The digital music market exploded as it did thanks to — among other reasons — the laziness and/or venality of record labels, producers, and even the artists themselves: filling each album, cassette, and CD with ten pounds of musical Styrofoam and an ounce or two of, like, actually good music. When it became possible to purchase single tracks, it became possible to purchase just the good stuff.
Simon & Garfunkel have sometimes struck me as performers who did particularly well by becoming popular when they did — before consumers could pick and choose. They released only five albums together, over the course of only six years. Each of those albums was padded with so-so covers and original songs and experiments. (Come on, now: would you really spend 99 cents for your very own copy — for repeated listening, yet — of “Benedictus,” “Blessed,” “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night,” or “Voices of Old People”?)
And yet, every album also contained a handful of songs so melodically beautiful, so sweet-sounding, so achingly meaningful to young people… How could you not buy their albums?
Which became the other fact of life with a Simon & Garfunkel album: you listened and re-listened, over and over during the course of entire decades, memorizing every note and nuance, so that to skip over (say) the nerve-jangling “A Hazy Shade of Winter” from Bookends would throw the whole thing out of whack. Even if not actually crafted as wholes, those five albums became wholes. People fall madly, crazily in love with other people, seeing in them physical perfection despite lopsidedness, asymmetry, strabismus… and so it was with Simon & Garfunkel’s albums. Even now, people who were around then can hear a lyric from a lesser song — say, It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw — and be transported.
Of their albums, I’ve always thought the last, Bridge Over Troubled Water, to be a bit peculiar. I don’t know what was going on behind the scenes; I understand that the two of them had for some time been having the classic “creative differences” (and maybe personal ones too). Whatever the reasons, in BOTW they managed to assemble an album in which every song is no worse than charming, catchy, pleasant. It doesn’t feel (to me) to have been produced as an album, but rather to have been assembled from pearls found scattered on the floor after a lovers’ quarrel.
Among those pearls, “The Boxer” really shines, I think. There is so much going on in this song. The lyrics, and how they wrap around and within the unconventional rhythm without ever sounding awkward… And the music? A beautiful melody and (it almost goes without saying for S&G) beautiful harmonies in their two voices. And mysteries: I’ve always wondered what that sound is — an instrument? electronic effect? — which goes sort of wooba-wooba-wooba behind (for instance) the words “When I left my home and my family/I was no more than a boy.” In its excellent section on the song’s composition and production, Wikipedia doesn’t answer the question, exactly, but it hints that it might be a bass harmonica. (It also includes a great extended quote from an interview with Fred Carter, Jr., who played guitar during the recording.)
I’m not 100% convinced that the lyrics tell a coherent story (not that they need to). Wikipedia reports, “It is sometimes suggested that the words represent a ‘sustained attack on Bob Dylan'” — which strikes me as an even goofier implausibility. But whadda I know?
Anyhow, here’s that glorious pearl, “The Boxer”:
[Below, click Play button to begin The Boxer. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 5:13 long.]
[Lyrics]
As for Bridge Over Troubled Water, the BBC recently broadcast an American-made documentary about its making, The Harmony Game. The only related things I’ve found so far on YouTube or other video sources have been blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em “trailers.” It’d be nice to see sometime, though!
