As a reformed Simon and Garfunkel return to Dublin, Eileen Battersby recalls the thrill of discovering US folk's dynamic duo
Take two smart Jewish boys from New York; one small, edgy, intense and driven, a natural songwriter, the other tall, rangy, a bit of a dreamer and almost good-looking with the voice of a choirboy. The combined talents, and voices, of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel add up to some of the finest sounds ever to emerge from a recording studio, anywhere. Between 1964 and 1970, they made five albums: Wednesday Morning, 3AM (1964); Sounds of Silence (1966); Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (also 1966); Bookends (1968) and Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970). They won five Grammy awards and also recorded the soundtrack of The Graduate.
Together they created an essentially folk-rock American music, expressing an articulate, introspective East Coast intellectual mood that belongs to a now distant era, yet remains timeless. "And the moon rose over an open field." It was as they sang, "We walked off to look for America", and I reckon they did, bringing the rest of us on the journey that included some stopovers in London. There was no blue collar rebellion, no hillbillies, and not even the rumoured sighting of a lone cowboy; but it was America, albeit harmonically intellectualised, quasi-romantic, far closer to Saul Bellow and John Updike than to Glen Campbell.
Who else but Simon would have written a salute to architect Frank Lloyd Wright? Through the voices of Simon and Garfunkel the word "harmony" certainly acquired an extra dimension. The Boxer, America, Homeward Bound, The Sound of Silence, Scarborough Fair, April Come She Will, The Dangling Conversation, The Only Living Boy in New York, Old Friends and so on: it's an eloquent, highly literate recording catalogue, shaped by yearning, anger, romance, sex, lyricism, catchy, often haunting tunes, political satire and the humour of subversion that appears to have driven Simon for most of his life.
There were many moments of what can only be described as absolute purity, perhaps best encapsulated by Bridge Over Troubled Water, a classic, reassuring anthem for soulful Everyman everywhere, and one of Simon's finest writing achievements - which is quite a claim in itself considering the range of brilliant songs he has written. Singing Bridge was certainly the culmination of Garfunkel's career as the custodian of a clear, soaring tenor of fragile beauty capable of meeting the demanding range of that song of songs.
By the time they last performed in Dublin in 1982, the partnership had been dead for about a decade, the college boys were now mature solo artists and their Dublin performance conveyed all the wryness of surviving life's experiences. Standing among the audience in the RDS that evening when we were young, I remember being struck by the wide age range. We saw 10-year-olds and teenagers; university students and parents; civil servants, hippy types, a few nuns and older people, people of 60 - about the same age as Simon (61) and Garfunkel (62) are now. Next week, more than 20 years on, they return to Dublin, and the fan base will probably now extend from eight to about 80.
There was another evening, in New York, a night when the black sky was challenged by thousands of burning candles. It was The Central Park Concert on September 19th, 1981. Mayor Ed Koch introduced them to 500,000 happy New Yorkers. The pair opened this most famous of free gigs with Mrs Robinson, went straight into Homeward Bound, followed by America.
"What a night," declared Garfunkel, and no kidding, it was that and more. Still crazy after all these years, the pair seemed to perform the 1974 Simon solo hit with heightened irony, except that neither of these guys are crazy. Together and apart, they have always been deliberate artists. True, it had been harder for Garfunkel, polite, old-world formal, eccentric, a gentle, thoughtful singer and a talented, understated actor as seen in Carnal Knowledge. I interviewed him once and can recall describing him as "funny, touchy, unpredictable, the sort of character who would bring pillow slips on a camping trip." He called himself "a troubadour" and considered his solo albums, Angel Clare (1973), Breakaway (1976) and Fate For Breakfast (1979) "under-appreciated". As for Paul Simon, he just continued writing great songs, making great music, exploring - creating a diverse, exciting repertoire from Late in the Evening to You Can Call Me Al to The Obvious Child, to You're The One, that has long consolidated his legacy to modern music.
The US, well, North America, dominated the mid-1960s folk singer/songwriter arena - Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot are all Canadian but, between the ever-improvisational Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and James Taylor, the Yanks haven't done badly either. Dylan and Simon fill a music library. But the small, dark guy from Queens with the warm, layered, husky, slightly nasal voice, who wrote the songs for the partnership, and has continued writing great tunes, is a phenomenon. More than equal to Dylan as a lyricist and melody maker, Simon is the more complete musician, and as for singing - it's no contest.
Just when some obituary writers were preparing to say Simon and Garfunkel together live, but solo are dead, Simon proved them wrong, time and again. Long before the triumphant Graceland album in 1986, dominated by The Boy in the Bubble with its defiant line "It's every generation/ throws a hero up the pop charts", Simon had proved that he could not only write songs for his jauntier solo self, he could also perform them.
How come he has remained so consistently good? The answer lies in his inherent musicality, his sponge-like ability to hear the rhythms in many types of music, from South America to Africa, to the Caribbean and traditional English folk songs, and make them his own. Mother and Child Reunion, his solo début single in 1972, was inspired by reggae culture and could not have been further from Bridge Over Troubled Water. That album had been the swan song of the partnership, but what a goodbye: it remains one of the biggest-selling records of all time. In 1977, Bridge Over Troubled Water received the Britannia Award for the best international pop album and single 1952-1977, as voted by the British music industry.
As fate goes, it's a good story. Simon and Garfunkel, the men, are products of Eisenhower's America, a conservative place that was beginning to loosen up until Vietnam happened and tarnished the dream. Garfunkel's family were of Jewish emigrant stock. Both sets of his grandparents had come from Eastern Romania; their names feature on the list at Ellis Island. They had settled on the Lower East Side with the other new arrivals, and then moved on to Brooklyn, and then on to Forest Hills where he was born in 1941.
Exactly one year later, Paul Simon was born, in Newark. His parents moved to Forest Hills when the future songwriter was two years old, and thus, in Queen's, both families joined the US middle-classes. By the time their sons were old enough to be neighbourhood kids, they had met each other. In the mid 1950s, the teenagers listened to the Everly Brothers and had formed an act, Tom and Jerry. In 1957 they had their first hit, Hey Schoolgirl, the only song they ever co-wrote. Garfunkel then went off to study architecture, which he abandoned after three and a half years to major in maths, in which he also completed a masters.
Meanwhile, Paul Simon had taken an English literature degree and was recovering from an abortive stint as a law student. They met up again and started performing together, playing the folk clubs. The rest, as they say, is history.
The two clever college graduates were more tidy-looking, more conservative and, well, more respectable than most of their peers on the 1960s music scene. There was also one vital factor that set them apart: the attention they paid to production values. Listen to any Simon and Garfunkel track, any Paul Simon solo and most Garfunkel solo tracks, and the quality of the production impresses. If there was a third presence in the union that wasSimon and Garfunkel, it was sound engineer/producer Roy Halee. Simon's songs are as carefully orchestrated as symphonies.
There are lots of archive shots of them at that time, performing live, Simon playing the guitar. Both wear suits and ties. The breakthrough appears to have come when, having earlier recorded an acoustic guitar version of The Sound of Silence on Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, it was then remixed and given the full electric treatment on the Sounds of Silence album. It was the moment the pair moved from cult to mainstream.
None of the history meant anything to me when I first became aware of them long after they had split. As a child in the US, I had only listened to classical music, particularly Bach, Beethoven and Mozart countering my sister's relentless Country and Western, and our Dad's jazz. It happened in Ireland when my pal Ruth O'Callaghan played the Bridge Over Troubled Waters album in her mom's kitchen. It was about the closest my sports-loving, swotty schoolgirl self came to hippydom. I quickly made up for lost time. By the time the guys sang in Dublin in 1982, I knew all the songs, as well as Simon's solo catalogue.
What's so special about the Simon and Garfunkel phase? A great deal. Look at one great song, The Boxer. There are enduring iconic and romantic images in US life: the cowboy and the defeated athlete. There are no cowboys in Simon's oeuvre, but the figure of the solitary loser - "In the clearing stands a boxer/and a fighter by his trade/And he carries the reminders/Of ev'ry glove that laid him down/And cut him 'til he cried out/In his anger and his shame" - is a defining image of America as clear as that of Brando's Terry in On The Waterfront.
Should they sing Old Friends next week, that line "How terribly strange to be 70" won't seem so strange. My nine-year-old daughter is coming to the concert - she knows all the songs. For Ruth and myself it's not about nostalgia: rhymin' Simon's music remains a constant. It doesn't make you lament the past, but it certainly makes you think, remember and, as always, sing along with lyrics you simply don't forget. Simon and Garfunkel are coming to town with songs that defy the years. Let's hope they do.
Simon And Garfunkel play Dublin's RDS Arena next Saturday, with support from The Everly Brothers. Tickets are sold out