Send "Simon & Garfunkel " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Simon & Garfunkel's 1970 swan song, Bridge Over Troubled Water, was both their most effortless record and their most ambitious. The duo spent most of the 1960s as a highly regarded folk act distinguished by their intuitive harmonies and Paul Simon's articulate songwriting, yet compared to the Greenwich Village revivalists, whom they tried to emulate on songs like "A Simple Desultory Philippic" and "Bleecker Street", they were pretty square. By Bookends in 1968, they were settling into themselves, losing their folk revival pretensions and emphasizing quirky production techniques to match their soaring vocals. Two years later, Bridge did that album one better by revealing a voracious musical vocabulary that spanned gospel, rock, R&B, and even classical. As this thoughtful reissue attests, the album sounds unique even 40 years later, driven and defined entirely by their own personal musical and political obsessions.This diverse album contains the roots of Paul Simon's subsequent incorporation of African and South American rhythms into astute pop songs, especially "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)". The tune is hundreds of years old, but Simon came to it via a contemporary Peruvian group called Los Incas. He wrote new English lyrics about the rural versus the urban, and he and Garfunkel sang them over the original instrumental track. Especially coming after the grandiose gospel of the title track, the song sounds both exotic and humble. Later, "Keep the Customer Satisfied" swells with gargantuan blasts of brass, "Baby Driver" revs up some R&B sax, and "Cecilia" sounds impossibly infectious with its pennywhistle solo and handclap/thighslap percussion. Despite the breadth of sound-- and despite the splintering of their relationship-- Bridge sounds like a unified statement enlivened by styles and rhythms not often heard on pop radio at the juncture of those two decades. The album cuts on Bridge hold up arguably better than the singles-- or maybe it's just that we've all heard the title track and side-two opener "The Boxer" so many times, while songs like "Keep the Customer Satisfied" and "Baby Driver" still sound less familiar, and therefore full of surprises. Especially on this subtle remastering, Bridge reveals a surfeit of strange, exciting sonic details, as Simon, Garfunkel, and co-producer Roy Halee insert small flourishes of sound, such as the disruptive skiffle beat on "Why Don't You Write Me" or the audience rhythm section on the live version of "Bye Bye Love". The title track derives its outsize drama not only from Garfunkel's intense, measured vocals but also from the resonating percussion, which mimics the echoing crack of sound against a cathedral wall. Thanks to the echo-chambered vocals, disembodied organ, and Joe Osborn's melodically prominent bass, "The Only Living Boy in New York" sounds practically weightless, as if Manhattan were as lonely and desolate as the moon. Even after it's been Zach Braff'ed, the song still retains its considerable evocative power and remains one of the most natural and surprising juxtapositions of sonics and sentiment in Simon's catalog....full text |
| Theseconddisc |
| “What’s the point of [making] this album?,” an impossibly youthful Paul Simon asks in the 1969 television special Songs of America. “The world is crumbling.” If Simon didn’t know then why he was “just” recording an album despite all of the tumult around him, he almost certainly knows now. After all, he and partner Art Garfunkel have seen Bridge Over Troubled Water make it to 40 years (actually, 41!), and have even participated in the celebration. The duo have also seen the accompanying album and its title track embraced by countless citizens of the planet over the past decades, especially in times of crisis. Bridge received colossal commercial and critical plaudits upon its release; six Grammy Awards and three Top Ten singles are among its accomplishments. But its greatest measure of success may simply be the way that “When you’re weary, feeling small…when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all” can still gently reassure one in need. Bridge Over Troubled Water has arrived in a stellar 40th Anniversary edition (Columbia/Legacy 88697 82724-2) containing the original album on CD plus a DVD. The landmark original LP still retains its power, for sure. But the real raison d’etre of this package is the two hours-plus of never-before-released content on the DVD. The Songs of America program and a new documentary, The Harmony Game, both take viewers back to a time when two musicians seemed on the brink of bridging the generation gap, voicing the concerns of youth in a way even their parents might understand. Paul Simon holds that he didn’t intend Bridge as a eulogy for the soon-to-break-up duo, and the songs weren’t written to conform to a theme of farewell. (The fact that they were composed over a long period of time seems to confirm Simon’s recollection.) Still, it’s hard for a listener today to ignore the knowledge that Bridge would be Simon and Garfunkel’s final studio album to date, and contains achingly beautiful valedictories. “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” finds Simon addressing his partner, a one-time architecture student: “So long, Frank Lloyd Wright/All of the nights we’d harmonize till dawn/I never laughed so long.” In “Song for the Asking,” a Garfunkel favorite, Simon wrote, “Thinking it over, I’ve been sad…Ask me and I will play/All of the love that I hold inside.” The album’s one cover version is, appropriately, the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love.” Not that it’s all elegiac; nobody could claim that of an album including the rocking “Ceciilia,” rollicking “Keep the Customer Satisifed” and exuberant “Baby Driver.” For a beautifully-crafted album with no filler, however, the title track still towers over the rest, even the indelibly poignant “The Boxer” and Peruvian-influenced “El Condor Pasa.” In “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Paul Simon could fairly claim divine inspiration....full text |
| Superseventies |
| Britain's best-selling album of the seventies was led by its title track, one of the top cuts in the history of popular music. As Paul Simon related to Jon Landau in an outstanding Rolling Stone interview, Art Garfunkel did not want to sing lead vocal on it at first, feeling it was not right for him. On many occasions Simon wished he had sung it himself, particularly when he stood in the wings while Garfunkel got all the applause for it. "That's my song, man," Paul recalled thinking in bitter moments. "Thank you very much. I wrote that song." Original album advertising art. Click image for larger view. It would not have been the epic it was had Garfunkel not suggested expanding it beyond two verses. Simon asked pianist Larry Knetchel to lengthen his piano track, then finally wrote a third verse. In retrospect he claimed the third sounded clearly different from the first two. "The Boxer" had been an international top ten hit the previous year. "Cecilia," originally recorded in a living room on a Sony and then copied and extended in the studio, became a smash in America. "El Condor Pasa," performed on top of a Los Incas record (and properly acknowledged), became another US hit, Julie Felix enjoying a cover success in Britain. Simon and Garfunkel both thought something like "Cecilia" would be the first single, but Columbia chief Clive Davis persuaded them to go with the title song. He felt that it had the potential to become a monster hit and a standard copyright despite its length and tempo. Events proved him right. Not only was it a number one single, it pushed the album past ten million in sales. In Britain Bridge spent forty-one weeks at number one, the highest figure of any pop or rock album. "The Only Living Boy in New York" was Simon's personal favourite on this collection. "Bye Bye Love" was a live recording. The LP was originally intended to contain a dozen numbers, but Garfunkel did not wish to sing Simon's "Cuba Sí, Nixon No," which never appeared anywhere, and Paul did not fancy doing what he called Art's "Bach chorale thing." In 1987, Bridge Over Troubled Water was chosen by a panel of rock critics and music broadcasters as the #42 rock album of all time. - Paul Gambaccini, The Top 100 Rock 'n' Roll Albums of All Time, Harmony Books, 1987. Bridge Over Troubled Water has always been bothersome. Vinyl copies of these tapes always seem to sound scratchy and distorted, particularly in the climax of the title track, with the audience in "Bye Bye Love," and any heavy brass scoring. Compact Disc does a lot to overcome these problems but can do nothing for the tape hiss from the master tapes -- "The Boxer" and the intro to "Bridge" for instance are quite hissy. Nor can CD do anything to improve the wowy sound on the orchestral backing to the title track. But benefits there are to be had. Much improved low bass solidity now powers its way through tracks like "Cecilia," "The Boxer" and "Baby Driver." Multi-tracked vocals and echo no longer contribute to the very edgy quality which could make the LP disappointing hearing. The orchestral contributions still sound bright, the brass is rather fierce at times, but the gain in simple transparency will mark this CD out as a high priority purchase for many people. - David Prakel, Rock 'n' Roll on Compact Disc, 1987. Well-crafted as they are, the lyrics haven't worn all that well; perhaps because of overexposure due to the tremendous popularity the album initially enjoyed in 1970 and its continued playability. What endures are the lush melodies, superbly produced. Overall, the CD's sound revitalizes this old chestnut providing a precise, yet warm, dynamic rendering of the craftsmanship displayed by the duo and their wonderful producer/engineer, Roy Halee, in the recording studio. The sound is sadly afflicted with consistently audible hiss and some distortion and/or muddiness in its loudest passages. Yet, on balance, the digital conversion is a substantial improvement; in fact, it offers several truly stunning moments. B+ - Bill Shapiro, Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD, 1991. The massive commercial success of Bridge Over Troubled Water -- it topped the charts for 10 weeks, won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, included four hit singles, and has sold more than five million copies in the U.S. -- tends to exaggerate its significance in the Simon and Garfunkel catalog. Actually, it's a step down from the masterpiece of Bookends, containing some filler, such as the comic if slight "Baby Driver" and the pleasant if inessential live cover of the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love"; it also lacks the previous album's musical and thematic unity. Still, one is admittedly splitting hairs when talking about an album that contains such classics as the title song and "The Boxer," as well as such notable tunes as "Cecilia," "El Condor Pasa," and "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright." This is Simon and Garfunkel's most popular album because it legitimately spoke to its audience, and much of it continues to set standards in thoughtful pop music decades later. * * * * *...full text |
Simon & Garfunkel lyrics
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