Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence

And the people bowed and prayed

in the sound of silence

“The Sound Of Silence”, 1964

At first it's just a beautiful friendship: two clean-cut kids from the comfortable Jewish middle class of Forest Hills, Queens, a residential neighborhood of New York. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel live three blocks apart and have known each other since middle school, since they were twelve years old.

Aesthetically and temperamentally they're polar opposites: the first short and impishly good-looking; the second tall, blond and angelic. Simon is as combative, sharp-tongued and perfectionist as Garfunkel is gentle, fragile and lacking in bite. From their earliest school plays, the two show an interest in the spotlight, seeming at ease with audiences and applause. Paul in particular (born October 13, 1941) inherited from his father, a bassist and session musician for a TV orchestra, a love of guitar and music. Arthur (born November 5, 1941), for his part, has a stage presence that makes up for his artistic shortcomings (he writes no lyrics and composes no music), one that will later open the doors of cinema to him.

The boys grow up in postwar America, the America of radio and the economic boom. They fall in love with the rock'n'roll of Elvis Presley and with Black soul and rhythm'n'blues. They have a particular fondness for the crystalline pop and vocal harmonies of the Everly Brothers, genuine idols regarded with respect and a desire to emulate them. In their bedrooms, Paul and Artie do nothing but rehearse over and over: a verse, a chorus, a bow and a smile for the press. Helped by their families (the mothers are good friends) who support them, the two never stop believing in their shot at show-business fame. In 1957 they record a fifteen-dollar demo of "Hey Schoolgirl," one of their very first songs, and get it onto the desk of Sid Prosen, a record man at the Big Record label. Delighted by the two boys' voices and artistic potential, as well as by the money he could make launching Paul and Artie onto the teen idol market, Prosen decides to sign them. With the stage names Tom Graph (after Garfunkel's obsession with drawing graphs and charts) and Jerry Landis (the surname of one of Simon's girlfriends) printed on the sleeve, "Hey Schoolgirl" makes its chart debut, climbing all the way to No. 49.

Their first taste of glory comes in November of that year, when the pair appear on television as guests on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand," one of America's most popular shows. That experience (they perform right after Jerry Lee Lewis!) proves even more valuable than the Midas touch for Tom & Jerry: 150,000 copies sold of the debut single, a more than flattering result.

From that day until 1961, the duo churns out eight more singles for various labels, none of which manage to break into the upper reaches of the charts. At that moment the record business is saturated with polite, well-mannered pop singers (Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone, Fabian, Ricky Nelson), who rose to fame once the fire of rock'n'roll had died down. Perhaps Paul and Artie made a miscalculation, perhaps they were guilty of some arrogance. Whatever the case, in 1959, once high school is over, the pair go their separate ways: Garfunkel goes to study architecture at Columbia, while Paul splits his time between studying English literature at Queens College and working as a singer-songwriter in small Greenwich Village venues to make a living and get by.

After graduating (1963) and taking some formative trips to France, the Caribbean, South Africa and Brazil (crucial to his later passion for world music), Paul reconnects with his old friend Art, who has in the meantime cut two 45s under a fake name. After bringing him in on some of his session work (under further pseudonyms: Paul Kane, True Taylor, Tico & The Triumphs), Simon introduces his friend to some of his own compositions in the acoustic folk style. The idea is to leave the world of teen idols behind for something new.

On the other side of the Atlantic, beat music is raging with Rolling Stones, Beatles and Who; back home, the cult name is Bob Dylan, a talent Simon will often find himself compared and pitted against. In truth, Paul's style is more intellectual and less instinctive than that of his colleague from Duluth. Simon is a student of music, a meticulous, punctilious sonic polisher, gifted with a romantic, "cultured" verve that is foreign to Dylan's own persona.

"Sparrow," "Bleecker Street" and "He Was My Brother": these are the titles of those early songs the duo (who finally bill themselves as "Simon & Garfunkel") perform for audiences in the Village's coffee houses around the autumn of 1963. Their small cult following in New York and their renewed artistic partnership are enough to convince Simon to drop out of Brooklyn Law School and put everything into music. Struck by the pair's potential, Columbia's Tom Wilson (Dylan's producer) decides to sign Simon & Garfunkel and have them record their debut album. A bet that must not go wrong.

Wednesday Morning, 3 AM is the duo's fateful debut, a stripped-down, acoustic record, surprising in its eclecticism for two twenty-two-year-olds. It's the first great chance to hear their wonderful vocal harmonies, their atmospheres as soft and simple as summer clouds. There's novelty and there's tradition: twelve songs in just over forty minutes. An early sketch of a personality, ranging from pop covers ("You Can Tell The World," with the Everly Bros. close at heart) to the esoteric (the Catholic liturgical chant "Benedictus"), from country/folk (Ed McCurdy's "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream") to traditional songs ("Peggy-o" and "Go Tell the Mountain") and heartfelt Dylan tributes ("Times They're A Changin'"). Among the five original tracks, the embryonic version of the future classic "The Sound Of Silence," recorded with just voices and acoustic guitar, stands out above all. Despite having been heard and sung billions of times since, this first reading still has the power to astonish and send chills down the spine today, thanks to its arcane, dark and enigmatic beauty. Paul Simon hits one of his creative peaks here: he weaves metaphor and literature around the theme of human incommunicability, recounting dreams and nightmares with a genuine, unmatched poetic clarity, succeeding in the ultimate attempt to give silence a sound. His other songs, though they can't hope to compete with it, nonetheless serve as a litmus test for the songwriter's style: fables and English literature ("Sparrow"), suspended images ("Bleecker Street"), Dylan-inspired folk ballads ("He Was My Brother").

It's worth noting just how much weight an album like this would carry, decades later, on the champions of the New Acoustic Movement: Kings Of Convenience, Turin Brakes and so on.

Once the recording sessions are over (three days in March '64), Paul decides to get a change of scenery and move temporarily to England, drawn by the lights of "Swingin' London" and the chance to make a name for himself in folk clubs overseas. In the land of Albion he finds love with a girl (the legendary Kathy Chitty, immortalized in classics like "America" and "Kathy's Song"), gets the chance to travel around the country and refine his folk guitar technique. He performs in clubs for a few pounds, writes new songs in train stations ("Homeward Bound"). When his "He Was My Brother" is released in England, helped also by his friend, talent scout Judith Piepe, who puts him up, something starts to shift.

After a quick trip back to the States (just in time to confirm the disappointing sales of the first album, released in October), Paul returns to England at the start of 1965. He records four songs for the BBC's "Sunday Club" program, a prelude to an entire solo album: nine previously unreleased acoustic tracks (which will later resurface on the duo's subsequent records), recorded at CBS's London studios in little more than an hour. The resulting work would go on to form the little-known Paul Simon Songbook, released shortly afterward, ill-fated and quickly deleted.

That autumn, while an unsuspecting Simon keeps performing in British folk clubs, singing on TV (on the famous "Ready, Steady, Go!") and meeting future talents (Al Stewart and Sandy Denny, among others), something magical and unexpected happens.

Record producer Tom Wilson has a great idea: take one of the standout tracks from S&G's previous album, "The Sound Of Silence," and give it a fresh electric coat of paint, in keeping with the recent fashion set by Dylan and folk-rock, at that time the latest trend on the youth charts. He calls session men Bobby Gregg (drums), Bob Bushnell (bass) and Al Gorgoni (electric guitar) into the studio and has them overdub their parts onto the original.

The result is convincing: without the authors' knowledge whatsoever, Columbia decides to release the track as a single. In no time at all the song flies to the top of the charts, sells a million copies and forces a bewildered Paul Simon into a hasty return home. The next step is recording another album, and this time all eyes are on the golden folk duo.

Sounds Of Silence opens precisely with that magnificent electric treatment given to the title track, which in this guise became an emblematic song of the era, a kind of sonic postcard of the Sixties, alongside other pop snapshots by the likes of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Produced by another old Dylan associate, Bob Johnston (who was behind the desk for the legendary "Highway 61 Revisited"), the album stands alongside the great folk-rock successes of the period, falling right into line with the likes of the Mamas & Papas, Lovin' Spoonful, Buffalo Springfield and Byrds. Electric guitars, keyboards and a rhythm section give new shape and substance to already memorable songs: "Richard Cory" (inspired by a 19th-century poem by Edwin Robinson), "Blessed," "I Am a Rock" and "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" shine with a new light, winning over and intoxicating the emerging hippie audience with "good vibrations." The acoustic moments are few but sublime: just listen to the soft, autobiographical "Kathy's Song" or the equally weightless "April Come She Will" to be convinced of the blissful creative moment Paul Simon was living through at the time (and would continue to for many years after!). The only cover is "Anji," an Eastern-tinged litany written by the brilliant English guitarist Davey Graham (whom Simon had heard during his trip to England).

Inspired in both its lyrics and its music, the album hits stores in mid-January '66, climbing within a month to No. 21 on the US charts and staying there for a full 143 weeks. The lightning success of the album and the single "Sound Of Silence" even drags the rediscovered debut album into the charts, pulling it up as high as No. 30.

The big leap has now been made: Simon & Garfunkel, with their well-mannered folk, are no longer a regional phenomenon. Hugely loved by the student crowd at colleges and literary circles, the pair nonetheless prefer not to take an active part in the frenetic political life gripping America in those years: the assassination of Kennedy (which did inspire the writing of "Sound Of Silence"), the raging war in Vietnam and the cold one with Russia, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the drama of racism and the struggle for civil rights. The revolutionary air of change fueling the hearts of young people is certainly shared by the duo, who however prefer to keep their distance whenever it means openly backing a candidate, leading movements, or issuing proclamations and manifestos. Like Dylan, and unlike Joan Baez, Paul and Artie want to focus on their work as songwriters: brushing up against the edges of the counterculture without ever stepping too far beyond a certain line, without getting burned.

With this fence-sitting mood (expressed to perfection by John Lennon a couple of years later, between the lines of "Revolution"), they sail through the Sixties as almost undisputed masters of the game.

Before '66 is over, the duo is back in action: over the summer, plenty of ideas have piled up, promptly committed to tape. This time the project is even more ambitious: freeing themselves from the record label's pressure over the choice of producer (Johnston's presence this time is purely nominal) and deciding for themselves on the solutions to adopt. Columbia, buoyed by their successes, has no problem granting full artistic control over the work in progress. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, with its weighty song titles, is another essential piece of the puzzle, listened to, consumed and even lived with like few other bestsellers of the time: the Beatles' "Revolver"; the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds"; Bob Dylan's "Blonde On Blonde". The duo's soft, gentle formula doesn't seem to change all that much. If anything, there's a return of dreamy acoustic settings drawing on folk heritage ("Scarborough Fair"), sweet declarations of innocence ("Cloudy", "Dangling Conversation") and bitter invective (the closing track's juxtaposition of the traditional "Silent Night" with a dramatic radio news bulletin).

There's room for the surefire hit ("59th Bridge Song" and "Homeward Bound", again drawn from their English stint) as well as surrealist-tinged textual experimentation ("A Simple Desultory Philippic"); Beatles-esque folk rock ("Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine") and the classic S & G sound ("Flowers Never Bend With Rainfall"). Even the songwriting process stays the same: Paul writes the lyrics and music; together with Garfunkel he refines and arranges them in the studio; he sings the finished tracks alongside his partner.

Like its predecessor, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme is also rewarded by popular acclaim, climbing to a flattering No. 4 (for 145 weeks) in the States.

Right after its autumn release, the duo embarks on their first massive American tour: an endless string of dates that sees them performing night after night without a break, between university campuses and prestigious "Symphony Halls", a long and grueling journey. The high point of the tour run is certainly reached with their appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival (June 1967), the first great gathering of talent of the psychedelic era: Paul (among the organizers) and Artie perform before a stadium of 50,000 people, hailed as new prophets alongside the other great guests (from Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin, from Otis Redding to the Byrds, the Who and Buffalo Springfield). The official christening of the budding "Summer Of Love" generation breathes new life into the duo, who by year's end receive another offer, even more enticing: director Mike Nichols offers them the chance to score his film "The Graduate", starring a young, up-and-coming Dustin Hoffman.

The pair accept enthusiastically, and the film's sensational box-office boom is now history. Suffice it to recall the opening sequences of Hoffman on the airport travelators ("The Sound Of Silence" playing underneath) or the immortal "Mrs. Robinson", here in a nearly final version, the driving theme of the whole work. A curious detail: the song was originally titled "Mrs. Roosevelt", an instrumental inspired by the wife of the former president Franklin Delano. The title change came at Garfunkel's happy suggestion.

The album accompanying the film is actually a big sleight of hand by Clive Davis, head of Columbia: he wanted to pad out the soundtrack (which, besides the sole new track "Mrs. Robinson", contained only four old songs) with further new additions. Having received a flat no from the duo, who were at the time working on their new project, Davis decided to release the soundtrack anyway, padded out only with Dave Grusin's incidental score. In this form, approved by the authors, the soundtrack to The Graduate bursts onto the market straight at No. 1 on the charts (February '68), driven to the top by the hit single, itself also at No. 1 for three weeks.

1968 is certainly an annus mirabilis from a commercial standpoint. Besides the film's success (a Grammy Award for the soundtrack; "Mrs. Robinson" voted song of the year), success also comes for the album Bookends, once again topping the American and British charts simultaneously. While in America the specialized press and television never stop covering them, in England all of the duo's albums appear together in the charts.

Self-produced for the first time (with the usual help of sound engineer Roy Halee, present since their earliest work), Bookends rivals its successor for the title of Simon & Garfunkel's great masterpiece. The impression is of an artistic journey reaching its expressive peak, as though the previous albums had in some way been a gradual preparation for this work. Minimalism on a grand scale, the duo's pocket-sized literature, is at its very best. The emulation of styles, codes and languages seems to have been left behind: S & G question their own roots and influences (the Everly Brothers, Dylan, folk, rock) to reshape as personal a musical statement as possible. It's a discreet record, one that invents nothing but implies a great deal. Twelve songs in a state of grace, to be listened to all in one sitting, with no dead spots or filler tracks.

Inside is the definitive version of "Mrs. Robinson", with its rhythmic intro of voices and that chorus committed to memory by at least three generations. Not to mention "America", another autobiographical ballad, among the finest in Simon's entire songbook.

Purely acoustic/hushed material is found only in "Overs" and "Old Friends", both sincere digressions on married life and successes shared together. It's a time of growing up and taking stock, and for once Paul lets slip the possibility of a final word on the whole project. More than the hard-rock attempt of "Hazy Shade Of Winter", more than the episodes that are by turns surreal (the Orwellian "At The Zoo" and "Punky's Dilemma") or poetic ("Fakin' It") or topical ("Save The Life Of My Child"), it is precisely these two fragile songs that give deep meaning to the whole. The structure, with an instrumental introduction ("Bookends Theme", which later returns with vocals added) and a spoken-word interlude (two minutes of dialogue between elderly people in "Voices Of Old People"), might suggest a concept work: short stories and reflections on friendship, the city in crisis, time relentlessly passing.

Bookends is an album of old photographs about the urge to run away and the passing of the seasons, the end of dreams and of innocence.

Following a year rich in commercial and artistic satisfactions, another one opens on a lower key, far from the spotlight and the charts: 1969, a pivotal moment of both wonderful and dramatic events (the first man on the Moon; the Woodstock festival; the escalating war in Vietnam), sees the relationship between Paul and Artie worsen. The two see less and less of each other, struggling to find the artistic balance they had only a few years before. Despite the friction, work continues: new songs for a new album that, however, proves to have a long and laborious gestation. The months go by and nothing concrete seems to emerge. In fact, the only S & G record to see the light of day in '69 is the single "The Boxer", a huge hit (No. 7 US; No. 6 UK) and a beautiful song about the sadness of loneliness and abandonment. The rest of the year passes amid misunderstandings and tempting new career openings: such as the one that comes Garfunkel's way, when he accepts an invitation from Mike Nichols (an old acquaintance) to join the cast of his new film, "Catch-22". The director assures Artie that the shoot (in Mexico) won't pull him too far away from studio work and won't take up more than a couple of months. He accepts anyway, confident that a period of "detox" from his friend can only benefit the duo's internal balance and his own artistic dignity.

Things don't go as planned, though: the film requires extra time (stretching from 2 to 5 months), and Simon, for the first time, feels snubbed, pushed aside. He begins writing songs, bittersweet and melancholy, about this temporary loss: "The Only Living Boy in New York" makes direct references to Mexico and to his friend (evoked by his old nickname, Tom), while "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" is a veiled nod to Garfunkel's passion for architecture and, at the same time, a bitter but necessary farewell (one that closely resembles the Beatles' "Two Of Us", in which another famous Paul sadly comes to terms with the end of a special friendship).

Upon the friend's return from South America and after a handful of concerts at the end of the year, the duo finally finish the work, after months and months of delays and postponements. Artie still doesn't know it, but Simon has already revealed to Clive Davis at Columbia his intention to break up the duo, shortly after the release of the new album, which will remain the last of their career.

Bridge Over Troubled Water (January 1970; No. 1 in the US and UK) thus stands apart in its own right, an enormously successful album (over 10 million copies sold) praised by the artists themselves, who, despite all the problems, consider it their best ever. Everything is truly in magical harmony: the vocal parts, the arrangements, the lyrics, the music.

Production duties remain in the hands of the duo (aided as usual by Roy Halee), with the songs entrusted to the solid professionalism of a fine group of Californian session musicians: Hal Blaine (drums), Joe Osborn (bass), Larry Knechtel (keyboards), Fred Carter Jr. (guitar) and Jimmy Haskell (string arrangements). The title track, with its famously well-known piano intro, offers Garfunkel's most convincing vocal performance: a splendid, romantic ballad that grows in intensity until the orchestral explosion and the bold final high note. This is a track that alone is worth the price of the album, alongside "Let It Be" by the Beatles one of the most celebrated of the Seventies. There's also room for the Andean folk melodies of "El Condor Pasa", with instrumental help from Los Incas, and for the infectious Afro-Hispanic rhythm of "Cecilia". Here Paul reveals what most interests him at that moment: ethnic music from outside the United States, a passion he would go on to explore more deeply in the years that followed. "Keep The Customer Satisfied" and "Baby Driver" are monuments to Simon's thunderous pop talent, which owes something to masters of the calibre of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. Also notable is the jazz/bossa experiment of the already mentioned "So Long…", while the cover of the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love" is a fitting tribute, a perfect farewell and at the same time a final return to their roots. However you look at it, from the acoustic grace of "The Boxer" and "Only Living Boy…" to the laid-back pop of "Why Don't You Write Me", Bridge remains an essential record, an ideal compendium of the art of songwriting.

If Bookends was an album that reflected on the past and concealed a childlike need to grow up, then Bridge Over Troubled Water is the album of the future and of adult plans. The final page of a story that offers more than enough food for thought about the duo's solo careers. Which, by that point, is no longer even a duo: right on schedule, as expected, comes the official news of the split.

On a personal level (note: not an artistic one) it's no longer possible to carry on, the personality clashes and ambitions are too many and too different. The fresh haul of Grammy Awards does little to help, nor does the certainty of being, at that moment, among the most celebrated musical acts on the planet. Paul and Art go their separate ways.

Garfunkel's career will continue along the safe tracks of melodic pop: polished albums, full of classy songwriters (Jimmy Webb) and star guests.

Snubbed by serious critics, Artie will carry on this way without any major stumbles or upheavals. Unlike Simon, who will find a new Mecca in Africa and Brazil, bearing witness, through landmark, celebrated albums (Graceland; Rhythm Of The Saints), to his boundless love for different musical cultures. With all due respect to his old friend, Simon can be credited with having changed the face of world popular music with his pop genius. But it must be said that without Garfunkel's angelic voice we would never have experienced the legend, we would never have dreamed on those splendid vocal harmonies. Thankfully, those records are still there, gathering dust, but as alluring as the memory of an old girlfriend.

Incredible as it may seem, inside it the sound of silence is still alive.

Simon & Garfunkel have occasionally reunited to play together. As in 1981, when they held the Concert In Central Park in New York in front of 500,000 people, or in 2004, for a long world tour that also took in Italy, with a memorable performance at the Colosseum, later compiled on the album Old Friends Live On Stage.

Paul Simon then released a new solo work in 2006, Surprise.

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