Simon & Garfunkel are one of the greatest folk duos ever to pick up a guitar and a microphone. There are many reasons why.
Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964)
- Though not a commercial success, Simon & Garfunkel's first album still gave us a few first class songs, such as the laid back "Bleecker Street",
a tribute to the Greenwich Village thoroughfare. Like the rest of the album, it's just Paul's guitar and the duo's voices, but the effect is powerful. - The album concludes with the title track, a wistful song in which the singer watches his lover sleeping, knowing that he must leave her soon as he is facing arrest for knocking over a liquor store. The vocals in particular are among the finest on the album.
Sounds of Silence (1966)
- "The Sound of Silence" had already appeared on Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., but only gradually found an audience, and when producer Tom Wilson put an electric guitar and rhythm section over the simple guitar-and-vocals arrangement, Simon & Garfunkel were truly here to stay. Though Garfunkel recalls that Simon was "horrified" when he first heard the electric arrangement, the extra instruments add an appropriate level of angst to the haunting lyrics about humanity's inability to communicate (a theme that runs through many songs on the album), which rank among Simon's best."Fools," said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed... in the wells... of silence... - Simon's adaptation of Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem "Richard Cory" opens Side 2, the almost jaunty tune and electric instrumentation expertly setting up the Mood Whiplash in which we learn that the title character had wealth but was so unhappy that he was finally Driven to Suicide... not that this stops the singer from cursing his poverty and wishing he could be Richard Cory.
- Following on from the previous song, "A Most Peculiar Man" is another memorable musical character portrait of a shut-in whose angry interactions with the other tenants in his building hid inner torment so terrible that, like Richard Cory, he was finally Driven to Suicide (the vocals and instruments becoming noticeably harsher for the relevant lyrics), and all that anyone can say now he is dead is that he was... a most peculiar man.He died last Saturday
He turned on the gas and he went to sleep
With the windows closed so he'd never wake up
To his silent world and his tiny room
And Mrs. Reardon says he has a brother somewhere
Who should be notified soon - "April Come She Will" is a beautiful ballad using the passing months as a metaphor for the changing moods of a romantic attachment - content in April and especially May, withdrawing across June and July, and dead and gone (whether literally or not is ambiguous) by August and September.
- Having opened with a song lamenting humanity's inability to communicate, the album closes with a song celebrating lack of communication in "I Am a Rock", described by Garfunkel as Simon's "most neurotic song". In contrast to the most peculiar man from earlier on Side 2, the singer of "I Am a Rock" is perfectly happy shutting himself off from the world, thank you very much. Rather that than be hurt again when love and friendship turn sour. The duo's voices mesh gloriously with each other, and the gradual ebbing of the instrumentation down to just Simon's voice and guitar for the final refrain is especially potent.And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966)
- Simon & Garfunkel's third studio album opens with the brilliantly constructed and beautifully rendered "title track", "Scarborough Fair/Canticle". While based in England, Paul Simon was introduced to the English folk song "Scarborough Fair" by Martin Carthy, but they decided to give the song that little bit extra by re-working Simon's anti-war ballad "The Side of a Hill" from his 1965 solo album The Paul Simon Songbook with a new melody by Art Garfunkel to be sung in counterpoint as "Canticle".note Add a dreamlike acoustic guitar riff, harpsichord, and glockenspiel, and you have all the makings of an absolute classic. (When they performed the song live, they pared it back to a rendition of "Scarborough Fair" only.)Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather
(War bellows blazing in scarlet battalion)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
(Generals order their soldiers to kill)
And gather it all with a bunch of heather
(And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten)
Then she'll be a true love of mine - "Homeward Bound" is an anthem for travelling musicians everywhere who are feeling the bite of homesickness. Simon composed the song while touring folk clubs in England, writing down the lyrics on a scrap of paper while, per the lyrics, "sittin' at the railway station" with "a ticket for [his] destination" (the railway station has variously been identified as Widnes or the now-disused Ditton, both between Liverpool and Manchester), and the sudden brightening of the mood for the refrain in which the singer dreams of returning to the land where his thoughts are escaping, his music is playing, and his love lies waiting silently for him is a particular highlight.
- Side 1 closes with the buoyant "59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)", an infectiously optimistic ditty about slowing down and taking the time to appreciate life's pleasures.
- The punchy Bob Dylan parody "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)" matches Simon's harsh vocals and deliberately meandering lyrics (with a healthy dose of Hypocritical Humor as the singer sneers at an unknown person for being so uncultured as to think that "Dylan" refers not to Bob Dylan, but to Dylan Thomas - "Whoever he was!") with a spiky electric score, the object of the parody emphasised further with wry use of a harmonica between verses and in the fade-out.
- The enigmatic "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" is a highlight of Side 2; just who - or what - is Emily? Simon and Garfunkel have given several possible answers - Simon's then-girlfriend Kathy Chitty, the 19th century poet Emily Dickinson, or perhaps the ideal of romantic love, or even simply some undefined aspect of life that brings fulfillment.
Bookends (1968)
- The "road trip" classic "America" is striking for being one of the few songs in Simon & Garfunkel's catalogue to feature lyrics that don't rhyme, and they certainly don't need to rhyme to paint a compelling picture of two lost souls who board a Greyhound bus from Pittsburgh to New York in search of what makes America what it is. The buildup of energy to the refrain (first on the line "It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw", then on the line "Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike") is especially powerful.
- The wistful "Old Friends" gives us a truly heart-rending set of vocals (doubly so when one considers the ups and downs Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's friendship has had as they have reached the "terribly strange" age of 70 mentioned in the song) over a well-crafted orchestral score, finally leading straight into a reprise of the gentle "Bookends Theme" for solo guitar that opened Side 1 and now returns to close it, this time with lyrics that pick up the thread of "Old Friends":Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you - The irresistibly catchy "Mrs. Robinson", made famous by its use in The Graduate, is another song in Paul Simon's catalogue that really takes off in its refrain, not least when the lyrics wonder where New York Yankees great Joe DiMaggio has gone at a time when the nation needs heroes to look up to.note
- The driving guitar rhythm and spiky brass of "Hazy Shade of Winter" lend an appropriate level of anguish to a song about a poet lamenting his lack of professional success as time seems to pass ever more quickly, with autumn changing to winter.
- The lively "At the Zoo" is almost guaranteed to get your toes tapping with its upbeat rhythm and its wry anthropomorphisation of the various zoo animals, some of them decidedly uncomplimentary!
Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)
- Simon & Garfunkel's fifth and final studio album topped the charts in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, and at least seven European countries,note and deservedly won the Best Album Grammy for 1970. It hits the ground running with the pure dynamite that is the title track, especially once Paul Simon joins Art Garfunkel on vocals for the third verse and the instrumentation gets louder and prouder for a truly outstanding climax. The lyrics, in which the singer presents himself as A Friend in Need, also set up one of the main themes running through the album: the ups and, more often, downs of friendship and love that signalled the duo's impending breakup. For added awesome, try the live version from the 1981 Central Park concert.Sail on, silver girl, sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way, see how they shine
If you need a friend, I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind - "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" may be somewhat controversial for its inadvertent use of Daniel Robles' Peruvian folk-inspired tune (as arranged by Los Incas), but since Simon reached a very amicable settlement with Robles' son and later produced Los Incas' first English language album, we can enjoy the song for his own contribution, the haunting lyrics about preferring to take action rather than be acted upon, about preferring to take off and be free rather than be chained down.
- "Cecilia" starts with an infectious rhythm track (a tape recording of Paul and Eddie Simon and Art Garfunkel slapping their hands against a wooden piano bench, initially recorded for a lark at a party) and provides vocal harmonies as good as any the duo ever recorded for a song about a relationship not quite going as the singer hoped.
- "Keep the Customer Satisfied" features a positively explosive use of big band brass, especially in the coda following the final refrain. Though some listeners interpret the lyrics about staying "one step ahead of the shoeshine", "two steps away from the county line", and keeping the customer satisfied to refer to drug dealing, the surface interpretation is the same as that for "Homeward Bound"; like Simon and Garfunkel themselves, the singer is just a travelling musician who is tired of life on the road and wants to go home.
- "The Boxer" is a plaintive, beautifully sung classic;note the gradual crescendo through the final repetitions of the refrain until it finally resolves into a quiet conclusion for solo guitar is a highlight. The live version (heard on their 1969 live album and the 1981 Central Park concert among others) is a must-hear, featuring an extra verse that does not appear in the studio version:Now the years are rollin' by me, they are rocking evenly
I am older than I once was, and younger than I'll be
That's not unusual, no it isn't strange
After changes upon changes we are more or less the same - The next song on the album languished, largely unknown and unappreciated, for close to 40 years. It's a cheerful, upbeat rock song about yearning for love and adventure. Then Edgar Wright named a movie after it: "Baby Driver".
- "The Only Living Boy in New York", one of several songs Simon wrote to express how much he missed Art Garfunkel while he was in Mexico filming Catch-22 (and another sign of their irreversible slide toward breaking up as a musical act), sticks long in the memory with its heavily echoed vocalise refrain and lyrics appealing to the memory of the duo's early years (with Simon addressing Garfunkel as "Tom", a nod to their 1950s performances under the name Tom & Jerry) even as they grew apart.
- The album - and the duo's studio career overall - closes with the sweet, simple, direct "Song for the Asking". The theme of growing distance remains, but the overall mood is hopeful - Paul Simon's music will still be there after he and Art Garfunkel have parted ways, and we just have to ask him to tell us of all the love he holds inside. And with so much first-class music, there will surely always be someone, somewhere, who will ask for the songs of Simon & Garfunkel.
