Trivia / Simon & Garfunkel

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• Breakaway Pop Hit: "Mrs. Robinson" from The Graduate is an interesting inversion, as Paul Simon only wrote the chorus for the movie and they didn't bother finishing and recording the complete song until after the movie had become a hit.
• Executive Meddling: A positive example of this is responsible for the duo's entire career. Short history: they first released "The Sounds of Silence" in 1964 in a completely acoustic version on their debut album. Said album tanked, then the two split and Simon moved to England. A year later, The Byrds spearheaded the folk-rock movement with their electrified covers of Bob Dylan songs, while the original S&G version of "Silence" started picking up radio airplay in the Boston area. Sensing an opportunity, in June 1965 Dylan's producer Tom Wilson took the original backing track and overdubbed electric guitar, bass and drums, borrowing members of Dylan's backing band. (If you listen closely, you can actually hear the band go out of sync with the original recording at one point.) Not bothering to consult either Simon or Garfunkel, the new version of the song was released as a single and slowly climbed up to #1. Simon returned from England, reunited with Garfunkel and the two went on to more success, though they only agreed to if the execs promised they'd never pull a stunt like that without telling them first.
• Popularity Redo: Simon, who'd gained a bit of a following as a folksinger in England, recorded and released the UK-only album The Paul Simon Songbook in 1965. It contained re-recordings of two songs from Wednesday Morning, 3 AM ("The Sound of Silence", "He Was My Brother"), but the rest were new songs. However, all but two of them were eventually re-recorded with Simon & Garfunkel. Even the two that weren't still got used: "A Church is Burning" was performed live, and "The Side of a Hill" was retooled as the "Canticle" counterpoint of "Scarborough Fair".
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: As a duo, Simon and Garfunkel only recorded five studio albums together over six years. So beloved are their songs that their five studio albums have been the source for more than three times as many "Greatest Hits" albums.
• Shrug of God: In 2008, Stephen Colbert facetiously asked Simon why the narrator of "Cecilia" would need to get up and wash his face after making love. Simon noted "Well, it’s the ’60s, so I can’t remember."
• Troubled Production: Bookends took more than a year to finish, partly because they stepped away from it to work on the music for The Graduate, and partly because the duo had trouble articulating a vision for the album, hiring scores of outside musicians (partly to take advantage of a loophole in their contract that forced the label to pay for session musicians) and exhibiting perfectionist tendencies in doing dozens of takes of song sections, let alone full songs. "Punky's Dilemma" reportedly took over 50 hours of studio time to finish. Simon struggled with the album's lyrics. He wrote a lot of them while high on hashish, and he later admitted to some Creator Backlash feelings about them, feeling that the influence of the drug led to a tone of self-absorbed Wangst. Columbia staff producer John Simon (no relation) arrived in the middle of the sessions and helped get the duo to focus more, but then he abruptly left the label at the start of 1968, forcing Simon, Garfunkel and engineer Roy Halee to finish the album. Interestingly, this seemed to kick-start their creativity, as they wrapped up the sessions by recording three standout songs ("Mrs. Robinson", "America", "Old Friends").
• What Could Have Been:
  • They were asked to play Woodstock, but declined because Art Garfunkel was the in middle of filming Catch-22 and they wanted to start writing songs for what would become the Bridge Over Troubled Water album as soon as he finished.
  • Simon's 1983 album Hearts and Bones was originally conceived as Think Too Much, a Simon & Garfunkel reunion album following A Concert in Central Park, but once recording began the duo started bickering and Garfunkel wound up leaving the project.

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