Simon & Garfunkel

Simon & Garfunkel split up in 1965, before they were anybody.

They had released an acoustic album that did not sell. "The Sound of Silence" was in there, with two voices and a guitar, and nothing happened.

Paul Simon went off to England to play folk clubs. Art Garfunkel went back to university. That was the end.

What brought them back together was a decision somebody else made without consulting them.

June 1965

The producer Tom Wilson, at Columbia, noticed the song was starting to get played on some college radio stations.

He went into the studio with session musicians, took the original tape and overdubbed electric guitar, bass and drums on top of it. Without telling either of them.

Simon found out in England, on the radio.

The single came out in September and on 1 January 1966 it was number one in the United States. The two of them had to get back together to go out and defend a hit they had not gone looking for, in a version they had not played.

That is where it all started. The entire career of Simon & Garfunkel exists because a producer did something that today would be considered an act of disrespect.

The third verse Simon did not want

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" is the other song in which somebody from outside decided.

Simon wrote it with two verses and as far as he was concerned it was finished. Garfunkel and the producer Roy Halee insisted a third one was needed for the song to build to the end.

Simon grudgingly wrote the verse that begins by speaking to a silver girl, and it is the one that makes the song take off.

Then he decided Garfunkel should sing it alone. It is the most generous decision of his life and the one he has regretted most: he has said many times that he would hear the audience give a standing ovation and know they were applauding somebody else.

In February 1970 that song was number one, and in passing it left Creedence Clearwater Revival in second place, which was where Creedence always ended up.

The duo broke up that same year. They sang about holding each other up over troubled water and separated before the album stopped selling.

The Our Father

There is something almost nobody in the English-speaking world knows and that in Latin America and Spain is obvious from childhood.

If you went to mass at any point in the last few decades, you have sung "The Sound of Silence" without knowing it.

Somebody set Spanish words of the Our Father to that exact melody, and the version spread through parishes in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Spain and more, until it became a completely ordinary mass hymn.

Whole generations grew up believing it was a Catholic hymn. Nobody knows who made the adaptation, and it is best put that way, because attributions circulate that do not hold up.

The irony is hard to improve on: a song about people who talk and do not listen ended up as one of the most sung collective prayers in the Spanish-speaking world.

2024

They got back together many times over fifty years and fell out just as often. The free Central Park concert, in September 1981, drew half a million people and did not fix anything permanently either.

But in 2024, both of them by then over eighty, Garfunkel said publicly that they had reconciled, and that both of them had cried.

They did not record again. They only mended what was between them, which was another matter and had been pending for longer.

What to remember

Simon & Garfunkel are proof that a career can hang on somebody else's decision taken without permission.

Put on "The Sound of Silence" — the electric one, the one neither of them asked for —, "The Boxer" or "Bridge Over Troubled Water", and you will hear two voices that fit together in a way that cannot be rehearsed, because they had been singing together since they were eleven years old at a school in Queens.

And keep in mind the two outside hands. The producer's, who put drums on top of them and turned them into stars. And the partner's, who demanded a third verse the writer did not want to write, and which turned out to be the best one.

Remember them like this: the poet and the voice, yes. But the two songs that define them were finished off by other people.

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Sources

Simon & Garfunkel, an American duo made up of Paul Simon (Newark, 13 October 1941; songwriting, guitar and vocals) and Art Garfunkel (New York, 5 November 1941; vocals), friends since childhood in the Queens neighbourhood. Their first album, "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." (1964), which included the acoustic version of "The Sound of Silence", failed commercially and the duo broke up: Simon moved to the United Kingdom and Garfunkel returned to his studies. In June 1965, the producer Tom Wilson overdubbed electric guitar, bass and drums onto the original recording without informing either of them; the single was released in September and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 1 January 1966, which forced the duo to reunite. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (1970) was written by Paul Simon with two verses; the third was added at the urging of Art Garfunkel and the producer Roy Halee. Simon decided that Garfunkel should perform it alone and has expressed his regret over that decision on numerous occasions. The song was number one in February 1970, a position it thereby denied that year to "Travelin' Band" / "Who'll Stop the Rain" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The duo split in 1970 and staged occasional reunions, among them the free Central Park concert of 19 September 1981, before around half a million people. In 2024, Art Garfunkel stated publicly that the two had reconciled. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. The melody of "The Sound of Silence" was adapted with anonymous Spanish religious words as a sung Our Father, widespread for decades at masses in Spain and in several Latin American countries to the point of being taken for an original Catholic hymn; the authorship of that adaptation has not been established, and the attributions in circulation are undocumented. Creedence Clearwater Revival has a profile of its own in this series. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Britannica, Rolling Stone, Billboard and other coverage.