Simon & Garfunkel

by Spencer Leigh

  Simon and Garfunkel, 1966 (New Musical Express)

  Judith Piepe said that the song was intended as a tribute to the American comedian Lenny Bruce, and Bruce’s death is included in the bulletin: ‘In Los Angeles today comedian Lenny Bruce died of what was believed to be an overdose of narcotics. Bruce was forty-two years old.’

  More aptly, Phil Spector attributed his death to ‘an overdose of police’ and indeed, the comedian had been busted many times for obscenity. His appeal to Simon probably lay in his honesty. There was no compromise about Lenny Bruce – he said what he felt.

  This is the only track on a Simon & Garfunkel album where Garfunkel plays an instrument – piano. Later it was planned to include just the carol on a compilation but only the mixed version has survived.

  Simon revived a novelty song which had been given a new treatment, some new lyrics and a new subtitle. Now it was ‘A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission)’. It ended with Simon saying, ‘Folk-rock’ and then ‘I dropped my harmonica, Albert’, a reference to Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, but there was no intention to put Dylan down. Paul Simon said, ‘I liked protest music. I thought that The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was fantastic. It was very moving and very exciting. There was a lot of bad protest because “Protest” became a thing. You knew it was over when “Eve of Destruction” happened.’

  In contrast to Simon’s admiration for Lenny Bruce comes his love of the American poetess Emily Dickinson. She is mentioned in ‘The Dangling Conversation’ and she is the ideal companion in ‘For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her’. Her bittersweet love poems were often little more than fragments and, to some extent, her reputation lay in her legend. She lived in seclusion and always dressed in white. Very few of her poems were printed during her lifetime and indeed, scarcely anyone knew that she wrote at all. The discovery of the poems after her death has led to her acceptance at the front of American poetry.

  Simon’s whimsy has a distinctive nineteenth-century feel – it could be a centuries-old folk song, both with its stilted title and the vocabulary employed. The song is complemented by a stunning, high-tenor performance from Art Garfunkel. The track ends with Garfunkel in full flow saying ‘I love you’ and we are returned to the present with ‘A Poem On the Underground Wall’. The song is about those midnight scribblers with their magic markers and Simon calls them ‘the prophets of today’, an echo of a line in ‘The Sound of Silence’.

  ‘The Sound of Silence’ implies that theirs is the only voice that is heard at all, but the Banksy in the new song is only using his freedom to spread bad language. There is not the same justification as with Lenny Bruce and using the word ‘Poem’ in the title is part of Simon’s humour.

  ‘A Poem On the Underground Wall’ was written about the London underground when Simon was living in the East End. ‘I wrote it about Whitechapel tube station where I had to change every time for that little Metropolitan line to Shadwell. I never saw anything like that in New York.’

  Among the lighter moments are two travelling songs, ‘Cloudy’ and ‘The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)’. ‘Cloudy’ is heavy-handed with its literary references to War and Peace and Peter Pan, but Simon deftly controls the music. I prefer the lightness of ‘Feelin’ Groovy’, despite the pretentious title. Paul Simon said, ‘I wasn’t satisfied with the original title. I mean, us recording a song called “Feelin’ Groovy”? So, I thought, well, give it a more intellectual title – I thought of “The 59th Street Bridge Song” which was okay.’

  The song’s buoyancy can be attributed to Simon writing it at 6 a.m. He began it on the New York bridge itself and Rolling Stone pointed out that although the bridge had no cobblestones, the approach had. There’s poetic license for you. If he’d wished, he could have called it ‘The Queensboro Bridge Song’, its alternative name. It connects Long Island to Queens and passes over Roosevelt Island.

  The result is a delightful piece of fluff which contrasts sharply with Simon’s other work. He realised this himself and told The New Yorker, ‘Sometimes I make a song purely an impression, like “Feelin’ Groovy”. I think: yellow… pink… bubbles… gurgle… happy. The line, “I’m dappled and drowsy” doesn’t make sense, but I just felt dappled. Sleepy, contented, it’s a happy song, and that’s what it was. There’s the other kind of song like “The Dangling Conversation”. It’s intricately worked out. Every word is picked on purpose. Maybe it’s English major stuff, but it you haven’t caught the symbolism, you haven’t missed anything really.’ ‘Dappled’ normally refers to spotty colouring so Simon has given the word a new meaning.

  Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was the first album that Columbia made on 8-track machines and because Simon and Garfunkel were so meticulous, it took time to make and was an expensive production, albeit one where the costs would soon be recouped. It had a quality which could hardly be ignored and it still sells well. It climbed to No. 4 on the US album charts and No. 13 in the UK. As with Bob Dylan’s first album, the back cover reprinted a review of the duo from Robert Shelton; it is very complimentary about their music but describes Garfunkel’s hair in terms of an electric shock.

  Although ‘Scarborough Fair/Canticle’ was an obvious single, it was snubbed for ‘The Dangling Conversation’ and then came a new song for the winter of 1966, ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’. There is nothing wrong with those songs but it is odd that a potential No. l was bypassed. Still, we all know what is around the corner.

  ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’ was a commercial single with a powerful sound from the organ, cymbals and drums. The duo’s individuality was buried in the production but it is a fine song. A disgruntled Simon combines the theme of growing old with the difficulty of writing. It reached No. 13 on the US chart but was only in the Hot 100 for nine weeks. In 1987 the song was revived by the Bangles for the film Less Than Zero, starring Robert Downey Jr as a drug addict at the very time he was a drug addict. The Bangles’ single went to No. 2 in the US and No. 11 in the UK.

  Robert Shelton’s old address book with a certain Garfunkel, Art in it. (Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool)

  CHAPTER 6

  Graduation Day

  Although Simon and Garfunkel had expanded their sound with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, they didn’t replicate their records on stage. They still worked as two voices, one guitar, and although there were good economic reasons for this, some of the audience felt short-changed. When they appeared with the Mamas & the Papas at Forest Hills in August 1966, the Mamas & the Papas with a full band took top billing.

  Still, they had a highly professional act and a New York performance was recorded for a live album on 22 January 1967. The album was not issued until 2002, when it appeared as the nineteen-track Live from New York City, 1967, recorded in the Lincoln Center. It was held back because there would have been too many versions of some songs on the market.

  Live from New York City, 1967 is a very good CD with Artie on left and Paul on the right. Their singing and harmonies are spot on and there is little to criticise. It was drawing towards the farewell outing for some of these songs as they were being replaced by new ones. Only six of the nineteen songs are retained for their Live 1969 album. Unusually, Simon and Garfunkel give us a work in progress, albeit not a very good one, as ‘You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies’ would not appear for another seven months. They perform the earlier ‘Wednesday Morning 3am’ as opposed to the rewrite ‘Somewhere They Can’t Find Me’. The between-songs banter is amusing and not as tetchy as it was with Don and Phil Everly.

  Some performances from the night before at the Lincoln Centre appear on the Old Friends box set including the only issued recording of Simon & Garfunkel singing ‘Red Rubber Ball’.

  In March 1967 Simon & Garfunkel came to the UK for concert dates at the Royal Albert Hall and in Birmingham and Manchester. They recorded an ‘in concert’ special for Granada TV at their studios in Manchester. That concert went well althou
gh when Simon was introducing ‘Feelin’ Groovy’, a string snapped and he remarked, ‘Wow, there’s a ghost on the stage, man.’

  Their introductions fell in line with their image. Art Garfunkel described how he had researched ‘Benedictus’ in the library and the show contains my all-time favourite Paul Simon quote: ‘I returned to the States in December 1965 and I went because “The Sound of Silence” had become a hit. I had to make this transition from being relatively unknown in England to the semi-famous type scene in the States.’

  At the time, Simon and Garfunkel needed something or someone to take them one step further to the ‘famous type scene’. That something or someone would be the film director Mike Nichols.

  Whether writing or performing, Simon is committed to integrity and he often questions what he does. The theme runs through Simon and Garfunkel’s work from ‘Homeward Bound’ to ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’. However, he is not above gentle ribbing and on their next single, ‘At the Zoo’, the monkeys stood for honesty.

  The single ‘At the Zoo’ was released for the tour, along with ‘Feelin’ Groovy’. Simon wanted to concentrate on ‘At the Zoo’ in view of a cover of the other song by Harper’s Bizarre, which was arranged by Leon Russell and made the US Top 20 as well as UK charts. The press release for ‘At the Zoo’ said, ‘Abounding in aural colour patterns which intrigue and interest the listener the more with each hearing. The disc has a brilliant lyric speaking of the logical zoo inmates who play the human game!’

  With the opposite of its intention, this press release makes the single sound unappealing but ‘At the Zoo’ had much going for it. It begins as a gentle travelling song but builds into something more substantial. By the time Simon arrives at the zoo he is ready for some bizarre comparisons, but the song lacked a chorus, which told against it. This was a drawback in the UK, although it reached No. 16 in the US. It was the third successive single by Simon & Garfunkel to miss the UK chart.

  ‘I can do nothing to make the charts here,’ mused Simon to Norman Jopling of Record Mirror in 1967. ‘I think I write the wrong material for Britain. I make mistakes regarding the singles which are put out there. Take “The Dangling Conversation”. It wasn’t suitable for the British market. It was way above the kids. Then there was “A Hazy Shade of Winter”. As soon as I released that, I knew the flip was better, “For Emily”. I should have put strings on it and it could have been another “Sound of Silence”. It was Art singing on that one. His voice is just great. I knew that “Feelin’ Groovy” was a hit as soon as I wrote it. The other version is all right but I put our version on the back of “At the Zoo”. Another mistake.’

  Still, ‘At the Zoo’ has had a life of its own. Simon said, ‘If it weren’t for the fact that they used that song as a commercial for the zoo which makes me happy, and the fact that children like it – there’s a children’s book based on it – I wouldn’t like the song.’

  This reveals that Simon regarded himself as the dominant force in the duo, that he was arrogant (How does he know ‘The Dangling Conversation’ was too difficult for ‘the kids’?), that he had control over their releases, and that he thought ‘For Emily’ was a potential hit. It has never been a chart record for anyone, but maybe its imagery was too outmoded.

  It also highlights the different approaches to the media by Dylan and Simon. Paul Simon explains, almost like a schoolteacher, while Dylan is flippant and contemptuous, often giving absurd answers to questions.

  A simple example: Dylan in 1964 said, ‘I’m just as good a singer as Caruso.’ What did he mean by that? He can’t possibly have meant that his singing voice was as good but maybe he meant that he could communicate just as well. Dylan never explains so you don’t know if he is being playful or ironic. If Simon had made such a remark, it would have been taken straight and he would have been mocked for it.

  The year of 1967 is known for the Summer of Love, but the events of that summer had been planned some months earlier. There had been jazz and folk festivals before, notably at Newport, and now the first great rock festival was planned for three days in June in Monterey, California. The executive board included the record producer, Lou Adler, and the leader of the Mamas & the Papas, John Phillips. Paul Simon joined the organising committee and he secured the Grateful Dead, who had fallen out with Phillips.

  It was decided that, with the exception of Ravi Shankar, the participants would not be paid and that the money raised would go to good causes. Although the festival took place in June, the month that Sgt Pepper was released, none of the Beatles took part, but there were thirty-two acts from the rock world including the Who, the Byrds, Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding.

  Backstage, Jimi Hendrix and Paul Simon had a jam session, although Simon says he was only playing rhythm, feeling somewhat intimidated. ‘If he’d say to me, “Take it, Paul”, I wouldn’t have been able to take it anywhere.’

  Over 70,000 hippies descended on Monterey, a sleepy costal village with a population of 25,000. Despite the preponderance of drugs, there were few arrests and the crowd was well behaved. I write this knowing that David Crosby in a wild stage rant said, ‘I believe that if we gave LSD to all the statesmen and politicians in the world, we might have a chance of stopping a war.’ This was a reference to the six-day Arab-Israeli war, which was contemporaneously being fought.

  Simon & Garfunkel closed the first night but you wouldn’t know that from D. A. Pennebaker’s film or the 4CD set. According to Simon’s memories, Lou Adler and John Phillips were in control and ‘history is written by whoever writes it’. Still, they scored well with the crowd who clapped along to ‘Feelin’ Groovy’. Following the festival, Simon was given $50,000 to supervise the buying of instruments and tuition for teenagers in the ghettoes.

  California dreaming was becoming a reality with Monterey, and then two years later there was Woodstock, although some negative vibes are attached to that. At the end of 1969, there was the disaster of Altamont but Simon & Garfunkel were not involved in either festival.

  The next Simon & Garfunkel single combined ‘Fakin’ It’ with ‘You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies’. Even though ‘Fakin’ It’ was a US hit, reaching No. 23, ‘You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies’ was the A-side in the UK. This might have been Simon’s instruction, but the decision was quickly reversed. Either way, neither side made the UK charts. ‘You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies’ has been ignored ever since except for a disco version in 1977 from Dana Valery sounding like Gloria Gaynor.

  ‘You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies’ had a biting rhythm and tough-sounding vocals but it was not as inspired, nor as original, as ‘Fakin’ It’. There was a peaceful bridge amidst the rocking verses and some impressive lines. The track sounds like a good idea that hadn’t been fully explored.

  ‘Fakin’ It’ was different, indeed strikingly different, from anything that Simon & Garfunkel had done before, but this was 1967 and the Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Byrds were coming up with new ideas, one after another.

  With ‘Fakin’ It,’ Simon had written a rock song to go with a rock setting. The lyric does not sound mystifying on first hearing. The language is simple and the title is repeated over and over. Ah yes, the honesty theme again, but strange things are happening. A shop door opens and a girl, Beverley Kutner, asks Mr Leitch if he has been busy. That is Donovan’s surname and it sounds like a personal reference, but that doesn’t explain what it’s doing there. Beverley Kutner was a folk singer that Simon knew in England. He had invited her to Monterey and in 1969 she met and married John Martyn. ‘Fakin’ It’ was improved when it appeared on Bookends. The recording was slightly sped up and remixed for stereo.

  The key line is when Simon compares himself to a tailor, alluding to his family history. The critic Robert Christgau called this ‘extremely subtle’ as Simon goes from a clever metaphor to personal identification. Simon related it to his Judaism, and he said, ‘Sometimes I’m American, sometimes I’m Jewish, but mostly I’m J
ewish’, an intriguing quote given to the teenage girls’ magazine Petticoat.

  In the early 60s, Mike Nichols and Elaine May had a popular comedy act in the States. They were riding high on the satire boom. They appeared in the UK on a David Frost show where they did a spoof interview with Albert Schweitzer. There was a marvellous single, ‘A Little More Gauze’, where a doctor refuses to continue with an operation unless the nurse dates him.

  After a while, Mike Nichols found success directing plays on Broadway. His debut as a film director was with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which would have been a challenge for anybody. It was both an artistic and a commercial success and his second film was The Graduate, which was about a young man’s initiation into the adult world.

  Suitable music was needed and Mike Nichols loved Simon & Garfunkel’s album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. It was something that his central character, Ben, would enjoy. He contacted the duo and gave them the novel, The Graduate, by Charles Webb, on which the script by Buck Henry would be based. Paul Simon dismissed the book as ‘bad Salinger’ and added, ‘I didn’t like anything about the film at first. I was only impressed with Mike Nichols who asked us to do it.’ Yet this was enough to persuade Simon to write the score. He told Melody Maker in 1971, ‘We had nothing to lose and we didn’t think that we had much to gain either. We weren’t paid an enormous amount. We didn’t think it was a big job. Dustin Hoffman was unknown.’

  Thirty-year-old Dustin Hoffman played the title role, looking way too old for a graduate, but he was convincing as the shy Benjamin Braddock who has no idea what do with his life. Nichols and the producers were unsure about Hoffman as he looked Jewish and this was a WASP story.

  Benjamin is told that the future is in plastics. He is seduced by the wife of his father’s business partner, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft, wife of Mel Brooks) and then falls for her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). When Elaine finds out what has happened, she ditches Benjamin and marries someone vacuous on the rebound. Benjamin arrives at the church too late to stop the wedding but fights off the congregation with the cross from the altar. Elaine leaves the church with him and they board a bus together and look at each other and realise what they have done. End of story. The imagery of the Christian cross had nothing to do with Simon, but it makes an interesting association with his work.