I’m sure she will appear someday.” Later, Simon contradicted this interpretation, saying it was not about a girl at all, but a “belief”.Īt 26, Simon believed he had reached the upper echelon of rock’n’roll without compromising his integrity, according to biographer Marc Eliot, but the duo continued to be met with sniffiness from critics. Neither of us know her, but the song is written about her. “And when you ran to me / Your cheeks flushed with the night / We walked on frosted fields / Of juniper and lamplight.” Introducing the song at a concert, Garfunkel told the crowd: “This is a song about a girl who is fictitious. Simon’s song For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her is a hazy, guitar-led love song. A handful of the songs from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, including Homeward Bound, were recycled from older releases, but the duo took great pains over its recording and production. … And that’s my memory of that time: it was just about idyllic.”Īfter rushing through the process of recording their second album, Simon and Garfunkel were adamant that they would take their time with their third (though it came out just nine months after its predecessor). But there’s something naive and sweet-natured, and I must say I like that about it. First of all, it’s not an original title. I like that about it, but I don’t like the song that much. “The movies and the factories / And every stranger’s face I see / Reminds me that I long to be / Homeward bound.” Simon has since said: “It’s like … a photograph of a long time ago. “And each town looks the same to me,” sings Simon, as Garfunkel’s falsetto harmony sweeps in. Written during Simon’s time in England, when he was touring the country while pining after his new girlfriend Kathy Chitty, it speaks to a sense of solitude and longing. It first appeared on the UK release of The Sounds of Silence, but turned up again on the duo’s third album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966). Homeward Bound, whose every line aches with nostalgia, doesn’t exactly make for cheery listening either, but it serves as something of a balm for anyone who’s experienced homesickness. That version reached No1 in the US Billboard Hot 100, and catapulted the pair to fame, though the haunting original has also come to be revered. That might easily have been the end of the duo, if it weren’t for the album’s producer, Tom Wilson, overdubbing electric guitars and a drumbeat to the melancholic, acoustic ballad and rereleasing it without their consent. “It was only necessary to start singing ‘Hello darkness, my old friend …’ and everybody would crack up.” Discouraged and dispirited, and selling just 3,000 copies of their album, the pair split up once again, and Simon moved to London. “ actually became a running joke,” said folk singer Dave Van Ronk, who was at the shows. The Sound of Silence in particular was treated with derision. To promote it, they performed a handful of terribly received shows. “That solo record I made at the age of 15,” Simon told Playboy in 1984, “permanently coloured our relationship.” Still, they reconciled several years later in 1963, this time using their real names, and in the space of three recording sessions had produced an album – Wednesday Morning, 3am. Their death knell came when Paul Simon released a solo single, True Or False, the perceived betrayal of which Art Garfunkel carried with him for decades. They had one moderately successful single during high school, and three subsequent ones that sank without a trace, but Tom and Jerry fizzled out when the pair went off to college. On “America,” however, there is a fine horn arrangement, and “A Hazy Shade of Winter” is simple but compelling.Given that they had one of the most fractious relationships in music, it should come as no surprise to learn that Simon and Garfunkel almost didn’t make it beyond their time as a rock’n’roll duo named Tom and Jerry. The phrasing in the song, which has a kind of folk song feeling, is too loose for anything but a show song at its most dishonest. On “Old Friends,” strings are used with wild abandon, when they might better not have been used at all. For instance, “Overs,” the weakest cut on the LP, would lend itself well to a Streisand styling. It is, also, and this is certainly not a fault per se, not rock and roll, whatever that is. It is nice enough, and I admit to liking it, but it exudes a sense of process, and it is slick, and nothing too much happens. The music is, for me, questionable, but I’ve always found their music questionable. It is hard sometimes, to find out who is putting whom on. Or maybe Avedon has merely captured them at their high-fashion best. This record is worth getting, if only for the cover, which captures the amazing resemblance of Simon and Garfunkel to Gertrude Stein and Alice B.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |