Art Garfunkel Official Site
By Paul Zollo
1990
Old Friends. " It starts so softly, two quiet chords taking   turns, and then Simon alone singing "old friends sat on their park bench like   bookends. . ." before he's joined in harmony by his oldest of friends, Art   Garfunkel, on the tune, "Lost in their overcoats waiting for the sunset. . ." Later Garfunkel takes his turn, and sings alone "Can you imagine us years from   today sharing a park bench quietly?" From Simon and Garfunkel's landmark   Bookends album, "old Friends" is a song, like most of their work, which   continues to reverberate long after the record is over, like an echo without   end.
Art Garfunkel first experimented with echo when he was a kid, singing in   the synagogue and the halls of his school. From an early age he recognized the   almost holy quality of his own voice: an angelic, ethereal sound that excited   his own ears before the rest of the world ever heard it.
"I learned how to   sing with Artie, " Paul Simon told us. "My voice was the one that went with that   voice." That Simon and Garfunkel grew up only blocks from each other in Queens,   New York, and attended the same school is one of those enormously lucky twists   of fate; lucky not only for the two of them, providing each with a counterpart   in harmony both musical and personal, but for the world at large, who have been   blessed by the magical sound of these two voices together .
Inspired by the   Everly Brothers, Paul and Artie's voices blended as if they were brothers;   listen today to "Scarborough Fair, " "The Boxer," "Homeward Bound" or any of   their other classic duets, and experience a sensation that was especially   soothing in the turmoil of the sixties, and resonates today every bit as   powerfully, the sound of two voices singing from a shared soul. It's a sound   that their engineer and producer Roy Halee said couldn't be achieved when they   separately overdubbed their vocal parts onto tape. But when Simon & Garfunkel sang together at the same time, it was magic. They met backstage in a   school production of Alice In Wonderland but even before that Simon was   intrigued by this tall, curly headed kid who could impress the girls with the   sweetest and smoothest of singing voices. They teamed up as teens and at that   tender age rehearsed like professionals, developing a miraculous precision and   harmonic blend. To hide the ethnicity of their names, they adopted the names of   cartoon characters instead, Tom & Jerry, and entered the world of rock and   roll at fifteen with a song they wrote together and recorded called "Hey   Schoolgirl." The song was a hit and the duo began to live out their dreams while   still dreaming them, appearing on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" as high   schoolers. When their next song failed to fly, the duo broke up for the first of   many times, and Tom became Artie again, and returned to the idea of a career in   teaching.
In a different world, Art Garfunkel might have gone on to become a   professor of Mathematics, quietly and contentedly aiming his enthusiasm for   numbers at a classroom blackboard instead of at the Hit Parade. But through a   series of twists and turns, most of which are detailed in the ensuing interview,   Garfunkel teamed up many more times with his childhood friend, and made some   music that changed the world. Though he was never really comfortable performing   in front of people, he recognized that in the recording studio he could bring   his voice to a state of pure grace, a kind of perfection preserved forever in   his spiritual singing on"Bridge Over Troubled Water" and so many others.
The   partnership of Simon and Garfunkel, despite well- known accounts of their   squabbles and differences, stands today as evidence of the power of real   friendship; Garfunkel's perfect harmonies added a depth and richness to Simon's   songs, while Simon continued to grow in his writing and provide Garfunkel with   the greatest material a singer could ask for. When their time came to an end,   and Artie was away in Mexico shooting Catch-22, the songs that Simon wrote   reflected the sadness of their separation, two of the sweetest and most enduring   songs of friendship ever written, "The Only Living Boy In New York" and "So   Long, Frank Lloyd Wright. " As a solo artist, Garfunkel turned to the songs of   some of the other great writers of our time, including Randy New- man and Jimmy   Webb. Webb wrote "All I Know", a soaring love song rooted in the gospel passion   of the Baptist church ideal for Garfunkel's angelic voice. It was the first hit   from his debut album Angel Clare, which also featured an impassioned   interpretation of Randy Newman's "Old Man." Garfunkel's entire Watermark album   was devoted to Jimmy Webb songs new and old, and it's a treasure, featuring a   heartbreaking rendering of Webb's "Wooden Planes".
Garfunkel is also a man of   many other talents, as I was reminded more than once in our interview. Besides   his acting in films from Carnal Knowledge through Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing, A   Sensual Obsession, he's also a poet, having written a book of 84 prose poems   called Still Water, which was published by E.P. Dutton (now New American   Library) in September of 1989.
He possesses a rare voice that seems only to   be growing richer as he grows older. On his most recent album, Lefty, his   version of "When A Man Loves A Woman" could bring warmth to even the coldest of   hearts; it's one of the most gracefully romantic records ever made, a hopeful   and healing reminder that tenderness still exists in these turbulent   times.
"I have to warn you," he told me in advance of our interview, "Simon   and Garfunkel was twenty years ago. I may not remember that much about my old   group." Given that, it was a happy surprise to discover that not only did   Garfunkel remember the Simon and Garfunkel years, he remembered with them with   vivid clarity, and with much humor and love.
SongTalk: You have one of the most amazing voices in music today. Was your   voice a natural occurrence or did you work to develop it?
Art Garfunkel : Well, it's a God-given talent and I observed that I had   it at a very young age, maybe five or so. My parents both sang very casually   around the house. My family bought a wire recorder in the forties when I grew   up, and they would sing a little into the wire recorder. Not seriously but just   to make music around the house, and I must have liked the pleasing sound and   their harmony. There was a little singing in my childhood and I could do that   myself, I realized. The next thing I knew is, with a little bit of practice   walking to school - You know how when you're walking on the pavement and you hit   the cracks, you can get a song going to your walking step? - Well, I used to   sing and when there was no one around, I could sing pretty loudly, and I thought   I had a nice voice. So I would sing a song and then start again at the top and   push the key a whole tone higher. I remember doing this as a young child. I must   have been training. Taking this serious attitude. What then happened was I fell   in love with echo chambers. All the kids would be let out of school and you'd be   at the back of the line. And you'd be humming something to yourself and the kids   would go ahead, and you'd be in the stairwell with all those tiles and I'd start   singing and it would sound really nice in the tiles. So everybody would go home   and I would linger. And sing for about an hour or so. And I remember thinking,   [laughs] "This is a really nice voice coming out of my throat. " I was really   digging the tiles but I did have a lucky thing going on there in my throat.
ST: What would you sing to the tiles ?
AG: Songs I had heard on the radio. This was the Perry Coma era.   Schmaltzy ballads. Plus there were certain inspirational songs that would get to   me: "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel. Stuff with the goose-bumps used to   get to me. And I would sing those.
And then I would sing a little in the   synagogue. See, if you're a singer, you love to turn your own ears on. You look   for those rooms where the reverb is great. I remember the synagogue had a lot of   wood and it was a great room. And it was a captive audience and you could sing   these minor key songs and make them cry, and that was a thrill.
Then I would   sing in grade-school when I was about eight. I bitched onto Nat King Cole's hit, "Too Young." [Sings] "They tried to tell us we're too young. . . " That was my   song and I was totally identified with that. I sang it in the school talent show   and got popular with the girls that way.
That got me a little into stage   experience. They cast me in a play about Stephen Foster. I played Stephen Foster   and sang "I Dream Of JP.annie With The Light Brown Hair" and some other Stephen   Foster tunes.
I remember singing, [sings] "...a beautiful sight, we're happy   tonight..." [ "Winter Wonderland"] They cast me in some Christmas thing so I   sang that. When I was in the sixth grade, Paul Simon, who grew up three blocks   from me but I didn't know him (he knew me, though), said, "I would see you in   these talent shows in the 4th Grade. " So by the sixth grade we met each other   because we were both cast in the school graduation program, Alice In Wonderland.   And he was the White Rabbit and I was the Cheshire Cat. There was no singing in   that play but there was a lot of [laughs] humor and joking around and a really   fast new friendship between the two of us backstage. So we became best buddies.
ST: From what I understand, Simon was impressed by your ability to attract   schoolgirls with your singing, and he wanted a part of that action.
AG: Yes, it was a means to popularity. That was the way you got to be   known and he thought it was cool. And he'd seen me in the hall. "There's that   guy who sings." And I would sing sometimes at the Jewish High Holiday services.
ST: You would sing in Hebrew?
AG: Yes.
ST: The Kol Nidre?
AG: Not exactly that one, but you've got the picture. It had all that   embellishment stuff. Kvetches, as we call them.
ST: Did you ever want to be a cantor?
AG : Yes. I did. Not as a real profession, but as something I might do   around the Jewish New Year, the High Holy Days. Something I might do on a   regular basis every year, I used to consider that.
ST: Did you ever return to that?
AG : No. Not really. At Passover, I'll get up over the wine and do a   little thing.
ST: When you began hanging out with Simon, did you hear him sing as well?
AG : Yes. When Paul and I were first friends, starting in the sixth grade   and seventh grade, we would sing a little together and we would make up radio   shows and become disc jockeys on our home wire recorder. And then came rock and   roll. The very phrase was born through the mouth of Alan Freed as we were junior   high schoolers. And when we listened to that subversive, dirty, rhythm and blues   music on the radio, we know that was the cool stuff. It was the only thing in   American society, aside from baseball, that had real genuine appeal and was not   hype-y. So we emulated the songs and practiced sounding like them and we tried   to have our own record, and we knew we were going to try to get on a label, and   we would work on our harmonies. And then we got remarkably serious in our   rehearsals . We would have sessions that were so much about accuracy and   patience and repetition and study. I would sit and examine exactly how Paul says   his 'T's at the end of words Like 'start.' And where would the tongue hit the   palette exactly. And we would be real masters of precision, figuring this would   be the way to make it sound slick and tight and professional.
ST: Were you driving force behind that precision?
AG : I would say yes. As a rehearsal freak, yes. Paul is a very creative   artist but I'm more that thorough, meticulous, disciplined nut.
ST: When you began singing with him, did you help him develop his voice?
AG : Well, "help him" sounds too much like spoon-feeding. I can't really   say it was that way. We were both copying what we heard on the radio. I wasn't   really teaching him anything. He was copying what I was doing a little. His tone   got some of the mellow, airy sound that I had. I think he intuitively developed   his style along my lines because I jumped in on it first. But it was all his   doing and not my doing any teaching or anything.
ST: Were the two of you able to harmonize together easily from the start?
AG : Yes, it came pretty naturally. I'm the kind of person who can hear   that stuff. If you sing along to the radio and you're not going to sing unison   with the melody, but find the harmony, I find that pretty easy to do. Then came   the magic words "Everly Brothers." When they hit the radio with "Bye Bye love, " we were really off and away. They killed us and we thought that was the coolest   sound. We used to wait for their records to come out. So I think you can hear   that they were a tremendous influence on us and on so many people. This nation   should prize them as one of the great treasures of our musical history. Those   guys were extraordinary. Not only because they were so damn good. but they were   so cool; their sound was so neat, and so unlike anyone else.
ST: In your early songs with Simon, you often sang melody and he would   sing a lower harmony. How did you develop that idea?
AG: The song seems to ask for the harmony. You do two things: You try not   to repeat yourself shake up the formula and observe what the song and the lyric   and the arrangement seems to call for. We do that, for example, on "Sounds of   Silence." I sing the melody. We pitched the song fairly high because I'm a   tenor. That left Paul below me, looking for a harmony part. I don't know how we   originally come up with these things...
ST: Do you recall constructing that harmony part with him? Would you do it   together?
AG: We were in my kitchen in my apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, uptown in   Manhattan, when I was a student at Columbia College, actually, in the   Architecture school. Paul would drive in from Queens, showing me these new   songs. And that was the sixth song he had written, "Sound of Silence." And he   showed it to me in my kitchen and I went crazy for how cool it was. Then, I   don't remember us saying, "Who'll do melody?" It could be he said, "I have you   in mind for melody," I don't know... which necessitated it being fairly high.   No, I can't remember us working it out.
ST: Since you mentioned studying architecture, I wanted to ask you about   some of the Simon and Garfunkel myths to see if they are true. One myth is that   when you went by the name of Tom and Jerry that your pseudonym was Tom Graph   because you loved doing graphs, and you were really into math.
AG: That's right. I used to chart the records. I used to listen to Martin   Block's "Make Believe Bathroom" on Saturday mornings and put down the Hit   Parade. I was in love with the Hit Parade for its own sake. Yes, I loved music   but I [laughs] loved the Hit Parade. I loved the rise and fall of the records   with their numbers. Records that went from eleven to four. It killed me because   of the numbers. And I had my graph chart of all these things. And I was very   mathematical, and I guess I chose tat name the way adolescents will do.   G-r-a-p-h.
ST: Math was a strength you had that Simon didn't share?
AG: That's true, yeah. I used to tutor it, and made my money to go to   college on, from that kind of stuff.
ST: Were you actually planning to be an architect?
AG: I was going to architecture school, yes, but I did three and a half   years in the architecture school with no real love or feel for it. I think I was   foolish enough to be involved with the concept of myself as an architect rather   than with designing and buildings, and [laughs] you know, architecture itself.   And after quite a while I realized I don't like to pick up a pen and freely   sketch and let my imagination run towards structures. And if I don't have that   natural desire, what am I doing here? How did I let this illusion go on so long?
ST: Back in the days of Tom and Jerry, I understand that you and Simon   would write he songs together.
AG: That's right.
ST: Did you write "Hey Schoolgirl" together?
AG: Yes. "Hey Schoolgirl" with its phrase "Woo-bop- a-loo-chi-ba" somewhat taken from "Be Bopa Lula," Gene Vincent's hit, was our attempt to   remember an Everly Brothers song that we had both heard one summer. We were   apart, Paul and I, in different places for the summer and at the end of the   summer we had both remembered this great record by the Everlys and we were   trying to reconstruct it. . . and we were getting it wrong! We were, in fact,   writing [laughs] our own song, "Hey Schoolgirl, " in an attempt to remember this   Everly Brothers song. When we heard the real Everlys song we realized, "Well,   that ain't it, so the thing we were groping towards... is ours!" So we finished   writing it and made a demo of it, and signed a contract with a small record   company on the strength of it, because the guy was in the waiting room of the   demo place, and we actually recorded it. It sold 150,000 copies.
ST: You actually had a hit at the age of sixteen?
AG: Yeah.
ST: When that happened to you, did you feel that you had started what   would be a long career?
AG: No, I don't remember thinking that. No, I was too realistic. At that   age I knew that you can't count on anything, that just because you have a   singing voice doesn't mean you have an automatic career. No, your point goes   beyond my thinking.
ST: How did you learn to be so realistic at such a young age?
AG: You just look at things. Nobody has automatic follow- up hits. Here I   was copying the charts all the time. I didn't see a talented first hit always   lead to a follow-up hit. I knew how mercurial the whole thing is. So even though   I thought we were good --- I thought our harmony and our blend was real good ---   I thought we were competitive and had a shot at making it, but once we did have   that first hit, I knew we had a chance of a follow-up hit, but you don't count   on anything. You just wing it. We had a flop and then another one, and then we   disbanded the group.
ST: Did you write other songs besides "Hey Schoolgirl" back then?
AG: Yes, we had a whole bunch of them we wrote together. Some were mostly   mine with a little Paul on words and music, some vice versa.
ST: Is it true that you and Paul used to hang around the Brill Building   and walk into offices to play your songs live for people?
AG: Dozens of them. The Brill Building and 1615 Broadway , two blocks   north of the Brill Building. The newer building . We'd knock on the doors, we   knew the different companies we liked because we were listening to Alan Freed   and we knew the different labels and they were all located there. We'd go up and   we'd often sing live for the people. Which was very nervous-making, you know?   They're busy, so if they don't like you, they cut you off right away. At the end   of your first verse they say, "No thanks, we don't need that. Got anything   else?" [Laughs] You're crushed because wait until they hear the middle part! You   haven't even gotten to the good stuff!
So, sometimes you play a demo for them   and they pick up the needle about nine seconds in and look for other tunes.   Sure, your feelings get kicked around.
ST: Did the two of you ever have thoughts of being a songwriting team,   like Goffin & King or Mann & Weil?
AG: No, because thoughts like that, those are extrapolations beyond what   I was doing.
I was just doing it. I wasn't standing back from it thinking   what it could lead to, what the name of it is, I didn't have such images.   Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to have a hit,   I just wanted to be like those people on the radio. It was all of a case of the   present tense with no projecting into the future, particularly.
ST: Why is it that you and Simon stopped writing songs together?
AG: Well, our whole friendship went into suspension over some thing that   happened in those early days. So for about five years we didn't hang out, we   weren't each other's friends.
ST: This started when you were seventeen?
AG: Exactly. And when we next got back together again, we were really on   different footing. You know, those are very critical years in your development.   So we were more advanced, collegiate types then, and now the world knew of this   thing called Bob Dylan And Joan Baez and all that folky stuff. So now I just   jumped from the late fifties to the early sixties.
ST: So you're about 21 now?
AG: Yeah, and we became friends again. In those interim five years, Paul had made many a demo and so did I. I had two different label deals and a couple   of records out of a folkie nature, but I was basically an architecture student   at Columbia
ST: You put out albums under the name Artie Garr?
AG: Singles. Artie Garr. G-a-r-r. One night we Paul and I hung out. He   showed me these things he was writing because, I think it's fair to say, he was   so impressed with Dylan.
ST: Did you share that enthusiasm?
AG: To the extreme. Dylan was the coolest thing in the country. If you   were a young person at that age, maybe you don't go for Dylan's gravelly style   voice, but who he was and how different and bold his lyrics were, and his look,   that was the closest thing the record business had to James Dean. His album   covers, if you look at the early Dylan, you see a real charismatic choir boy   star of a kid. I remember when Freewheelin Bob Dylan came out, his second CBS   album, I was in Berkeley. I was a carpenter. This was my year off from   architecture school getting field experience And I was singing at Berkeley in   clubs as well as doing carpentry during the day. And I saw in the record store   around early September the new freewheelin' album. And there's Dylan in the   village walking in the snow, and the camera's got an upward angle on him and   he's with his girlfriend. And I knew I had to try and make another record.   [Laughs] That was such a great place to be!
So I came back home [to New   York], ran into Paul, he showed me these new songs he had written, about two or   three songs. And they were really wonderful. And I let him know how keen I was   to work out harmonies for them. In my mind I was thinking, "This has got to make   it now. Between the commerciality of these folky songs that Paul's writing, and   the blend that we had worked on in the past, which will now serve us, we should   have a shot at a career."
ST:- Do you recall which songs he played for you?
AG: Yes. "He Was My Brother," that was his first one. A song called "on A   Side of A Hill" which ended up becoming the "Canticle" part of "Scarborough   Fair." The third one was probably "Sparrow," "Who will love a little sparrow?" The fourth one I know was "Bleecker street." He was probably up to three songs   at that point. So these three did it for me. And then we started harmonizing   them and we were giddy with joy over how appealing it was to our own ears.   Before the world gets to know something that's neat, you get to know it. And   you're your own spectator of what's coming out of you. And it's really kind of .   .. delirious and happy. It made you want to giggle while you were singing, it   was so much fun doing these things.
ST: Had your voices changed at all by then?
AG: No... Paul seemed to sound a little better and we'd never done these   kind of sweet folky things. We were young rockabilly when we were younger. So   the fact that there was kind of an emotional, goose-bump, bittersweet quality   was really nice for our voices. So it was a bit of a new blend to soften up this   way. I guess that's why there was something new and exciting to our own ears   about it.
But we were deeply confident on the inside. I kept thinking, ' his   has to do it. This is very directly appealing."
We'd go to the fraternity   house. It was a good place to practice. But we really wanted the kids to   overhear us. And whoever heard us would go nuts over it. [Laughs] There was   really a something going on there.
Paul kept writing these songs. A new one   would turn up every three, four weeks. "Bleecker street" was the fourth, "Wednesday Morning, 3 A M." was the fifth, and "Sounds of Silence" was the   Sixth.
ST: You wrote the liner notes to the first Simon and Garfunkel album   Wednesday Morning 3 A.M. and in them you wrote that when you first heard "The   Sound of Silence" that it took you by surprise, that level of writing. Do you   recall feeling that way?
AG: No, I don't. I might have been putting on a little bit of gloss for   those notes. I was just reading those "Wednesday Morning" notes and they were   embarrassing. I was mixing my version of Variety magazine jargonese a little bit   there.
I remember thinking "Sound of Silence" was the best of all the songs   he had written. It was just a notch above in terms of commercial appeal. But if   I could rephrase the way I wrote those notes, I would be happy.
ST: You also said in those notes that you were not entirely clear about   the meaning of the song. Was that true ?
AG: Not really. What Paul was doing was touching images that can be taken   a lot of different ways. I understood. I knew where he was coming from, what his   sensibility was.
ST: You put out that album with the original acoustic version of "Sound of   Silence" to have it later overdubbed with electric instruments, which made it a   hit ---
AG: A whole year later. In that year, Paul gave up on Simon & Garfunkel, and America. He became a Yankee in London, a street-singer, folk club   singer, making twenty, twenty-five pounds a night, which was great money for a   college kid.
ST: Why did he have then, after you had released your first album?
AG: Well, the album, after about a year of doing nothing, looked...   defunct.
It was put out in the Spring of '64. He left about a year later. I   joined him in the summer of '65 and he had already carved out a little niche in   that sort of folk circuit of England. So I joined him on some tunes and worked   out my harmonies; he had written four more since I had seen him: "Kathy's Song, " "A Most Peculiar Man," "Blessed" and one other, "I Am A Rock. " By then he was   up to about thirteen, fourteen of them.
ST: What did you do during the period when he was in London?
AG: School. I was probably finishing architecture and finally giving up   to it. Returning to Columbia College, getting a Bachelor's Degree, which is a   period of my life in which I first fell in love with learning, per se. So I was   not really thinking of music as a career at all.
. This is the difference   between Paul and I. He really had broken away from a sort of "proper" profession   and was truly bohemian. He's a musician's son. So he had left America with this "I don't really know what the future is, but I think I might be holding it in my   hands in this guitar."
I, on the other hand, was thinking, "My future's   probably going to be in some professional something. If it's not architect,   maybe I'll teach or something. So my music was, in my mind, more of an   avocation.
ST: But even with such an amazing voice, you didn't foresee a career as a   singer?
AG: No. [Softly] No... I have other talents, Paul.
I teach well. I   used to really like teaching a lot. I enjoyed it a lot and I was good at it.
ST: Did you enjoy it as much as performing?
AG: I hated performing. I love to sing but I don't love to sing in front   of people. I don't have much of a feel for performing. When I think of   performing, I think of being so nervous you want to throw up. That's what   performing means to me.
Singing in the recording studio when there's no one   else around, that's a whole different thing.
ST: But even with that nervousness, you sing pretty beautifully in   concert.
AG: Quiver-y. In the beginning. It took quite a while, a lot of shows,   before I began to calm down a little bit. To this day I'm still just learning   how to get comfortable on stage. I did a tour in Europe last October. And I like   working solo and it was a lot of fun joking around with the audience, saying   things. I'm only just learning how to do certain things.
ST: Simon was always able to stand behind his guitar and play. You were   more out there in a way.
AG: That's right. And Paul has more, I think, of a feel for the stage.   Whereas I have it more for the notes themselves. I love record making and   mixing, arranging, producing. That I love. I love to make beautiful things, but   I don't like to perform.
ST: So Simon & Garfunkel were essentially broken up when "The Sound of   Silence" became a hit?
AG: Yes. I didn't have a career point of view towards music anymore   because our one album with CBS was a flop. So then I came home at the end of the   summer of '65 to find that that year and a quarter-old album had one of its   tunes released with overdubbed instruments called "The Sounds of Silence" and it   came out in September, '65. And as it slowly climbed the charts, my life   changed.
ST: How did you feel, from a musical point of view, when you first heard   the overdubbed electric version?
AG: I remember thinking, "Of course it's not a hit. Because I never have   hits."
At that point I was very used to how hard it is to really make it, and   just because you sing doesn't mean you get anywhere. So I was very well   practiced in disenchantment. So when I heard it, I thought, "Well, of course   it's not a hit" because a hit is a one-in-a-million thing. And I was lucky   enough to have such a one. It will probably never happen again.
It was in   that electric 12-string style of the Byrds. "Mr Tambourine Man." Okay, so they   did that to us. It's cute. They've drowned out the strength of the lyric and   they've made it more of a fashion kind of production. And you never know. I was   mildly amused and detached with the certainty that it was not a hit. I don't   have hits.
ST: When that did become a hit, did that influence Simon's writing? Did he   begin tuning them out more frequently?
AG: I would say no. He continued to do just what he was doing. I can't   say there was any alteration. He didn't change his style, he didn't change his   speed of writing. He came back [from England] reluctantly, because he was in   love with Kathy and England and his life as a free young Yankee. And he hated to   have to relate to a hit record in America. Even though it was the thing we had   long wanted, it came at an unfortunate time. It was the winter of '65. And he   only knew that it was happening when it broke the Top Ten.
So Paul came home,   we met in the basement, we said, "All right, this thing we've been looking for   all these years has finally happened. It behooves us to be smart and see if we   could have a follow-up hit.;' We turned all our attention to what would be the   single we would put out, to secure this toe-hold we had in the business. To show   people it wasn't a fluke and to show people we could make an interesting record   in a whole other vein. So our goal was to have a hit that was nothing like "The   Sounds of Silence." Just to show chart muscle in a different way.
"Homeward   Bound" became that second record. I remember cutting it and then thinking, "It's   so important that it be commercial. And it's not quite good enough. Let's cut it   all over again." And from scratch we redid it. Went to Nashville. We redid it   and it came out good. It went to Number 5 in the country.
Paul had just   written it. It was one of the latest that he had written in England. He said he   wrote it waiting in the train station around Manchester, wanting to get back to   London where Kathy was.
ST: When he would write a new song, would he play it for you on guitar?
AG: Yes. But through much of the time, he was writing them as we were   touring together or working together. So I knew them very well; it was that   thing he kept noodling on.
ST: Would you ever give him input on a song?
AG: Yes. My head was always listening to these songs as records in the   making. So I was always thinking of the structure, the length, the arrangement,   where they were headed as the record they'd be.
Records have images. There   are wet records and dry records. And big records... "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is a big record. There are lighter records. You know, there are forest-green   records, there's orange records. These are the pictures I'm using. These are   production thoughts.
So as he was writing the songs, I was thinking of the   instrumentation we would use, how thick would the record be, or is it more like   a ditty.
I'd put it into a category: this is like the Del Vikings. It's hard   to put into words how I was thinking, but I'd look at the song as one of the   elements that makes a record. The musicianship, the arrangement, the singing,   are the others.
ST: Would you work on your harmony parts separate or together?
AG: Together. If he was writing the song, I would start seeing, in just   the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the   arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was   all emerging as the song was emerging. And we would feed off each other. I would   throw back at him what progress I'm making and that would give him a sense of   what he's writing.
ST: "I Am A Rock" was your third hit?
AG: "I Am A Rock" was third. It peaked at number three in the nation. And   then we got a manager, Mort Lewis. Mort helped us in the touring area. We   branched out to become touring artists. We had a nice show.
Then we tried a   fourth single that was really arty.
ST: "The Dangling Conversation"?
AG: Yeah. We thought, "Can we take the audience where we want to go now   and do a ballad?" Because ballads are tougher to have hits on. Something slow   and really intellectual and literary. Let's see if they'll go for that, because   then we can take them anywhere
It turned out that we couldn't. That record   was not a hit.
ST: Did that surprise you?
AG: A little bit. It informed me that you can't exactly call your shots.
ST: Did it change Simon's writing at all? Did he try to steer away from   those kinds of songs?
AG: I would say probably yes, a little bit. At least, you know, you start   thinking of songs in two categories: singles and album cuts. An album cut can be   as artful as it wants to be. A single should be under five minutes or under four   minutes. There are certain things you think of in singles that you wouldn't   necessarily hold yourself to for an album. You look for a more memorable,   repeatable chorus in a single, a shorter length. So, certainly for singles, we   knew it was best to stay away from the long, intellectual ballad.
After "Dangling Conversation" we began taking albums much more seriously and doing   them much more slowly and artfully as we were influenced by the Beatles.
So   in '66 we slowed way down for our third album. See, the second album was Sounds   of Silence quickly put out because it had a hit single. Made in three weeks. But   on the next album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, I think we must have spent   nine months making that album, which was sort of unprecedented . But it was such   a labor of love and fun, that we thought we were breaking new ground in terms of   how creative an album can be. It was something we just learned from what the   Beatles were doing.
So when that album came out in late '66, that gave us a   certain stature in the business, which helped, because we had obviously spent   more time and energy and creative powers on that album. It had that interesting "Silent Night/7 O'Clock News." And it had "Scarborough Fair," which worked great   for us.
That was a lot of fun to do.
ST: That was the one song in which you and Simon shared writing credit; he   said you wrote the "Canticle" section.
AG: Well, we both wrote it. The Iyric, as I said before, came from Paul's   second tune, which never made any of our albums, called "On The Side Of A Hill." [ singing softly ] "On the side of a hill in a land called somewhere, a little   boy lies asleep in the earth..." It's an anti-war song. "While down in the   valley, a cruel war rages, and people forget what a child's life is worth..." A   bit of that lyric ended up behind "Scarborough Fair" but the melody [of the "Canticle" section] I wrote. And I wrote it just to be contrapuntal, to weave   and swell around the lines of "Scarborough Fair" to increase the flow of the   record. So I took the writer's credit.
ST: It's a beautiful counter-melody.
AG: Thanks. I could write about seven of those things in an hour. Every   hour I could write seven more. Supposedly that's an achievement in BMI terms for   me. It's like breathing, I don't get it.
ST: Why didn't you do more of that, then, in other songs?
AG: He wouldn't let me. [Laughs] No, just a joke! I don't know why I   didn't do more of that. There wasn't a need to do more of that. It's a specialty   thing; it treats a song a little like wall-paper to be weaving in and out   between the lines. It makes the song a little less than a proper song. It works   in record terms.
I don't remember holding back, it just never came up that   that would be the right thing to do on another. Here, for once, we were not   starting with a Paul Simon song, we were starting with a traditional folk song, "Scarborough air." It's the nature of this flowing song that it could take this   counter- melody. I can't think of any other Paul Simon songs that could... maybe "The Boxer" could do that. No, "The Boxer" is too busy.
ST: With lyrics?
AG: Yeah.
ST: On "Scarborough Fair" did you both sing both parts?
AG: Yes. We probably did two-part harmony on the melody and then doubled   it. So that gives a kind of tubular, strong, commercial sound to the front. Then   on the "Canticle" part, Paul takes some of those lines and I take the others   that are higher. And we double that melody. So there's one voice unharmonized in   the background but that one voice is doubled.
ST: How did you learn techniques such as doubling voices, and did Roy   Halee have much of an influence in that area?
AG: My guess is yes, that Roy had something to do with that. We did it a   lot and once we started doing it, we liked the sound. It's all over our records,   doubling your voice.
ST: Did you start punching in vocals about at that time?
AG: I can't remember, but as you know, that's a big phrase we use a lot,   punching in. The world's not supposed to know about that. [Laughs] It should   seem like it's seamless. But sure, we were fixing lines right from the   beginning. That's standard recording technique.
As the years go by, you get a   little more insecure, so you get more finicky about punching in not a line, but   two words. And as years go by, you Ret Ret more local about the fixes you're   making.
ST: In "A Simple Desultory Phillipic" Simon wove your name into the song: "I've been mothered, lathered, aunt and uncled, Roy Haleed and Art Garfunkled. "
AG: What about it?
ST: I was wondering if you appreciated it.
AG: I thought it was nice. I did appreciate it. I thought it was cute.   Even though the sentiment is slightly negative. He's implying that he's been   done to by these people. It's just a touch of a dig.
Paul is like John   Lennon. They're feisty. There's a rebellious attitude. You know, that's very   acceptable. It's standard rebellious attitude stuff. The public tends to like   that stuff. It shows that they're feisty, that they're not busy patronizing the   proper sounding, wholesome phrases of the culture.
ST: Simon said that in terms of record making, you, he and Ray Halee had a   three-way equal partnership. True?
AG: I don't know. Yeah, I guess. We all respected each other's talents   and we all fused what we did. It became, really, a mix.
Roy was very   important in that we loved him so much and we pitched ideas to win him over. It   was so much fun to turn him on and make him think we were great. So really, he   was our audience. We were always throwing ideas with the hope that Roy would   fall out of his chair with how neat that was. He was always surprising us. We'd   be out with the musicians in the studio trying to show the drummer what we think   he should do. And a half-hour later, we would come back and Roy would say, "Let   me show you what I worked out in terms of the sound when you were out there. I   want to put a reverb on the attack of the drum, but then.... " [Laughs] He'd   show us what he worked out and you'd go, "What a wonderful contribution! He's   just cooking away creatively on the engineering side while we're working on the   arrangement." These things put wind in your sails. A lot.
ST: Was Roy a perfectionist?
AG: Definitely. Roy has brilliant standards. Really a fine artist.   There's a difference between a Rolls-Royce and a Toyota, you know. And Roy is   really a craftsman, a consumate artist. He's a bit of a misfit in the eighties.   They don't do that stuff anymore.
ST: Do you feel that Roy is out of date?
AG: Well, he's having hits with Paul, so he's not really out of date. But   that kind of care and concern is no longer costworthy.
Talk to a record   company executive and they'll go, "Yeah, well, if he wants to do it, let him   turn himself on, but it doesn't mean anything commercially anymore. "
I'm not   saying this right because I do think it means some thing. Records became much   cruder in the last twenty years. Let's put it that way.
ST: Simon said that he felt Bookends was the quintessential Simon & Garfunkel album. Would you agree?
AG: I don't know what you mean exactly by that phrase. I think of   Parsley, Sage as the first real album in doing what we do. Bookends is the one   that had a theme running through the whole side one. That makes it literary and   particularly interesting in that it has a theme, a theme of youth to middle age   to old age.
But Bridge Over Troubled Water is the one with the most   successful variety. Different songs strike out in different directions with   different kinds of production. So it's a kind of a showing off piece in the   variety sense. It makes that album, in my mind, kind of the richest, because it   goes in so many different directions.
ST: Bookends features "Voices Of Old People" which is not really a song   but a sound painting. Was that your conception?
AG: Yeah. I wanted to set up the song "Old Friends. " And I wanted the   actual sound of the old people on tape so you can feel what we're talking about   before we sing something about old people. I actually wanted to get their   coughs, their wheezes, their sighs.
It was really going to be a collage of   gutturalisms, real earthy sounds in the back of the throat. Not so much what   they were saying but their vocal production, to see if I could capture older   people that way.
But we had wonderful quotes from all these interviews I had   done. I went to old age homes...
ST: Did the people then know who you were?
AG: Yes. When they were real elderly, they dimly knew and didn't care.   Actually, they didn't know. The lady who ran the place knew who I was and they   would accomodate my interest and give me a nice serious treatment. The actual   old people I spoke to, they were pretty old, so they didn't know who I was. So   it was just a case of cooperating. And I would be the sophomoric interviewer   asking them about life itself But they said wonderful stuff . .
ST: Did they know you were recording it?
AG: Yes.