Simon & Garfunkel

by Spencer Leigh

  It was a sound commercial move to release Simon’s and Garfunkel’s albums simultaneously, although having a press photograph of Garfunkel smoking a cigar and holding up Simon’s LP was still crazy. Artistically it was not the best move for Garfunkel as it demonstrated what everybody knew – that Simon had the heavy talent.

  Although Simon and Garfunkel’s new albums were so different, Antônio Carlos Jobim provided a common link. Paul told Radio 1 DJ Stuart Grundy, ‘I noticed that in a lot of Jobim’s songs, he uses every note of the chromatic scale. I’ve started doing this and it’s like a game I play. I feel I have to do it and I’m involved in a score of possibilities for a melody line.’

  Jobim recorded for CTI and another of their musicians, Bob James, was playing on Still Crazy After All These Years. He plays electric piano on two cuts and arranges the title track and ‘I Do It for Your Love’. He brings a Jobim feel to the latter and ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’ has similarities with ‘American Tune’, a track from the last studio album, also featuring Bob James.

  A jazz feeling underscores the album. Paul himself did some arranging and he had been studying under jazz musicians Chuck Israels and David Sorin Collyer. The saxophonist Phil Woods, who had played with Charlie Parker, contributes a coda to ‘Have a Good Time’. Said Simon, ‘We told him to play anything he wanted as long as it was in the key of B flat. Two or three takes and it was over.’ Thirty seconds of bebop. Dave Matthews, best known for his work with James Brown, arranged the horns on ‘Have a Good Time’.

  By now Paul and Peggy had divorced and Paul had dropped his manager as he had stopped touring. He had a sixteen-month-old son, Harper, and he was going to look after him. Although Paul had not intended to write personally about his marriage, that is how the songs fell into place. He came out of the shower one morning and said, ‘I’m still crazy after all these years’, realising he had a highly original title. Indeed, the phrase has passed into the language as ‘Still… after all these years’ or ‘Still crazy after all these…’ In 1998 a British Spinal Tap film, Still Crazy, was made about a reformed rock band with Jimmy Nail, Billy Connolly and Stephen Rea. In 2015 Bob Harris’ revamped autobiography was called Still Whispering After All These Years.

  The film Las Vegas Nights was issued in 1941 and featured the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Frank Sinatra. They sang a new Frank Loesser song, ‘Dolores’, with witty but irritating rhymes. It sounded very dated but it was the inspiration for ‘50 Ways to Leave Your Lover’. Whereas that was playful nonsense, Paul Simon’s song is much better constructed. It features Simon with backing vocals from Patti Austin, Phoebe Snow and Valerie Simpson.

  Art Garfunkel, 1975 (CBS Records)

  Paul Simon, 1975 (CBS Records)

  Although it is humorous, ‘50 Ways to Leave Your Lover’ can be seen as a commentary on divorce. The song came out of a play session with Harper, and Paul developed it with a Rhythm Ace drum machine. The final version with drumming from Steve Gadd is superb as he played a rhythm that is as distinctive as anything on Graceland. He didn’t get a songwriting credit for it: ‘he was just doing his job,’ said Simon.

  There are many instrumental highlights on the album, notably Michael Brecker’s saxophone on ‘Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy’. There is a magical accordion on ‘I’d Do It for Your Love’, a wonderful song for Peggy relating to happier times. The combination of three instruments in ‘Night Game’ adds a dimension to what would otherwise be a fairly ordinary song.

  For all this instrumentation, the album is bleak and is not bursting with the joie de vivre of some of Rhymin’ Simon. You have the impression that whatever colouring has been added to Simon’s songs has been well considered and that every instrument is there for a purpose.

  A major exception to this laidback feeling is the rip-roaring ‘Gone At Last’, a furiously-paced gospel song with Phoebe Snow and the Jessy Dixon Singers. Simon had recorded a slower version with Bette Midler but it didn’t work. Phil Ramone was working independently with Phoebe Snow and he suggested that Paul try it with her. She gives a great performance, concluding with a staggeringly high note. Overall though the song is not as strong as ‘Loves Me Like a Rock’. Among the outtakes is a less frenzied version with Paul Simon, the Jessy Dixon Singers and percussion, which also works.

  Jessy Dixon organised the Chicago Community Choir who are featured on ‘Silent Eyes’. The song, taken at a mournful pace, has a disturbing lyric about the quandaries around Jerusalem.

  In ‘My Little Town’ the adolescent Simon felt secure knowing that ‘God keeps an eye on us all’, but the more adult Simon is disillusioned. The middle section of ‘Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy’ is unnerving and the album’s gloom is heralded by the title cut which finds him contemplating suicide: ‘I fear I’ll do some damage one fine day.’

  The humorous touches in ‘Have a Good Time’ are ironic and the kindness he experiences in ‘You’re Kind’ is at variance with everything else he knows:

  Why you don’t treat me like

  The other humans do?

  Although the record is not a concept album, the songs fit well together. They represent different aspects of the same experience, namely the breakup of his marriage. The music is cleverly varied, from the gentle shuffle rhythm of ‘You’re Kind’ to the vitality of ‘Gone At Last’, from the lightness of ‘50 Ways to Leave Your Lover’ to the fire of ‘My Little Town’. Special credit goes to Phil Ramone: everything is sharp and clear and the balance is perfect.

  Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh said, ‘“My Little Town” is Simon & Garfunkel’s final studio duet and with the exception of “The Boxer”, the best rock track they ever created. Simon takes the lead, using Garfunkel’s eerie wimp tenor to add an edgy thrill; the arrangement is heavy with brass, percussion, and thunderous bass chords from a grand piano. As a statement of Self-Importance (Simon’s perpetual theme), it’s tops.’

  He added, ‘Simon may have waited his entire career to create “My Little Town”, which is an equally perfect expression of self-importance’s companion: the revenge motif. Though the mill town detail tries to hide it, “My Little Town” is a portrait of the middle-class Forest Hills, New York neighbourhood where Paul and Art grew up.’

  Paul submitted ‘Still Crazy After all These Years’ and ‘Have a Good Time’ to the Warren Beatty movie Shampoo, although the songs were not used. Indeed there is so little of his music on the soundtrack that you wonder why his credit is there.

  The single of ‘Gone At Last’ made No. 23 on the US charts and ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’ No. 40, but the big one was ‘50 Ways To Leave Your Lover’, which was Simon’s first solo US No. 1, replacing the Ohio Players’ ‘Love Rollercoaster’ at the top and staying there for three weeks. In the UK, the only hit single from the album was ‘50 Ways’ but even then it only reached No. 23. The British public preferred ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ to ‘50 Ways to Leave Your Lover’ and in America, it was the other way round.

  In the UK, ‘50 Ways’ is such a golden oldie that most people would assume that it went higher, but then ‘Scarborough Fair’ was never a single. It has also been a minor US country hit for both Bob Yarbrough (though his name was misspelled on the single as ‘Yarborough’) and Sonny Curtis. The Still Crazy album topped the US chart, replacing Elton John’s Rock of the Westies, and was No. 6 in the UK.

  In 2005 Paul Simon and Herbie Hancock recorded a new arrangement of ‘I Do It for Your Love’, changing it to a minor key and giving it a modern jazz treatment which worked very well.

  When Simon appeared at the London Palladium in 1976, someone threw a request on stage. ‘Read it,’ shouted the audience. It said, ‘Will you play some different songs – not just pre-arranged ones?’ Simon said, ‘How rude, would it suffice if I re-arranged the pre-arranged songs?’ An awkward moment had passed but there was a lack of spontaneity and Simon seemed somewhat distant. Penny Valentine said that he ‘delivers his songs in an invisible box’, which was very perceptive. />
  CHAPTER 11

  Trick or Treat

  Although Simon and Garfunkel had come together for ‘My Little Town’, their relationship was strained and they had little interest in working as Simon & Garfunkel. When Paul was the guest host of the American TV show Saturday Night Live, he invited Art to join him. Catch it on YouTube and you will find their fifteen minutes together enthralling for all the wrong reasons. Firstly, it was the land that fashion forgot. Simon, with ear-covering hair and moustache, wearing an old-fashioned jacket with key pocket and patches and faded jeans, was an art teacher on a day out, while Garfunkel, with his frizzled hair, wearing a cowboy shirt and worn-out jeans, looked like someone you would cross the street to avoid. If they had consulted a style advisor, they would be due a full refund.

  Simon introduced Garfunkel, who walked through the audience and sat on the stool next to him, unclear where to put his legs. As he was sorting himself out, Simon said, ‘So, Artie, you’ve come crawling back.’ This was unscripted as you could sense Garfunkel wondering about the best response, which was possibly to throw a punch. They performed a decent version of ‘The Boxer’ and Simon remarked that it was good to be back again, but followed it with a remark that Garfunkel’s movie career was over. ‘Scarborough Fair’ followed and then Simon put his guitar down and they stood for ‘My Little Town’ with Garfunkel reading from the autocue. Well, he could have been reading a newspaper for all the effort he put into it. Simon said, ‘I have to give him his solo number’ and Garfunkel sang ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’.

  It’s bizarre but a year later Simon was back on Saturday Night Live with George Harrison and they performed charming versions of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and ‘Homeward Bound’ and looked comfortable together. Although not filmed, Art Garfunkel, Kinky Friedman and Bob Dylan sang Barbra Streisand’s ‘People’ at a Hollywood party.

  Simon enjoyed collaborating with others, but not necessarily with Garfunkel. David Sanborn, the saxophonist from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, made an album, Sanborn, in 1976 which was produced by Phil Ramone. Paul and Phoebe Snow sang on the slow groover ‘Smile’, not an oldie but a new song from Simon. In 1977 he co-produced an album of covers for the CBS album, Libby Titus, a singer with a really good voice and a stimulating choice of boyfriends – Levon Helm and Dr John.

  As his brother, Eddie Simon, was running the Guitar Study Centre in New York, Paul gave the students a talk about ‘American Tune’ and Art spoke about harmony.

  Paul Simon was friendly with the producer of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels and in 1976 he was asked to send up his own image as ‘Mr Alienation’ by dressing as a turkey on their Thanksgiving show and singing ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’. It is both funny ha ha and funny peculiar and you couldn’t imagine Van Morrison being talked into something like that.

  Paul Simon had much in common with Woody Allen in that they wryly commented on the life of New Yorkers, and Simon was given the role of Tony Lacey, a record producer, in his 1977 film, Annie Hall. Lacey, an exiled New Yorker, lives in a lavish house in Los Angeles that was once owned by Charlie Chaplin and Nelson Eddy and he is insincere and deceiving with a cocaine spoon dangling from his neck. He invites Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) to a party, neatly contrasting with Allen’s ungainly hero, the Jewish comedian Alvy Singer. Shelley Duvall was cast as a pretentious rock critic, and she and Simon had a relationship whilst filming. At the time, Paul was living a few blocks from his former wife, Peggy, and his main interest was in building an art collection.

  For Christmas 1977 Columbia released Greatest Hits, Etc to show that Simon had amassed a solid body of hits without Garfunkel. There were twelve previous tracks – three from Paul Simon, five from Rhymin’, four from Crazy, with the Etc representing two new ones – ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’ and ‘Stranded In a Limousine’. The album went Top 20 in the US and Top 10 in the UK, but the single ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’ was much bigger in the US, making the Top 10.

  ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’ is a superb song, about the incontestable path towards death but also about an unhappy marriage and divorce. The four verses are exceptionally strong, as good as anything Simon has written, and he said, ‘I always felt it should be shorter but I didn’t know which verses to take out.’ It works very well and has the Oak Ridge Boys supplying background harmonies.

  ‘Stranded in the Limousine’ has a fabulous rhythm and a deliberately rushed vocal from Paul Simon, but the song is light on detail. Who is this ‘mean individual’ who leaves his car at the traffic lights?

  In 1978 Simon met his new flame, the actress Carrie Fisher. Carrie was the daughter of singers Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, who had divorced in 1959 when she was three. Her first movie role, to show how things move in circles, was in Shampoo.

  It was smart of Art Garfunkel to ask Jimmy Webb to write him an album of songs. Jimmy decided on a theme of obsessive romance and the songs would be lushly orchestrated and employ the Muscle Shoals musicians, Paul Desmond’s saxophone, Jimmy Webb’s piano, and Irish folk band the Chieftains. A number of disparate elements came together to make a very fine album, which was produced by Art.

  The LP was called Watermark and Webb wrote ten of the twelve tracks. Some were songs that had been used previously (‘Paper Chase’ by Richard Harris, ‘Marionette’ and ‘All My Love’s Laughter’ by Webb himself) but most were new. The cover photograph was taken by Laurie Bird. The title track is a lovely song about a girl who is like a watermark, never there but never gone. The classic track is ‘Crying In My Sleep’ about a man trying to forget his lover.

  The two outside tracks are the traditional ‘She Moved Through the Fair’, performed with the Chieftains, and ‘(What a) Wonderful World’, a fun version of Sam Cooke’s hit with Art, James Taylor and Paul Simon, with a new verse and produced by Phil Ramone. Watermark was a US Top 20 album and this track was a US Top 20 single. Talking of James Taylor and Jackson Browne, Art said, ‘You could say those artists are the children of my sound, yeah. We were folkies – softer, more thoughtful – goosebumps with melodies.’

  And what about the rabbits?

  Richard Adams wrote his first book, Watership Down (1972), while he was working at the Department of the Environment. It depicted a colony of rabbits, which was forced to move from their warren by building developments. Unlike many children’s books, Adams did not endow them with human characteristics and took great pains to treat life in the warren seriously: in short, they behaved like rabbits, admittedly rabbits who were talking and scheming.

  There was much speculation as to how the book could be filmed and, after several years in the making, an animated film was released in 1979. John Hurt’s voice was used for Hazel and Richard Briers’ for Fiver, while Joss Ackland was the Black Rabbit and Sir Ralph Richardson the Chief. Mike Batt, whose CV included the Wombles, desperately wanted to write the score, but the work went to Angela Morley (previously known as Wally Stott) and Malcolm Williamson. Mike Batt kept submitting ideas for songs. ‘Even “Bright Eyes” wasn’t going to be used,’ he says, ‘but then “Over the Rainbow” was almost taken out of The Wizard of Oz. I had two songs that were dropped, so I then recorded “Run like the Wind” with Barbara Dickson and “Losing Your Way In the Rain” with Colin Blunstone.’

  Mike Batt told the producers that Art Garfunkel would be ideal for ‘Bright Eyes’ and, he says, ‘within a week, there he was, in my home in Surbiton, doing a routine for the song.’ The track was recorded in 1976, but it could not be released until the animated film was ready and that took three years.

  Although ‘Bright Eyes’ was a UK No. l for six weeks in April/May 1979, it didn’t impress Richard Adams. ‘I was watching Wogan and he asked Richard Adams what he thought of the film,’ says Mike Batt, ‘He said, “I hated ‘Bright Eyes.” He based his dislike on the assumption that it was wrong factually. He said it was about a dead rabbit – well, if he read his own book, he’d realise that the song is sung and thought by Fiver at a time when he thinks Hazel is dea
d. The whole point is that the other rabbit thought he was dead.’

  In total contrast to ‘Bright Eyes’, Art lent his harmonies to ‘A Junkie’s Lament’, a 1976 song which was written and recorded by James Taylor, clearly from personal experience. The stark track closes, unexpectedly, with thirty seconds of celestial harmonies.

  Quickly following Watermark, Art was recording his next album, Fate for Breakfast, this time produced by Louie Shelton. ‘Bright Eyes’ was added for the UK release, but the packaging was different in many territories. Six different photographs of Art having breakfast were used for the various issues: there you are, a record collector’s dream.

  Art is back with Larry Knechtel on piano for one of his greatest performances, ‘Miss You Nights’, although hardly anyone knows it. The song by Dave Townsend had been recorded by Cliff Richard and been a minor UK hit. Garfunkel’s version is so strong that it should have been released as a single and promoted heavily. Instead, Columbia went with ‘Since I Don’t Have You’, another revival of a doo-wop hit, albeit without the Skyliners’ harmonies. The track is very good but not as strong as ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’.

  The infectious oldie ‘Oh How Happy’ with a double-tracked Garfunkel works well and should have been released as a single but I’ve no strong feelings about the rest of the album. They follow the style of the romantic ballads that Garfunkel does well but the songs are only so-so – ‘In a Little While’, ‘And I Know’, ‘Finally Found a Reason’, ‘Beyond the Tears’, ‘When Someone Doesn’t Want You’, ‘Take Me Away’ and Stephen Bishop’s ‘Sail On a Rainbow’.