Simon & Garfunkel

Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound Of Silence

(1964 – Inclusa nell’album “Sounds Of Silence”, Columbia, 1966)

“Hello, darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again”. In the swollen river of 60s rock, amid the raging currents of protest songs and the exuberant, adrenaline-fuelled gallops of the era, that chilling incipit arrived to reveal the dark side of the great dream. It was March 10, 1964, and today, fifty years later, we can safely say that the message of Simon & Garfunkel sounds more relevant than that of many of the naive protagonists of that golden season. Behind that unmistakable arpeggio and that enchanted melody, in fact, resurfaced everything that had stayed submerged in those years of collective euphoria and mass gatherings: the individual dimension, withdrawn, solitary. The sense of incommunicability of someone who had lost their certainties well before the new spring of '68 and the subsequent realignment. A Paul Simon at the peak of his misanthropy writes words of pure venom and desolation: “And in the naked light I saw/ ten thousand people, maybe more/ people talking without speaking/ people hearing without listening/ people writing songs that voices never share/ And no one dare/ disturb the sound of silence” (“E nella luce pura vidi diecimila persone e forse più, persone che parlavano senza dire nulla, persone che sentivano senza ascoltare, persone che scrivevano canzoni che mai sarebbero state cantate, nessuno osava disturbare il suono del silenzio”). Words against the grain, just like the old Bob Seger's ride. Words that broke with an entire decade.

And yet, that melancholy became contagious, drawing new hordes of fans into the court of Simon & Garfunkel, thanks above all to the breakthrough success of their next Lp, released in 1966 and staying on the US charts for a full 143 weeks. Rock, having already passed through the end-of-summer glow of the Beach Boys' “Pet Sounds“, was rediscovering itself as autumnal and crepuscular, as well as minimal and even “homemade”: Paul Simon revealed that the opening line also referred to his habit of writing songs in the dark, shut away in his bathroom at home: in practice, he anticipated the bedroom indie-rock of the last twenty years. America had suddenly lost its innocence and was questioning its own shadows. Starting with those of the Vietnam War and the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which took place on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, an event that undoubtedly shaped the song's mood. And yet it all came about almost by chance: already present in acoustic form on the debut album of the two young American songwriters (“Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.”, 1964), the song had passed largely unnoticed, like the rest of the album (which would go on to enjoy a second life precisely after the success of the Lp “Sounds Of Silence”, climbing back up to No. 30 on the US charts).

It was only when producer Tony Wilson decided to add an electric arrangement, following in the footsteps of Bob Dylan, that “The Sound Of Silence” (initially plural: “Sounds”) took flight, propelling the duo's successful second album. Then came cinematic consecration in Mike Nichols' film “The Graduate” with Dustin Hoffman, in which the song accompanied the opening credits, the pool scene and the closing credits (and the big screen would later dust it off again, for instance in 2006 on the soundtrack of “Bobby”, the film about the death of Robert Kennedy, and in 2009 on “Watchmen”, the adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons).

But that veil of melancholy has never been lifted. And that friendly shadow (“darkness my old friend”) has grown out of all proportion, just like a cancer (“like a cancer grows”), swallowing up the Age of Aquarius and hippie innocence, the dreams and illusions of an entire generation, replaced at best by an artificial, fake divinity (“the neon god they made”). The party was over, and all that was left was to surrender to the great chill of disillusionment. With the happy days of surf and drive-ins gone, along with the wild highway drives and the frenzied dances of the Land of a Thousand Dances, America found itself naked and moved before the notes of that haunting lullaby. Just as at the Ground Zero Memorial, on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, when Paul Simon sang it softly, accompanied only by his guitar. It was the sound of silence, echoing once again amid America's rubble.

Hello, darkness, my old friend

(adapted from an article published on Leggo.it)

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17/02/2026