 1984 interview with Playboy. The album ranks at #234 of Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Save the Life of My Child is a story song about a young man ready to jump off the ledge of a tall building. The song starts realistically enough, underlining the older people's prejudice towards youth. Then the lyrics take a poetic turn in the final verse:

When darkness fell, excitement kissed the crowd
And it made them wild
In an atmosphere of freaky holiday
When the spotlight hit the boy
And the crowd began to cheer
He flew away

"Oh, my Grace, I got no hiding place"

One of the duo's masterpieces is America. America is a song that "creates a cinematic vista that tells of the singer's search for a literal and physical America that seems to have disappeared, along with the country’s beauty and ideals".

The soaring harmony lines and crashing cymbals create a powerful and poignant end to the song: They've all come to look for America. Pete Fornatale interprets this lyric as a "metaphor to remind us all of the lost souls wandering the highways and byways of mid-sixties America, struggling to navigate the rapids of despair and hope, optimism and disillusionment". Another interesting aspect of the lyric that is often overlooked is its lack of a formal rhyme scheme; it is one of the few Pop songs in which the lyrics simply do not rhyme.

The album also contains the two songs that were rejected by Nichols for The Graduate. They are both great songs, Mr. Nichols. Here's Overs, a jazzy, mediative song:

Punky's Dilemma is more playful:

Bookends, alongside The Graduate soundtrack, propelled Simon & Garfunkel to become the biggest Rock duo in the world. Simon turned down offers to write music for films such as Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Midnight Cowboy. He collaborated briefly with Leonard Bernstein on a sacred mass before withdrawing from the project due to "finding it perhaps too far afield from his comfort zone". Garfunkel took the role of Captain Nately in the Nichols film, Catch-22, based on the Catch-22 novel. Initially Simon was to play the character of Dunbar, but screenwriter Buck Henry felt the film was already crowded with characters and subsequently wrote Simon's part out.

The filming of Catch-22 began in January 1969 and lasted about eight months. The unexpectedly long film production endangered the relationship between the duo. It was a good thing that they had already recorded a couple of songs in late 1968 that would be released in March 1969 as the lead single to their coming album. The single would be a Top 10 hit all over the world. The A-side was another one of their masterpieces: The Boxer.

The song's lyrics take the form of a first-person lament, as the singer describes his struggles to overcome loneliness and poverty in New York City. The final verse switches to a third-person sketch of a boxer, who, despite the effects of "every glove that laid him down or cut him till he cried out", perseveres. At the last we are told the narrator cries out, "I am leaving, I am leaving" - "but", the lyrics continue, "the fighter still remains."  The chorus of the song is wordless, consisting of a repeated chant of "lie-la-lie". Simon stated that this was originally intended only as a placeholder, but became part of the finished song.

Simon said: "I didn't have any words! Then people said it was 'lie' but I didn't really mean that. That it was a lie. But, it's not a failure of songwriting, because people like that and they put enough meaning into it, and the rest of the song has enough power and emotion, I guess, to make it go, so it's all right. But for me, every time I sing that part... [softly], I'm a little embarrassed."

I dedicate this, with great love, to my life partner, who was listening to the song as he was studying for his college exams.

The B-side, Baby Driver, is an uptempo and happy R'n'R song, about a boy who lives a comfortable life in a protected home, but who searches for adventures and one day decides to have his first sexual experience.

Bridge over Troubled Water, what turned out to be the duo's final album, was recorded in November 1969 and released in January 1970. Both critically and commercially successful, the album topped the charts in over ten countries and received two Grammy Awards, plus four more for the title song. It sold around 25 million records and was ranked on several lists, including at number 51 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

The title track was also their next single, getting to the top of the charts all over the world. Bridge over Troubled Water, the duo's crowning achievement, feels like it always existed as a song somehwere in the universe, and Paul Simon was blessed to find it. He was also blessed to have Art Garfunkel's angelic voice, who sung solo on this. Session musician Larry Knechtel, who would soon join The Bread, performs piano on the song. Definitely among the 10 best songs of all time.

The single's B-side, Keep the Customer Satisfied, an Everly Brothers' influenced number, recounts the exhausting tours that Simon grew tired of.

The next single off the album, also a big hit, was Cecilia. A lively number, anchored in numerous experimental percussive sounds that the duo created and engineer Roy Halee processed, deals with the subject of an untrustworthy lover.

The B-side, yet another classic, The Only Living Boy in New York, is a thinly veiled message to Art Garfunkel, referencing Garfunkel's long absense to Mexico to act in the film Catch-22. Simon was left alone in New York writing songs for Bridge over Troubled Water, hence the lonely feelings of The Only Living Boy in New York. Simon refers to Garfunkel in the song as "Tom", alluding to their early days when they were called Tom and Jerry, and encourages him to "let your honesty shine . . . like it shines on me". The background vocals feature both Garfunkel and Simon recorded together in an echo chamber, multi-tracked around eight times.

A couple of years ago, the song was appropriately used in the final scene of The Normal Heart, the film that chronicles the plague of AIDS among gay men. In the film, the song takes a new meaning: it is now about the only gay man who has survived the AIDS epidemic in his community because violent homophobia caused the world to ignore the problem until everyone he loved died. That’s who the only living boy in New York is.

The final single from this album, also a #1 in many countries, is another favorite of mine. El Cóndor Pasa (If I Could) is a Peruvian song based on traditional Andean music. Simon relied on erroneous information from Jorge Milchberg of Los Incas about the collection of royalties for his arrangement of the song. Simon wrongfully thought it to be a traditional song and thus not restricted by copyright law, but in reality it was written by Peruvian Daniel Alomía Robles. His son Armando Robles Godoy filed a successful lawsuit later that year in 1970, citing that he held the song's copyright in the United States since his father's 1933 filing. Simon wrote English lyrics to the instrumental recording by Los Incas, and the song later became a forerunner of Simon's world music era as a solo artist.

The B-side, Why Don't You Write Me, deals with separation from Simon's wife in a jungle. In this song Simon experimented with Reggae for the first time, a genre he later explored in his solo career, most notably in Mother and Child Reunion.

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright is a tribute to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright but also to Garfunkel, who also wanted to train as an architect. It chronicles the early career of the duo and predicts their future split up. At the end Halee shouts "So long already, Artie", a portentous message.

The recording process was tough for both musicians, and their breakup was almost certain considering the deterioration of their relationship. "At that point, I just wanted out," Simon later said.

Garfunkel stated in a very recent interview:

“It was very strange. Nothing I would have done. I want to open up about this. I don’t want to say any anti Paul Simon things, but it seems very perverse to not enjoy the glory and walk away from it instead. Crazy. What I would have done is take a rest from Paul, because he was getting on my nerves. The jokes had run dry. But a rest of a year was all I needed. I said: ‘I’m not married yet. I want to jump on a BMW motorbike and tour round Europe chasing ladies.’”

Bridge over Troubled Water's closing track, Song for the Asking, represents an "olive branch" extended by each of the duo's members to the other and holding open the possibility of reconciliation and further collaboration.

We'll close with My Little Town a stand-alone song they recorded together in 1975. 6 years later, they would be singing together in a free concert in Central Park, with more than 500,000 people in attendance. There would be more concert reunions, but there would never be a new song recorded by the duo. So, let's listen to the last one there was: