To lionise the birthday of one of our okay pop composers , we look behind the scene of his classic Sung dynasty , “ Bridge Over Troubled Water . ”
It was leaping 1969 . Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were proceed . Racial tensions were erupting across the country . The war was reproof in Vietnam .
What was a sensitive vocaliser - songster like Paul Simon to do but dig deep for some words of solace ? As he stare out the window of his New York flat across the East River , he babble out the curtain raising lines he ’d had for over a week . “ When you ’re weary , feel humble . . . When tears are in your optic , I will dry them all . ” He especially liked how the melody to the 2nd twosome echoed one of his favourite Bach choral .
But after that predict outset , there was only the sound of quiet .
“ I was stuck for a while , ” Simon admitted . “ Everywhere I went led to somewhere I did n’t need to be . ”
What at last inhale him to finish his “ baseborn little gospel Song dynasty ” was an album by southerly church doctrine group The Swan Silvertones .
“ Every time I came home , I put that book on , so it was in my brain , ” Simon tell . “ I started to go to evangel chord changes , and select the melody further . Then there was one song where the lead Isaac Merrit Singer was scatting , and he shouted out , ‘ I ’ll be your bridge circuit over deep H2O if you trust in my name . ’ "
That offhand phrasal idiom provided the lyrical paint he ’d been looking for .
Simon could n’t look to act his novel song for his musical partner Art Garfunkel . With its sweeping tonal pattern and sustain high greenback , it would be stark for Garfunkel ’s choirboy - pure voice . Or so he thought .
“ He did n’t desire to sing it , ” Simon said . “ He could n’t find out it for himself . He feel I should have done it . And many time , I cerebrate I ’m sorry I did n’t do it . ”
Garfunkel remembered it otherwise . “ When Paul show me ‘ Bridge Over Troubled Water , ’ he said it was for me . And I loved the song immediately . My way of say thank you was , ‘ Are you certain ? Because you sound adorable vocalizing it , and it ’s almost like you could do it . . . ’ Now the famous tale is that he take up offense and that became a irritant between us , as if I was rejecting the song . That ’s folderal . ”
Regardless of who was to fork over Simon ’s ballad , the duette hustle into CBS studios in Hollywood to chisel out the finer gunpoint of the transcription . But it shortly became apparent that the two - verse call was n’t quite finished .
Garfunkel said , “ It was supposed to end with the second verse line , but there seemed to be a promise of what could be if Paul were to extend the song . The whole production could give up , and we could make a record with real size . ”
Reluctantly , Simon wrote a third verse . “ You could clearly see it was written afterwards , ” he said . The third verse may not have please the songwriter , but it made way for a wonderful kitchen sink arrangement that included two basso parts , vibraphone , strings and a thunder round , made by the drummer slapping chain from his automobile ’s Baron Snow of Leicester tires across a snare drum .
That third verse also became the source of some lyrical controversy . In the tardy ‘ 60s , scouring songs for hide import was every rock fan ’s favorite hobby . And listeners wonder about the equivocal line “ Sail on , silver missy . ”
Simon said , “ There was a whole period of sentence where the song was hypothecate to be about diacetylmorphine . ” And silver missy was the syringe . “ It ’s absolutely not so , ” Simon sound out . In fact , fluent daughter was a guileful reference to Simon ’s then - married woman Peggy . “ It was half a joke , ” Simon explained , “ because she was upset one day when she find two or three gray hairs on her pass . ”
Two hebdomad in the making , the finished record was a dynamic go - Diamond State - force , tumefy from a cathedral still to a deeply moving finale which left all who heard it teary - eyed . It was also five minutes long . Back then , AM radio would n’t touch any birdcall over three minute . But Columbia Records honcho Clive Davis declared , “ It ’s the first single , first racetrack and title of the album . ”
“ I knew it was an important song , but I did n’t know it was a hit , ” Simon admitted . “ Which was not to say I was surprised when it was a hit . I would n’t have been surprised if it was n’t a collision . ”
It was indeed a hit , Simon & Garfunkel ’s biggest ever . “ Bridge Over Troubled Water ” spent six hebdomad at # 1 . It swept the Grammys in 1971 , claiming six awards , including Song of the Year and Record of the Year . Now a criterion that ’s been translate into many oral communication , it ’s been breed by 100 of artist , from Johnny Cash to Ray Charles to Annie Lennox .
Breakup Song
Ironically , this song of fellowship contribute to Simon & Garfunkel ’s dissolution in 1971 . As Simon read , “ Many times on stage , when I ’d be posture off to the side . . . and Artie would be singing it , multitude would stomp and cheer when it was over , and I would retrieve , ‘ That ’s my strain , Isle of Man . Thank you very much . I wrote that . ’ In the earlier days , when thing were smoother I never would have thought that , but towards the end when things were strained , I did . It ’s not a very generous matter to reckon , but I did consider that . ”
Garfunkel said , “ We ’re strong in our melodic opinions , and we ’ve had lot of differences , but we ’ve remained reasonably damned gentlemanly all the way . These floor about how much we did n’t make concord always make me laugh , because I think , ‘ Is n’t the obvious affair about Simon and Garfunkel that they really made harmony very closely ? ’ ”
In the reunification tour the duad have staged in recent years , “ Bridge Over Troubled Water ” closes every show with a flak of that consonant honey .
“ I ’ve sung it six million four hundred thousand time , ” Garfunkel said , “ and every clip , I get a slight trial of the power of a great song . ”
As for Simon , who has continue to get and try out as one of pappa ’s most reformist creative person , he remains slightly in awe of the song . He has said , “ I know so much more than when I compose ‘ Bridge Over Troubled Water , ’ but I doubt that I ’ll ever write anything that has that easiness and simplicity again . ”
