Simon & Garfunkel

by Spencer Leigh

  It looked as though Simon had joined Garfunkel in making new albums that suffered from diminishing returns. Then something unexpected happened. In 2002 Garfunkel made the best solo album of his career, and what’s more, he wrote half the songs. Well, let’s not overdo this – he wrote one third of one half of the songs, but it was still a considerable achievement. After his book of poems, Still Water, he had moved onto songwriting, and autobiographical songs at that. ‘Wishbone’ contained specific references to Laurie Bird.

  Art Garfunkel’s album, Everything Waits to Be Noticed (Do you sense a message in the title?) was far superior to Paul Simon’s You’re the One and possibly the only thing that stopped it being a big seller was Art Garfunkel, as he had become unfashionable.

  Billy Mann, Art’s producer, had put him in touch with the Nashville songwriter Buddy Mondlock and the Los Angeles songwriter Maia Sharp, who were both fine singers and musicians. The result was a tremendous album of original songs with excellent harmonies, containing shades of Fleetwood Mac, the Mamas & the Papas, Manhattan Transfer and, naturally, Simon & Garfunkel, but with enough originality of its own. The arrangements are well thought out with the cellos and violins in ‘Crossing Lines’, which has some sudden, surprising chords like ‘The Boxer’.

  Jann Wenner’s sleeve notes were over the top, but not too much. The opening track ‘Bounce’, written by Graham Lyle and Billy Mann, was both a fine opener and a good indication of what was to come as the harmonies bounce back and forth. It is a mixture of pop, jazz and choral singing.

  The title song finds the G (as Jann Wenner calls him) sounding like Paul Simon, a bit like the way McCartney sounded like Lennon on ‘Let Me Roll It’. He said of this song, ‘It started as a poem when I was up all night with Paul and Beverley Martyn. We were maybe a little stoned, and in St James’s Park, we saw 28 geese take off over the pond as if they had waited for us to notice. It was such a nice high.’ It is a fine track and another one, ‘The Kid’, has shades of ‘April Come She Will’.

  The only cover on the album is ‘Every Now and Then’, a song that Buddy Mondlock had written with Garth Brooks for Garth’s 1992 album, The Chase. Considering that Garth sold millions of copies of The Chase, it was an unnecessary song for Garfunkel to sing, but why not? It was Buddy’s most successful composition.

  The trio did concerts to promote the album and I caught them at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool. Buddy Mondlock did four songs but it was difficult to catch all the words. One song had been recorded by Nanci Griffith and he ended with the excellent ‘No Choice’. Maia Sharp played keyboards, guitar and something that looked like a cross between a clarinet and a saxophone and again did four songs. She was most impressive, or rather would have been, if we had not suffered from some deafening percussion, which distorted the balance.

  Art Garfunkel, dressed in blue shirt, blue jeans and black shoes, did eighteen songs – six from the Simon & Garfunkel days, four from his solo career, one from Paul Simon’s (‘American Tune’) and five from the new album, plus a lovely version of Jesse Belvin’s ‘Goodnight, My Love’ to end, followed by the repetition of ‘War is not the answer’ from ‘What’s Going On’ by Marvin Gaye.

  In view of America’s foreign policy, he had apologised for being American. The audience was very responsive, especially when Paul Simon’s name was mentioned, and for once at least, he was very favourably disposed towards him. At the Grammys, Simon had called him ‘my past and perhaps future partner’.

  In Nick Hornby mode, Art said that his favourite American songwriters were Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, James Taylor, Paul Simon and the best writer of romantic ballads, Jimmy Webb. He then sang ‘All I Know’. He described how touchy Paul could be and said that Paul didn’t care for ‘Jesus loves you much more than you knew, woo, woo, woo’ in “Mrs Robinson”.’ There was ‘The Sound of Silence’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and ‘If I Could’, but I could have done without the long drum solo in ‘Cecilia’. ‘Kathy’s Song’ was a lesser-known choice and a very good one. Garfunkel did his No. 1’s ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ and ‘Bright Eyes’, and the songs from Everything Wants to be Noticed were presented excellently. He read the poems that inspired two of them, ‘Perfect Moment’ and ‘The Thread’, which are about life along Park Avenue. He came across as a very warm performer, which surprised me because I thought he would be aloof. Not a mention of his walk across Europe though.

  CHAPTER 16

  Surprises

  Paul Simon was in a dilemma, feeling an old man in a young man’s world. He said, ‘In 2001, two things made me stop and ponder before I could write songs again: 9/11 and my sixtieth birthday. They both made me think, “What do you have to do now that needs to be said?”’ He did not want to be an oldies act, simply doing reunions with Garfunkel. As he remarked, ‘You can stay fixed in your timeframe like Fats Domino and Chuck Berry or you can be inventive to the end like Miles Davis and that’s what I’m holding myself up to.’

  But Simon felt that a harsh inner voice was preventing him from working. A psychiatrist told him to imagine the voice was comic and it would go away. Then you could put it under your shoe. This advice crops up in ‘Sure Don’t Feel Like Love’ on his album Surprise. I’m English so I’m cynical. Randy Newman said that Simon was as much a critic as a songwriter which caused him to reject most of his own output. Better, he thought, to be simply a songwriter and let others judge. That sounds more like the root of the problem.

  From time to time, Simon met and worked with Paul McCartney although they have never played on each other’s records. In June 2001 both artists appeared at the Adopt-a-Minefield Gala at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles. After a set from Paul Simon, the host Jay Leno asked, ‘Is the lad from Liverpool here yet?’ McCartney performed his set and as a finale Simon joined him on stage for ‘I’ve Just Seen a Face’.

  In 2005 Paul McCartney rang the other Paul on his birthday to sing ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ – yes, tacky but he couldn’t resist it. In 2010 Paul Simon sang John Lennon’s ‘Hold On’ at a tribute concert in Brooklyn.

  Every year the Kennedy Center honours those who excel in the performing arts and Paul Simon was an honouree in 2002 with President George W. Bush in attendance. The opening speech by Steve Martin was, and still is, hilarious. Instead of praising Simon, he has fun at his expense: his partnership with Garfunkel ‘ended in an acrimonious split’ and that with Sony Records ‘ended in an acrimonious split’. Martin says that he has been friends with Simon for twenty-five years but that is ending tonight. It is very rare to see Simon laughing heartily in public, but he looks rather concerned when the music gets going, no doubt wishing he had a say in it. Alicia Keys destroys ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ with her histrionics; James Taylor and Alison Krauss should have worked out their harmonies for ‘The Boxer’ and John Mellencamp chose to combine ‘Graceland’ with ‘Mrs Robinson’. Fortunately, the Dixie Hummingbirds are on hand for ‘Loves Me Like A Rock’. President Bush told Paul Simon that he often listened to Graceland while he was jogging. You’d have thought that it might have improved Bush’s decision making.

  An offer from out of the blue inspired an excellent song. The Wild Thornberrys was a successful American TV cartoon series for Nickelodeon about a family coping with life in the wilds and it relayed messages about endangered species. It was made into a full-length feature, The Wild Thornberrys Movie, with familiar actors supplying the voices – Brenda Blethyn, Tim Curry, Rupert Everett. The soundtrack featured many leading world musicians including Sting, Peter Gabriel, Youssou N’Dour, Hugh Masekela and, naturally, Paul Simon. He wrote the beautiful and reassuring ‘Father and Daughter’. The song fitted into the context of the film, especially with its Graceland accompaniment, but it was also about Paul’s own relationship with his daughter, Lulu, who had been born in 1996.

  The song was nominated for an Oscar in 2003 and Simon performed it at the ceremony. There were four other candidates: a new song, ‘I Move On’, for the film
version of Chicago, ‘Burn It Blue’ from Frida; ‘The Hands That Built America’ by U2 from Gangs of New York; and ‘Lose Yourself’ by Eminem from his film, 8 Mile. Although an unlikely Oscar song, ‘Lose Yourself’ was the winner.

  Paul Simon made an exceptionally good video for the song, which included clips from the film. It was issued as a single and appeared on the soundtrack album and Simon must have liked it as three years later he included it on his next studio album, Surprise.

  The speculation about Simon and Garfunkel getting back together was always news, but in Southport two lads saw a gap in the market and, with impressive wigs, launched themselves as The Sounds of Simon and Garfunkel. I saw them a few times and enjoyed what they did. In 2004, I was even more impressed when I learnt they could get £3,000 for an appearance.

  In 2002 Dustin Hoffman introduced Simon and Garfunkel at the Grammys where they received a lifetime achievement award. The acclaim was such that they decided to do some more concerts.

  In 2004 Simon and Garfunkel were together for a reunion tour – their first tour together in twenty years. It was a golden and lucrative period for 60s bands to reform because their original fans were in their sixties with disposable income as their children had left home. They toured with the Everly Brothers, singing a couple of songs with them and allowing them a fifteen-minute spot, which was close to insulting them. It should have been something resembling equal time. To make matters worse, they sang their pastiche, ‘Hey Schoolgirl’ before they introduced them – the audience could have had another song from the real thing instead. But why were the Everlys on the bill? Were Simon and Garfunkel thinking, ‘Well, if you think we argue, listen to these two.’

  At one concert, Garfunkel referred to something that had gone wrong and Simon said, ‘Wasn’t my fault’ to which Garfunkel retorted, ‘I’m not touching this goldmine of comic material.’

  The tickets were highly priced and Simon was now raking in the money from his catalogue. He owned the songs through Paul Simon Music but in 2004 he made a deal with Universal, who would look for suitable uses in films, TV and, most lucrative of all, commercials.

  Simon met the experimental musician, Brian Eno, at a dinner party. Brian Peter George St John le Baptise de la Salle Eno, to give his splendid full name, had been a member of Roxy Music and he had provided electronic accompaniments for many musicians including David Bowie (Low), Talking Heads (More Songs About Buildings and Food) and U2 (The Unforgettable Fire). He had many albums of his own ambient electronica and they included Here Come the Warm Jets (1974) and Music for Airports (1978). Simon knew his work and wondered what he would make of his demos. He took some new songs to Eno’s studio and he liked Eno’s suggestions very much.

  They made Surprise together and Eno is credited with ‘sonic landscape’, which introduced Simon to drum’n’bass. There are standard instruments as well as ambient electronica and ‘Wartime Prayers’ finds Eno adding his sounds alongside the Jessy Dixon Singers and Herbie Hancock on piano. Simon and Eno wrote three tracks together including the meandering ‘Another Galaxy’, which sounds like part of a larger story and contains a great line about leaving home being the lesser crime.

  On the album, Simon is reflecting on contemporary events, the meaning of faith and the importance of family life; he had a young family but his father had died in 1995 and his mother the following year. They are not protest songs as such, more sad reflections on the state of the world. ‘How Can You Live In the Northeast?’ is about religious factions and ‘Wartime Prayers’ about the invasion of Iraq: ‘People hungry for the voice of God hear lunatics and liars.’

  There is also humour amongst the barbed comments. In ‘Outrageous’, he says, ‘It’s outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor’ but then adds that it’s outrageous that a rich man like himself should be complaining about this. The song ends with the line, ‘Who’s gonna love you when your looks are gone?’

  It’s back to religion for ‘I Don’t Believe’ and he commented, ‘I’m not religious at all. I agree with Richard Dawkins’ suppositions about religion. I’m interested in God, but I’m not interested in religion as a path towards God. My interest in religion is that it doesn’t annihilate me or my family.’

  The title for the album came after Simon was amused by people saying, ‘I can’t believe this happened’ or ‘I can’t believe this was so long ago’. He realised that we were continually being surprised hence Surprise for the album title. He had a pleasant surprise himself as it sold 30,000 copies in the first week of release in the US, although the sales fell away. The reviews were his best for some years, but the album was trying to be too smart and there was too much confusion in the lyrics. Contrast that with the clarity of the songs on Bookends or Bridge Over Troubled Water.

  Simon did some dates to promote Surprise including some in the UK, where he met up with an old acquaintance. ‘Paul Simon phoned me,’ said Martin Carthy, ‘and said he was doing three gigs at Hammersmith Apollo and did I fancy coming along. I could only make the last one and so I went and hung around until I could get a message through. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan assume that if they say, “Come down”, everyone will say, “Gosh, it’s Martin Carthy, let him in”, but the reality is that you wait around for hours. I didn’t mind and when I saw him, he said, “Would you like to do something with me?” It was “Scarborough Fair” and he had Steve Gadd on drums, who is Dave Swarbrick’s favourite drummer and so I was able to go back to Swarb and brag about it. It was great thing to have done that and Paul asked me if I was mad at him. I said, “Yes, I was but it was very stupid of me.” I had just taught him something, hooray! That was how we were all learning things back them. We all learnt from Davey Graham. He is the one everybody has fed off for years.’

  Since rock’n’roll began in the mid-50s, the performers of the day have dipped into the so-called Great American Songbook. Elvis Presley sang ‘Blue Moon; Gene Vincent ‘Over the Rainbow’; Little Richard ‘Baby Face’; the Marcels ‘Blue Moon’; Frank Ifield ‘I Remember You’; Gerry & the Pacemakers ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’; the Platters and Bryan Ferry ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, and hundreds more. Occasionally a contemporary artist released a whole album of standards, a famous example being Nilsson’s A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, a million-selling LP from 1973 with Frank Sinatra’s arranger Gordon Jenkins.

  In 2002 Rod Stewart upped the game by recording It Had to Be You, and it was so successful that it led to four more albums plus a Christmas one. Art heard Rod’s first album and probably thought, ‘I can do that and I know the man to produce me – Richard Perry.’ At the same time, Richard Perry heard Rod’s album and thought he could make one with Art. He had made Breakaway with Art in 1975, which had included ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’.

  Some Enchanted Evening (2007) is a good MOR album but Garfunkel is subdued, perhaps for romantic effect. The title song from South Pacific is normally belted out but Garfunkel takes it gently. The individual tracks work fine, but overall it needed more variety and energy to show that this is indeed an album by Art Garfunkel. In the notes, he acknowledges his debt to Chet Baker and Johnny Mathis.

  Many of the great composers are represented including Harold Arlen (‘Let’s Fall in Love’), George Gershwin (‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ where Garfunkel sings ‘handsome’ instead of ‘pretty’ and loses the rhyme) and Irving Berlin’s ‘What’ll I Do’. With the harmonica solo, there is nod to Frank Ifield in Johnny Mercer’s ‘I Remember You’. There is ‘If I Loved You’ from Carousel and ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’ from My Fair Lady. It is good to hear ‘Life Is But a Dream’ without the usual doo-wop accoutrements. Best of all are the two Latin arrangements, ‘Quiet Night of Quiet Stars and ‘You Stepped Out of a Dream’.

  In 2008 Paul Simon starred alongside Crowded House and Joe Bonamassa at the Cornbury Musical Festival in Oxfordshire. In February 2009, Garfunkel was a surprise guest when Simon reopened the Beacon Theatre in New York and they
sang ‘Old Friends’, ‘The Sound of Silence’ and ‘The Boxer’. In October 2009 Simon joined David Crosby and Graham Nash at a concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where they sang ‘Here Comes the Sun’.

  In March 2010 Simon & Garfunkel announced a tour of the USA and Canada but the tour was cancelled in June because Garfunkel had a vocal cord paresis. Garfunkel stopped smoking but it took him over a year to recover his voice. Nevertheless, he enjoyed his time at home as he raised his two sons, James and Beau Daniel.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t use the time to write his autobiography, which had been talked about for years. A solo tour was announced but several dates had to be cancelled as his voice wasn’t ready and he resumed touring in 2014, often with Tab Laven on acoustic guitar. He joined the so-called Black Simon & Garfunkel on The Tonight Show for ‘Can’t Feel My Face’.

  In 2011/2, Paul Simon set about celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Graceland with arena shows featuring twetnty-four supporting musicians and singers including Vincent Nguini and Bakithi Kumalo. A commemorative issue of Graceland was released and there was a documentary film, Under African Skies, made by Joe Berlinger.

  A double CD of Simon’s successes called Songwriter was issued in 2011 with thirty-two tracks, 140 minutes playing time, and a sleeve note from the painter Chuck Close. Simon sang the songs except for ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, which came from Aretha Franklin. Simon said that the song had fulfilled its destiny as she had treated it like a gospel hymn. He admired Johnny Cash’s treatment, which was one of his final recordings. Said Simon, ‘He didn’t feel he was up to it but the fragility of his voice brings something extremely powerful.’