Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth and final album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, was released in 1970 and became the duo’s best-selling record as well as a Grammy Album of the Year winner. It was a massive critical and commercial success, topping the charts in 10 countries and selling more than 25 million copies worldwide.
And it was recorded and released as the lifelong friends saw their partnership collapse.
While Side One of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends is thematically consistent, Side Two is more of a grab bag.
Three of the five tracks were written for Mike Nichols’ film The Graduate — with ‘Mrs. Robinson’ famously appearing in the movie while ‘Punky’s Dilemma’ and ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ didn’t make the cut. ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ found success on its own, charting higher than any Bookends song other than ‘Mrs. Robinson.’
The album’s final song, ‘At the Zoo,’ is a tribute to the Central Park Zoo that portrays the animals in amusingly human terms (“giraffes are insincere… zebras are reactionaries… pigeons plot in secrecy”).
Simon & Garfunkel’s third album, 1968’s Bookends, marked a major stylistic departure for the duo.
The straightforward acoustic folk (and folk rock) of their first few albums gave way to a record very much crafted in the studio. The songs on this album feature distorted instruments, samples, skits and interviews. It’s a cross between Peter, Paul and Mary, National Public Radio and Eminem.
Bookends is a concept album at heart, though I’m not sure the concept holds up across its full length. Side One starts and ends with ‘Bookends Theme,’ a gentle guitar melody that is echoed in the moving track ‘Old Friends,’ about two elderly men who sit on a park bench “like bookends.”
The third single from Parsely, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme might not have the instant familiarity of ‘Scarborough Fair’ and ‘Homeward Bound’ but it is a dazzler nonetheless.
‘The Dangling Conversation’ sets a sad scene of the relationship that has dissolved into apathy. Simon, all of 25 years old when he wrote this, beautifully captures the numbness of faded love.
You can picture these two intellectuals, “couched in… indifference,” reading their poetry and having superficial conversations about analysis and the theater — this is 70s Woody Allen territory a decade earlier.
Simon & Garfunkel’s third album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, was recorded and released in 1966, the same year that Sounds of Silence introduced their sound to a large audience.
The new album, their third, was even more successful than its predecessor, achieving triple platinum status and sending three singles up the charts.
One was the duo’s rendition of the classic folk tune ‘Scarborough Fair,’ blended with a counter melody inspired by Simon’s solo track ‘The Side of a Hill.’
Meet Me In Montauk 