Simon and Garfunkel

It has been my pleasure of late to re-enjoy one of the favorite acts of my youth. It kind of kicked off when a friend gave me a book of Paul Simon lyrics that they got on sale at a local Borders store. This got me digging around my CDs and cassettes, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. Looking back, they had an amazing career and a substantial influence.

You must remember that we’re talking about an act that only put out five albums, and one of them never sold in significant numbers. They were signed by Columbia during what James Taylor refers to as the “Great Folk Scare.” This is the same folk movement, inspired by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, that gave us Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and like most movements a thousand pretenders that sank without a trace. Do a google search for Inman And Ira and see what I mean.

Anyway, Paul Simon and Arthur Garfunkel had a hit single back in high school, performing as Tom And Jerry. Simon went on to do a stint at the fabled Brill Building, along with people like Carole King. When folk music started showing up on television shows like Hootenanny and the folk-protest movement looked like it was going to displace rock ‘n’ roll, Paul got together with his old classmate in 1963 and recorded Wednesday Morning 3 AM.

But this proved not to be the path to stardom after all. Simon continued on performing and writing, but Garfunkel returned to suburban New York and got on with his life. Paul eventually pulled up stakes and moved to England where he tried to get his music career jump-started.

Fast forward to ’65 or ’66, where some enterprising Columbia A&R man took a track off the pair’s album and overdubbed a small rock band. The song was called Sounds Of Silence. Record company execs liked what they heard and released it as a single. Next thing they knew, an act they had released two years previously suddenly had the number one single in the land.

While the company was cobbling together an album from various Simon demos and bits of Wednesday Morning 3 AM, they talked the duo into coming back together and giving it another go. The Sounds Of Silence album ended up being one of the biggest records of Beatles-dominated 1966, and a pair of stars were born.

Part of the appeal of Simon and Garfunkel was that they embodied the intellectual, poetic vibe that made Bob Dylan so popular, but with a lot more musicality and considerably more mainstream attitude. They were the safe Dylan, so to speak. It was music aimed at a specific demographic; college students from New York City. This turned out to be something a lot of middle class kids aspired to in the mid 60’s.

The next album, Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme, brought this to the fore. It was the first opportunity since Wednesday Morning for Paul and Artie to craft some new music, and now they had a mandate and some money to work with. Enter producer Roy Halee, and the unit was complete. Listening back to it now, the album had some remarkable arrangements. Now in 2010 it’s hard to imagine a time when bass and drums were not obvious choices, but you won’t hear much of them on S&G albums.

Lyrically, Paul’s songs from this period come off as being a little pretentious. They show us a world right out of The Graduate. It’s for the sons and daughters of cocktail-sipping suburbanites who’ve sent their offspring to the finest schools to prepare them for more of the same. These offspring walk around in expensive coats and berets, books of poetry tucked under their arms. Some stanzas from “The Dangling Conversation” sum it up nicely:

And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost

Ick. C’mon, Paul, get a real job, wouldja?

Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theater really dead?

And yet, it’s really a very pretty song that sticks with you even if the words sometimes seem just a little precious. One must remember that Paul Simon was probably one of the preeminent acoustic guitarists of the ‘60’s, and along with Roy Halee’s arrangements and production these albums sound great. Paul is also remarkably generous in giving Artie some great songs to be the lead singer on, including some of their biggest hits.

And, Paul was also aware of his own perspectives and wasn’t afraid to poke fun at himself. A great example of this is “A Simple Desultory Philippic,” which artfully skewers his own muse. It makes reference to everything going on around them in 1967. The whole album is swimming with cultural and now-historical references that really make the era come alive, up to and including the album’s final track, “Silent Night/7 O’clock News.” At the time it was chilling. Now, it’s a litany of names that anyone my age never thought they’d forget, and discover they had. References to Lenny Bruce and Richard Speck are joined with the eerily prophetic words of “Former Vice President Richard Nixon,” saying that the war in Vietnam could last “another five years.”

This album was followed in ’68 with Bookends. The album was recorded and mixed in between tours and other commitments, but it’s a clear leap forward from Parsley Sage etc. Paul’s songwriting was maturing quickly, especially in regards to his lyrics. Here’s some lines from “Punky’s Dilemma.”

Wish I was an english muffin
‘Bout to make the most out of a toaster
I’d ease myself down
Comin’ up brown

I don’t care, I love stuff like that. Songs like this and “Hazy Shade of Winter,” which the Bangles would later do an excellently rockin’ version of, were great. And he could still do the sensitive, beautiful stuff they were most famous for and that Artie’s voice was best suited for. The album may have been velcroed together piecemeal, but it’s still great.

They finished up their dual career with arguably their best work, Bridge Over Troubled Water. The title kind of said it all. Their friendship had really ended before Sounds of Silence, but there was money to be made and audiences to be wowed. Hearing yourself on the radio is pretty cool, too. Still, it was getting to the point that they couldn’t stand to be in the same room together. They decided to do one more album and call it a career. Both intended to continue on as solo acts.

Paul was again generous in giving Artie the lead on what would turn out to be their biggest hit ever, the album’s title track. If Garfunkel by himself was going to fail, he had no one to blame but himself because you couldn’t ask for a bigger gold star on your resume.

The album is startlingly good all these years later. Gone is the pretentiousness of Parsley Sage. Firmly in place are the brilliant Halee arrangements. A lot of it sounds damned odd to modern ears, but all of it sounds great. Even the slightly ragged flute duo doubling the vocal line on “El Condor Pasa” come off as haunting.

And the 1967 edition of Paul Simon would not have hesitated to write a tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright, but it would not have been as touching or beautiful as what the 1970 edition came up with. And as often happened with his best stuff, Art did a masterful job of singing the lead. Even the throwaway tunes like “Baby Driver” work.

Personally, the song I keep being impressed by on this album is “The Only Living Boy in New York.” This strikes me as the song that was missing from Bookends; the soft beautiful rambling little tune that would have made that whole album gel better. On this one, it tends to get lost. It’s also the one 40 years later that I come back to.

The penultimate tune was their tribute to their biggest influence; a live version of the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love.” And just when you think they couldn’t follow that, Simon throws on another little gem called “Song for the Asking.” A little peck on the cheek on the way out the door.

Simon hit the ground running, doing a self-titled album that coughed up two hit singles. There Goes Rhymin’ Simon did the same. For his third solo album, 1977’s Still Crazy After All These Years, he teamed up for one song with Garfunkel. The song, “My Little Town,” was released simultaneously on both their solo albums. This was the only glimmer of light for Artie’s solo career. Around the same time they did a reunion tour, but no album came from it except for the live one following the tour. They have occasionally repeated the reunion, but basically they just don’t like each other. They only do it because of public pressure, and it’s the only way Art can get in front of a real audience.

And as of 1986, people have finally stopped asking Simon about reunions anyway. For all his success as a solo artist it was always the hanging question; when are you getting back together with Garfunkel? In ’86 he went to South Africa and did an album that came to be called Graceland. It was a landmark event in pop music and it proved once and for all that he simply doesn’t need Art Garfunkel. Graceland reinvented and redefined Paul Simon forever.

My brother, Rett, got to meet Art Garfunkel once. He said Art came across as self-absorbed and arrogant, convinced of the supremacy of his talent.

In between Tom And Jerry and Wednesday Morning 3 AM Paul wrote a song called “Red Rubber Ball” that was a hit for a group called the Cyrkle. The song sucks. It just shows that, even for Paul Simon, it’s possible to suck.

In the mid and late 60's, Simon and Garfunkel were part of a select group of acts that defined the era. They weren't as big at the time, or as influential in the long term, as the Beatles, Stones, and Dylan. But they did lead the second rank. They kept the flame burning that the Everly Bros lit for harmony duos, and stretched the envelope musically.

They are definitely worth a listen. I personally would recommend starting with the Greatest Hits collection released in the '70's. Not every song on it was a big hit, nor did Columbia use the original studio versions of every song. The versions they did pick are striking in their differences from the original, and the whole collection works on a level that most Best Ofs don't. They left off certain singles in favor of things like a live version of "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" that is so much better than the version on Parsley Sage. Even if you've got all five of the original S&G albums, this one is worth having. And if you don't have anything of theirs, then there's no better place to start.