Paul simon and art garfunkel biography bookends
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Lyrically, “America” offers a journalistic view of two people on a cross-country road trip searching for identity in the elusive American Dream.
On the double-nickel anniversary of Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel, it would be easy (but grossly inaccurate) to dismiss the five hits from it, “A Hazy Shade of Winter”, “At the Zoo”, “Fakin’ It”, “Mrs.
Robinson'
And then there's Simon's songwriting, which takes a more personal stance on songs like "Overs," "America" and "Mrs. Art Garfunkel is my guest in this ultra-rare classic rock interview. Pepper-era Beatles.
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Certainly not in songs or sounds per se, but Art explains that Sgt Pepper… established the album format as no longer a hit single or two surrounded with filler, but a complete musical statement, with a beginning, middle, and conclusion, unfolding “…like a major motion picture,” Garfunkel explained to me In the Studio.But more than that, it elevated Simon & Garfunkel to a new level. Simon once referred to Bookends as "our first serious piece of work," and it stands decades later as the record that transported a perfectly pleasant folk act to a more consequential place.
Paul Simon / Simon and Garfunkel Albums Ranked
Simon & Garfunkel: Bookends
Released two months after The Graduate soundtrack, this 1968 concept album further explores themes from that film, namely the search for one’s place in the world, aging, and alienation.
Thus, Bookends has an introspective undertone. Producer Roy Halee’s folk-rock arrangements can be strident, but rock elements are tempered by mellow acoustic guitars, strings, and a glockenspiel. Bookends was Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s answer to the Beatles’ artistic challenge, and the American duo cleared the bar masterfully in Spring 1968.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 as inspiration for the Simon and Garfunkel masterpiece Bookends the following year. Robinson," buoyed by The Graduate's buzz and success, shot to No. 1, giving Simon & Garfunkel their second chart-topping single. Bookends featured the first album appearance of the song; it had only been included as two brief sketches on the hit Graduate soundtrack.
–Redbeard
How Simon and Garfunkel Turned a Page on ‘Bookends’
Because Paul Simon excelled at writing such great melodies and, along with Art Garfunkel, sang some of the most gorgeous harmonies heard on the radio in the '60s, Simon & Garfunkel's achievements in sound architecture are often overlooked.
But listen closely to 1968's Bookends and 1970's Bridge Over Troubled Water, their last two albums, and you'll hear one of the most adventurous studio groups of the era – one that was every bit as sonically explorative as any of their more lauded contemporaries in this field.
The seeds were planted on their third album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme from 1966.
Not only was the massive crowd turnout a testament to Simon and Garfunkel’s enduring popularity and importance, but the video of the performance became an icon on PBS across the country for three decades.
And after watching the first post-9/11 telecast of New York City-based Saturday Night Live, who can ever forget the “cold” opening of steely-eyed native son Paul Simon singing “The Boxer”, surrounded by the grim yet defiant phalanx of NYC firefighters, police officers, and paramedics?
Up until then, they pretty much had made their name with a series of Top 40 singles (three of them, in fact, ended up on Bookends).
Listen to Simon & Garfunkel's 'Bookends'
So, their fourth LP was a concept album of sorts – partly inspired by the Beatles' Sgt.
Bookends went to #1 sales in both America and the UK, and since then Rolling Stone magazine has ranked Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel as the #21 album of the entire Sixties as well as #234 on their Top 500 Albums of All Time. According to long tall tenor Art Garfunkel, we have the Beatles’ Sgt.
The sentimental “Old Friends/Bookends” portrays two old men sitting on a park bench contemplating the passing of time. Robinson”, and “America” as simply Oldies radio fare, teetering on the apron of anachronism. Paul Simon had earned that right to represent the moral voice and conscience of emerging 21st century America, in part because of the album Bookends, released in April 1968 with his musical partner Art Garfunkel.
It found Simon & Garfunkel evolving from their strict folk roots while feeling the influence of Revolver– and Sgt. They were somewhat of a gamble here that paid off.
"Mrs. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Simon's writing experiments on hashish – about the cycle of life told through a series of songs bookended, if you will, by two versions of "Bookends Theme": the album-opening instrumental that runs 30 seconds, and the side-closing take that includes vocals and is almost a minute longer.
The rest of the album is made up of a mix of songs the duo recorded that had no place within the first side's concept or were left over from The Graduate soundtrack, which was released less than three months earlier and made it to No.
1, the first Simon & Garfunkel-affiliated LP to do so.