Simon & Garfunkel

by Spencer Leigh

  In 1978 the Canadian singer/songwriter Dan Hill toured with Art Garfunkel; he had had one huge success with ‘Sometimes When We Touch’. He was to be signed to Columbia once Paul had left and possibly they thought he was the replacement but there was only one Top 10 record with him, ‘Can’t We Try’ (1987). Roy Halee sometimes worked with him, and Roy was also producing Blood, Sweat & Tears and Laura Nyro.

  The film director Nicolas Roag was known for his strange, disoriented films – Performance with James Fox and Mick Jagger, Don’t Look Now with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, and The Man Who Fell to Earth with David Bowie. The erotic thriller Bad Timing was another for Roag’s gallery.

  Art Garfunkel was cast as the lead actor in Bad Timing. He was living in New York with Laurie Bird, who had played Paul Simon’s girlfriend in Annie Hall. In June 1979, while Art was away, she took an overdose and died in their apartment. Art became withdrawn and he said, ‘I was stunned to have lost Laurie. I kept my love for her even though she was gone. I read her diaries over and over.’ He played classical music and read philosophy and rarely went out. His poems about her are included in his collection, Still Water, which was published in 1989. The poems are very affectionate but are more like musings than poetry.

  In the light of that tragic event, Bad Timing was incredibly bad timing. Art Garfunkel played psychoanalyst Dr Alex Linden who works for the CIA and is obsessed with Milena Flaherty (Theresa Russell). The film is set in Vienna and she has a husband in Poland, Stefan Vognic, played by Denholm Elliott. Everything goes wrong and Alex finds Milena comatose after taking an overdose. He calls for an ambulance and rapes her before it arrives. A detective tries to find out what happened but drops the charges when Milena survives. For all its art house pretentiousness, Bad Timing is rubbish – an unpleasant film with disagreeable characters. Watching it today, it seems an endless commercial for cigarettes.

  In 1977 Lorne Michaels produced The Paul Simon Special for US TV which gently mocked the idea of making a special with Charles Grodin as the director Chuck and guest appearances from Lily Tomlin and Chevy Chase. Art Garfunkel joined in for ‘Old Friends/Bookends’ and the Jessy Dixon Singers were featured on ‘Loves Me Like a Rock’. At the end, Chuck encouraged them to plan a reunion tour because ‘The sound of the two of you together is so much better than either of you can sound alone.’ Charles Grodin won an Emmy for his script and then became a CBS News commentator. He fought injustice, helped the homeless and fought for drug offenders to be released. When he was sixty he returned to acting and often plays old men in feature films.

  In 1978 Paul Simon appeared in the spoof Beatles’ film, All You Need Is Cash, starring Eric Idle and Neil Innes. He denied that the Rutles had had any effect on his career at all. But had Simon inspired the real Beatles? While Simon was with Clive Davis in a coffee shop, John Lennon and Yoko came in and Lennon praised his solo work.

  Simon had not made an album since Still Crazy After All These Years and Clive Davis told him it was time for something new. Simon said that he would make an album of covers, but that was unacceptable to Davis. ‘Whyever not?’ said Simon, ‘That’s what Artie does.’ But no, a Paul Simon album had to feature new material.

  Simon had other gripes with Columbia. He accused them of bad or fraudulent accounting, leading to him being underpaid. He claimed poor promotion on his single ‘Stranded in a Limousine’, which was never a hit song.

  Reluctant to deal with Columbia anymore, Paul Simon bought himself out of his contract for $1.5m and moved to Warner Brothers. The deal was reported as $10m for three albums but there are so many clauses and sub-clauses in these contracts that you can’t say with certainty what any of them are worth. As it happens, Warner would be getting one of the greatest albums ever made but all that was down the line. What Simon liked about the deal was the ability to be able to pitch a movie to them.

  Paul Simon was a singer, guitarist, composer, concert performer, record producer and innovator, anything but a one-trick pony, but that was the title of his next project, a feature-length film. Paul Simon did not want to drift too far from his own life – he wanted to set his film in New York and people it with characters that he understood. Indeed, the closest comparison to One-Trick Pony would not be another rock movie but Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories. There are touches of Allen’s humour in the script, but not enough. When someone says ‘Hare Krishna’ to Simon, he responds ‘Harry Chapin’ and when he calls his wife he says, ‘I’m not dead, I’m in Cleveland.’

  In a sense, he was dealing with his alter ego. He wondered what would have happened if he had had a couple of hits in the 60s, say, ‘The Sound of Silence’ and ‘Homeward Bound’ but then faded away. This film was about the singer/guitarist Jonah Levin, who scored with a folky hit about Vietnam, ‘Soft Parachutes’, and continued with club dates through the 70s. He hears the B-52’s at a club and realises that the scene is changing.

  Jonah Levin is going through a divorce and he refers to his ex-wife (Blair Brown) and his ex-dog but not his ex-son (played by seven-year-old Harper) with whom he plays baseball. He wants to get his marriage back but at the same time he has affairs with a waitress and with a record executive’s wife. His wife thinks he should give up his childish dreams: ‘You’ve wanted to be Elvis Presley since you were thirteen years old, and he didn’t do too well himself.’

  Simon delivers his lines dolefully and he is too inhibited to let go in any of the scenes. Indeed, thinking of the film as a whole, everybody is too polite. Dustin Hoffman could have played the part with ease and both Gary Busey and Richard Dreyfuss were considered, However, Simon was not keen on his songs being sung or mimed by somebody else and Warner Brothers wanted a Paul Simon album to sell. Hence, with a little reluctance, Paul had to star in the film he had written. He had strong control as the executive producer Michael Tannen was also his business manager.

  Now we come to the music, which is both the film’s biggest strength and its biggest weakness. Theoretically, Simon had to write songs for his character which would be passable but lack commercial potential. Instead, Simon was writing to the best of his ability and in most cases and unlike most music films, the songs were performed in their entirety without cutaways to further the plot. What’s more, he assembled a wonderful band – Richard Tee, Eric Gale, Steve Gadd, Tony Levin – and they are his road band in the film. It is unlikely that somebody this good would be performing songs of this quality with such a strong band and not getting the recognition he deserved.

  We only hear a shortened version of ‘Soft Parachutes’ during a 60s revival concert and it is the weakest song on offer and certainly not one which would have established Jonah.

  Indeed, when Paul Simon is auditioning new songs for a bunch of disinterested record executives, the inclination is to stand up and shout, ‘I’ll sign him.’ In the end, they take him, largely because Walter Fox’s wife likes him. Fox (Rip Torn) tells Steve Kunelian (Lou Reed) to produce him and Kunelian adds his own orchestration to ‘Ace in the Hole’ which so disgusts Jonah that he returns to the studio at night and destroys the tape. End of film. Yes, that’s right, the end of the film – a feeble ending for a full-length film.

  The film includes some guest appearances, and Sam & Dave steal the show with a spirited ‘Soul Man’. The Lovin’ Spoonful reunite for ‘Do You Believe in Magic?’ and Tiny Tim wanders around aimlessly.

  One-Trick Pony cost $7m but it fared poorly at the US box office. Although Simon did an American and European tour with musicians from the film and performed some of the songs, he wasn’t into promotion. Indeed, it never had a UK release, but the album made the UK Top 20. The tour went well and he was joined by Carrie Fisher on stage in Fort Worth for his birthday and together they sang ‘Bye Bye Love’.

  He toured Europe in November 1980 with a set based around One Trick Pony, which no one would have seen, and a four-piece horn section, three of whom had worked with the Band. Garfunkel came on stage in Paris. At the end of the first half at the Ha
mmersmith Odeon, he asked for requests and someone shouted, ‘Buy me a drink’ and Simon said, ‘I’ll buy everyone a drink.’ True to his word, Simon bought the interval drinks which cost him £1,000.

  He was unlikely to have bought Annie Nightingale a drink after an interview on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Anne wondered how he was writing songs, now that Garfunkel had gone. He replied, ‘We never wrote any songs together. I wrote all the songs. Not wishing to sound immodest but Art only sang them with me.’

  ‘Is this generally known?’ asked Nightingale, feeling that she had the scoop of the decade.

  ‘I guess everyone knew but you,’ said Simon.

  At the Hammersmith Odeon, someone shouted out, ‘Where’s Annie Nightingale?’

  The album sold strongly in the US, making No. 12 on the charts, with the highly rhythmic ‘Late In the Evening’ reaching No. 6 and the title song also making the Top 40. Another song, the yearning ‘Long, Long Day’ was performed by Simon on The Muppet Show. He performed with Harper on Sesame Street.

  The outtakes from One-Trick Pony include ‘All Because of You’, which became ‘Oh, Marion’ and ‘Spiral Highway’ which became ‘How The Heart Approaches What It Yearns’.

  Art Garfunkel was also touring and he appeared with Chieftains in Dublin and had both Paul Simon and Jimmy Webb join him at Carnegie Hall. Garfunkel had a new girlfriend, Penny Marshall, and his 1981 album Scissors Cut was dedicated to Laurie Bird with her photograph on the back cover.

  I thought that the title might refer to a new hairstyle but no, it is a reference to the childhood game and is an excellent love song from Jimmy Webb. Webb wrote the remarkable ‘In Cars’, which had been on his own album, Angel Heart. It is about the importance of cars in adolescent life. The opening line is ‘Went to school in cars’, which didn’t happen much in the UK. The harmonies on this track are exceptional, which include Paul Simon’s, and it sounds like the Beach Boys at their best. The track ends with a snatch of Garfunkel singing ‘Girl from the North Country’, the new lyric Bob Dylan had put to ‘Scarborough Fair’.

  Webb had written the music for the animated film The Last Unicorn, featuring the voices of Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow, and Art recorded the plaintive song ‘That’s All I’ve Got To Say’ to close the album.

  The arranger Del Newman has mixed feelings about the album. ‘Art Garfunkel rang me and said, “Del, how much do you charge?” He felt that there were people in the States ripping him off so he was trying to collate what was going on. I was going to New York to do his next album. I had written three arrangements but he was rude to me on the phone. He said, “I am tired of people ripping me off” and he slammed the phone down. I thought, “Right, I have already written these arrangements and the orchestra has been booked in New York, and so nobody is going to get these arrangements until I get paid.” CBS rang me and said, “Put them in Air Freight will you, Del?” I said, “No, you will have to pay me in advance.” I knew that if he didn’t have the arrangements, he would still have to pay the orchestra. He rang back and said that I could go to CBS in London and get my money. I took them to CBS, but they hadn’t heard anything about it. I explained the situation and they asked me to take a cheque. I said, “No, I want ready money please.” I had to sit in the office for several hours with my arrangements, adamant that I wasn’t going to leave until I got paid. I got my money and Art didn’t want me to go over and conduct. Later he sent me a letter from New York apologising for the telephone call and saying, “The London players would have been better.” It was nice of him to do that as he was saying sorry. A lot of people would have left it. I had a great respect for him over that.’

  The hit single from the album, albeit No. 61, was ‘A Heart in New York’, by the Scottish songwriters Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle, which contains many cultural references and a clip of the Yankees crowd.

  Clifford T. Ward was a most underrated UK songwriter and so I am always glad to see his work on albums. ‘Up in the World’ had been recorded by Ward himself and then Cliff Richard. It’s a beautiful performance from Art Garfunkel and although it’s short, you are drawn into the story.

  The US version of this album included ‘Bright Eyes’ somewhat late in the day, and in the UK, it was replaced by an Eric Kaz song, ‘The Romance’.

  Paul Simon was saddened by the lukewarm reception given to One-Trick Pony, and in the UK the sales were outstripped by The Simon and Garfunkel Collection, which went to No. 4 and was on the album chart for eighty weeks.

  In the summer of 1981 Paul Simon was approached by the Parks Commissioner of New York about the possibility of a free concert at Central Park, during which they would raise funds through T-shirts and fast food. Paul liked the idea of ‘a neighbourhood concert’ as he called it and he asked Garfunkel if he wanted to join him for some of their successes. They soon realised that it didn’t feel right that Paul should be an opening act for Simon & Garfunkel, or vice versa, and they decided to do the whole concert together with occasional solo spots (‘Still Crazy After All These Years’, ‘A Heart in New York’ where crowds cheered the reference to Central Park). They were told that the sound could not go beyond eighty-five decibels but Paul Simon’s first words were ‘Turn it up, Phil.’

  Because of calcium deposits in his hand, Paul could not carry the concert with just his guitar and anyway he felt more comfortable with a band. Garfunkel was less sure but Paul pointed out that he needed an electric piano for ‘Still Crazy’ and horns for ‘Late In the Evening’. Art had to sing ‘Me and Julio’, ‘Kodachrome’ and ‘Late In the Evening’ for the first time. The arrangements were clever and ‘Kodachrome’ merged into Chuck Berry’s ‘Maybelline’. They sang the Everly Brothers’ ‘Wake Up Little Susie’. The best moment was the merger of their voices and the changes in lead vocals on ‘American Tune’.

  Half a million people came to the park on 19 September 1981 and the applause on the live album is so long that you wonder when the first song ‘Mrs Robinson’ is going to start. Paul performed a new song, ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’, which linked the gun deaths of three Johnnys – Ace, Kennedy and Lennon, but was also a love song to rock’n’roll. Someone rushed the barricades and said, ‘I need to talk to you’, which was a scary moment although it was soon resolved. They were singing only a few hundred yards from where John Lennon had been shot. Indeed, Simon had been in the Dakota building from time to time as he dropped Harper off to play with his friend, Sean Lennon. The TV film was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had directed the Beatles’ Let It Be, so he knew something about squabbling groups.

  The success of the double album and the popularity of the film encouraged Simon and Garfunkel to perform more concerts. They did European dates in June 1982 and I saw them at Wembley Stadium, or at least, I think I did. These were the days before big screens and I was so far away that I can’t say for certain whether I saw them or not. They could have been the lookalikes from the cover of The Simon and Garfunkel Collection, as I’d wager that is not them.

  The seats weren’t numbered and the gates opened at 4 p.m. for a concert billed to start at 7 p.m. Our seats were a long way from the stage and as the show started at 8.15 p.m. (no opening act), there was a good sale of food, drinks, T-shirts and programmes. The sound system was fine: it sounded like Simon and Garfunkel but it could have been a record. How stadium concerts have changed. Their set was much the same as Central Park but with the understandable addition of ‘Bright Eyes’. They closed with ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’ and ‘Late In the Evening’. It struck me that this was the biggest gathering of people who had my book on Paul Simon.

  Since Paul had found his first marriage and divorce painful, he didn’t want to remarry. He lived with Carrie Fisher and she persuaded him to marry her in 1983. Paul was unsure but as they watched baseball at Yankee Stadium, he was in such a good mood that he said okay. Five days later they were married. Billy Joel gave Paul and Carrie a jukebox stacked with great records for a wedding present.

  Sim
on and Garfunkel had decided to make a new album together and Paul had the songs, the ones that would constitute Hearts and Bones, but by the time it was released in 1983, he had removed Art’s vocals. The album had four producers (Paul Simon, Russ Titelman, Roy Halee, Lenny Waronker) but no Art Garfunkel. Paul was in control, as it were, but his reason for deleting Art is unclear – Art said that Simon felt that his voice would take the focus away from the songs and that the songs were too personal for two voices. Art retaliated with ‘I understand the emotions. I am a singer.’

  This was not a commercial album. Paul Simon was over forty and getting divorced for the second time, and the songs, more directly personal than usual, are about that. He is having trouble with his hands and the album even starts with the words, ‘My hands can’t touch a guitar string’, hardly a sentiment to give purchasers confidence.

  Simon only plays on six of the eleven tracks, but the musicianship is a tour de force. There are the jazz musicians, vibraphonist Mike Mainieri and saxophonist Mark Rivera (also known for his work with Billy Joel), some Chic touches from Nile Rodgers and the redoubtable Steve Gadd on drums. What’s not to like?

  ‘Train In the Distance’ is about his first marriage and his son Harper. The train in the distance is a strong image and he spells it out by saying that the idea that life could be better is ‘woven indelibly’ into our hearts and our bones. What a wonderful choice of words. The song contains a much-quoted Simon phrase, ‘negotiations and love songs.’ Several songs are revealing about his stormy marriage with Carrie Fisher. She was half-Jewish and Simon has the amusing phrase about ‘one and one half wandering Jews’. The title song is blisteringly honest about their relationship.

  Simon had told a therapist that there was no point in him writing songs anymore. The therapist said his songs were loved by millions and he had a duty to continue. This led to his two-part ‘Think Too Much’, in effect two different songs with a related theme. In one he is laughing at himself and in the other he is taking it seriously, probably proof, if any was needed, that he was thinking too much. Simon said that the two songs reflected how often he changed his mind, another example being the lyric of ‘Outrageous’ on Surprise.