Simon and Garfunkel - The Harmony Game imagine...

One, three and five, but the last part of it...

HE HUMS

Oh. Just doesn't sound good.

If you're in the harmony game, you learn to scorn harmonies like that.

The harmony game.

# Hello, darkness, my old friend

# I've come to talk with you again... #

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel made their debut in the harmony game

over 50 years ago.

# Left its seeds while I was sleeping... #

And it was this song, The Sound Of Silence,

which catapulted them from obscurity to worldwide fame

in the summer of 1965.

# Within the sound of silence... #

They grew up here, in Forest Hills, Queens, a suburb of New York City.

They were neighbours and classmates at the local primary school.

And they bonded here at Forest Hills high.

Barely in their teens, they formed a band,

and called themselves Tom and Jerry.

Mindful, perhaps, that a pair of Jewish schlemiels

called Simon and Garfunkel might not easily catch on.

Their very first song was recorded in 1957.

It was called Hey, Schoolgirl, and sold a modest 100,000 records.

And you can hear echoes of their childhood heroes, The Everly Brothers.

# Hey, schoolgirl in the second row

# The teacher's looking over, so I gotta whisper way down low... #

Their first album was released in October 1964.

It was a synthesis of folk and rock, called Wednesday Morning, 3AM.

And it disappeared without trace until one year later,

one song, The Sound Of Silence, was resurrected and re-released

with the inspired addition to the original recording

of bass and drums and an electric guitar.

# And the sign said the words of the prophets

# Are written on the subway walls

# And tenement halls... #

And the rest, as they say, is history.

# The sound of silence. #

Tonight's film is an intimate, insider view

of Simon and Garfunkel's final and most successful album.

The miraculous Bridge Over Troubled Water.

This is a portrait both professional and personal

of two artists at the very peak of their powers,

and at the moment of dissolution.

The album, which was recorded in 1970,

is a chronicle of the potency and fragility of their time together,

and a response to a decade in American life

of unprecedented turmoil and political unrest.

The combination of the two is what makes Bridge Over Troubled Water

so eerily powerful and effecting.

-Did we go on stage before?

-No, no, no.

Why Don't You Write Me, Feelin' Groovy...

'With The Graduate becoming a hit and Bookends coming out,'

at that point, we had four out of the top five albums.

Feelin' Groovy, Scarborough Fair, Only Living Boy, At The Zoo,

Emily, Anji, Sound Of Silence.

'Oh, we were on top of the world, we were lucky sons of guns.

'Our toes were twinkling.

'There's nothing that brings out your talent than hit records.

'It puts you in such a good mood,

'that you rise to the height of your stuff.

'You know that girls are available,

'you know that the world is waiting

'for the next thing you're going to put out.'

The kids are doing it again, one year later, how long can this go on?

Lew Burdette!

THEY BOTH LAUGH

'It was a marvellous time for Paul and Artie, and for me,'

because each day was better than the day before.

'They kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.'

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Approaching the mic was really fun.

Here comes something I really feel confident with,

because the world is relating to what we're doing.

# And here's to you, Mrs Robinson

# Jesus loves you more than you will know

# Whoa, whoa, whoa

# God bless you please, Mrs Robinson

# Heaven holds a place for those who pray

# Hey, hey, hey

# Hey, hey, hey... #

'After The Graduate, Mrs Robinson, our confidence level was...

'you know, very high.

'And we thought, "Hey, why don't we do that?"'

If we think it's a good idea, probably it is a good idea.

It's a certain freedom that you get

when you're, kind of, sitting on top of the world.

# Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home

# And here's to you, Mrs Robinson

# Jesus loves you more than you will know

# Whoa, whoa, whoa

# God bless you, please, Mrs Robinson

# Heaven holds a place for those who pray

# Hey, hey, hey

# Hey, hey, hey... #

'When Simon and Garfunkel,

'who were not called Simon and Garfunkel at the time,

'auditioned for Columbia Records,

'the engineer who was...recorded the audition was Roy Halee.'

And he said, "If you sign those guys I would love to be the engineer."

I'd just broken into Columbia Records as a mixer,

and I was assigned to do their audition.

And that's how I met them, that's how we started.

And that was the Wednesday Morning AM album

which became their first release.

I was doing practically everybody in Columbia Records in the pop vein.

In walked these guys, from nowhere, and just knocked me out totally.

# I can hear the soft breathing of the girl that I love... #

'I just wanted to work with them.'

Just, "Put me from now on with Paul and Artie."

You know. "You can have everybody else."

Roy Halee was one of the great engineers of his time,

and, er...and a genius with the echo.

And he would...

..play around with echo, you know, all the time.

You'd come into the studio, he'd say, "Listen to this."

You know, it was great to work with him.

He...he was just thinking, and he was involved,

and he had a tremendous enthusiasm.

He had great energy.

'I could actually sense what Paul Simon was thinking.

'I was always thinking, what would go nicely,

'what colour would be really beautiful in this song,'

or very commercial in this song.

We were, in truth, a threesome,

and Roy Halee was the driver in many of these things.

Because at this point in our lives,

we were moving from the song to the record,

and the record is sound itself.

So we were playing with sound.

That was the age when technologically,

you could give them an amazing treat in their earphones,

cranked out loud.

And so, let's serve them

the greatest sonic experience we could do.

There's more than just the song going on.

There was a certain thing, a chemistry that happened,

I think, between the three of us. It just clicked.

They were very comfortable, and I loved the sound.

I thought... I'm classically trained,

and I thought the sound was extremely classical-sounding.

And at the same time, being very pop.

With Simon and Garfunkel, he really invented, well...

or he got the sound. And this was the sound.

We would sing, uh...

um...a take together on mic, on one mic.

And when we got the take that we wanted,

then we would double it, individually.

I would sing my part individually, on mic,

and Artie would sing his individually on mic.

And when you combine them together,

and they would be, you know, perfectly in sync,

that's what Simon and Garfunkel sounded like.

That was what the sound was.

Without a doubt, that was the sound.

Many times, I was talked into, by someone, you know,

"Let's put them on separate tracks

"so we have control later," you know what I mean?

And that sound was never the same.

Once you separated those two voices.

The way they blended together in one point...

The harmonic structure or whatever it was was magical.

THEY HARMONISE

HE WHISTLES

# Do-do-do-do-do... #

I know.

# Ain't you got no rhymes for me? #

'We'd do a show, come back to the Holiday Inn, sit on end of the bed.

'Paul would noodle along with something he's writing,

'I'd be listening and thinking of the record we're going to make of this.

'And when three or four of them were ready to be recorded, every few months,

'we would go in the studio and put 'em down.'

Basically, I'd come in with a song and a lick and the two of us

who had already learned our harmony and knew how to do it

and Roy knew how to do it.

Nobody gets dragged to the top of the charts.

We were playing that game in those days.

Delightfully.

It was tough for a single would be what I think, but having finished Bookends,

it was in of itself the beginning of a new album.

The Boxer was written

perhaps a year before...

that album.

We would go to get certain musicians like Charlie McCoy,

playing the bass harmonica on The Boxer.

That was done in Nashville.

That was before we were all over the place.

I'd played guitar with Fred Carter Jr.

He was a really good picker and he made up the lick,

that starts the top of the thing.

But we were so locked in together playing this acoustic thing,

we probably did two or three takes,

it must have been like 5-6 minutes of straight boom.

Travis picking locked.

The harmonics of those two guitars -

the way they beat against each other - there is a tone,

beautiful tone that runs through that whole verse.

# I am just a poor boy

# Though my story's seldom told

# I have squandered my resistance

# For a pocketful of mumbles such are promises

# All lies and jest

-# Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

-#

We would pitch to Roy as if he was our big brother

and we were playmates, Paul and I, in the notes, the chords, the changes.

And we'd serve up ideas to Roy

and that was one - we went to the church at Columbia.

We liked the tiled dome. We did our la-la-lahs,

stacked up in harmony.

All the la-la-lahs were done in that chapel at Columbia University.

So this meant the field crew had to go to the chapel,

set up all the machines. Well, they thought I was totally insane,

which I probably was.

# Lie-la-lie

# Lie-la-la-lie-la-lie

# La-la-la-la-lie. #

It has that wordless chorus and, I tried to make up a chorus.

But I couldn't think of anything,

so I just left it at the lie-la-lie which is really a...

one of the best things about it because from country to country,

people sing that.

When we went into the studio Artie said he wrote this little instrumental section.

He sang it and it was really lovely so we said just put it in,

we'll take that verse out.

My melody was like a lot of melodies I wrote in our records,

if you're the harmonist, you're always playing the game of given these chords and that main line,

what would harmonise with it and stay in the chords.

And what kind of games can you play with larger and smaller intervals where the melody...

Bach played the same game.

And we did it with a... a Bach trumpet, a real high trumpet.

And a pedal steel, where we would take the attack off

and blend the sound so that you couldn't tell what the sound was...

And the mixture of those two sounds,

I've had people from all over the world, honestly, ask me, what is that sound?

How did you guys get that sound?

Roy Halee had a great habit of walking around the studio in LA

or New York, and he would clap,

he would walk all over the studio clapping,

and when he heard a certain echo,

he would say put the drums here or put the mic here, whatever it was.

Columbia Records at that time had fabulous hallways.

Their hallways were their echo chambers.

They were really, really fine.

I bet Barbra Streisand's voice is still floating around somewhere in one of those hallways.

You could put anybody in a hallway,

those hallways - it was like putting them in a cave, it was incredible.

He found a place right in front of the elevator doors,

he said we'd do the overdub right here. I had these massive drums.

So I set up a chair, headsets,

and I was listening to # la-di-dah #,

Bang! And I was smashing these two drums.

Humongous explosions.

And all in perfect synchronisation as my hands were coming down,

the elevator door opened and there was probably an 85-year-old

security guard standing there who thought he was just killed.

He said "Whoa! what's going on here? What are you guys doing?"

It was really funny. The guy was shocked.

Can you imagine how loud that was!

The Boxer was more, complicated from a technical standpoint.

I could literally write a book on how that was recorded and created.

We ran out of tracks, we had to run machines,

you know, wild track things in,

but can you imagine taking all of this back?

Now we've got to mix this together.

I got Columbia, by the way, to get us a 16 track machine on the strength of -

I swear this is a true story,

bringing Clive Davis into the control room,

played the record for him and showed him how we had to do it.

We got our 16 track machine.

I thought that a record had a capital R from the moment I started making them.

When you go into the studio and you're a kid at first,

if you're 14, these are big concepts, the studio and making records.

If you can put it on record, it might last for a long time if it is very good.

I was one of the members of a group of musicians in Los Angeles, California called the Wrecking Crew.

They were Hollywood's go-to band that made hit records.

They were just astute about what's danceable and fresh.

Somebody must have said along the line,

you've got to try these guys because they are really really good.

Well, they are more than good, you know.

Those musicians, in my experience, were the most creative

and the best players that you could possibly have in a studio.

Roy Halee, who was pretty much on top of his game,

knew the musicians who were making the records and so forth.

You know what was fabulous about Hal too?

The most creative percussionist on the planet.

He would be doing a Sinatra session in the day

and then he would go do a movie score at night

and he would do Phil Spector, then he would come and work with us.

Somehow they got to me.

They wanted me and Joe and Larry.

Joe Osborn and Larry Knechtel.

The three of them, Larry and Joe and Hal worked as a unit very well

and very quickly and understood each other.

Joe and Larry and I - they used to call us the Hollywood Golden Trio.

Or the HGT.

They came from different musical backgrounds.

But they meshed and they played on a lot of records,

all the Mamas and Papas records, the Beach Boys records.

They were the big LA studio band.

I got involved with Paul and Artie

when they started the Bridge Over Troubled Water album.

98% of the time it was the three of us

along with Paul would play and Art would do a scratch vocal

so we got something to play to.

It was basically that rhythm section.

We're rehearsing the band for the concerts next week.

HE HUMS

HE SCATS

# Cathy, I'm lost I said,

# Though I knew she was sleeping. #

This is new for us to be working with a band.

We decided to take along to our concerts, the fellows

who we've been making our records with for the last two years.

These Life Savers were sent up here - whoever sent them, thank you...

LAUGHTER

On that 1969 tape of us being on the road,

bringing in our band on the road for the first time,

there's me on the record saying,

"Here's a song you haven't heard yet" and I'm just so earnest and straightforward.

This is also one of our new songs,

it's called Bridge Over Troubled Water...

'That's the name, folks - you react however you want.'

PIANO INTRO

# When you're weary

# Feelin' small

# When tears are in your eyes

# I will dry them all... #

It was quite amazing,

the first few times that Artie sang Bridge Over Troubled Water,

because people hadn't heard it.

And, you know,

he would say, "Here's a new song that's coming out on our album,"

and he'd sing this song and people would...you know, like, erupt.

'It worked in just about every room I've ever sung it in.

'Small and big. It's a killer song.'

That 1969 live album is a really good album.

Erm... We really were good.

# Tom, get your plane right on time

# I know your part'll go fine

# Fly down to Mexico

# Da-doodin'-da doo-din' da-doodin'-da, and here I am

# The only living boy in New York... #

Well, if there's a theme that goes through Bridge Over Troubled Water

about people leaving, or something like that

it was certainly unintentional.

And the songs were written over...

you know, rather a long period, because The Boxer's on that album

but that was recorded maybe a year or so before

the rest of the album, but

The Only Living Boy In New York

was written about Artie going to make Catch-22 in Mexico.

And "Tom, get your plane right on time" was cos

when we were kids we were Tom and Jerry.

That was our first record. Hey, Schoolgirl - Tom and Jerry.

You've taken me into cheap sentiment.

I don't want to play my friendship with Paul on camera -

it's very deep, very private, and it's full of love.

But yeah, those songs are about a friendship...

I don't know how to talk about it, it's essentially a private,

cherished thing.

# Aaaaah, ah-ah-aaah... #

'The Only Living Boy In New York, where you have all those huge voices,

'that's, I think we sang...

'I think we put, like, 12 or 14 voices on there.'

Singing together. But we literally were standing in the echo chamber,

in LA.

I heard those voices... Rather than in the studio editing echo,

let's go into the echo chamber and try it.

Go physically into this echo chamber, into this room.

We really sang that whole thing right in the echo chamber, and it's...

..it really has a sound, you know. I mean, it really sounds big.

# I know that you've been eager to fly now

# Hey, let your honesty shine, shine, shine now

# Da-doodin'-da doo-din' da-doodin'-da, like it shines on me

# The only living boy in New York

# The only living boy in New York... #

Joe Osborn is the feature on that...

Beside the song itself, obviously.

The featured musician on that song, to me, is Joe Osborn,

with that eight-string bass.

He played an eight-string bass like a...guitar, he played like...

Joe played like a guitar player.

The reason I remember this part so well is I had to re-learn that part

for a show in New York, for Bass Player magazine.

And there would be spots that were very awkward

to play. Going from one chord change to another

would be just...not playable.

And that was because of the parts

that Roy had spliced together from different takes.

Like those slides, and that melody he plays

on that eight-string bass - it's like this big gorgeous horn.

And Larry, of course, with the sustained organ part.

Beautiful.

And Hal, you know, with those drum fills, he used all those

tubular drums - which he had just gotten, by the way,

was just experimenting with them...

You know, those tuned... Big array of drums.

He played that. And of course, the voices in the echo chamber...

Everything just came together beautifully.

El Condor Pasa was a song that I heard

when I was booked to do a week at a theatre in Paris.

And one of the other groups was called Los Incas.

And they played El Condor Pasa,

which I used to hang around every night to hear them play that.

I loved it, and I would play it all the time, and then I thought,

"Why don't I just put words to it?

"The track exists, we don't have to cut it again.

"Let's just see if we can buy the track.

"And put words to it."

Which is... And that's exactly what I did,

because the song is hundreds of years old.

It's a traditional Peruvian song,

and almost like a national anthem of South America but certainly of Peru.

I came back from Mexico in the middle of Catch-22

and Paul said, "Listen to this track" -

and played me Los Incas, playing this Peruvian melody.

And I thought, "How magnificent."

# I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail

# Yes, I would

# If I could

# I surely would... #

Jorge Milchberg is the leader of that group,

and he played what they call "el charango", I believe,

it's an armadillo.

The outside of an armadillo, with strings. An unbelievable sound.

And then they would play these flutes.

We just had to take the track that existed.

You couldn't remix it or bring anything up, you just...

That was the track, and then you put the voices on top of it.

And Paul had a lyric over the melody,

and I thought, "Wow, what a beautiful, colourful piece."

To place it right after Bridge, is deft, I think.

I enjoy that a lot, that transition.

GUITAR INTRO AND CHEERING

# Bye-bye, love... #

When we were kids, I remember hearing the Everly Brothers,

and we went to buy their record, and in order to buy their record

we had to go get on a bus, get a transfer, get on another bus...

Go all the way into Jamaica, to this record store - buy the record...

Take the two buses back, listen to it,

flip it over and listen to the other side,

try and learn the harmonies...

There's not too many, you know,

singers that I can say I was really a fan.

Bye Bye Love, if I can read us right back in the old days,

sounds exactly like what we felt wanted to be in the album,

to keep this thing full of surprise and variety.

There was nothing like Bye Bye Love -

we knew we did it pretty well from our earliest years.

We brought it into our concerts, we loved that the audience

would do a backbeat to it, and if we got record-making serious,

we could help the 10,000 audience give us a nice, tight backbeat.

And Roy had his machines backstage with the big cables fed in,

and we put down various audiences and picked the best.

I went with them,

we went around to practically every college in the country and recorded.

And all we recorded were the audience clapping.

It was Paul's idea, "Wouldn't it be great,

"instead of just handclaps in the studio,

"let's go out and record an audience clapping."

And that's how it came about.

It's pretty much the way we recorded it,

I think we might have enhanced it with, er...

..handclaps. I think we might have augmented the handclaps and...

..fooled around with the echo kind of things.

But essentially that was a live recording,

and a tribute to Don and Phil, those guys were our heroes, you know.

And eventually we got to perform with them

when we did the reunion tour in 2003.

That was great.

We loved, you know, playing with them.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-NEWSREADER:

-In a scene described by one investigator

as reminiscent of a weird religious rite,

five persons, including actress Sharon Tate,

were found dead at the home of Ms Tate and her husband,

director Roman Polanski.

We were living in this house on Blue Jay Way,

that George wrote his song about, the summer of the Manson murders.

And the town was really tense, especially up around there.

And we were sitting around one night, my brother and Artie and me,

and I think another friend, or two or three other friends,

maybe six or seven people.

Sort of just, you know, hanging out partying,

and we started, like, pounding on things and making a rhythm.

That is a vivid memory

and it really comes through the cockles of the mind so easily.

Why do I know that one so well?

It was just so infectious from the start.

We liked our Sony Sound On Sound tape recorder, big silver thing.

Once we kicked on the reverb button,

it gave you a kickback of every sound, quite loud and pronounced,

and the kickback was a good quarter of a second.

So you could play your Levi's on your thighs with your hands,

as Paul and I did, into that rhythm,

and work out a little pattern which has an accentuation to it.

PERCUSSIVE INTRO TO CECILIA PLAYS

When the thighs had a pattern,

and Paul's brother Ed was just giving us a solid 4/4

on the piano bench, cos it's just a little cushioned,

"Doo, doo, doo, doo."

We were starting to like it.

Stuey Scharf, our friend from the east,

played a junky guitar that was around the house,

with its strings tuned out, and he gave you a,

"chun, ba-ba dum, ba-ba dum,

"Ah, chun, ba-ba dum, ba-ba dum, ah."

That was a wonderful quirky spike in our pattern.

So we did that all night long or for a couple hours.

Perhaps we lost track of time.

And listening back to it,

there was a section of about a minute and 15 seconds

that was such a good groove that I said to Roy,

"This minute and 15 seconds is so great

"we should make a loop out of it."

So, I mean, this is the days of analogue,

so to make a loop out of it,

you literally had to have a loop of tape

between tape machines, and this minute and 15 seconds got repeated

and became the rhythmic basis of it.

They brought it back down to the studio and I said, "Woo!

"We can do all kinds of things with this with reverb,"

I love to play around with different reverbs and delays, which we did.

"Chuk-achucka, chuk-achucka,"

you know. And then the creative process started.

# Cecilia

# You're breaking my heart

# You're shaking my confidence daily

# Oh, Cecilia

# I'm down on my knees... #

And then just play the simple guitar.

I don't when I wrote the song or how I wrote the song.

Cecilia is the goddess of music. Anyway, I had the song.

We sang it and it sounded like that straight away.

We said, "Wow, that's...that's, you know, that's...

"That's pretty hooky with a really good rhythm."

# Making love in the afternoon

# With Cecilia

# Up in my bedroom

# Making love

# I got up to wash my face

# When I come back to bed someone's taken my place... #

I ran into a soldier coming back from Vietnam.

He said, "When we heard that record,

"we knew things were really changed in the States."

Just that line. He said, "Woah, man. You can say that in a song now?

"It's like a different country." Which never occurred to me.

To me it was like an old joke. It seemed like some old joke.

We went to the parquet floor of Columbia's Gower Street.

Big studio, in '69. This is where you would have gone in Hollywood.

There were no strings. It was Paul and I with bunches of drumsticks.

We dropped them on the parquet floor.

That was wonderfully ticky-tacky. That went into the record.

In the mid-range.

Then we sent Paul out on the xylophone that was

hanging around the studio.

He doesn't play xylophone but we said,

"If Roy compresses the sound so that tonality is bleached out,

"it doesn't matter what notes you play."

# Oh, oh-oh,oh,oh

# Oh, oh-oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

# Oh, oh-oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh... #

In that particular case, that was a fun thing. That was like, "Wheee!

"Let's have fun."

But I still think they worked on one mic

because I was so...obsessed with that.

I really was. It was like an obsession. "What do you mean? No.

"We can't do that!"

Fun.

When they were out in California in '68, they met Chuck Grodin.

They also met at that time two television producers who

laid out to them a marvellous format for them to present their music

and a television special.

I had met Art Garfunkel when we did Catch 22,

I guess somewhere in the year prior to Songs Of America.

My previous experience writing and directing in television was

that I had been fired three times over a six-week period

from Candid Camera.

That was my total background.

Hardly somebody who would be chosen to write and direct

the Simon and Garfunkel special, the only one.

At the peak of their fame, when Bridge Over Troubled Water.

I had this idea, which I presented to Paul and Art

that this special should reflect how it influenced what

Paul was writing about - the Vietnam War, the Poor People's March,

equal rights for people and how this feeds in to his songs,

one way or another.

Chuck had a take on helping with our show and was the director

and stamping its nature.

It has a lot of heart, it has a lot of sociological awareness.

# Cathy, I'm lost, I said

# Though I knew she was sleeping

# I'm empty and aching and I don't know why

# Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

# They've all come too far, America

# All come too far, America... #

AT&T was the sponsor. I'd laid out for them.

Every single thing that you see in the final version of

this Songs Of America.

Poor People's March, Cesar Chavez.

Paul and I visited with Cesar Chavez, it was all down on paper.

When it was finished,

they sent their representative from NW Ayer Advertising

and he was furious.

He was livid at me.

I was alone in a room with him and he said,

"You're using OUR money to sell YOUR ideology."

I was 34 years old. I looked like I was 26.

I really had no idea what he meant. I said, "What's my ideology?"

He said, "Humanistic approach."

I said, "You mean there are people against the humanistic approach?"

He said, "You're goddamn right there are.

"The southern affiliates of AT&T are not going to appreciate

"seeing black and white kids going to school together.

"They're not going to appreciate it.

"This is going to offend a lot of AT&T southern affiliates."

I thought I had just left the world.

I think we were naive kids from the northeast who thought

that's the way the world was and everybody thought that way.

But they didn't.

I must remind you that starving a child is violence.

Suppressing a culture is violence.

Neglecting school children is violence.

Punishing a mother and her family is violence.

This was a big awakening to me - the humanistic approach.

Then they said, "We'd like you to make some changes."

I said, "Like what?"

"When Coretta King says poverty is a child without an education.

"I'd like you to lower the volume on that." "I said, "To what level?"

He said, "Inaudible."

# I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail

# Yes, I would

# If I could

# I surely would

# Hmm-mm... #

The sponsor, which was AT&T, really disliked it

and withdrew their sponsorship, after having paid for the whole thing.

The powers of centralised America had to find a mesh with

how much Simon and Garfunkel want to talk about poverty in America.

What our take is of the Vietnam War. That's essential to the show.

We would hear a very interesting behind the scenes

confrontation with Simon and Garfunkel and America as it was.

Good evening. I'm Robert Ryan.

Tonight, the Alberto-Culver company,

makers of the famous Alberto VO5 products, bring you

Simon and Garfunkel and their first TV special, Songs Of America.

These two young men have attracted

a tremendous following among the youth of America with

their lyrical interpretation of the world we live in.

Alberto-Culver just came up with 860,000

and they had Robert Ryan, the late actor Robert Ryan,

he came on before with a kind of apology, explaining, we feel that

these two artists have earned the right to have their voices heard.

It was like, "Don't look at me, boss.

"We feel they've earned the right."

By the end of the first commercial, the Robert Kennedy funeral train,

one million people shut off the television set.

One million people shut it off right there. They didn't want to see this.

They thought they were getting a straight entertainment special

and it was political.

It was anti-war and it was. I guess it was liberal.

# When you're weary

# Feeling small

# When tears are in your eyes

# I will dry them all

It was the first time that Bridge Over Troubled Water was played

and was played over footage of the trains that carried Jack Kennedy

and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King funeral

so it was played over those three people.

The sponsor said, "It isn't balanced."

We said, "What isn't balanced about it?"

They said, "Well, they're all Democrats."

We said, "We think of them all as assassinated people, you know."

# I will lay me down

# Like a bridge over troubled water

# I will lay me down... #

We got a telegram from Ethel Kennedy after that.

This is after Robert Kennedy had been assassinated.

She appreciated that there were people out there...who were

interested in people who needed somebody to reach out to them.

We got hate mail. That was like the time of America, love it or leave it.

We got plenty of that. "You don't like it here, get out."

As far as the show did that night, it got killed by a Peggy Fleming

ice skating special, which will tell you where the country

was at much more than anything else that I can say.

I guess, in retrospect, that's something to be proud of

because we spoke up for who we were in our generation.

That's who we were.

We're staying in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

I'd get my guitar and I'd head downstairs.

I'd get in the elevator to go to the studio.

In the elevators, they have newspapers.

I'd see the headlines on the newspapers and I'd think,

"Why am I going to make this album?

"What's the point in this album, the world is crumbling?"

Beethoven's, uh...

..200th birthday is coming up, did you know that?

Beethoven was writing this part,

and parallel fifths were scorned, ironically.

Beethoven said, "Where is there a law that says you can't write in parallel fifths?

"Where did that law come from?

"I'm writing parallel fifths, I say you can."

He was a fool, Beethoven.

Somebody else's 200th birthday is coming up in not so long.

-200th birthday?

-Yeah.

-Who's that?

Americas.

Think it's going to make it?

For me, most of all, it has the vibe between Simon and Garfunkel,

and when I look at it nowadays I go, "Gee, we were so bonded.

"Our sense of humour is inside, we knew each other, what we're talking about."

It comes off nice on-screen, it's like a scrapbook photo for me,

it warms my heart to see this early Paul and Artie.

My favourite moment is I'm sitting off-camera,

I asked Paul if he had any other aspiration, "Like what?"

I said, "Well, would you ever think of running for office?

"You know, be President?"

Oh, I don't know.

Some days.

Why are you smiling?

-Some days you'd like to be President?

-Some days I wouldn't want to be President.

What do you feel like the days you want to be President, why would you want to be?

Straighten it all out.

And get on back to my songwriting in peace!

I would like to develop myself as an artist, as much as I could.

And to be President, I just don't have time, really I don't.

See, he wants to develop himself as an artist, Chuck.

You have no time to be President?

I feel I'd make the time.

LAUGHTER

You're singing against a B minor and B major on the track,

-so I don't suggest you chord this...

-OK, what do we have?

..it's going to be very dissonant, so what I suggest is you hold the F sharp.

SINGING WITH PIANO

-Did you get that, Mac?

-Yeah, that's around 23.

-Right.

'So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright' was kind of interesting,

the changes, the chord changes, because it's a Brazilian influence,

but I don't know, really, how I did it.

When I got the call to work on 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'

they called me to work on 'Keep The Customer Satisfied'

and 'So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright'.

MUSIC PLAYS

Love it.

Love it, love it love it.

I think it's a string quartet, it's kind of buried, as I recall,

but very tasty - Jimmy's a fine musician, you know, a fine musician.

That's it, we got it.

'Artie was an architecture major at Columbia.'

Yes, Mort.

All right, I've had an interesting afternoon.

And he loved Frank Lloyd Wright, so it was 'So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright'.

You hear me on the end of it?

# So long already... #

So long, already, Artie!

It's in the fade.

You listen to it and you'll hear Artie, riffing over and over again,

and this voice way in the distance saying,

"So long already, Artie!"

I'm out in LA and Paul said,

"I've written what I think is my greatest song,

"and I want to play it for you."

And I'm sitting in a chair,

and he played 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'.

And, you know, if your around the music business all your life,

every now and then, maybe once a decade,

you'll hear a song that's so striking, so powerful, so unusual,

and 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' was that for me.

I have no idea where it came from.

It just came all of a sudden, you know.

One minute it wasn't there, and the next minute the whole line was there.

It was one of the shocking...

..one of the shocking moments in my songwriting career, you know.

And at the time I remember thinking, "This is really...

"..considerably better than I usually write."

But that is how fast it came.

HUMMING NOTES TO 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'

All of a sudden I sang that line and I sort of just stopped.

And then I sang it twice.

I said, "Oh, you can sing it twice in a row."

But that's a pretty long melody, especially for a pop song.

And then I wrote the lyrics, and then I showed the lyrics to...

I said to Artie, "I wrote this song and I think you should sing it."

The hold damn song is a gem.

I love running through the line from top to bottom

and delivering Paul's intentions.

"If you're down and out, let my lucky gift of a voice be a friend."

"Lucky gift."

You shake out the human condition so you can be as honest as you can

about these beautifully written words.

The first thoughts were, those lyrics are too simple.

They're very - "When you're weary, when you're feeling small,

"when evening falls so hard, I'll comfort you, I'll take your part" -

they're just too simple.

And, of course, that's what really made it...

..so universal.

I remember distinctly, Paul coming in the control room and he said,

"I think I've wrote something really over the top, this is really good."

And he sat and he played it and sang.

And that's how it started.

# When you're weary

# Feeling sad

# When peace is all you seek

# I will be there, whooo

# To bring you sleep... #

Artie and I, and Roy Halee, were working with Larry Knechtel.

Larry Knechtel was the piano player.

And we spent two or maybe three days...

..just making up the piano parts - because I wrote it on guitar.

I showed Larry the song and he -

mostly Larry, but all of us - sort of combined

to make up what it is that we heard in terms of gospel piano.

I sat at the piano at the end of each verse

of Bridge Over Troubled Water and said, "Let's work out how we turn around."

After the Like A Bridge Over Troubled Water set twice,

how are we going to come around chord-wise to the quiet set-up of the next verse?

So here was this piano piece that he wrote

and it was, you know, beautifully written.

Fortunately for us, he had an extensive knowledge of gospel music

because we hadn't used him in that capacity before.

In fact, he plays bass on a bunch of our records.

Larry Knechtel had already put his part on.

He and Art went in and did the piano part.

And then we went in with the bass and drums and did overdub to that.

And then we overdubbed the strings in the big studio in Hollywood.

Ernie Freeman did the arrangement.

I sent a demo to the arranger

and the arranger came back and handed it out to everybody

and it said on it, "Like A Pitcher of Water."

You know? We said, "What is this?"

He said, "Well, that's the song."

So I thought, "Well...

"that's how much attention he's paid to this demo -

"he didn't even hear the words right!"

He just heard "Like A Pitcher of Water."

So I still have that framed at home.

Then we went back to New York and we worked on Artie's vocal.

That was the last thing we did - we went and worked on Artie's vocal.

And here it goes.

'That was his time to really show his chops.'

# When you're weary. #

The fact is from the moment I locked on to that melody

and the fun of singing,

it was a thunderous reaction.

It always has been.

# When tears are in your eyes

# I will dry them all. #

Art sang the song very powerfully.

I heard Art do the song at the vocal mic,

getting the sound for the mic

and sung Bridge Over Troubled Water...

a cappella and it was chill bumps.

# ..And friends just can't be found

# Like a bridge over troubled water

# I will lay me down

# Like a bridge over troubled water

# I will lay me down. #

It was a great two-verse song

with the most heartfelt of lyrics.

It needed nothing. But the record-maker in me

loved the notion that these two verses could be a set-up

for an as yet unwritten third verse

and we could be calling this all runway material

for a take-off that's waiting.

Roy Halee and Artie said, "You have to write a third verse.

"The song wants to be bigger. It wants to be a really big song."

And I said, "No, it doesn't. It's a little hymn. It's just a little hymn.

"That's the way I hear it."

And they said, "No, no, really, you have to write a third verse."

So I wrote a third verse in the studio, which I never do,

you know, I always take a long time to write.

But I wrote this one in the studio.

-# Sail on, silvergirl... #

-Paul's mic?

# Sail on by

-# Your time has come... #

-Where's my mic?

Hold it.

# ..All your dreams are on their way

# See how they shine

# Oh

# If you need a friend

# I'm sailing right behind

# Like a bridge over troubled water

# I will ease your mind

# Like a bridge over troubled water

-# I will ease your mind.

-#

Those wonderful words and that triumph

of an airplane taking off...

From the moment the song was written,

and I had the great fun of execution, the two together worked.

Well, I didn't think it was a smash,

but I thought it was something really exceptional.

I thought it was probably too long for a commercial record.

It was all piano up until the last verse.

It just...

I didn't think that it was... I didn't think that it was a hit.

I thought Cecelia was going to be a hit, which it was.

So you always knew the animal called the single

and knew what was an album piece that was really happening,

this seemed the latter.

As a single, too slow, too long.

Clive Davis came in the studio, president of CBS, and said,

"I want to get behind it all the way.

"It's the title of your album. It is the first single.

"Be unapologetic about such a slow song

"because I'm going to get behind it with faith."

I knew it was exceptional and...

..the first time I heard it on the radio...

..I knew that it was a hit because it sounded huge

just with the voice and the piano.

And if a song jumped out of the radio,

that meant there was some kind of magic in the way you cut it.

There was a moment in time

when Bridge Over Troubled Water didn't exist at all,

and then there was another moment when it did, or it started to.

Where does it come from, what actually happens,

were you in the shower one day?

I was listening to some music by a gospel group

called the Swan Silvertones.

And I heard, uh...

It was the music that was in my mind most of the time and every time

I'd come home I'd put that music on and I'd listen to it

and I think that must have subconsciously influenced me

cos I started to go to gospel changes.

HE PLAYS GOSPEL GUITAR

And that's how that fell in.

I write for various reasons.

Some songs I write for the pleasure of writing a song.

It doesn't have any great meaning, it's just a song.

Songs are nice.

Some songs you try and express yourself emotionally.

Those are different songs for me,

and they express what I feel

and they relieve tensions that I feel when I express them.

# Here is my song for the asking

# Ask me and I'll play

# So sweetly I'll make you smile

# This is my tune... #

I love that song, Song For the Asking is an under-appreciated gem.

Of all of Paul's statements from the heart,

this is one of the supreme songs

I don't hear mentioned enough.

I never hear it covered, why doesn't somebody do that,

it's just a gem of a song.

Song For the Asking which I think closes the record...

Well that was my, one of my little solos, you know,

I guess we were balancing out songs

that were solos and songs that were sung together.

And, er...

it's a pretty sweet song,

you know, straight ahead.

Almost embarrassing.

It's Paul's calling card, you know?

When you think about what he's saying,

here's my song for the asking, ask me and I will play.

It's a great statement from a human being

because thinking it over,

I have been sad, I don't have to be this person.

It's great stuff for a lover to say.

Give me a chance and I'm dying to pour my heart out to you.

Well, you know, I think in the notes of apology

that show up in album after album, um, that's just to say

I haven't forgotten what I did

to various people.

You know, I was not an angel, that's for sure.

That is really the big break of Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Up until then we sang all the songs together,

but on Bridge Over Troubled Water there was like,

well, Artie's singing almost all of Bridge Over Troubled Water himself

and then I join in at the end,

he's singing verses of So Long Frank Lloyd Wright,

I'm singing the bridge,

I'm singing Baby Driver sort of by myself,

I'm singing most of Only Living Boy by myself then he joins in

on the harmony, so we had begun to separate

how we would have made albums.

Separating the voices

so it was more like a Beatles record than an Everly Brothers record.

Where you knew the two voices

and the two characters well enough

that we could each have our own songs and, um,

it would feel natural and that's the first time that we

did that and probably would have been the pattern for the next album

or two or however many albums

we would have made had we stayed together.

Um, it's just the way it worked out.

Like Bridge, Artie was...that was his song.

Paul said, that's your song, you can do that song, that's you.

There were two things left off Bridge.

One was a song called Cuba Si Nixon No...

It was about a hijacking, about a guy hijacking a plane to Cuba

and Artie really didn't like that song.

-Standing up!

-We stay on the four.

I was voting against it in those days,

thinking it doesn't represent our more thoughtful selves.

It was the only one Paul ever wrote in this fountain of delight,

it was the only time I put my finger on a spigot

and said, I have a hard time getting behind that lyric.

All right, then start on the lower note.

Just let me get the chords before I get the note.

You sing it and get the vocals in your head and then I'll learn it.

And then there was a Bach piece that Artie really wanted

to put on the album and I really didn't want

to put a Bach piece on the album, and we argued about both of those songs and finally we said,

look, forget it, that's it, it's done.

Put it out the way it is and in a way, kind of interesting,

they were both indications of where we each wanted to go.

I wanted to go more towards something rough and political

and he wanted to go towards something classical.

I was hard-nosed about it in those days showing that we were

working together too much, we needed a rest.

Today I look at it and I go, it's a good rock 'n' roll song. It swings.

What's the problem? You can say these things.

In those days I thought Cuba, Si. Nixon, No -

"It's to too easy to mistake for simplistic political talk."

That's what I said in those days.

Where I was heading...musically,

or what I was interested in musically, was not a continuation of

The Everly Brothers two-part harmony

that we based our sound on in the beginning.

It was evolving and separating anyway.

And I think that would have been inevitable.

'I can't see myself doing this five years from now'

I speak of the whole spiritual sphere,

that whole...aspect about my life.

This entertaining....

..it has nothing to do with that.

To say that, yes, that's all I have to do is to be a professional songwriter...

..or as entertainers is inaccurate.

I'm doing a lot else, personally.

When Bridge Over Troubled Water was over, I wanted a rest from Paul.

The amount that we were in the studio and in each other

and duelling for what makes the great record that knocks

the kids out the most, that duel was tiring.

So I would've loved a rest from what we were doing.

No next project with Paul for a year, please.

But then...

..I loved where we were at.

When you say when it was over, you couldn't ask for a luckier place to be.

People really getting what you're doing

and you're invited to stretch out creatively and take the top higher.

This is what we're here for, no?

I think that there would've been one more album.

It would've been a very hard album to follow,

because there wasn't any way to get bigger than

Bridge Over Troubled Water, I mean that was grandiose...

..in all kinds of ways.

Gee, my memories of what you're talking about,

our era and the fun of making records that chased after

The Beatles, as creative and as wonderful sonically.

We used to think there are about ten aspects of record-making.

The grooves the musicians establish - very important.

The songs, its lyric, its melody, the changes,

the engineering.

Well, if you can do 80/90% of those things first rate

you can come out with a Good Vibrations.

So we were chasing after those wonderful records cos

the rock 'n' roll era of the '60s was open-ended at the top.

It was a very, very long-lasting,

rewarding experience dealing with two guys who...we all loved music.

I grew up with them, we all grew up together

so it makes it very special, they're like family.

When you hear their song, and you do their record,

it's almost a religious experience.

It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

There's so many different things in this album.

It's not all just big orchestra sound, it's the rhythm sounds.

And the sounds in it are different.

And things that people want to learn and play.

Because I was focussing on record-making and writing songs

and blending with Artie, I never really paid attention

to like how unique the voice was.

You couldn't miss Art Garfunkel's voice.

It really was an extraordinary voice - and still is.

He turns me on and I turn him on

and when we met each other at 11, we'd give each other a charge.

I recognised him as the cool kid in the neighbourhood, the live wire.

And he recognised me as the same,

and we were buds right from the beginning and we turned musical immediately.

Our blend knocked us out as did our sense of humour

and sense of being unbounded by the Queens neighbourhood

but having a notion of taking it somewhere

# And the years are rolling by me They are rockin' evenly

# I am older than I once was

# And younger than I'll be that's not unusual

# It isn't strange after changes upon changes

# We are more or less the same

# After changes we are more or less the same

# Li-la-li

# Li-la-la-la-li-la-li

# Li-la-li

# Li-la-la-la-li-la-li La-la-la-li. #

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

# When you're weary

# Feeling small

# When tears are in your eyes

# I will dry them all

# I'm on your side

# When times get rough

# And friends just can't be found

# Like a bridge over troubled water

# I will ease your mind

# Like a bridge over troubled water

# I will ease your mind. #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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