Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met at a school in Forest Hills, in the New York neighborhood of Queen’s. They formed a duo that made their public debut before they both turned 15 and had an unoriginal name: Tom & Jerry (Garfunkel introduced themselves as Tom Graph and Simon, as Jerry Landis).
He composed most of the songs and Garfunkel took care of the arrangements. It was a time when the “folk” had a certain popular insertion, but not in their case. So they tried their luck in different ways. Simon, for example, did duets with a young woman named Carole Klein, who would later rise to stardom as a pianist and composer: Carole King, another of her neighborhood neighbors.
At the end of 1963, Paul Simon decided to study law, while continuing to compose. And Garfunkel entered Columbia University to study mathematics.
Sound of silence
Simon was never precise as to the origin of “The sound of silence” (“The sound of silence”). Originally, the song was titled in the plural “The sounds of silence”, while it went to the singular in the final version, almost two years later.
At some point, it was mentioned that it was a veiled protest against the Vietnam War and at others, that it alluded to the “lack of communication” between men. Simon admitted that he wrote it because of the commotion of the murder of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
Perhaps in these verses it can be recognized: “In troubled dreams, I was walking alone, through narrow cobbled streets (…) when my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, which split the night and touched the sound of silence”. Simon finished composing it on February 19, 1964 and, with his teenage partner, they received an appointment at Columbia Records to record an album, this time under his real names (Simon & Garfunkel).
“The sounds of silence” was recorded only as an acoustic piece on an album titled Wednesday Morning 3AM, which also included a Bob Dylan song, appeared in October of that year and had a limited impact: they sold only three thousand copies.
So Simon decided to go to Europe and Garfunkel, to his studies in mathematics…
five million records
But the song that unknown duo was heard on some radios and spread in the atmosphere that defined the New York bohemia of that time, Greenwich Village.
It was a word of mouth that revived the interest of the producer of that album, Tom Wilson, and he decided to record it again, this time with drums, bass and electric guitar. The sessions were held in September 1965 and both the single and the album of the same name were released on the first day of 1966: for a month it held the top spot in sales across the United States with five million copies. An absolute success.
Simon & Garfunkel produced another “bombshell” a few months later, when their songs, especially “Mrs Robinson”, illuminated that unforgettable “The Graduate”, by Mike Nichols.
A film that launched a very young Dustin Hoffman to the category of superstar and Anne Bancroft as a powerful sensual symbol. But the end of the film -also apotheotic- is accompanied by “The Sound of Silence”, when the characters of Hoffman (Benjamin) and Katherine Ross (Elaine) contemplate the Springfield church.
The Simon & Garfunkel duo premiered the third and final of their masterpieces (Bridge Over Troubled Waters) at the beginning of 1969, before disbanding… quietly.
Each one took their own path, Simon developed a notable musical career, Garfunkel tried it as an actor and the reunions were very spaced. None as spectacular as in September 1981, when half a million people packed Central Park to cheer them on at a concert.
keys
Paul Simon defined that “the key to The Sound of Silence is the simplicity of the melody and the words”. He assured that “it was a youthful letter, it did not stop being a kind of post-adolescent anguish, obtained from reading some university text.” He could allude to some mystical touch, the one at the end: «The words of the prophets are written on the walls of the subway, and in the halls of houses, and whispered in the sounds of silence».
