Troubled Water: The Problem of Being Simon & Garfunkel
PAUL SIMON, the songwriter, guitarist and performer of folk and pop music, was born in 1941 in Newark, New Jersey but raised in a middle-class Jewish family at 136–57 72nd Avenue in Queens, New York. Simon is an underrated singer with a lovely falsetto — and one of the best songwriters America has ever known.
As a boy, Paul Simon was small for his age, loved the New York Yankees and carried some kind of anxiety in his face so that strangers sometimes stopped him on the street and asked “What’s wrong?”
His mother, Belle Simon, a former schoolteacher, quit to become a homemaker and bring up Paul and his younger brother, Eddie. She was a pal to her sons. Paul’s father, Louis Simon, was a bass player and bandleader for bands that played on TV for people like Arthur Godfrey and Garry Moore. Louis Simon was musically gifted, but distant and critical.
ART GARFUNKEL lived right across the street from Paul, on 72nd Avenue. As a boy, Art was shy and introverted. He used to play with his Spaldeen ball and sing to himself, and he liked what he heard, and realized he had a musical voice. He has said, “Singing was my silent companion as I stepped over the threshold into a room of strangers.”
Art decided he wanted something “clearer and cleaner” than a Queens accent, and began consciously to “move beyond my neighborhood,” to scrub the New York from his accent. He also began to sing in temple, which increased his sense that there was something sacred about a lovely voice, and that all forms of music are a gift from God.
Paul and Art were born within a month of each other in 1941, and both went to P.S. 164, to Parsons Junior High and to Forest Hills High. Paul heard Art sing at a school assembly and realized Art was the best singer in the neighborhood.
Paul soaked up the sounds of doo-wop on the streets and R&B and rockabilly on New York radio stations. He loved the Christmas carol “Silent Night.” Broadway show tunes didn’t interest him. His parents took him to ”Fannie” on Broadway but its title embarrassed him. Another popular musical, “Bye Bye Birdie,” seemed to him condescending to young people. So it was the local doo-wop groups that shaped Paul’s love of music — and Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Ruth Brown. There was a gospel group called the Swan Silvertones and Paul loved their song “Oh, Mary Don’t You Weep,” which had a line “I’ll be a bridge over deep water if you trust in my name…”
He also loved a song called “Earth Angel.” At 13, 14, 15, he heard his father disparage rock’n’roll, call it stupid. But Paul Simon thought: ‘What a great paradox: Earth… Angel!’
By age 13, he was realizing he wasn’t going to play center field for the Yankees. But writing songs was something he COULD do, and he found it addictive. He’d walk into the bathroom, turn off the light, and play music. (“Hello, darkness, my old friend…”)
As a teenager ambitious to break into the music business, Paul hustled around the Brill Building. He sold the song “Hey, Schoolgirl,” recorded it with Art Garfunkel, and it became a local hit. Jewish people were allowed to be songwriters in those days — but they weren’t “supposed” to be pop stars, so Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel recorded “Hey Schoolgirl” as “Tom and Jerry.”
Paul Simon was still in high school when “Hey, Schoolgirl” became a local hit. His several thousand dollars in royalties abruptly ended the allowance phase of his childhood. He bought a red convertible and he and Art Garfunkel — at age 16 — got to play on “American Bandstand.” Host Dick Clark did the standard interview, asked Garfunkel where he was from. “Queens,” said Garfunkel. “And where are YOU from?” Dick Clark asked Paul Simon. In a passable southern accent, Simon said, “I’m from Macon, Georgia.” Garfunkel realized ‘Wow. We’re in show business now — and part of it is going to be make believe.’
The group Tom and Jerry faded away, and Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel went off to live their own lives. But they came back together, formed Simon & Garfunkel, and made gorgeous record albums. The years 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1968 were rich years for Simon & Garfunkel, both musically and as friends.
Liberated by the expressive imagery in Bob Dylan’s songs, Paul wrote “The Sound of Silence.” He was 22 years old, and he was pleased. The song didn’t take long to write. But the initial release of the song didn’t sell; it was only when a producer added some electric tracks to it that the song became a big hit. And Paul learned a lesson — that a song in its pure form, and a song at its most commercial, are not the same thing. In his career, he would have to balance art and commerce.
Paul had a songwriting genius Artie didn’t have, but Artie’s voice was a marvel. Paul was the more ambitious of the two, an engine pushing the group on to the next plateau. But Paul could be slightly deranged in his negativity. For instance, he wrote the lovely upbeat song “Feelin’ Groovy’” — and then so loathed having to sing “Life, I love you, all is groovy!” that he refused to perform the song. Actually, there was one exception to the rule; he would sometimes FORCE himself to sing “Feelin’ Groovy” to punish himself for a previous mistake.
Artie often got Paul to relax and enjoy life a little more. Together they created albums of poetic, introspective songs and brought them across to a mass audience. Art Garfunkel says, “Fame is a kick. The party’s at your house.” The commercial and critical success of Simon & Garfunkel coaxed Art out of his introverted moods, and helped him meet a lot of gifted artists and beautiful women.
But by 1969, the years of touring, being forced to live and work so closely together, had taken a toll on Paul and Art’s friendship. Art saw singing and acting in similar terms: you take words written by others, make them your own, and perform them.
Artie also thought it would be good to act in Hollywood films — not only for him but also for Simon & Garfunkel, because Hollywood films would give them time away from each other, ease the growing tension, increase their exposure and win the group new fans. Whereas, Paul couldn’t help but see a film shoot as a distraction from the greater art of composing music and recording an album.
Paul has a theory that every successful creative partnership has an arc. On the way up, the crowds keep getting bigger, the notices keep getting better, the money’s flowing in, and you share the illusion that you’re a single entity. But the truth is that success is feeding both your egos, which have always been separate, and you begin to have real disagreements.
You reach the zenith and start heading down, you feel the popularity fading, you start bickering and you realize you’re two egotists with some sweet memories in common, and your LP’s in common, which are like children that grow up and find their way, but that you have quite different visions of the future.
Simon often feels, even about his best-loved songs, ‘This isn’t very good.’ But one day a melody came to him, and when he reached for words he thought of the Swan Silvertones singing “I’ll be a bridge over deep water…” and the song became “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” This little song about loyalty had an unexpected power. It felt to Paul like a hymn.
The musical line magically fit with the words “like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.” Both the music and the words surprised him. He was not really thrilled that everything fit; he can’t be that happy when he’s creating. But he told himself: ‘Well, that’s better than you usually do.’ The more he played the song, the closer he came to bliss. That brief feeling of joy, of being at the top … as a songwriter, he was always chasing that feeling.
Artie was off in Rome filming the movie “Catch-22.” Paul had written “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” which he thought was terrific and was eager to record. Art admired the song when he heard it — but pushed Paul to add a third verse. Art said, ‘It’s softly grounded but give it a big third verse and it could be like an airplane taking off… It wants to be a BIG song.’
Paul wanted art; and Art wanted commerce.
So they asked their sound engineer, Roy Halee, a man they both respected. Roy agreed with Art; “Bridge Over Troubled Water” should be a big song. So, reluctantly, Paul added the third verse — then announced that it was now too long to get radio play. He also thought it was a mistake to add strings to the arrangement; his little hymn had become schmaltzy and bombastic.
Art suggested that Paul take lead vocals on this song. Art meant this in a generous spirit; ‘It’s your song; you feel it’s the best you’ve ever written. So you should be the one to interpret it vocally; you should be the one who presents it to the audience.’
But Paul, in his negativity, was insulted. Their agreement had been that Art would do lead vocals on their ‘major’ songs. If Art was giving this song to him, maybe Art didn’t really like the song. Paul said ‘Yes, this is the best song I’ve written, and it needs the best voice to sing it.’ He deliberately pitched it too high for his own voice so that Artie would have to sing it.
By then, there was enough tension between Paul and Art that Art insisted that Paul not be present when Art did the vocals. He wanted to soar like a bird as he sang “Bridge Over Trouble Water” and was afraid Paul’s negativity might clip his wings.
The song was released, and became a huge hit. Allen Toussaint said, “That song had two writers: Paul Simon and God.” The album “Bridge Over Troubled Water” sold 25 million copies and won six Grammy Awards.
It was a piano song, not a guitar song, so Paul had no role at all when they performed it in concert. A piano player would come out, and Artie would sing “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and the crowd would go crazy, thunderous applause for Artie — and then, of course, Artie would introduce the piano player, and HE would get sustained applause.
And Paul would be standing awkwardly off to the side, thinking ‘No one’s clapping for me. I WROTE that song.’ He sort of regretted giving the song to Art.
And then Art Garfunkel decided to star in another Mike Nichols movie, “Carnal Knowledge,” and Paul Simon decided ‘Enough of this partnership…’ And so “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” a song about solidarity, about eternal loyalty, was the last straw in breaking up a brilliant partnership. Simon and Garfunkel went their separate ways, both of them pretending it wasn’t a big deal. It was only later that they’d look back on 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1968 as magical years, and 1969 as tragic.
For decades, journalists and fans asked Paul Simon, “Are you going to get back together with Art Garfunkel?”
Paul would often reply, ‘Making music with Artie is a lot of fun. We’ve known each other since we were eleven. And we’ve been arguing since we were twelve.’