Simon & Garfunkel

by Spencer Leigh

  The Graduate is social satire which still works today and has many comic scenes, especially when Benjamin is getting a hotel room for himself and Mrs Robinson. He encounters Buck Henry as a niggling desk clerk. The film does have serious overtones and it could be argued that Ben was taking advantage of a seriously distressed and alcoholic woman, Mrs Robinson. Later on, Mrs Robinson claims that she was raped and although she wasn’t, Benjamin’s behaviour could be questioned.

  Simon & Garfunkel were passed the rushes of the film and asked to supply the music. The production team placed ‘Scarborough Fair’ and other songs in the picture for the time being with the intention of replacing them. The music worked so well that there was no need for new material. As so often happens, accidents become innovations. Paul Simon said, ‘Nobody had ever thought of taking old music and putting it on a soundtrack before.’

  Simon had the riff for ‘Mrs Robinson’ but he was singing ‘Mrs Roosevelt’ to it. Mike Nichols said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’re making a movie here. It’s “Mrs Robinson”.’

  ‘Mrs Robinson’ is the only new song by Simon & Garfunkel in the film and even that is not complete. There are two short passages, one of which opens with a magnificent chord when Dustin Hoffman crosses a bridge. The song itself was written and recorded after the film had been completed.

  The Graduate was a good film that had its finger on the pulse of modern America. Its themes included lack of communication, insincerity and the inanity of cocktail chatter. Mike Nichols could not have found more appropriate musicians, for these topics covered Paul Simon life’s work.

  The combination of music and story was perfect and despite the fact that the trailer gave away the plot, the film drew huge audiences and rave reviews. The new head of Columbia, Clive Davis, insisted on a soundtrack album for The Graduate. Paul Simon said no, the songs were on existing albums. Davis disagreed: he had seen the film – it was going to be massive and there had to be a souvenir album. He agreed to put their name only in small print on the cover to avoid it looking like a new Simon & Garfunkel album.

  Davis had a brainwave for the new album, Bookends: put in a poster and charge one dollar extra. It worked well but both Simon and Garfunkel thought this a hard-nosed business strategy that they opposed. In his book Davis says, ‘I didn’t detect any gratitude for my efforts to make Paul and Artie superstars.’

  When the souvenir album from The Graduate was released, it took all of five minutes to top the US album charts, and yet it adds nothing to Simon & Garfunkel’s oeuvre. Comparatively little Simon & Garfunkel music is present and much of the LP is incidental music written by Dave Grusin. Although Grusin’s music works in context, it sounds wrong next to Simon’s songs. In short, this was not a record for Simon & Garfunkel fans but more for those who wanted a keepsake of the film. The release of films on video was still some years away.

  What little there is of Simon & Garfunkel can be heard elsewhere. ‘Mrs Robinson’ and ‘The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine’ are only snippets and there are only four full-length tracks by the duo: ‘April Come She Will’, ‘Scarborough Fair’ and two versions of ‘The Sound of Silence’, one acoustic, one electric. There isn’t even a picture of the duo on the cover – unless you think that is Art Garfunkel’s leg on display. That famous picture was parodied for the film, Percy, which had music from the Kinks.

  Nevertheless, the soundtrack album from The Graduate topped the US album chart for nine weeks, being replaced by Simon and Garfunkel’s next album, Bookends, and it remained on the listings for a year. In the UK, The Graduate made No. 3 and stayed on the charts for over seventy weeks.

  At last ‘Scarborough Fair/Canticle’ was released as a US single, making No. 11. It should have gone higher but it was already on two hit albums. The song was credited to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel and published by Lorna Music, which is fair enough as it was way out of copyright, but shouldn’t Martin Carthy have been credited for his arrangement? Martin Carthy had one of the UK’s Rottweilers, the manager and promoter Jeff Kruger, fight his cause.

  Jeff Kruger told me, and you have to remember this is someone who never had any self-doubts, he was always right, ‘“Scarborough Fair” was an old British song and there had been a relatively new recording by Martin Carthy, and we published that song and that recording. My partner Hal Shaper said that Simon and Garfunkel were coming to the office and I played them Martin’s recording. They said that they were going to record it and I was very pleased because I was sure they would make it a worldwide hit. When they released it, they put it down as their arrangement of a traditional song and they claimed the copyright. They put it in The Graduate, which was going to open with a royal premiere the following Thursday week. I wasn’t standing for that but their British publisher said there was nothing he could do. I said that I would put out an injunction to stop the release of the record and the film until my rights were acknowledged. United Artists must have spoken to Simon and Garfunkel as their manager sent me a first class air ticket to New York. Simon and Garfunkel were okay at the meeting but their lawyer called me every insulting thing it was possible to call me. After an hour or so, I said to them, “You may believe the rubbish that your lawyers are telling you but the bottom line is this, unlike in America, your celebrity will not protect you. When you go into the witness box, the first question that my QC will ask you is, ‘Do you normally steal songs from poor British writers?’ That is the reality of it. You heard the song in my office, you got the music from my publishing firm, and you stole it. One of two things can happen: you acknowledge us as the publisher and pay us the royalties or I will sell you the copyright”, and it was the latter that we did. We lifted the injunction and I walked out of there with a lot of money for my publishing company, and the hatred of the lawyer who stopped me getting UK tours with a lot of major artists, but you have to protect what you believe to be right.’

  In turn, Martin Carthy had seen the song in Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s The Singing Island, so who really knows who deserved the money? Still, Martin Carthy was able to pay off his mortgage. Martin Carthy says today, ‘You shouldn’t feel sorry for me because of “Scarborough Fair” although I felt sorry for myself at the time. It was never my song. It was there for anybody to do. The only thing I resented is that Paul Simon implied he had written it when in fact he had taken enormous pains to learn it. I wrote the words down for him and I just think that his way of promoting the song wasn’t entirely honourable, but it’s tough bananas, isn’t it? It’s ridiculous to suggest that had it not been for Paul Simon, I would have had a hit with “Scarborough Fair”. I wouldn’t have had a hit because, leaving aside the question of whether people would have bought my version, I wouldn’t allow Fontana to issue a single of it. I don’t believe that my version would have made me $20m or whatever or that I would have got to do the music for The Graduate.’

  Simon and Garfunkel developed ‘Mrs Robinson’ into a complete song. It was very catchy, featuring very rhythmic guitars and congas, and far less complex than most of Simon’s work, being a two-chord tune. The outstanding lyrics were largely in blank verse. Simon was proud of them, telling Melody Maker in 1971, ‘“Mrs Robinson” was the first time that Jesus was mentioned in a popular song. Nobody had said “Jesus” before. People thought it was a word that you wouldn’t say in pop music. On the radio they wouldn’t play it; they’d find it blasphemous.’

  Far from being profane, Simon thought the lyrics funny, although they sang them straight. There was a sardonic humour which gave the song a sting in its tail. There was a bewildering reaction when they appeared on The Andy Williams Show. The audience laughed loudly through it all and I have never understood why. Was somebody in the wings holding up a sign saying, ‘LAUGH’? True, the song is amusing, but this is as though they were the new Marx brothers.

  There is the much-quoted line about the baseball star, Joe DiMaggio, who was Marilyn Monroe’s former husband. In 1970, June Southworth in the magazine Rave called it an
‘incredible line’ and continued, ‘One line and it summed up the whole middle-class, middle-age of America, looking for its lost youth, and the heroes like Joe DiMaggio who went with it.’ Said Paul Simon, ‘It’s an interesting line for a song that has nothing to do with Joe DiMaggio.’ Indeed. Simon had planned to use Mickey Mantle’s name in the song but that didn’t scan. As it happens, Mickey Mantle had been in the US charts in 1956 as Teresa Brewer had recorded the novelty hit ‘I Love Mickey’ with him. Joe DiMaggio didn’t get it. He asked Simon, ‘What does that song mean? I haven’t disappeared. I’m doing ads for Mr Coffee.’

  Everybody fell for ‘Mrs Robinson’. It soared up the American charts to become their second No. 1, replacing the disco favourite ‘Tighten Up’ from Archie Bell & the Drells. Three weeks later, they were replaced by Herb Alpert with a Burt Bacharach and Hal David song, ‘This Guy’s in Love with You’. In the UK it reached No. 4 but then was followed by an EP of four songs from The Graduate, which made No. 9.

  Even rock critic Nik Cohn mellowed, writing in Queen, ‘It hurts me badly to praise anything by these two – who have turned out what for me have been a series of baddies – but it’s an irresistible hummable melody line and even the words have bite.’

  There was tough competition for the Record of the Year at the Grammys: ‘Mrs Robinson’ (Simon & Garfunkel), ‘Hey Jude’ (the Beatles), ‘Harper Valley PTA’ (Jeannie C. Riley), ‘Honey’ (Bobby Goldsboro) and ‘Wichita Lineman’ (Glen Campbell) – all five being familiar oldies today. My personal preference would be for ‘Wichita Lineman’, which is a highly unusual Jimmy Webb composition, but the voters went for ‘Mrs Robinson’. Simon was surprised; he had been certain he would lose to ‘Hey Jude’.

  In 1968, Simon was a guest on the double album The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, two musicians associated with Bob Dylan going electric. He joins them for harmonies on the final verse of ‘The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)’.

  Early in 1968, the New York writers Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil had fun at Simon and Garfunkel’s expense, writing ‘The Young Electric Psychedelic Hippie Flippy Folk and Funky Philosophic Turned-on Groovy 12-String Band’. Barry Mann’s single couldn’t match up to his magnificent title but it was a fun record. Mann who wrote and performed ‘Who Put the Bomp’ had an ear for pop satire but this was overblown.

  In March 1968 they returned to the UK for further concerts, the first one being in Manchester. Garfunkel was out of sorts, complaining that the driver should go faster than thirty miles an hour and detaching Paul’s guitar lead in Edinburgh so they couldn’t do an encore. The following day he fell ill and returned to the States suffering from exhaustion. The remaining dates at the Royal Albert Hall and the Birmingham Odeon were rescheduled for May.

  Al Stewart, who had known Paul Simon in London, met up with him in April 1968: ‘I was 19 and I used to follow him round and Paul was 22 which was like a grown-up to me. I was the annoying teenager who carried his guitar case and went out for sandwiches when they were needed and got lumbered with the silly jobs. I was still doing it in 1968. I went to New York and he enlisted me as a roadie for a gig in Cornell University and so I think it took me a long time to stop carrying Paul Simon’s guitar case, both literally and figuratively.’

  Paul Simon gave some press interviews, staying in the Hilton Hotel with a ‘Jesus Saves’ T-shirt and saying how much he liked the Hollies. Well, sort of. ‘They spent a lot of time at our recording sessions picking things up, watching the way we work. It obviously affected their own style.’ He told the press that he had split up with Kathy and he had felt so bad that he had not been able to write anything for six months. Then came the Bookends album.

  Bookends seemed destined for great heights and they had put so much into it. They worked in collaboration with Roy Halee, but this time with no outside producers. Simon, who could lose friends with his interviews, said the following about producers to Record Mirror in 1971: ‘If someone is good, they know what they want and they can do it themselves. And if they’re not good and you as the producer add the element that’s good, then what is it? You’re just adding yourself to somebody and you might as well do it yourself. I don’t think there’s any need for producers anymore. All you need are engineers who know what’s happening with the sound and then you go out and play.’

  The age of the train for Simon & Garfunkel, 1968 (Harry Goodwin)

  So Simon felt that they only needed Roy Halee, who had strong opinions but knew where to draw the line. Halee said, ‘The producer calls the shots and wears many hats. An engineer’s only function is sound. A lot of engineers get into trouble by crossing the line. The producer’s role is the sound, the artist, the arrangement and the songs. He’s the captain of the ship, or should be.’

  Paul’s strong opinions about producers were coloured by his time at Columbia. He added, ‘Bob Johnston was a producer assigned to us by Columbia when Tom Wilson quit. I don’t know why they put him on our production – he was an extremely overrated man. He used to fall asleep at our sessions. Bob Johnston never said anything. I don’t know what he was there for. He just wanted to know whether anybody wanted a chicken sandwich or not.’

  In interviews about his role as a producer, Bob Johnston stated that the producer should deliberately take a back seat if the artist knows what he is doing. This is what he did with Simon & Garfunkel and it seems harsh to be criticised for it. On Nashville Skyline, Bob Dylan asks Bob Johnston, ‘Is it rolling, Bob?’ Johnston let Johnny Cash record in prisons and he produced Leonard Cohen, who said, rather more charitably, ‘It wasn’t just a matter of turning on the machines. He created an atmosphere in the studio that invited you to do your best, stretch out, do another take – an atmosphere that was free from judgment, free from criticism, full of invitation, full of affirmation.’

  Prior to the new generation of pop stars, most successful artists were obliged to record a Christmas album. Simon and Garfunkel were thinking along those lines as they recorded ‘Star Carol’ (known from Tennessee Ernie Ford) and an a cappella ‘Comfort and Joy’ in April 1967. They were not released at the time, but if Simon and Garfunkel had followed it though, it would have been a folky Christmas with magical harmonies.

  The new album, Bookends, was all their own work, but its playing time didn’t stretch to thirty minutes. Paul told Penny Valentine in Disc, ‘I had the idea for this album immediately after the previous one. A common theme for an album is becoming popular in America. Ours starts with a track, “Save the Life of My Child”, and goes on from there. Lyrically, I think it far better than anything we have done before.’

  The theme of ageing only applies to the top side of the album. The second side comprises largely of singles although ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’ encompasses the themes of the Bookends suite. Art said, ‘The Beatles made Rubber Soul and moved onto Revolver and Sgt Pepper, which were not just collections of songs but the album as an art form. We were terribly impressed, and that shone a light on the path that led to Bookends.’

  There are seven tracks in the Bookends suite, although it is not a song for each of the seven ages of man. The delicate ‘Bookends Theme’ is punctuated by a thunderous chord and the twosome plunge into ‘Save the Life of My Child’. The so-called child is probably in his late teens and is about to kill himself by jumping from a high building. The atmosphere is tense and confused. The police officer’s words are drowned in the chaos and then we suddenly hear the group singing the opening lines of ‘The Sound of Silence’, an early example of sampling. You have to listen hard to catch that, but it is after the second chorus. This was the fifth out of six albums to include ‘The Sound of Silence’ in some way. The production is extremely tight with good use of a Moog synthesizer and if you think that producing records is easy, then listen to the cover version from Mighty Howard which Pye released. You’ll hear how badly the sounds are balanced and yet they had Paul Simon’s blueprint to work from.

  ‘Save the Life of My Child’ is a
mong their best tracks but whether something so deliberately chaotic appeals to you is a matter of taste. As for the ending, we are told that the boy flew away, an identical ending to another 1968 song, ‘Rambling On’ from Procol Harum, although written independently. In Simon’s song, both the police and the crowd talk as though jumping off ledges was commonplace, and possibly the song is about the effects of hallucinogenic drugs, which is certainly the case with ‘Rambling On’.

  There is a brilliant song called ‘America’ in West Side Story in which the Puerto Ricans sarcastically weigh up their integration into American life and culture. In his ‘America’, written in blank verse, Paul Simon is wondering what is happening to his country. He is showing Kathy America. They have boarded a Greyhound and while they are admiring the scenery, Simon feels that he has lost his identity and so he too is looking for America. When he finally gives vent to his feelings, Kathy is sleeping and doesn’t hear him. He realises that he is not alone as everybody is searching for America. The Nice did a workout on the West Side Story song, while another prog band, Yes, recorded a highly original, ten-minute workout of ‘America’ for the Atlantic sample, The New Age of Atlantic, in 1975.

  Paul Simon says that the journey never happened: ‘I think it’s very 1968, about a generation of kids who have just started to travel the country. The girl is Kathy, my girlfriend in England, but we never actually took a trip like that. None of those events actually occurred to me in my life. In many ways, this is a song with no physical roots.’