Simon & Garfunkel

by Spencer Leigh

  Although Art Garfunkel had no new film commitments, the projected plan for a Simon & Garfunkel tour evaporated. Sharing backing vocals on a few of Simon’s solo gigs was Carly Simon (no relation) who had been friendly with them for some time. When she released her sardonic masterpiece ‘You’re So Vain’ there was much speculation as to whom the song was addressed: Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson and record mogul David Geffen were all contenders. In 2015, Carly Simon admitted that the first verse was about Warren Beatty, but she didn’t say anything about the rest.

  Simon could have been a contender himself when he came out with such choice quotes as this, said to Rolling Stone in July 1972: ‘Many times on stage, though, when I’d be sitting off to the side and Larry Knechtel would be playing the piano and Artie would be singing “Bridge”, people would stomp and cheer when it was over and I would think, “That’s my song, man. Thank you very much. I wrote that song.”’

  CHAPTER 9

  Give Us Those Nice Bright Colours

  Early in 1973 Simon reported that he planned to write his autobiography, but this never happened, although The Songs of Paul Simon was published by Michael Joseph. This contained many illustrations and the sheet music of most of his recorded songs. The pictures covered Simon’s career with Garfunkel very effectively both as Simon & Garfunkel and as Tom and Jerry, but his UK folk club days were ignored as was the LP, The Paul Simon Songbook. Simon’s own commentary was too short and said nothing new. The most significant comment from Simon was that his next songs would be better.

  When Paul Simon visited London, he said that he was putting the finishing touches to a new album and arranging concert dates to tie in with its release. Simon acknowledged that the market had changed considerably with the rise of teenybop sensations including the Osmonds, the Jackson 5, Marc Bolan and David Cassidy. He told Melody Maker, ‘To 14 year olds I’m sure the music is interesting, but if you’ve been listening to rock’n’roll for 16 years as I have, it’s boring.’

  He couldn’t even raise enthusiasm for the singer/songwriters who were around. ‘What’s wrong is the emphasis that came in the 60s on the singer/songwriter, and I contributed to that. Nobody’s content anymore to be just a songwriter or a singer. A good songwriter like Jimmy Webb or Paul Williams feels compelled to go out and be an artist and they’re so mediocre. If you have a record by a really good group like Poco who aren’t top notch songwriters, then they never reach their potential.’

  But what about Elton John? ‘I appreciate that Elton John makes a good record but I am not interested in it. I don’t mean that in any offensive way. He’s good. He might be the best in the world at making records as far as I’m concerned. They all sound so good and full. I just couldn’t care less. I’ve been doing it for too long.’

  In May 1973 Columbia issued Paul Simon’s new album, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. As might be expected, Simon had not followed contemporary trends, but had produced an album which was a logical extension to his previous one but also superior.

  After the gospel-sounding ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ single, it was logical to find Simon whooping it up with gospel groups. Simon told the UK press, ‘I like hearing oldies. Some are good and some are bad but everybody is nostalgic about their teenage years. I wonder if those kids who were born in 1955 like it – they probably don’t. But do you know what I find interesting? The music that was the precursor of rock’n’roll which is gospel quartets reached its popularity before I was born, late 30s and then through the 40s. I love that music. I mean quartets like the Swan Silvertones and the Dixie Hummingbirds, and that’s why I use those groups on the record.’

  The Dixie Hummingbirds liked picking up early on the last note to give them an urgency. A rehearsal was recorded with them moving around and this was better than something more formal where they stood in the front of the microphones.

  This time the lyrics were interwoven with the music and the music often shunned the obvious in favour of something more surprising. Simon told Sounds, ‘The biggest influence lately on my music is that two years ago I went back to study the classical guitar. I learned more about harmony and orchestration and now I find it easier – I can change keys when I want to and I know more about musical options than I did in the past. I don’t just have to Travis pick in the key of G.’

  Paul’s good-natured approach runs over into the cover illustration by Milton Glaser, which is a collage that represents each song. Such an approach would not have worked for The Paul Simon Songbook.

  As with the previous album, Simon was ready to travel in order to work with the right musicians in the right studios. Simon struck lucky here: ‘I called up Al Bell at Stax Records and asked him who played on the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There”. He told me about these guys in Muscle Shoals.’

  Simon arranged a three-day session at the studio in Alabama. His intention was to record ‘Take Me to the Mardi Gras’ but to his astonishment, it was finished on the first day. Having two days to spare, he used the musicians to cut ‘Kodachrome’, ‘One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor’, ‘Was a Sunny Day’ and ‘St Judy’s Comet’. The songs for the album had taken him six months to write and here he was cutting five of them in three days. Once he was back in New York, he would work on the mixes and it would be six months before he had a product that he wanted to release. He said, ‘An album in less than 18 months for me is lightning.’

  William Bender wrote in Time magazine, ‘Simon’s second album since his breakup with Art Garfunkel testifies anew to a major talent that simply will not stop growing. By now a pop composer with no superiors and few equals, Simon, 31, manages to distil a diversity of pop styles into an original blend, yet remarkably enough, never losing the original force or point, whether it be rock, gospel, folk, soul, jazz or even hymnody.’

  Nowhere is this diversity better illustrated than in the opener, ‘Kodachrome’, where Simon uses rock’n’roll riffs for one of the most uplifting and joyful tracks you are ever likely to hear. He had started the song as ‘Going Home’ but decided it was trite and changed it to ‘Kodachrome’, a celebration of colour film. You’re carried along by the song’s buoyancy with the Melody Maker reviewer comparing it to winning the pools.

  Simon’s energetic vocal is only one component of this clean-sounding rock’n’roll which includes glissandos from Barry Beckett that are worthy of Jerry Lee Lewis himself. Everything is so tight that it is hard to credit that this was only recorded because Simon had finished ‘Take Me to the Mardi Gras’ ahead of schedule. By the end the pace quickens to that of a whirlwind but you have to hear it yourself – and play it loud.

  There are plenty of successful songs about photographs – ‘Photograph’ (Ringo Starr), ‘Pictures of Lily’ (the Who), ‘Eight by Ten’ (Bill Anderson, Ken Dodd), ‘People Take Pictures of Each Other’ (the Kinks) ‘Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)’ (A Flock of Seagulls) and ‘My Camera Never Lies’ (Bucks Fizz) – and ‘Kodachrome’ is one of the snappiest. The song is more about memories (schooldays and old girlfriends) than the pictures themselves, and he pays homage to ‘You Are My Sunshine’ when he pleads for his pictures not to be taken away. Note how strategically Simon places the word ‘crap’ in the opening verse – the word hardly matters now but it was not heard in popular songs in 1973 and did restrict airplay.

  But there was another reason why airplay would be restricted in the UK and why indeed it was not released as a single. ‘Kodachrome’ is the registered trademark of Eastman Kodak for its colour film and so the BBC would be breaking its charter by advertising. An occasional outing escaped the net, notably on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Around the same time, Dr Hook’s ‘The Cover of Rolling Stone’ was banned by the BBC for the same reason.

  In ‘Kodachrome’, Simon reflects on his lack of education, so the song does not apply to himself. On the second track, ‘Tenderness’, he is accompanied by the Dixie Hummingbirds with Cornell Dupree on guitar and he recreates the magical doo-wop sounds
of the Flamingos and the Spaniels. The ending is delightful as the bass meanders away on its own. The horn arrangement is by New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint, best known for soul hits with Lee Dorsey, Ernie K-Doe and Irma Thomas.

  Oddly, ‘Tenderness’ is the only track that Simon made with the engineer Roy Halee. He had made ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard’ with Phil Ramone and he chose to work with him on this new album. There might have been a conflict of interest as Halee was working with Garfunkel and the change brought something different to this album.

  ‘Take Me to the Mardi Gras’ evokes the feeling of a fiesta extremely well. By the end of the song, Simon has reached the Mardi Gras and there is an atmospheric fade-out from the Onward Brass Band capturing the creole jazz of New Orleans. They came to the studio in their uniforms. Simon is not so much entering the spirit of the music as sounding like a city boy who would like to see its magic. Rev Claude Jeter, the former lead singer of the Swan Silvertones, sings a bridge about the coming of the Kingdom. He sings in high falsetto very effectively, a part that earlier would have gone to Art Garfunkel.

  A song to his wife Peggy, ‘Something So Right’ is a slow ballad about how he is trying to slow down. Simon compares his shyness to the Great Wall of China – still, that’s his problem, not mine. The arrangement is from Quincy Jones and, according to Simon, ‘he made it a city love song with jazz overtones’. Simon recorded it live in the studio with a band ‘just like Sinatra would have done’. It would have been perfect for Garfunkel or, for that matter, Sinatra if he was behaving himself.

  Side one is completed by ‘One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor’, another of Simon’s songs about living in New York City and about the paranoia of high-rise apartments. Some residents hold a mysterious meeting and the singer feels edgy and uneasy. Simon’s vocal creates tension and is uncharacteristically harsh at times.

  The pressures of living today continue on the second side with ‘American Tune’. The singer is homesick for America, although it’s a far cry from those straightforward homesick songs about someone in a foreign land wishing he were home. Simon refers to the Pilgrim Fathers and sees how their ideals have been destroyed by modern America. Their heritage has been so abused that he even dreams of the Statue of Liberty leaving the country. Simon has found the America he was seeking on Bookends but he doesn’t like what he sees. It’s a moving song with a performance to match and yet Paul Simon told Sounds in 1973, ‘I love New York. I’m very happy here.’

  The melody is enhanced by a beautiful string arrangement from Del Newman, which gives the track a hymnal quality. Indeed, Simon had based his melody on a Lutheran hymn which was also used by Bach in St Matthew Passion, namely the aria, ‘O Sacred Heart Sore Wounded’. It is not an American tune at all and certainly not Paul Simon’s.

  The words have a similar feel and message too.

  We come in the age’s most uncertain hour and sing an American tune.

  To hold me that I quail not in death’s most fearful hour.

  The first line is Paul Simon, the second Robert Bridges.

  ‘In those days if you were working with an unknown they would give you a month to finish the whole thing, but the top people could spent three years making an album,’ recalls the arranger Del Newman. ‘There was an enormous orchestra for “American Tune”. Paul had given me a guide vocal and guitar. It is a lovely tune, a beautiful tune, and he wanted a string orchestra and I could really get my teeth into that. I was asked to do the arrangement for an orchestra, to be recorded four or five days later. When I left the studio, they had been working about an hour on a little harmonium, and the bass player hadn’t even got his upright out of the case. I had heard one or two verses of the song and I thought, “Fantastic”. Two and a half hours later when I left, Paul was still going over the chords with this pianist. I came back for the session four days later and the bass player told me that he hadn’t even got his bass out of the case. They still only had the guide vocal and guitar. Paul put Grady Tate on drums who is one of the greatest drummers in America and he’s so far back in the mix he might as well have not been there, and all you really have is the guitar and my strings. The cost of those strings would have been my complete budget for an album if I’d been working with an unknown.’

  Neither Phil Ramone nor Paul himself were completely happy with the vocal. Phil suggested that he went jogging to open up his lungs. Simon returned an hour later and cut a perfect take.

  ‘American Tune’ has not been covered as much as I would have thought but Curtis Stigers cut a vulnerable, world-weary voice and piano version in 2007. It is a pity that Ray Charles never cut this tune. In 2004 Simon and Garfunkel included it on their reunion tour and Art said, ‘Wish I could have gotten to this song before the two of us split. I adore this song.’ They performed a serious and very moving version of the song.

  The West Indian rhythms return for ‘Was a Sunny Day’, but this is more calypso than reggae. The staccato verses are ideal for Simon’s clipped vocal and he is joined on the chorus by Maggie and Terre Roche, the two girls who had attended his songwriting course. Later, with sister Suzzy, they had a following with a succession of quirky albums as the Roches.

  Del Newman could have worked with them. ‘Paul Samwell-Smith used to produce Cat Stevens and he was a lovely man who had been a bass player and he introduced me to two sisters who had come over from America and were protégés of Paul Simon. I was invited to dinner and they were going to make an album. Paul hadn’t told me that this was why I had been invited to dinner. I don’t like being taken for granted. We had a lovely meal and these two girls were saying to me, “We want you to do this” and “We want you to do that” and I said, “What are we talking about here?” Paul said, “I am sorry, Del, I am going to produce this record with them and I would like you to write the arrangements.” I found them so arrogant and I said, “I am afraid that you have got the wrong person.” I thanked them for the meal and I just walked away.’

  Paul was one of the producers and played guitar on Maggie and Terre Roche’s first album, Seductive Reasoning. They used many of the same musicians as Simon had on There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and also worked in Muscle Shoals. It can be viewed as the lesser-known companion to that album.

  ‘Was a Sunny Day’ is an effortless, easy on the ear song about a young girl losing her innocence, though there is a reference to the Cadillacs’ 1955 doo-wop record, ‘Speedoo’. It’s a lightweight song, short on detail, but the track is enhanced by the Latin American percussionist, Airto Moreira, associated with Antônio Carlos Jobim.

  ‘Learn How to Fall’ is a reflective song in a similar mood to ‘Peace Like a River’. Musically, you think that you can predict how it will run, but there’s a sudden chord change and we’re on a different course. The political content is introduced ever so gently in the final verse. Simon’s guitar work is up there with the best of John Fahey.

  ‘American Tune’ ends with Simon trying to get some rest and it could be considered a lullaby to himself. On ‘St Judy’s Comet’, he is singing a lullaby for his infant son, Harper. The lyric has a jokey edge although the reference to himself as his son’s famous daddy seems heavy-handed. This was falling in with other singer/songwriters who were writing songs for their offspring – Tom Paxton, James Taylor, Paul McCartney, Loudon Wainwright III and Donovan. Maybe it’s the genes but many of these children ended up as performers themselves.

  If Simon is a ‘famous daddy’ on ‘St Judy’s Comet’, he dreams of being president in ‘Loves Me Like a Rock’, the album’s final cut. The verse is oddly prophetic in the light of Watergate. The Dixie Hummingbirds convey a gospel feel but it has a secular lyric. Simon supplies a rugged vocal, but he’s got too much control to let go completely. The demo for ‘Loves Me Like a Rock’ sounds more wistful than the record and includes an additional verse about the congregation singing.

  As James Davis didn’t want to be in a whisky-drinking gospel group, he started up the Dixie Hummingbird
s in 1928. He found a great lead singer in Ira Rucker. They became one of the most famous gospel groups and they resisted offers to switch to rhythm and blues. They were also to record their own version of ‘Loves Me Like a Rock’.

  With few blemishes, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon was a great album and Simon’s most consistent to date. What’s more, he wasn’t standing still but exploring new possibilities. A comparison can be made with John Lennon: both their first solo albums were stark but then their second ones had a fuller, more commercial sound.

  The demos from the album include an early version of ‘Something So Right’, including the line, ‘I’m just a travelling man, eating up my travelling time.’ The acoustic demo for ‘Take Me to the Mardi Gras’ is very good indeed and there is an unfinished demo for ‘American Tune’.

  Art Garfunkel had been fine in Carnal Knowledge, but film companies weren’t flooding him with offers. The only news had been his wedding to Linda Grossman at her family home in Nashville in October 1972 with Paul Simon attending. He returned to recording again the follow year.

  The press had a night of long knives when Art Garfunkel released Angel Clare in September 1973. It was cruelly slated for being a collection of pop songs with no cerebral material to get into. Many thought that it proved conclusively that Paul Simon had been the heavy talent in the duo.

  Well, of course he was. That Simon had been the mainspring had been apparent since the first records in 1965 and we didn’t need the new album to tell us that. But – and it’s a big but – Art Garfunkel had a beautiful, delicate voice and he knew how to use it intelligently. His voice contrasted with Simon’s own and Garfunkel’s sound often sweetened the bite of Simon’s bitter lyrics.