![]() Like “The Boxer,” the song would become one of Simon’s most widely covered compositions, with those songs anchoring its eventual sales bounty of 25 million copies sold.įor CBS, Simon and Garfunkel’s sales cast a long shadow over Paul Simon’s determined reset as a solo artist. Framed by Larry Knechtel’s elegant piano arrangement and capped by a dramatic orchestral crescendo, the record would prove Simon and Garfunkel’s signature achievement-their biggest single hit, earning four Grammys on its own including Record of the Year and Song of the Year the LP added Album of the Year and Best Engineered Recording to their haul of gilded gramophones. The last song recorded but first completed, the piece conjures a luminous pop gospel testament Paul Simon crafted from the bones of a Bach hymn and lyrics directly inspired by the Swan Silvertones’ “Mary Don’t You Weep,” gifting Garfunkel with one of his most incandescent solo vocals. If Bridge Over Troubled Water was produced under combat conditions, its title single would emerge as one of the most celebrated of the era. Then again, during the album’s production Garfunkel accepted a role in Mike Nichols’ next comedy, Carnal Knowledge, a move infuriating his partner. Simon proves more detached and lightly veiled on “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright,” a farewell saluting Garfunkel’s earlier architectural aspirations while signaling Simon and Garfunkel’s imminent split, a message Garfunkel evidently didn’t recognize until years later. Related: Our Album Rewind of There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Paul’s 1972 solo release One of the album’s most beautiful moments, the track feels like a benediction, answered by Garfunkel himself in its closing refrain, “Here I am.” Simon’s conversational vocal tempers its warmth with a melancholy admission, “Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,” before slipping into a hushed yet majestic choral section given vast sonic space above Joe Osborn’s melodic, plangent bass guitar foundation. Yet affection, not rancor, warms Simon’s lyrics to “The Only Living Boy in New York,” directly addressing his partner by his teenaged stage name at this juncture in their partnership: Even as Bookends was reaching record stores, Garfunkel penned a deeply sad letter venting years of perceived grievances documented in Robert Hilburn’s biography of Simon. Tensions between them stretched back across years, from their short-lived teenage bids for rock ’n’ roll glory as Everly Brothers wannabes Tom and Jerry through Simon’s separate Brill Building and British folk scene adventures. More conventional pop prevailed on “Cecilia,” another successful single, and “Keep the Customer Satisfied,” neither of which would age as well as two deeper cuts with autobiographical details balancing admiration with wistfulness. Released as a single, the track was an international hit, reaching #1 in seven countries and breaking into the top 20 in the U.S. An erroneous initial attribution as a traditional folk song prompted a suit by the family of its composer, Daniel Alomia Robles, amicably settled to recognize Robles’ original 1913 creation. Leonard Cohen’s “Gloomy” ‘Songs of Love and Hate’: A Look Backįor “El Cóndor Pasa,” Simon adapted a folk song he had first heard by Los Incas, adding English lyrics and inviting the Peruvian ensemble to add indigenous flutes, percussion and guitars to evoke its timeless setting.Bobbi Ercoline, Woman on Iconic ‘Woodstock’ LP Cover, Dies. ![]() Carl Palmer Talks About Emerson, Lake and Palmer.Radio Hits in 1982: Top 40 Was Still Rockin’.When The Smithereens Turned It Up to ’11’.‘Body Heat’: 1981’s Double Dealing Thriller.Steve Hackett Sets More Dates of His ‘Genesis Revisited’ Tour.Bruce Springsteen Adds Dates For 2023 Tour With E Street Band.Peter Gabriel Adds North American Dates in Support of New Studio Album, ‘i/o’.When Eddie Money and Wife, Laurie, Renewed Their Wedding Vows.Best Weekly Singles Charts of All-Time: March 1970 Edition.Bonnie Raitt Rebounds in the ‘Nick of Time’.9 (More) Signature Rock Classics That Weren’t U.S.Bruce Springsteen Receives National Medal of Arts in White House Ceremony.Prog-Rockers Barclay James Harvest Reissue an Innovative LP as a Box Set. ![]()
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