Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, the
Speaker 1: show that brings you the little known details and secret
Speaker 1: histories behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more.
Speaker 1: We are your folk rock duos of details, your childhood
Speaker 1: frenemies of facts, your bridges over the troubled waters of Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: One of us does all the work and the other
Speaker 1: has curly hair, and away with the phrase. My name's
Speaker 1: Jordan Roun talk.
Speaker 2: That was a sick birth. Thanks, and I'm Alex Eigel.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sorry, guys. Hosting schedule has been my fault lately, but
Speaker 2: you know, onward and upward. The only way out is
Speaker 2: through once more, end of the breach, et cetera. Yes, Jordan,
Speaker 2: what are we talking about today?
Speaker 1: Buddy oh man, I am so excited today we're talking
Speaker 1: about one of my favorite musical acts in history. Is
Speaker 1: that a cliche take? Maybe, but I don't care. I
Speaker 1: think the quality of their melodies, their harmonies, and their
Speaker 1: poetry has seldom been equalled, and their songs seem to
Speaker 1: mean more to me with each passing year. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the prototypical sensitive boomer band perfect for staying in
Speaker 1: by yourself and brooding, or sitting under a tree at
Speaker 1: recess by yourself and daydreaming, or being in transit by yourself. Basically,
Speaker 1: if you spend a lot of time by yourself and
Speaker 1: any phase of your life, these guys were excellent company.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about Simon and Garfunkle now. To me, they
Speaker 1: articulated a certain kind of romance that came with adolescent solitude.
Speaker 1: Along with Brian Wilson rhapsodizing his childhood room and his
Speaker 1: own sense of isolation, this para mythologized the teenager's inner sanctuary,
Speaker 1: perhaps better than anyone else in this era. It's a
Speaker 1: home with your thoughts escaping, your music playing, and sometimes
Speaker 1: your love life waiting quietly for you. And if there
Speaker 1: was no love life to speak of, your sanctuary was
Speaker 1: a place where you could seek solace in the silence
Speaker 1: and convince yourself that you were a rock, an island,
Speaker 1: a fortress deep and mighty, when in reality you knew
Speaker 1: that you were just an overly sensitive, bookish kid. Heigel,
Speaker 1: what do you think of Simon a Garfunkle.
Speaker 2: I mean they're hilarious, like lol, the hilarity of like
Speaker 2: two of the neediest men in recorded music. Singing songs
Speaker 2: about about how they don't need anyone and they're tough
Speaker 2: and their survivors is so endlessly funny to me. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: I'm a rock I'm a boxer. Also, please be nice
Speaker 2: to me at all costs. No, I mean, look, man,
Speaker 2: Paul Simon's one of my favorite artists. I am sure that, like,
Speaker 2: because I acknowledge his ass hattery, it may come across
Speaker 2: as not that one.
Speaker 1: It's so hard with him even I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: like take shots in this episode. And I love him.
Speaker 2: I think he's I mean, honestly, I know Dylan probably
Speaker 2: got there first in terms of, you know, rewriting the
Speaker 2: rules of the music industry as far as like making
Speaker 2: songwriters composers a thing and disrupting that whole flow and
Speaker 2: XYZ and everything else that Dylan gets credit for. But like,
Speaker 2: Paul Simon is above Dylan for me because his lyrics
Speaker 2: are on par and frankly like I think a little
Speaker 2: less caricature role.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his highs are like similarly high and his lows
Speaker 2: are not as low as like God gave names to
Speaker 2: all the animals or any of the other like outtakes
Speaker 2: that are not even I think that's on the record.
Speaker 2: It's not an outtake or any of the stuff that
Speaker 2: like Dylan, people want to ignore when they're filating him.
Speaker 2: Paul is a once in a generational talent, and because
Speaker 2: not only is he an incredible guitarist, he writes these
Speaker 2: beautiful melodies. His own voice is incredible, you know, and
Speaker 2: regardless of how much of a little pisser he is,
Speaker 2: like he did open so many people's eyes to so
Speaker 2: many other forms of music around the world, and that
Speaker 2: is like the most checkered part of his legacy that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he treated some of these people poorly and made some missteps,
Speaker 2: and like those are not to be taken lightly, of course,
Speaker 2: but also like people heard this from him in a
Speaker 2: lot of cases, you know, and I think that is
Speaker 2: you can't take that away from him, for good or bad.
Speaker 2: And like, yeah, man, I go to sleep crying to
Speaker 2: American Tune sometimes, like what about it? That's how I
Speaker 2: feel about Booke NDS.
Speaker 1: I was going to try to quote from it in
Speaker 1: this episode, and I even just typing the lyrics out,
Speaker 1: I got choked up. I was like, oh, I can't,
Speaker 1: I can't speak.
Speaker 2: These Graceline that does that to me, like I don't understand,
Speaker 2: Like like the fact that like you can call me
Speaker 2: al is like such a memorable song, like the most
Speaker 2: like gutting lyrics that I've Like, I why am I
Speaker 2: soft in the middle of the rest of my life
Speaker 2: so hard? That's I mean, yeah, the whole song is
Speaker 2: like I don't want to end up a cartoon in
Speaker 2: a cartoon graveyard. Like if that doesn't dig at you
Speaker 2: at a certain point, then and I'm just going to
Speaker 2: assume you have no interior life or capacity for introspection.
Speaker 1: I feel as though so many of his songs and
Speaker 1: it's sort of how I feel about some of Brian
Speaker 1: Wilson's songs too. You appreciate them more with each passing year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that is like a form of emotional clairvoyance.
Speaker 2: It is truly, like very few people possess that as writers. Yes,
Speaker 2: And for him to be kind of up there is
Speaker 2: not It's also not to be taken light.
Speaker 1: Linth There's a guy I know, a journalist. I should
Speaker 1: be nice because I do know him, but he wrote
Speaker 1: an op ed for NBC News a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: He's a big Dylan guy and he said something about
Speaker 1: how Paul Simon will be The headline was something like,
Speaker 1: Paul Simon sold this catalog to Sony for millions, he'll
Speaker 1: still end up a historical footnote to Dylan. And people
Speaker 1: went like that piece became a headline on like TMZ
Speaker 1: and Slate like all these other places because people were furious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, Bob Dylan doesn't need any
Speaker 2: more shooters. Yeah, like Paul Simon. You know, Paul Simon
Speaker 2: doesn't either. Let's be frank. I mean he's like a
Speaker 2: ruthless little power broker and richer than you know, crecious.
Speaker 2: But like, that's a stupid take. That's a dumb take.
Speaker 2: Sorry guy. Also, we're all gonna end up in side
Speaker 2: notes in history. The country has like fifty years left
Speaker 2: top Uh. All of that said, I rarely, if ever
Speaker 2: listened to Simon and Garfuncle on purpose. Interesting, I grew
Speaker 2: up the son of Boomers. Yeah, I heard all of
Speaker 2: these songs by Osmosis, and I would simply rather listen
Speaker 2: to Paul Simon at this point in my life. I
Speaker 2: also hate the song Feeling Groovy.
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it.
Speaker 2: That pushes me into like near inarticulate rage. And I
Speaker 2: would much rather listen to Paul Simon flex all of
Speaker 2: his chops at once than like have him be constrained
Speaker 2: by this tall dweeby egomaniac ginger beta male Garfum who
Speaker 2: has a lovely voice, but scoreboard like ball, don't lie, baby,
Speaker 2: where is your career?
Speaker 4: My pal?
Speaker 2: You're like a big He's a big book reader. I'm
Speaker 2: told that's what he's been sitting on his ass and
Speaker 2: like doing with his residuals for like the past forty years.
Speaker 2: Is like he like writes about the books that he reads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his memoir, if you could call it that. I
Speaker 1: had to read it for work and we were going
Speaker 1: to review it, and I was like, I don't know how.
Speaker 1: It's like riddles and lists of books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I like the songs off
Speaker 2: this record, obviously, Like there are great songs, but there
Speaker 2: are Paul Simon songs. Sorry, ark harmony singers are not
Speaker 2: in short supply, as it turns out, And you know,
Speaker 2: all these songs are great and you can hear all
Speaker 2: the evidence of their genius in all of the songs
Speaker 2: Paul Simon wrote without him, So I don't have any
Speaker 2: particular nostalgia explicitly for this band. And if I'm being like,
Speaker 2: if I want to dig another level deeper, I find
Speaker 2: this particular brand of like Cardigan folk to be the
Speaker 2: absolute needier of that genre. Like I obviously, and look,
Speaker 2: I'm fully admitting this. I'm sitting here as a guy
Speaker 2: with tattoos who really like inside Lewin Davis, and like,
Speaker 2: of course I'm gonna be like, well, I like Dave
Speaker 2: van Wrong because he's more authentic. I realize him walking
Speaker 2: into a trap of self parody when I say that,
Speaker 2: But it is like the most illustrative thing that I
Speaker 2: can describe about this is Dave van Wrong talking about
Speaker 2: when Simon and Garfuncle would go in and with their
Speaker 2: little like little teing renaissance harmonies be like hello darkness,
Speaker 2: my friend, and just the whole coffee house would just
Speaker 2: burst out laughing at them.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's in some documentary somewhere of just him,
Speaker 2: of everyone being like, oh, like, come off it, I
Speaker 2: you know whatever, I get it. So but sorry, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm that guy. I'm that cliche. You know, Art's got
Speaker 2: a great voice, he.
Speaker 1: Does, but I know you're your preferred version of Bridge
Speaker 1: lays elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, honestly, dude, you've got a great voice,
Speaker 2: but also Aretha has a better one.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my version of Bridge over Troubled Water. I mean,
Speaker 2: like she it's a complete, like almost rearrangement of this song,
Speaker 2: and it's got to practically a new song. But I'm
Speaker 2: also like, yeah, cool high notes, man, you know, like
Speaker 2: other people can do that, right, Maybe you shouldn't have
Speaker 2: been such an.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I mentioned this on a lot
Speaker 1: of episodes. My parents kind of went out of their
Speaker 1: way to not force the music of their youths onto me,
Speaker 1: So by and large I found a lot of my
Speaker 1: beloved boomer music on my own. I kind of, I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to use this expression, but I kind of
Speaker 1: came to it, honestly. But there were a few artists
Speaker 1: who they kind of intimated to me were important and
Speaker 1: worth paying attention to. And the Beatles were obviously one,
Speaker 1: and pet Sounds was another, and obviously these guys, and
Speaker 1: I think, perhaps more than anything else, for me, the
Speaker 1: music of Simon and Garfunkl introduced me to, for better
Speaker 1: or worse, the concept that nostalgia part of this was
Speaker 1: undoubtedly how much their music was tied to boomer documentaries
Speaker 1: and movies and other media. But I think it's more
Speaker 1: than that, and I think we kind of touched on
Speaker 1: this earlier. A huge part of their brilliance is that
Speaker 1: for me, they provided nostalgia in real time. Like I
Speaker 1: grew up watching The Wonder Years on Nick at Knight
Speaker 1: and it's one of my favorite shows. And to me,
Speaker 1: the music of Simon and Garfunkle was like Daniel Stearns's
Speaker 1: voiceover narration as the adult version of the main character,
Speaker 1: Kevin Arnold. The poetry in Simon and Garfunkle, to me,
Speaker 1: was like a voice from the future urging you to
Speaker 1: preserve your memories because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: that's all that's left you. And I mean, to me,
Speaker 1: the definitive Simon and Garfunkel song is Bookends. It's a
Speaker 1: fragmentary piece about a time of innocence and confidences in
Speaker 1: all of our lives. And so to hear that in
Speaker 1: what would I've been seventh grade, like twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it kind of instilled this sense of
Speaker 1: appreciation of this moment in my life that I knew
Speaker 1: was special, and I knew was fleeting, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of it gave me that awareness in that moment
Speaker 1: to kind of hold on to it as much as
Speaker 1: I could and really savor it, which is to me
Speaker 1: a huge gift of Simon and Garfunkel's music.
Speaker 2: I got that with Kiss No No, I mean, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: But again that's Paul Simon.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, okay, yeah, yea, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean's you know what it is though, that you forget
Speaker 1: how young. I think we have this quote in here
Speaker 1: somewhere where Paul Simon he's given an interview on Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin's podcast, and he's like, he said it slightly less
Speaker 1: egotistically than I'm about to paraphrase. Yeah, it's crazy how
Speaker 1: much I wrote in like three years. The Simon and
Speaker 1: Garfunkle period was like nineteen sixty five, mid mid to
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixty five, t like early nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: There's an innocence to those songs that I think.
Speaker 2: But let's not you know, Credence nailed out three albums
Speaker 2: in a year, and those albums have are like wall
Speaker 2: to wall bangers, So let's dial it.
Speaker 1: Back bangers, Yes, but I think lyrically speaking, and I'm
Speaker 1: not even really a lyric guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, does does Paul Simon have a riff that gets
Speaker 2: placed in every single piece of media about the nineteen sixties?
Speaker 1: I mean probably sounds silence Missus Robinson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shut up, all right, you're right. I can see
Speaker 2: I like Cecilia. I like Cecilia. It's cool. I like
Speaker 2: this p It's like proto Beatman cool whips.
Speaker 1: Yeah it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. I wonder if Art did that.
Speaker 1: No, no he didn't. No. To all this being said,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about Bookends, which is my favorite Simon
Speaker 1: a Garth funk, but we're talking about Bridge over Troubled Water,
Speaker 1: which turned fifty five earlier this year. I have to
Speaker 1: be honest at the risk of sounding like a hater.
Speaker 1: I know the title track has been embraced by millions
Speaker 1: as a modern hymnal. It's not one of my favorites
Speaker 1: of theirs. It's sort of how I feel about Imagine
Speaker 1: and to a lesser that let it be.
Speaker 2: Wow, I just engine sucks. Okay, Yeah, Imagine sucks. I'm sorry, Like,
Speaker 2: you can't divorce that song from its hypocrisy, or it's
Speaker 2: like I just don't like it as a sound. Profound
Speaker 2: thoughts for babies, like lyrical engagement level. Let it be
Speaker 2: at least as a cooler vocal performance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does a guitar sol.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say anybody who tries to sing let it
Speaker 2: be because they think it'll be fun and or easy.
Speaker 2: You are in for a hell of a ride on
Speaker 2: that chorus, my foolish friends. This album is yeah, No,
Speaker 2: there's incredible. There's incredible songs on here. I like Bridge
Speaker 2: Over Trouble as a song. As a composition, I mean
Speaker 2: that melodies so again, melodies just a beautiful, lilting melodies.
Speaker 1: Not one of my favorites. It's weird. I know, it's
Speaker 1: like one of those ones that I know is an
Speaker 1: important song with a capital I and a capital S.
Speaker 1: But to me, it's it's a little too sweet for me.
Speaker 1: It's a little too soccer and it's churchy compared to
Speaker 1: some of their other song. I mean, it's still obviously
Speaker 1: gorgeous song, but but yeah, I mean the story behind
Speaker 1: it is incredible. The album it's off of which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about. Everything on the album is amazing. Yeah, Heigel
Speaker 1: is a hard out, so we should probably dive in
Speaker 1: no fact teasers for you on this episode, folks, here's
Speaker 1: everything you didn't know about Bridge.
Speaker 2: Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkle.
Speaker 1: Wow I called this section taken it to the Bridge
Speaker 1: the early years.
Speaker 2: There are so many great Bridge puns in here.
Speaker 1: Those are all for you. Yes, before we go any further,
Speaker 1: we should give a brief recap of Simon and Garfunkle's relationship,
Speaker 1: because that'll make the pettiness of their squabbles just so
Speaker 1: much richer. Unsurprisingly, Simon and Garfunkle, we're childhood friends, or
Speaker 1: more like childhood frenemies. They met as classmates growing up
Speaker 1: in Queen's and Paul Recount's meeting Art in the fourth
Speaker 1: grade in a school auditorium while waiting for the buses
Speaker 1: to come and to pass the time, they held an
Speaker 1: impromptu talent show. Art stood up and sang and blew
Speaker 1: everyone away with his version of Too Young, which had
Speaker 1: recently been a hit for Nat King Cole, and Paul,
Speaker 1: who was the son of a musician himself, was struck
Speaker 1: both by the beauty of Art's voice and the impact
Speaker 1: it had on girls. Art and Paul became closer when
Speaker 1: they were cast together in a school production of Alice
Speaker 1: in Wonderland. Simon was the White Rabbit and Garfunkel was
Speaker 1: the cheshire Cat. The casting is incredible.
Speaker 2: I just want to note that too Young is indeed
Speaker 2: what you think it's about.
Speaker 1: But it's sung by a fourth grader, so that's endearing.
Speaker 2: It was later covered by Michael Jackson. Really Oh no, oh,
Speaker 2: I mean it's about it's about they say we're too
Speaker 2: young to like go steady, we're too young for this relationship,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. But when I was just wiki and
Speaker 2: I was like, Michael Jackson released a version later, I
Speaker 2: was like, as a bye hole, it was young Michael.
Speaker 2: It was Michael in seventy three, So I guess that's fine, Okay.
Speaker 1: Paul and aren't used to sing together after school, honing
Speaker 1: their vocal blends somewhat obsessively. They used to sing in
Speaker 1: such close proximity that they were able to study how
Speaker 1: their tongues touched the roof of their mouths and formed words,
Speaker 1: so that they could really really tweak that harmony.
Speaker 2: That harmony singing is actually really interesting to me because
Speaker 2: whether they were doing this knowingly at the time, that's
Speaker 2: like indigenous folksing. Oh well, yeah, it's in a talking
Speaker 2: head song. It's in naive melody, like singing into my mouth.
Speaker 2: And that's I believe David Byrne has at some point
Speaker 2: been like yo, I was like reading a book about
Speaker 2: like folks singing and like various indigenous like singing practices,
Speaker 2: and that was like a thing that certain cultures do
Speaker 2: where they're literally like they just they use each other's
Speaker 2: mouths as resonating chambers. And it's like it's actually, that's
Speaker 2: actually like you know, diseasive side, like it's a post
Speaker 2: COVID world, but like it's actually like very intimate and
Speaker 2: very I think, quite beautiful actually you know, oh yeah
Speaker 2: and really and yeah that's man. That's how you get
Speaker 2: good at harmonies is by eliminating. You know. The thing
Speaker 2: that I always like to that I always compare with
Speaker 2: harmonies is like the band versus like the Beach Boys
Speaker 2: or the Beatles, where it's like you have, you know,
Speaker 2: these these wide harmonies with the band where it's like
Speaker 2: they're not agreeing on phrasing, they are not agreeing on
Speaker 2: vibrato length, they are not agreeing on even the right
Speaker 2: way to pronounce words. Sometimes but they're just still so
Speaker 2: in sync that it works, and it's a value neutral approach, right.
Speaker 2: But like close harmony singing is much harder because you
Speaker 2: do have to like literally align your phonemes. Because I
Speaker 2: don't know if anyone's taken singing lessons or anything, but
Speaker 2: like specific vowel sounds need to be placed at specific
Speaker 2: parts in your mouth to get them to come out
Speaker 2: with a certain amount of resonance and with a certain
Speaker 2: amount of uh, with the right air control behind them
Speaker 2: to keep them on pitch. So, like getting to that
Speaker 2: degree of indistinguishable between two people actually singing is something
Speaker 2: that is like, yeah, man, you see it in like
Speaker 2: indigenous tribes and brothers and these two were like, let's
Speaker 2: just go to the basement and hammered out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was reading something about I'm sure it was
Speaker 1: through the Beach Boys, because that's obviously one of my
Speaker 1: other great loves. But how siblings who sing together are
Speaker 1: able to achieve a level of harmony singing that others
Speaker 1: can just by virtue of the fact that just micro
Speaker 1: pronunciations and not to mention just the resonance of the
Speaker 1: vocal cords vibrating in such a similar way yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's it was a picture of Eskimos that
Speaker 2: he had seen David Burne. Yeah, this is from eighty
Speaker 2: eight Rolling Stone interview. He said he had seen a
Speaker 2: picture of Eskimo's throat singing and doing it like right
Speaker 2: into each other's mouths.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there are videos of that on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I've never seen that. I'd like to see that.
Speaker 2: Probably. That is interesting.
Speaker 1: Well, one afternoon, while Paul and Art were singing into
Speaker 1: each other's mouths trying to recall the lyrics to the
Speaker 1: Everly Brothers Hey Doll Baby, the fifteen year olds accidentally
Speaker 1: stumbled onto words for an original song written in under
Speaker 1: an hour and it kind of sounds it. Hey Schoolgirl
Speaker 1: became their party piece, performed at amateur stages across Queens.
Speaker 6: Your Mind, Your Mind in the second row the teachers
Speaker 6: looking was the way down, he said, Bah, let's.
Speaker 1: Meet I do that. The enterprising teams sought a record
Speaker 1: deal and decided to record a demo that they could
Speaker 1: hand out to executives because performing in offices in the
Speaker 1: Brill building was just too awkward. Basically and in a
Speaker 1: movement seems straight out of the movies. A promoter named
Speaker 1: Sid Prosen happened to overhear their demo session and offered
Speaker 1: to sign the pair on the spot, but they feared
Speaker 1: their given names were quote too ethnic sounding to play
Speaker 1: in Middle America, so they picked flashy showbiz pseudonyms. Arcarf
Speaker 1: Uncle said on Tom Graff, a reference to his love
Speaker 1: of mathematics and his habit of making the chart position
Speaker 1: of his favorite pop songs on graph paper. Paul Simon
Speaker 1: christened himself Jerry Landis, after the surname of his then girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Sue Landers. It's so funny. Jerry Landis doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: a stage name now, No.
Speaker 2: It sounds like one of John land murderer John Landis's
Speaker 2: extended family.
Speaker 1: Together, they were Tom and Jerry, obviously. After the cartoon,
Speaker 1: their new manager slipped DJ Allen Freed two hundred bucks
Speaker 1: to play Hey Schoolgirl on his influential radio program, where
Speaker 1: it quickly gained traction. Alan Freed famously went down for
Speaker 1: the payola scandal a few years later. But he's also
Speaker 1: the guy who is credited with coining the term rock
Speaker 1: and roll, although that's probably not actually true but or stolen. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: Hey Schoolgirl by Tom and Jerry got the number forty
Speaker 1: nine on Billboard, and they even napped a spot on
Speaker 1: American Bandstand and alongside Jerry Lee Lewis. So you've got
Speaker 1: like fifteen year old Paul Simon sharing a stage with
Speaker 1: Jerry Lee Lewis, which is incredible.
Speaker 2: I must have scared the shit out of it. Did Yes,
Speaker 2: it did.
Speaker 1: Paul and Art's success made them legends in their neighborhood,
Speaker 1: but Paul's teenage in security was made infinitely worse by
Speaker 1: constantly being paired with Art, who was taller, more handsome,
Speaker 1: and had this angelic voice. Years later, Paul would recall
Speaker 1: Art saying during a photo session, no matter what happens,
Speaker 1: I'll always be taller than you.
Speaker 2: That is all. That's awful, that's iconic, that is apex
Speaker 2: level petty.
Speaker 1: And also they're like fifteen, So that's not like strictly true,
Speaker 1: but it was, but it was.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 1: Yes, Simon was so insecure that he stopped growing. He
Speaker 1: was so anxious.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 1: Garfunkle meanwhile, was battling insecurities of his own. He was
Speaker 1: rarely comfortable in his role as a teen pop star.
Speaker 1: He would say, it was all over my head. I
Speaker 1: never would have done it. If Paul hadn't pulled me along,
Speaker 1: I was too fearful of the competitive adult world of
Speaker 1: rock and roll. After earning two thousand dollars in royalties
Speaker 1: from Hay school Girl Art, put it in the bank
Speaker 1: and resumed his studies to enroll at Columbia University. Paul
Speaker 1: Simon meanwhile doubled down on the life of a young
Speaker 1: rock star. He took his share of the royalties and
Speaker 1: bought a fire red Chevy and Pollock convertible.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: He also quietly inked a solo side deal and started
Speaker 1: recording under the name True Taylor. He wrote a song
Speaker 1: with his father, Lee, who he mentioned earlier was a musician.
Speaker 1: He was a bassist and dance bandleader, and the song
Speaker 1: they wrote was called true or False And to hear
Speaker 1: it now, maybe I'll splice it in. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a song that a kid in the fifties would write
Speaker 1: with his dad. The lyrics consist of questions put to
Speaker 1: a potential love interest. Do you like to call me
Speaker 1: on the telephone? Are you excited to make a date?
Speaker 1: Are you sad when I go away? Terrible?
Speaker 2: Is he talking to a dog?
Speaker 8: He acted, gentleman, Uncle, Please an answer as you acted
Speaker 8: Jimble last way, please answer Afons.
Speaker 1: But the name True Taylor would prove ironic because when
Speaker 1: Art Garfunkle learned of his musical partners extracurricular endeavors, he
Speaker 1: took it as a serious betrayal. Things got even uglier
Speaker 1: when their parents got involved, creating tension between the neighboring families.
Speaker 1: And in Art's memoir he said that his friendship with
Speaker 1: Paul had been quote shattered. And this was nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 1: This was many years before Simon and Garfunkle. He already
Speaker 1: said that their relationship was shattered. This whole True Tailor's
Speaker 1: Side Deal incident would be a sore point between them
Speaker 1: for decades to come, establishing a pattern of distrust and
Speaker 1: ego blows that would underscore their entire relationship kind of
Speaker 1: to this day. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't think Paul did anything that egregious, but karma came
Speaker 1: from young Paul Simon. In the midst of the True
Speaker 1: Tailor fallout, Paul's Prize Chevy and Paula exploded. He was
Speaker 1: cruising through Queen's one night and a freak electrical accident
Speaker 1: caused the car to overheat, smoke billowed from under the hood,
Speaker 1: and the terrified team barely managed to escape the vehicle
Speaker 1: before it burst into flames just outside the Garfunkle's house.
Speaker 2: He like looks up and arts slowly closes a curt
Speaker 2: non everything in Rosemary's Baby or something. He's like, I
Speaker 2: did that, arguably even worse.
Speaker 1: Paul Woul ultimately become extremely embarrassed by these early songs
Speaker 1: in the wake of his career as you know, way
Speaker 1: serious voice of a generation songwriter. He even went to
Speaker 1: court in nineteen sixty seven to successfully block the release.
Speaker 1: Here's a I think really good even though I know
Speaker 1: it is objectively bad song released under the name Jerry
Speaker 1: Landis in nineteen sixty two called there Goes the Lone
Speaker 1: teen Ranger, which basically parodies the Lone Ranger TV show.
Speaker 2: The bopp.
Speaker 9: Relay, the.
Speaker 2: The Launting Rangers.
Speaker 6: This same soul I can't get at and you know
Speaker 6: who's to blame. It's the naughty rangel Jane around. My
Speaker 6: girlfriend's not the same.
Speaker 2: She even kiss the TV said, Oh, it's.
Speaker 6: A crying shame goes He Goes.
Speaker 9: Bank Bank lo Ranger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that song sucks. I was going to try and
Speaker 2: listen to that good faith, and I didn't make it
Speaker 2: all the way through. I respect that, though, man, Like,
Speaker 2: no one's entitled to your rough drafts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: No, that's how I know. That's how like stand culture
Speaker 2: works these days. And like you know, obviously we have
Speaker 2: the president of like Kurt Cobating writing in his now
Speaker 2: published journals. Please don't publish my journals when I'm dead.
Speaker 2: But yeah, man, I respect that. It's like if it's
Speaker 2: like I died, someone went in and found out my
Speaker 2: like dog like logic demos that I made super baked
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night in twenty thirteen, like
Speaker 2: I would haunt you.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about, uh, Paul inking a side
Speaker 1: deal while art was clearly not all that into being
Speaker 1: a musician and was preparing to go off to college.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not a bad movie, I dud. Yeah him,
Speaker 2: I'd like funny if your loser buddy is like I
Speaker 2: would like to go and study books, like and you
Speaker 2: have all this talent literally flowing out of every orifice
Speaker 2: and limb of your body, Like yeah, oh ethic, No,
Speaker 2: Paul Simon does me any terrible things later, Let's not
Speaker 2: start castigating him for his ethics at this juncture.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, I agree with you.
Speaker 2: So based on all of that, Simon and Garfunkle would
Speaker 2: not have a meaningful conversation again for years. Art went
Speaker 2: to Columbia and Paul spent time at the Brill Building
Speaker 2: with Carol King, another Queen's college student, must be said,
Speaker 2: trying to sell demos, which he would later describe hilariously
Speaker 2: as fodder for you. Nux is away with words. I mean, yeah, dude,
Speaker 2: great American lyricist. The pair drifted. Simon and garfunk well
Speaker 2: not Carol King, drifted in and out of each other's
Speaker 2: orbit until they came together in nineteen sixty three as
Speaker 2: a Greenwich Village folk act. It was another case of
Speaker 2: putting the talent and music ahead of their own relationship,
Speaker 2: which Art admitted was already quote strained. They were signed
Speaker 2: to Columbia Records in late nineteen sixty three and recorded
Speaker 2: the album that would become Wednesday Morning, three Am with
Speaker 2: producer Tom Wilson a short time later. The album tanked
Speaker 2: upon its release in the fall of nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: selling an abysmal three thousand copies at a time when
Speaker 2: you know any person with a Bone Structure was making
Speaker 2: a recording If I Had a Hammer and selling out
Speaker 2: Carnegie Hall. Simon went abroad to England and Artie went
Speaker 2: back to school. Then a year later, producer Tom Wilson
Speaker 2: went back and added a twelve string electric guitar part
Speaker 2: and drums and bass guitar to Sound of Silence to
Speaker 2: make it sound more like the then trendy folk rock
Speaker 2: Sounds of the Birds and the Buffalo Springfield and like
Speaker 2: a rolling Stone. So out of nowhere, Simon and Garfunkle
Speaker 2: had a hit on their hands and almost an unwelcome
Speaker 2: interruption for their solo lives. Art and his Precious Little
Speaker 2: Books and Paul's time abroad where he was having sex.
Speaker 1: And he released an album over there too, called The
Speaker 1: Paul Simon's Song Book, which.
Speaker 9: Good for him.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard that? It's a lot of early
Speaker 1: like Kathy's Song and Flowers that Ever Bound Fall type
Speaker 1: stuff like stuff on the first two Simon and Garfunkle records,
Speaker 1: But it's just him. It's pretty good. It's it's interesting, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's it's so weird to me that
Speaker 1: Sarmon Garfunkle very nearly never happened had this producer not thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll just take this song and without the knowledge of
Speaker 1: the people who wrote it or performed it, just completely
Speaker 1: redo it with electric guitar and release it.
Speaker 2: Tom Wilson was a genius, ye, I mean, he like
Speaker 2: was seeing things that they and hearing things that they
Speaker 2: did not. Yeah, so I'm I mean, I guess is
Speaker 2: an artist. I would be somewhat red asked about that,
Speaker 2: but sure he was correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's just weird to me that they they
Speaker 1: had a hit and they didn't know basically, like, that's
Speaker 1: so great, and they had already moved on with their
Speaker 1: lives and then suddenly they were just yoped back together
Speaker 1: and you know, you knew it in that lens, it
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense. I mean, I'm almost surprised that
Speaker 1: they made as much music as they did in the
Speaker 1: next five years.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, Well, as you mentioned this, yoking had a
Speaker 2: largely negative effect on Paul and Artie's already shaky frente
Speaker 2: of me sh By the end of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: creative differences and long held resentments made the union a
Speaker 2: ticking time bomb. They both envied each other's place in
Speaker 2: the team. Art resented that Paul got first billing, complaining
Speaker 2: that Simon and Garfunkle sounded like a law firm. Paul,
Speaker 2: having done everything in the band, had the correct opinion,
Speaker 2: which is that he thought the audience saw Art as
Speaker 2: the star because he was the featured singer, and some
Speaker 2: people probably thought Art even wrote the songs. But Artie
Speaker 2: knew that Paul wrote the songs and thus controlled the
Speaker 2: pair's future. And what's more, he never got over what
Speaker 2: had happened with Tom and Jerry.
Speaker 1: You really got mad when that frying paint came down
Speaker 1: on that mouse. That was really just a bridge too far.
Speaker 1: Oh that different Tom and Jerry.
Speaker 2: Okay, Art mustering his entire chest to say this in
Speaker 2: a trembling voice barely above the snores of a kitten.
Speaker 2: I never forget and I never forget Ooh anyway, Paul,
Speaker 2: for his part, thought that Art was phoning it in.
Speaker 2: He was continuing coursework for a mathematics doctorate at Columbia,
Speaker 2: and Paul's rejoinder to that was, Okay, I'll go teach
Speaker 2: a songwriting course at NYU in nineteen seventy love it.
Speaker 2: He felt Art was also a little bit too much
Speaker 2: on the old wacky Tobaccy, which had an effect on
Speaker 2: his vocals and made him less than professional regarding deadlines.
Speaker 2: He showed up late to rehearsals and he wants even
Speaker 2: completely missed a flight to London that forced a sold
Speaker 2: out concert to be canceled. Yeah, I mean sorry, man,
Speaker 2: You know I gotta go ahead and say that, like
Speaker 2: Paul actually gave Garfuncle so much more than he was due.
Speaker 2: Because this is also the era when like you had
Speaker 2: a hit and then you sent out a band that
Speaker 2: wasn't the actual artist, ye to go capitalize on the
Speaker 2: hit if the artist was not available, like without promo
Speaker 2: photos and from the back of a hall. You know,
Speaker 2: people didn't know that it wasn't the five to seven
Speaker 2: Jumpstart boys performing there smash hit Let's get happy together
Speaker 2: in a car like so this was already an established practice.
Speaker 2: This happened all over the place. And for Simon to
Speaker 2: be like, I'm sorry, I'm going to pull an audible
Speaker 2: and find another tall guy with a high voice, like
Speaker 2: very generous art is infuriating. He's a deeply infuriating human. Jordan,
Speaker 2: this is where you will punch in about thirty seconds
Speaker 2: to a minute of art Garfunkle's studio Chatter, in which
Speaker 2: he waxes poetic on a single take of a song
Speaker 2: from the single Yes, a single vocal take of a song.
Speaker 2: He is hilariously in a reverb chamber. So as he's
Speaker 2: doing this, he's in a big plate reverb chamber, and
Speaker 2: you can hear the this saint of an engineer occasionally
Speaker 2: punching in and going, So, did you want to do
Speaker 2: another take? Should we maybe move on to the next one? Well,
Speaker 2: Garfunkle just wax is poetic about the heart and element
Speaker 2: of the song that has now been gotten away from it.
Speaker 5: Never it wanted to have air to mix with its
Speaker 5: I don't know start. I think I'm starting to hate it,
Speaker 5: but except I know I love it. It's been chased
Speaker 5: away somehow, somehow, something wonderful was lurking behind all of
Speaker 5: the pausing and the techno realities of our job. That
Speaker 5: here's a classic case of whatever.
Speaker 4: Was fertile about the song which I was connected with
Speaker 4: about an hour and a half ago, has ground down.
Speaker 4: I can't find well you want to put down one
Speaker 4: take like that will take out all these extra drum things,
Speaker 4: something like starting from the beginning feels like the right
Speaker 4: thing to do, because it is it seems to me
Speaker 4: to be tremendously respected. What does the singer feel like
Speaker 4: singing it at? Where since he knows his own chops,
Speaker 4: will he be pacing most naturally? And then the rest
Speaker 4: is for you to say, I see the kind of
Speaker 4: record that would lead to. But let me try something
Speaker 4: and then I'll take direction. But first I would think
Speaker 4: comes this fat, fabulous.
Speaker 5: Thing called what comes natural, which is really to be respected.
Speaker 9: I think we should move on, and we have.
Speaker 4: The way I sang the opening is a good interpretation.
Speaker 4: It's it's very close to the mic and easy. It's
Speaker 4: not pushed at all, but it's a good way to
Speaker 4: record me. It's one of my sounds, and I think
Speaker 4: it worked good on that take, and that's a good
Speaker 4: frame of reference.
Speaker 5: As a vocal. Let's move on, Okay, let's move ahead.
Speaker 2: More light footedly anyway. One incident that Jordan feels worth
Speaker 2: highlighting is recounted in journalist Robert Hilburn's book Paul Simon
Speaker 2: The Life, which comes with the caveat that it is
Speaker 2: a book so packed with gratuitous spawning over Paul and
Speaker 2: cheap potshots at art that one could assume it was
Speaker 2: originally supposed to be a ghost written Paul Simon memoir.
Speaker 1: Have you read it? I have not. It's pretty egregious.
Speaker 2: In the wake of the gargantuan success of the Graduate
Speaker 2: soundtrack in nineteen sixty eight, Simon and Garfunkle were booked
Speaker 2: to play prestigious gig at Boston's Symphony Hall. Their manager
Speaker 2: hired a private plane for them as a treat, but
Speaker 2: Artie wanted to hitchhike to quote the book that made
Speaker 2: everyone else nervous, because then something could happen and he
Speaker 2: might not get to the show on time, but Garfunkle insisted.
Speaker 2: On the day of the concert, Garfuncle headed for the highway,
Speaker 2: where a young Boston bound couple in a VW gave
Speaker 2: him a ride. Garfuncle was sitting in the back seat
Speaker 2: when he noticed the husband who was driving staring at
Speaker 2: him in the review mirror. Finally, the driver said, uh,
Speaker 2: you look like that singer in Simon and you know
Speaker 2: Simon and the other guy. Garfunkle replied, that's me, Art Garfuncle.
Speaker 2: Somewhere a single spring lily bloom. The driver counter, don't
Speaker 2: kid me. There's no way Art Garfunkle would be hitchhiking,
Speaker 2: and Garfuncle spent the rest of the trip trying to
Speaker 2: convince the couple that he really was the pop star,
Speaker 2: but the driver of the car refused to even look
Speaker 2: at Artie's driver's license. When they let him off at
Speaker 2: the outskirts of Boston, Garfuncle gave it one final try,
Speaker 2: give me your name and I'll leave a couple of
Speaker 2: comps for you at the box office. As he drove away,
Speaker 2: the husband snapped, why don't you grow up? It's even
Speaker 2: funnier if he was just give him the classic just
Speaker 2: like few.
Speaker 1: It's gonna do it a Boston Yeah, honk, Why don't
Speaker 1: you grow up? Like? That's a hard one to say
Speaker 1: in a Boston.
Speaker 2: Good though, Garfunkle managed to get to Symphony Hall just
Speaker 2: in time for the five o'clock soundcheck, but Simon didn't
Speaker 2: enjoy that kind of suspense.
Speaker 1: No thanks on the private jet, I think on it
Speaker 1: sh so.
Speaker 2: Just like art Garfuncle, the eternal Beto male, like in
Speaker 2: a car in the back seat, desperately trying to convince
Speaker 2: people who knew who he was who he was and
Speaker 2: failing and in fact infuriating them.
Speaker 1: Yes, the process believing them. I prefer to think they
Speaker 1: just left him on like a toll plaza.
Speaker 2: He hitched him out of the car. It was like,
Speaker 2: get out of it here, not Art.
Speaker 1: That's why I included a ancdote. I just love it
Speaker 1: so much. But the main fissure in Paul on Art's
Speaker 1: relationship occurred in late in nineteen sixty eight, when director
Speaker 1: Mike Nichols, who'd worked with the pair on the Graduate,
Speaker 1: offered them both roles in his next project, an adaptation
Speaker 1: of the book Catch twenty two by Joseph Hiller. Art
Speaker 1: was cast as Captain nately Well. Paul was initially approached
Speaker 1: to play the character of Dunbar. Naturally, we were thrilled.
Speaker 1: Paul recalled to Mojo in twenty eleven. Then, a few
Speaker 1: weeks before shooting was due to start, Mike Nichols called
Speaker 1: me up and said, look, the screenplays so long. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have to write your character out, and I guess
Speaker 1: that means ARTI will be out too. I said, no,
Speaker 1: don't take him out just because I'm out.
Speaker 2: What a sweet thing to do for his tall, dorky,
Speaker 2: lame ass friend Annie.
Speaker 1: And Paul added that was the main reason Simon A.
Speaker 1: Garfunkle broke up, But I think we would have broken
Speaker 1: up anyway. All duos do. It's just too hard when
Speaker 1: one person does all the the stress is very difficult
Speaker 1: to manage. Art meanwhile, did not see the big deal.
Speaker 1: I think for him, he thought this was his true
Speaker 1: tailor moment. He said in a nineteen ninety interview with
Speaker 1: song Talk magazine. Our way of working was for Paul
Speaker 1: to write while we recorded, so we'd be in the
Speaker 1: studio for the better part of two months working on
Speaker 1: two or three or four songs that Paul had written,
Speaker 1: recording them, and then when they were done, we'd knock
Speaker 1: off for a couple months while Paul worked on his
Speaker 1: next group of songs. Rather than wait for Paul to
Speaker 1: write the next bunch of songs, I went off and
Speaker 1: did this movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, I agree with his justification, Yure.
Speaker 1: Moreover, Art viewed himself as the junior partner in Simon
Speaker 1: and Garfunkle, and he saw this as an opportunity to
Speaker 1: boost his standing. In the same song Talk interview, he
Speaker 1: likened it to George Harrison taking on an acting role
Speaker 1: to quote balance out the Lennon McCartney contribution. I thought
Speaker 1: I was gonna help give my side of the group
Speaker 1: a little more interest, and I'd be bringing it back
Speaker 1: to the duo after we had our rest from each
Speaker 1: other and we go on and make more albums. He
Speaker 1: thought he was gonna up his own popularity and bring
Speaker 1: a new crowd to Simon and Garfunkle.
Speaker 2: Sure, man, But like you know, George Harrison was writing
Speaker 2: songs that were actively being suppressed by the other two,
Speaker 2: and you know you weren't.
Speaker 1: He wrote for Emily Wherever I may find her just
Speaker 1: not one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkle songs. But
Speaker 1: he wrote us song Is it really that?
Speaker 9: Is it like.
Speaker 2: Forty seven to one?
Speaker 1: Check me? I feel like there's a second one that
Speaker 1: I don't like even more check me. I think there's
Speaker 1: like maybe one more. But for Paul, getting cast in
Speaker 1: this Hollywood movie was just another instance of him being
Speaker 1: the good looking heart throb. Paul at this stage was
Speaker 1: starting to visibly bald and apparently found Art's halo of
Speaker 1: blonde curls enormously annoying. So this was already a tense
Speaker 1: thing that Art was gonna go be a movie star
Speaker 1: and Paul was gonna be, you know, locked away in
Speaker 1: the studio with his hair thinning. But then but then
Speaker 1: Art forced him to wait, and that really pissed Paul off.
Speaker 1: There were delays on the Catch twenty two, said in Mexico,
Speaker 1: and it soon became apparent that the three month shooting
Speaker 1: schedule was overly optimistic, and ultimately the shoot for Catch
Speaker 1: twenty two stretched into eight months. That's some like Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz delays right there.
Speaker 2: Sorry. I'm also just now finding out that Art Garfrinkle's
Speaker 2: cousin is lou Pearlman of one of the biggest Ponzi
Speaker 2: scams in history and founder of the Backstreet Boys and
Speaker 2: n Sync. WHOA, that's okay, that's Barfrenkle was not a songwriter,
Speaker 2: although he did write the poem Canticle as a rewrite
Speaker 2: of a Paul Simon's song for his own debut album
Speaker 2: Oh Yeah. He worked as the vocal arranger for the duo,
Speaker 2: which seems like something he wrote in his own Wikipedia
Speaker 2: as it is unsourced, and is also credited as having
Speaker 2: written the arrangement on the Boxer and creating Voices of
Speaker 2: Old People, which is an audio montage on Bookends. I
Speaker 2: don't even think he wrote this. This is this wiki
Speaker 2: is not even giving him credit for writing that song
Speaker 2: that you said he didn't write for Emily wherever I
Speaker 2: may find her, I mean, I keep looking, but check
Speaker 2: me on that.
Speaker 1: I think it's on.
Speaker 2: I think it's on Parsley Sage, rosemar In Time Ostle Sage.
Speaker 1: It sucks.
Speaker 2: Who's may and you know what it is is I
Speaker 2: don't really like English folk, and there's so much English
Speaker 2: folk in there, like little lilting like let's dance around
Speaker 2: the maypole.
Speaker 1: I could see you liking Bert Chance though.
Speaker 2: I do like her. I was literally about to say,
Speaker 2: like I do like Burt Jansch and I love and
Speaker 2: I love Nick Drake. I just have like that pentangle
Speaker 2: like again, if it's dance around the if it's dance
Speaker 2: around the maypole, hard.
Speaker 1: Past, who knows where the time goes? Sandy Danny song
Speaker 1: is gorgeous and there's there's some good stuff there.
Speaker 2: But I know it's you mean for Emily has an
Speaker 2: uncredited it's uncredited on Wikipedia. The song entry itself says
Speaker 2: it was written by Paul Simon. Really, oh wow, song
Speaker 2: by art so he is zero for four hundred. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: she let me find I did have the actual discography.
Speaker 1: Wow, I could have sworn there was one.
Speaker 2: Nope. Art did not even grant you that, my friend.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, okay, making it that much harder for you
Speaker 2: to defend him.
Speaker 1: I mean, I agree with you. So the shoot for
Speaker 1: Catch twenty two was delayed from three months to about
Speaker 1: eight and future screenwriting icon Nora Efron profiled the troubled
Speaker 1: production and a colorful piece for The New York Times
Speaker 1: where she detailed disasters ranging from bad food in the
Speaker 1: mess hall to horrible hotel accommodations and problems with telephones.
Speaker 1: Her piece featured a memorable quote from comedian Bob Newhart,
Speaker 1: who was casting film. We make bets on who's going
Speaker 1: to go insane or who's already gone insane. In fact,
Speaker 1: maybe we've all gone insane, and we're all together and
Speaker 1: we don't know it, and we'll go home and my
Speaker 1: wife will call Paramount and say, listen, my husband is insane.
Speaker 1: We have no norm here, We have no way of judging.
Speaker 1: Art later admitted that he felt bad for just hanging
Speaker 1: out in Mexico as this production dragged on, while he
Speaker 1: knew that his musical partner was at home growing angrier
Speaker 1: and angrier by the day. He would say. Mike held
Speaker 1: me in Mexico for like four or five and a
Speaker 1: half months, and I should have really said to him,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't need me this long. I've got
Speaker 1: to work in New York City. Call Paul Simon, what
Speaker 1: am I doing down here? I should have said that,
Speaker 1: but I was many miles away. And you don't realize
Speaker 1: what you're missing when you're out there. You're not in
Speaker 1: knom like I mean, were you in the sheep?
Speaker 2: He would say, so, yes, yeah, yes, yes, I was
Speaker 2: in the shop Craft.
Speaker 1: Services was terrible. As production on the film stretched through
Speaker 1: the early months of nineteen sixty nine, Paul Simon found
Speaker 1: himself under considerable pressure from Columbia Records chief Clive Davis
Speaker 1: to begin work on their next album in order to
Speaker 1: capitalize on the success of the Graduate Soundtrack, the recent
Speaker 1: Grammy win, and the huge sales of their previous album Bookends.
Speaker 1: For a time, Simon de Garfunkle had the top three
Speaker 1: album positions in the US, with Bookends at number one,
Speaker 1: the Graduate Soundtrack at number two, and their nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six album Parsley Say Ageos Mary in Time at number three.
Speaker 2: Also known as PSrT.
Speaker 3: Is it no?
Speaker 2: I was like the real heads call a PSrT bro.
Speaker 1: That's really impressive, Like I'm hard. That's crazy to name
Speaker 1: another act who's had the three top albums. I don't
Speaker 1: think the Beatles even did that.
Speaker 2: This isn't definitive, but Bob Newhart had the number one
Speaker 2: and number two albums simultaneously on the Billboard two hundred
Speaker 2: with the Button Down Mind and the Button Down Mind
Speaker 2: Strikes Back. Guns n' Roses had used Your Illusion one
Speaker 2: in two at number one and two respectively in nineten
Speaker 2: ninety one and two thousand and four. Nelly had Suit
Speaker 2: and Sweat at number one and two. But those are
Speaker 2: all double albums or like combined albums, right, I believe, so.
Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone's had three separately released albums.
Speaker 2: That is wild.
Speaker 1: That's a crazy stat.
Speaker 2: As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with
Speaker 2: more too much information after these messages.
Speaker 1: Woo, one of the earliest songs that Paul wrote with
Speaker 1: the album that would become Bridge Over Troubled Water was
Speaker 1: the Only Living Boy in New York, one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Originally he pended as a kind of good luck message
Speaker 1: to his old friend Art. He would say, I was saying,
Speaker 1: go do it, go off and do the movie, a
Speaker 1: kind of Hey Jude type song. I feel compelled to
Speaker 1: mention that Paul Simon is dramatically misinterpreting the meaning of
Speaker 1: Hey Jude, which, as we all know, was written by
Speaker 1: Paul mc cart need to cheer up John Lennon's son
Speaker 1: Julian after John left Julian's mom to go be with Yoko.
Speaker 1: Thank you. In order to make the meaning of the
Speaker 1: song slightly less obvious, Paul Simon evokes their childhood alter
Speaker 1: ego in the opening line Tom as in Tom and
Speaker 1: Jerry catch your plane right on time. I know your
Speaker 1: part will go fine. In other words, go off, do
Speaker 1: this movie. The role's gonna go great. It's very sweet,
Speaker 1: it's very jalous.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But despite this encouragement, traces of Paul's own alienation and
Speaker 1: loneliness managed to bleed through. Art would sum up Paul's
Speaker 1: message as I'm the only living boy in New York.
Speaker 1: You used to be the other one, and now you're gone.
Speaker 1: Despite the small hints of jealousy and the lyrics, it
Speaker 1: is undoubtedly a gorgeous song. Artie contributed the melody of
Speaker 1: the backing vocal, later recalling it's us around eight times screaming,
Speaker 1: and we mixed it down very softly. I started getting
Speaker 1: into open math off harmony, which you're describing earlier, in
Speaker 1: a very loud, strident way. We were screaming at the
Speaker 1: top of our lungs and inside an echo chamber. I
Speaker 1: remember that day Dylan, Bob Dylan dropped by to visit.
Speaker 1: We came out of the booth after all this screaming,
Speaker 1: and there he was also of note instrumentally speaking. On
Speaker 1: The Only Living Boy in New York is the exquisite
Speaker 1: bassline played by session player Joe Osborne of the iconic
Speaker 1: group of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew. He's
Speaker 1: playing it on an eight string bass, and I love this,
Speaker 1: he would remember years later when he tried to play
Speaker 1: it on stage, he couldn't quite do it, and he
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out why he couldn't nail his own part,
Speaker 1: And then he realized that his bass part on the
Speaker 1: record had been camped together and was therefore impossible to
Speaker 1: play exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and this wouldn't have been an eight
Speaker 2: string bass the way that like six string basses exist now,
Speaker 2: this would have been like a twelve string guitar, where
Speaker 2: it's four strings of the bass guitar with another string
Speaker 2: either a unison or tune in octave above it. That's
Speaker 2: crazy because the five string bass and six string basses
Speaker 2: them today didn't really exist until the eighties, seventies or eighties.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I just want to highlight the production on
Speaker 2: these albums, man, Like, it's really down to like a
Speaker 2: couple of God yes, you know, it's Hal Blaine of
Speaker 2: the Record Crew, one of the most prolific and iconic
Speaker 2: drummers of all time. The aforementioned Joe Osborne, who I
Speaker 2: think the same thing happened in with his baseline on America.
Speaker 2: They also comped together some basslines with that, so you like,
Speaker 2: if you're trying to play those like upper register fills
Speaker 2: that he plays, it's not it's a it's a studio trickery.
Speaker 2: And then Larry Necktell I believe.
Speaker 1: Is also.
Speaker 2: Was he also in Muscle Shoals.
Speaker 1: I know he was definitely in the rerec and crew
Speaker 1: because he played on Pet Sounds and all the Beach
Speaker 1: Boys studio stuff and Phil Spector's studio stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't know about muscle shoals. No, he wasn't. Okay,
Speaker 2: my mistake, so yeah. And Larry Nekchdel, who was just
Speaker 2: like their utility guy because he's played geys and bass,
Speaker 2: but you know a lot of the other stuff too,
Speaker 2: and especially on these songs, is is Roy Haley Man, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the producer on this. I really like it is crazy
Speaker 2: to actually think about what he was doing with these. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: he never had Simon and garfer go on separate mics.
Speaker 2: He only ever had them on one mic.
Speaker 1: Well, we talk about this in a bit. There was
Speaker 1: some documentary as watching with him where he would always
Speaker 1: have them sing their parts together on one mic, like
Speaker 1: Everly Brothers style, and then to thicken it he would
Speaker 1: then individually have them do their own parts separately.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, And I mean like only Living Boy for example,
Speaker 2: is like eight times there's like eight overdubs of them
Speaker 2: singing together in an entire echo chamber, which I think
Speaker 2: is very cool. Yeah, but yeah, I mean that's Roy Haley.
Speaker 2: Should get a lot of credit with that. Same with
Speaker 2: you know, same with just doing this stuff on Bridge.
Speaker 1: The drum sound on the Boxer that sounds like a
Speaker 1: cannon shot, like, Yeah, a lot of this cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Boxer. For me, the craziest thing is all
Speaker 2: the guitar layers on there. But we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I know, yeah, there's I think it's
Speaker 1: in here later. But in some interview I think both
Speaker 1: Paul and Art separately said, yeah, it was Simon and Garfunkle,
Speaker 1: but we were really a trio with Roy Halley.
Speaker 5: I mean it was.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another song that directly addresses ARTI on Bridge over Troubled
Speaker 1: Water is So Long Frank Lloyd Wright, which is basically
Speaker 1: a semi affectionate kiss off from Paul to his friend,
Speaker 1: who was a one time architecture student. Simon later admitted
Speaker 1: in a twenty eleven interview with Mojo, I guess the
Speaker 1: bigger picture was that him flying down the Mexico was
Speaker 1: a disappointment that I was trying to block out, and
Speaker 1: the nostalgic refrain to the song I'll remember Frank Lloyd Wright,
Speaker 1: all of the nights we'd harmonized till dawn. I never
Speaker 1: laughed so long. So Long, So Long seems too surrendered
Speaker 1: to the inevitable. As Art would later say, that's a
Speaker 1: wink from Simon to Garfunkle. So long Arty will be
Speaker 1: splitting up next year. You may not know it yet.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm advancing a new theory here, which is that
Speaker 2: maybe Art Garfuncle is an idiot.
Speaker 1: Uh. He later said that he had no idea that
Speaker 1: the song was in reference to him. This is what
Speaker 1: I'm yes, this is what I'm yes, yes, uh, he said,
Speaker 1: Paul quote never let me in on that. I find that.
Speaker 1: I find that to be a secretive and unpleasant thing
Speaker 1: to have done.
Speaker 2: To you, because that presupposes a very stoned Art Garfuncle
Speaker 2: sitting around and singing these lines and going, man, it's
Speaker 2: crazy that you used to sing in the in your
Speaker 2: basement with Frank Lloyd Wright, just like me. That's wild,
Speaker 2: and then never addressing that, like not retaking that case later. Yes,
Speaker 2: of course that was But no, I was deceived by Paul.
Speaker 1: He later chilled, saying in the liner notes to a
Speaker 1: twenty twelve compilation that he's able to ignore the unpleasant
Speaker 1: subtext of the song because it's quote just so much
Speaker 1: fun to sing, And he says of Paul that quote
Speaker 1: one loves the giver of a beautiful gift. I don't
Speaker 1: know fine the lyric All of the Nights We'd Harmonize
Speaker 1: Till Dawn is a sweet reflection of their early days together,
Speaker 1: made all the more poignant by the fact that they
Speaker 1: don't harmonize on this song, which is kind of heartbreaking
Speaker 1: when you think about it. Art sings a solo, except
Speaker 1: when Paul takes a section of the bridge. Architects may
Speaker 1: come and architects may go, and never change your point
Speaker 1: of view. I think that's very interesting that Paul takes
Speaker 1: that one line. People come, people go, They don't change
Speaker 1: your point of view. That's I don't know. I find
Speaker 1: it telling that he chose that line out of the
Speaker 1: entire song. I don't know if that was strictly a
Speaker 1: musical decision. The pair in general don't really harmonize much
Speaker 1: on Bridge over Troubled Water the whole album in general.
Speaker 1: Unlike the Everly Brothers style harmonies on their earlier records,
Speaker 1: Bridge was a showcase for separate voices. Paul Simon would
Speaker 1: explain in the twenty eleven documentary The Harmony Game. It's
Speaker 1: more like a Beatles record than an Everly's record. You
Speaker 1: knew the two voices and the two characters well enough
Speaker 1: that we could each have our own songs that's the
Speaker 1: first time we did that, and that probably would have
Speaker 1: been the pattern for the next album or two. Have
Speaker 1: we stayed together? And yeah, we talked about earlier about
Speaker 1: their specific way of recording their harmonies, how they would
Speaker 1: gather around one mic and sing together and then each
Speaker 1: double track their vocal part individually afterwards, and Roy Halley
Speaker 1: would say, people would say, why don't you just record
Speaker 1: them individually so you'll have more control, which makes sense
Speaker 1: when you're mixing, but that sounds was never the same.
Speaker 1: They needed to look at each other's mouths and see
Speaker 1: the way that their tongues touch their soft palate and
Speaker 1: really get those phonemes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those fricatives, it's true elves. Yeah, no, I know.
Speaker 1: And speaking of the Beatles, much like John and Paul
Speaker 1: struggling to make room for their romantic relationships, Paul and Artie,
Speaker 1: Paul Simon and Arc Garfunkle were becoming more involved with
Speaker 1: serious partners of their own. While art was on his
Speaker 1: way to a session for the Bridge Over Troubled Water
Speaker 1: track The Boxer in the fall of nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: he was recognized while stepping out of a cab by
Speaker 1: part time actress Linda Grossman, he was recognized. He must
Speaker 1: have been so happy that he was recognized.
Speaker 5: This time.
Speaker 1: Artie was smitten by Linda Grossman and took the bold
Speaker 1: move of inviting her on the spot to the session
Speaker 1: he was going to. He'd say, I was ready, My
Speaker 1: rhythm was already going. I think I asked I think
Speaker 1: I asked her to marry me in the second sentence.
Speaker 2: What a weird thing to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when they split up, he would later insist
Speaker 1: that he never loved her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, like, honestly, anyone please tweeted us right in
Speaker 2: if we're if you think have listened to this episode
Speaker 2: and think that we're being unfair to this guy, Yes,
Speaker 2: come on.
Speaker 1: So Paul wasn't exactly thrilled that art just showed up
Speaker 1: to their session with a stranger. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: makes the whole like John bringing Yoko, who at least
Speaker 1: was known to the rest of the band, seem you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, Linna Grossman lived in Boston, and if you have
Speaker 1: an artistic career in New York, it is really hard
Speaker 1: to keep commuting back up to Boston. It's really it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a time suck. It's a money suck. It
Speaker 1: makes it really really hard to keep things going in
Speaker 1: New York, especially if that's where you your your finances
Speaker 1: are and you make your money and all the opportunities are.
Speaker 1: It's really really, really difficult, let me tell you. And
Speaker 1: you know already he was really determined to make that
Speaker 1: relationship work, and he commuted back and forth between New
Speaker 1: York and Boston at great personal expense, I'm sure, and
Speaker 1: tremendous cost to his own sanity. But one of the
Speaker 1: downsides of this is that he had even less free
Speaker 1: time to record with Paul, who you'll remember was already
Speaker 1: pissed about the Catch twenty two shoots. So now he
Speaker 1: finally had already back and he was going back and
Speaker 1: forth to Boston to be with this rando who stopped
Speaker 1: him on the street and say, hey, aren't you our
Speaker 1: Garfuncle And he was like, you're pretty yes, I am.
Speaker 1: Is presumably how that went down, So now anywhere with you,
Speaker 1: Paul was doubly mad. Meanwhile, Paul, this is quite a choice.
Speaker 1: He was cementing a relationship with Peggy Harper, who at
Speaker 1: the time was married to Simon and Garfuncle's manager mart Lewis.
Speaker 1: Once their relationship heated up, Peggy left her husband, who,
Speaker 1: may I remind you, was Simon and Garfuncle's manager, Mart Lewis,
Speaker 1: and divorced him so she could marry Paul. I can
Speaker 1: only assume this was some kind of weird music industry
Speaker 1: ediple thing. Yeah, marrying your manager's wife is. That's a
Speaker 1: hell of a thing. Paul apparently actively pursued her despite
Speaker 1: his personal friendship and professional relationship with her now ex
Speaker 1: husband mart Lewis, the manager of Simon and Garfuncle, who
Speaker 1: continued to manage Simon and Garfuncle Paul solo after the
Speaker 1: breakup of the duo. This Mort guy. This guy either
Speaker 1: he was extremely open minded about all this, or he
Speaker 1: knew a meal ticket when he saw one. Rather than
Speaker 1: feel that Paul had quote taken Peggy from him, Mort
Speaker 1: said that he was quote relieved about the divorce and
Speaker 1: held no animosity towards Simon when the pair started dating.
Speaker 1: He said he and Simon even had a heart to
Speaker 1: heart conversation, agreeing not to let the matter disrupt their
Speaker 1: business ties, and with that, Paul and Peggy married in
Speaker 1: late autumn nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: Look, Paul, you can my wife, but don't fit the money.
Speaker 1: Let's go to fifteen percent. You want the divorce signed?
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Paul probably didn't appreciate already bringing in, you know, just
Speaker 2: some woman from the street, because she was pretty invalidated him.
Speaker 1: I must have that wrong, Like that's from the hell
Speaker 1: Burn book, which is extremely pro Paul. There must be
Speaker 1: something I'm going maybe not maybe not? What's over Linda Grossman?
Speaker 2: What There's a line in his Wikipedia page. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: Garfuncle has undertaken several long walks in his life. Yeah,
Speaker 2: h writing poetry along the way. Just what a hilarious
Speaker 2: thing to put.
Speaker 1: I think they were like extremely long, Like I think, yes.
Speaker 2: They're like forty miles. They're like it's like a long
Speaker 2: he's marathon walking. Yeah, just like you know, getting all
Speaker 2: the way down there on to personal life. But it's
Speaker 2: just he's taken long walks, several long baths. Okay, Sorry.
Speaker 2: So I found a nineteen seventy three Rolling Stone interview
Speaker 2: where our Carfuncle said I invited Linda to the studio
Speaker 2: that night we were working on the Boxer. She was reluctant,
Speaker 2: but she thought she'd try it. She came sat over
Speaker 2: the engineering console with her chin on her wrist, staring
Speaker 2: at me, Paul and Roy for four hours. She was
Speaker 2: going to know everything. I was impressed and flattered. I
Speaker 2: like people who third degree me, who stare at me.
Speaker 2: I feel they're interested. And we went out afterwards and
Speaker 2: I was very charmed and we dated a lot. It
Speaker 2: took us about three years though, before I had the
Speaker 2: courage to ask her to marry me. And the following
Speaker 2: sentence is They divorced in nineteen seventy five, with Garfunkle
Speaker 2: later claiming he never really loved her.
Speaker 1: So wait, why she was a singer. So I was
Speaker 1: going to bring her to the studio to weigh in.
Speaker 2: Was that what he means certainly adds to your notion
Speaker 2: of Paul Simon not being thrilled that a random person
Speaker 2: pulled up and just plopped down at the console. Oh,
Speaker 2: they worked on this song. Who's this again, Artie? I
Speaker 2: just met her in the street. Her name is Linda.
Speaker 1: We had Bob Dylan in here yesterday, arn and I
Speaker 1: didn't listen to him. Yeah, no offense, London. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm sure you lovely, I'm sure he never loved you. God,
Speaker 1: sorry to that woman, all right, all right, all right,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: The sessions for The Boxer were one of the most
Speaker 2: difficult songs that Simon and Garfunk put together. Sessions lasted
Speaker 2: well over one hundred hours, spread out over Columbia Studios
Speaker 2: in Nashville, New York, and also Saint Paul's Chapel at
Speaker 2: Columbia University. The church had a tiled dome which was
Speaker 2: beloved by the band for the l lailai parts, and
Speaker 2: this created a fun challenge for the engineers, who viewed
Speaker 2: the excursion as a bit of a field trip because
Speaker 2: mobile recording technology was not quite where it is today.
Speaker 2: Simon would recall that the recording for The Boxer began
Speaker 2: in Nashville, where they played with pro session guys like
Speaker 2: Charlie McCoy on harmonica, who played on Dylan's Blonde on
Speaker 2: Blonde on many other things, Pete Drake on pedal steel
Speaker 2: no relation to Nick Drake, the similarly kitten voiced but
Speaker 2: virtuosic fingerpicking British guitarist, and Fred Carter, who played the
Speaker 2: fingerpick and guitar part along with Simon. The first line
Speaker 2: is a lick he wrote while his guitar was in
Speaker 2: a special tuning Simon later said, ever since guitarists get
Speaker 2: their fingers all twisted up trying to play that part
Speaker 2: and they can't because they don't know the tuning, I.
Speaker 1: Won't tell them.
Speaker 2: No, I have the detail on those. Actually, the two
Speaker 2: of us played sitting about three feet apart and completely
Speaker 2: locked into it. We did it over and over until
Speaker 2: we got to take you here on the record. It's
Speaker 2: live on the record. No edits Roy and Lardy were
Speaker 2: in the control room and they were really happy with
Speaker 2: the way the guitars meshed together. That is beautiful. Fred Carter,
Speaker 2: in a two thousand and eight interview with Fred Boord Journal,
Speaker 2: explained it thusly. When we started to record in New York,
Speaker 2: I had a baby Martin, it's a smaller bodied model,
Speaker 2: and Paul Simon was playing his Martin a DA team.
Speaker 2: He was tuned regular in standard tuning EADGB E. So
Speaker 2: all I was here in was bits and pieces of
Speaker 2: the songs while he was doing his fingerpicking. So I
Speaker 2: tried two or three things and then picked up this guitar,
Speaker 2: which was about a third above his guitar, and I
Speaker 2: turned the first string down to D and I turned
Speaker 2: the bass string up to a G which put my
Speaker 2: guitar in an open G tuning. He says that Paul
Speaker 2: was in open C at this point, so if that's true,
Speaker 2: what they were essentially doing was playing guitars a fifth
Speaker 2: off of each other, which is very interesting. And that's
Speaker 2: a studio tactic that you do see in a lot
Speaker 2: of places where people will, I think in Nashville as well,
Speaker 2: where you kpo your capo one guitar at the seventh
Speaker 2: threat and then played the same guitar part just a
Speaker 2: fifth hire to thicken the sound. As long as you're
Speaker 2: not doing any kind of really complicated harmonies, it works out.
Speaker 2: And so he said, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: we were just still on the song on my guitar.
Speaker 2: They had me miked with about seven mics. They had
Speaker 2: a near mic, a distant mic, a neck mic, a
Speaker 2: mic on the guitar hole. They even miked my breathing.
Speaker 2: They micd the guitar in back. Roy Halley was a
Speaker 2: genius at getting around the first time we were listening,
Speaker 2: they killed the breathing mic and they had an ambient
Speaker 2: mic overhead which picked up the two guitars together. So
Speaker 2: I was breathing, I guess pretty heavy in rhythm, and
Speaker 2: they wanted to take it out, and they took it
Speaker 2: out and then said, no, we have to leave that in.
Speaker 2: And it now sounds like an additional layer rhythm on
Speaker 2: the record. So you can actually hear guitarist Fred Carter
Speaker 2: Junior's breathing as part of those guitar tracks.
Speaker 1: I never noticed that. I got to re listen to that.
Speaker 2: He also played telly and twelve string guitar on that track,
Speaker 2: three or four guitars in total, and a six string Doughbro,
Speaker 2: which is like the resonator style guitar that you hear
Speaker 2: in bluegrass music, not on a slide, he says. So
Speaker 2: there are so many guitars on that, which is why
Speaker 2: it sounds magic. And one of that central lick is
Speaker 2: them playing in two different tunings at once. So cool.
Speaker 1: That song I used to always kind of think was
Speaker 1: like long and slow and would skip to like Missus
Speaker 1: Robinson whatever. Although I get the more that's like, that's
Speaker 1: the one that is a magical song. I mean to me,
Speaker 1: it's like the musical equivalent of like cool hand Luke too.
Speaker 2: It's just like that, yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah, And
Speaker 2: just I don't know, man, I think I do think that,
Speaker 2: you know Howie deserves like a lot of recognition for
Speaker 2: this he talks about on the Boxer. Also, he put
Speaker 2: the brass and the rest of the voices on the
Speaker 2: end of that, and then he made this decision to
Speaker 2: mix the pedal steel track with a piccolo trumpet part.
Speaker 2: So the pedal steel was recorded down in Nashville and
Speaker 2: this boc esque piccolo trumpet part done in the Columbia church.
Speaker 2: And so he had two remote sessions of these two
Speaker 2: very distinct instruments and bounce them into one track together.
Speaker 2: That's just I love studio magic.
Speaker 1: And it's very much a Phil Specter or Brian Wilson
Speaker 1: technique of putting two instruments together playing the exact same line,
Speaker 1: and the effect is a completely new third sound that
Speaker 1: your brain puts together. I mean, I had no idea
Speaker 1: what that sound was. I thought, I think I assumed
Speaker 1: it was a pedal steel, but there was something off
Speaker 1: about it. I didn't realize that there was a pickle
Speaker 1: of trumpet on top of it. Pickle trumpets what they
Speaker 1: use in penny Land too. It's I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's unusual to be used in like a country.
Speaker 1: Tinged record like this.
Speaker 2: It's mostly a I mean, you probably wouldn't hear it
Speaker 2: on any rock no poke record unless somebody was trying
Speaker 2: to make it sound annoyingly baroke. Yeah, yeah, like the Beatles. Yes, continue,
Speaker 2: I think you're up. We've got to talk about the drums.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, so sorry.
Speaker 1: That's the other great part of the song.
Speaker 2: So the famous drum beat for the Bronxer. It only
Speaker 2: has one drum part, and it is played during the
Speaker 2: lie live part, and it is an amazing drum part
Speaker 2: because it sounds like the hammer of God. It is
Speaker 2: played by famed Wrecking Crew player how Blaine, who drummed
Speaker 2: on probably ninety five percent of things throughout the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty top ten US hits, forty of
Speaker 2: which were number ones. He authored the beat that is
Speaker 2: now just called the be My Baby beat from the
Speaker 2: ron Ads. Wouldn't it be nice? I Got you babe,
Speaker 2: mister tambourine man, Agent of Aquarius, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The
Speaker 2: effect of this sound was achieved not by any kind
Speaker 2: of intense like metering of reverb lengths or echo anything.
Speaker 2: Hal Blaine said that Roy Halley would just walk around
Speaker 2: clapping until he found the sound that he wanted, and
Speaker 2: so ultimately he decided to put the drums in the
Speaker 2: studio hallway by an elevator shaft for this maximum reverb
Speaker 2: in echo and Columbia's records hallways were just always known
Speaker 2: as apparently being great sources of echo and reverb. Halle
Speaker 2: would later joke, I bet Barbara Dreyisen's voice is still
Speaker 2: echoing in that hallway somewhere. And so Hal Blaine would
Speaker 2: pound the drums at the well, really just one drum
Speaker 2: snare right In.
Speaker 1: Different interviews, he said snare and tom tom, But I
Speaker 1: mean he was just also super old, so he might
Speaker 1: have I don't know, not to be awful, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was a snack.
Speaker 2: I mean the definitive I think the definitive one is
Speaker 2: the snare, but they might have mixed a low tom
Speaker 2: into it to give it a little bit of body.
Speaker 2: That actually makes sense anyway, so they would be how
Speaker 2: Blaine was just he said, they were all around me
Speaker 2: with all these mike cables, my drums, a set of headphones.
Speaker 2: When the chorus came around the lie Lie bit Roy
Speaker 2: had me come down on my snare drum as hard
Speaker 2: as I could in that hallway by the elevator shaft.
Speaker 2: It sounded like a cannon shot, which was just the
Speaker 2: kind of sound that we were after. Unfortunately, at this
Speaker 2: exact moment, during one take, the elevator doors open and
Speaker 2: an elderly man stepped out, just as how Blaine came
Speaker 2: down on a snare drum with all of the force
Speaker 2: he could summon. It nearly scared him to death. Blaine recalled,
Speaker 2: he jumped back into the elevator, the door and took off.
Speaker 2: We never saw him again. He later died. No, but
Speaker 2: I think I think about his face every time I
Speaker 2: hear the boxer and again like this is again just
Speaker 2: these guys, Hal Blaine, Larry Nechdel, Joe Osborne, engineer, producer,
Speaker 2: Roy Halley. And this was the first Simony Garfunkle album
Speaker 2: that credited these back musicians in their liner notes. And
Speaker 2: this was also an era when that was not even
Speaker 2: standard practice, you know. So this is because Motown musicians
Speaker 2: were famously not credited. So this is like a measure
Speaker 2: of faith that you know they had in crediting these guys,
Speaker 2: which I think is wonderful. With all of this material,
Speaker 2: A standard eight track recorder wasn't cutting it, so Roy
Speaker 2: Halle brought Columbia boss Clive Davis into the studio to
Speaker 2: lobby for the novel sixteen track recorder. Davis op his
Speaker 2: purse strings and bought another eight track recorder, which made
Speaker 2: Simon and Garfunkle among the first musicians to use sixteen
Speaker 2: track recording. But what they were actually doing was doing
Speaker 2: two separate eight track recorders that were manually synchronized and
Speaker 2: brought together. Hallie talking to Sound on Sound says we
Speaker 2: linked up two eight track machines to make sixteen and
Speaker 2: going out and making work tapes. The second eight track
Speaker 2: would be used as a work tape to go in
Speaker 2: overdub voices in the church, do that as a remote,
Speaker 2: bring it back to the studio and overdub on it.
Speaker 2: That wasn't being done at the time, so it was great.
Speaker 2: It was very innovative and very creative at that standpoint.
Speaker 2: So I don't know how you're gonna handle that. They
Speaker 2: edit God Love You and now we have the lost.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, there's actually a missing verse of the Boxer
Speaker 1: that was removed after already wrote that Bach like steel guitar, trumpet, melody,
Speaker 1: that was his line. That's his saw right, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: He gets one separate part of one song.
Speaker 1: The verse. The Lost Verse is occasionally reinserted during live
Speaker 1: versions of The Boxer and I heard it with them
Speaker 1: when I saw Simon and Garfunkle live in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, and it blew my mind because I assumed
Speaker 1: that Paul had written it especially for the occasion. It
Speaker 1: goes as follows. It's actually very sweet. It actually was
Speaker 1: cool that they added it as men in their twilight years.
Speaker 1: Now the years are rolling by me. They're rocking evenly.
Speaker 1: I'm older than I once was and younger than i'll be.
Speaker 1: That's not unusual, No, it isn't strange. After changes, upon changes,
Speaker 1: we are more or less the same. After changes, we
Speaker 1: are more or less the same. That was cool to
Speaker 1: see them at like you know, age seventy or whatever
Speaker 1: singing that to each other. That was really cool. It
Speaker 1: was my sixteenth birthday present for my dad seeing Simon
Speaker 1: and garfunk and so we went together, which was really cool.
Speaker 1: And also as a special guest at the show, they
Speaker 1: had the Everly Brothers and then all four so I'm
Speaker 1: on a Garfunkle and the two Everly brothers came out
Speaker 1: and sang songs together. It was unreal. It was one
Speaker 1: of the coolest concerts I've ever been to, one of
Speaker 1: the best presents I've ever received, really amazing. Yes lyrics, Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: lyrics to the Boxer. Paul reportedly wrote an early draft
Speaker 1: of the lyrics of this song on the back of
Speaker 1: an airsickness bag related note about sixties songs involving airsickness
Speaker 1: bags by people named Paul. It was pointed out to
Speaker 1: me that the line from back in the USSR all
Speaker 1: the way the paper bag was on my knee.
Speaker 2: I always thought it was like contraband or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was. It's an airsickness bag,
Speaker 1: That's what that line means. I never knew that. I
Speaker 1: never never really made sense to me. Is that I
Speaker 1: just blow your mind? Or did you?
Speaker 2: I don't think I ever really parsed the lyrics. I
Speaker 2: don't think about that, my friend. No, I don't think
Speaker 2: about it at all.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay the Boxer again. I'm not a big lyrics guy,
Speaker 1: but the lyrics to the Boxer always stunned me. The
Speaker 1: words tell the story of a man struggling to overcome poverty,
Speaker 1: and loneliness in New York City. After being presented in
Speaker 1: the first person for the first few verses, the final
Speaker 1: verse uses the third person sketch of a boxer and
Speaker 1: the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade,
Speaker 1: and he carries the reminders of every glove that laid
Speaker 1: him down or cut him till he cried out in
Speaker 1: his anger and his shame. I am leaving. I am leaving,
Speaker 1: but the fighters still remain. It's the fight seeing cool Endlop,
Speaker 1: That's what I always see. Simon has suggested that at
Speaker 1: least the spirit of the lyrics are autobiographical. Ah sad
Speaker 1: news for anyone who ever clung to this song for
Speaker 1: strength when they were struggling to overcome major life events.
Speaker 1: Paul wrote it after feeling like he was being unfairly
Speaker 1: criticized in the press. So no, not the loss of
Speaker 1: a loved one or a parent, or grow poverty, just
Speaker 1: people were mean to him in the music newspapers.
Speaker 2: I mean that that whole first verse, which never really
Speaker 2: made much sense to me, suddenly clicked into place. Though
Speaker 2: my story is seldom told, I have squandered my resistance
Speaker 2: for a pocket full of mumbles such are promises all
Speaker 2: lies in jest? Is this just him winging about people
Speaker 2: in the press being mean to him that whole first verse?
Speaker 1: It could be read that way, he says in a
Speaker 1: nineteen to eighty four interview with Playboy. I think I
Speaker 1: was reading the Bible around that time. That's where I
Speaker 1: think phrases like workmen's wages come from and seeking out
Speaker 1: the poor recorders. That was biblical. I think the song
Speaker 1: was about me. Everybody's beating me up, and I'm telling
Speaker 1: you now, I'm going to go away if you don't stop.
Speaker 2: And I never did.
Speaker 1: But by that time we had encountered our first criticism.
Speaker 1: For the first few years, it was just pure praise.
Speaker 1: It took two or three years for people to realize
Speaker 1: that we weren't strange creatures that emerged from England, but
Speaker 1: just two guys from Queens who used to sing rock
Speaker 1: and roll. And maybe we weren't real folkies at all,
Speaker 1: maybe we weren't even hippies. But yeah, Paul's been cagy
Speaker 1: over the years about whether or not the lyrics were
Speaker 1: strictly literal. In Robert Hilbert's biography, which again grain of Salt,
Speaker 1: he participated, and he gave many interviews for Paul said,
Speaker 1: looking back, I don't recall thinking that I went through
Speaker 1: years of struggle. I was never poor and I had
Speaker 1: a family that loved me. But I have to say
Speaker 1: singing his anger and his shame still makes me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: So there must have been some anger and shame. I
Speaker 1: think some of the feelings in the song started when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. It wasn't a traumatic injury you
Speaker 1: can point to, but there was something. And Hilburn then
Speaker 1: takes the opportunity to theorize that this something he speaks
Speaker 1: of included matters of his size, his hair, his failure,
Speaker 1: and occasional humiliation of the Jerry Land's solo years as
Speaker 1: a kid being snubbed by the Greenwich Village folk crowd,
Speaker 1: and later having to fight to gain respect in the
Speaker 1: rock community. Another biographer, Eric Elliott, that's not his name,
Speaker 1: that's a guy with the middle school with another biographer,
Speaker 1: Mark Elliott, reads into the lyrical story in a much
Speaker 1: more literal way by relating it to Simon's own biography.
Speaker 1: Like the quote this and full, he writes, the second
Speaker 1: verse of The Boxer connects with the album's recurring theme
Speaker 1: of abandonment. Set in an autobiographical back to the beginning frame,
Speaker 1: The singer is a poor boy leaving home, as Paul
Speaker 1: did when he went to England, surrounded by strangers in
Speaker 1: a railway station, probably a reference to his girlfriend Kathy
Speaker 1: Chitty and the song he would write around that time.
Speaker 1: Homeward bound. Once at his destination, the narrator lays low
Speaker 1: the house he shared in the East End. Looking to
Speaker 1: fit in, he tries to join the clique of artists
Speaker 1: he found there. The song then switches locales again, back
Speaker 1: to New York, but the only offers he gets there
Speaker 1: are from the street walkers, an allusion to perhaps the
Speaker 1: bands only into making money, the ones that are the
Speaker 1: ones that horr themselves out.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The song then breaks into a vocal and instrumental run
Speaker 1: of Lila laies. They are a fade in in cinematic
Speaker 1: terms that becomes, for a moment, a purely non chronological
Speaker 1: exultation the joy of singing now ohk. Next, the singer
Speaker 1: laments the passing of the years. This is the lost verse,
Speaker 1: the passing of the years and the acknowledgment of changes,
Speaker 1: already's leaving to make a movie, etc. And sighs to
Speaker 1: acknowledge the bandonment as nothing new in his life, that
Speaker 1: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Speaker 1: And finally, in the final verse, the singer longs to
Speaker 1: go home, yet not home, to somewhere where the harsh
Speaker 1: New York winters won't bleed him dry. Mexico. Perhaps we're
Speaker 1: already's filming his movie, all of which resolves with the
Speaker 1: vision of a boxer, a fighter who desperately wants to
Speaker 1: get out of the ring, but despite the beating he
Speaker 1: has taken, remains in the fight. He is what he
Speaker 1: is and will somehow make it through. Are you family
Speaker 1: with that?
Speaker 2: Charlie Brown had hose tweet?
Speaker 1: Not No.
Speaker 2: I can theorize though it's a classic bit of Twitter Twitter.
Speaker 2: It's just passed into one of those tweets that has
Speaker 2: passed into common lore. And I'm reading I'm remembering as
Speaker 2: best I can. But it's people will get on here
Speaker 2: and just say anything Charlie Brown had hose. No, he didn't,
Speaker 2: that's not true. And in similarly, people can just write anything.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm sorry, I don't. I think I feel
Speaker 2: like a lifelong New Yorker who probably took some buses
Speaker 2: around the port authority is probably more likely to just
Speaker 2: be writing about actual street walkers and poor people than
Speaker 2: veiled criticisms of bands just in it for the money,
Speaker 2: particularly when Paul Simon is like one of the most
Speaker 2: money minded cats from when he was a seventeen year old.
Speaker 2: That's losers that should have gone back to the editor.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: The course of the Boxer contains non lexical syllables. That's
Speaker 1: a great term. Lie la lie. They are extremely effective,
Speaker 1: especially following the extremely literate verses. I think it's a
Speaker 1: cool way to follow it up. But Paul only intended
Speaker 1: the lila lies as a placeholder. He would say, I
Speaker 1: didn't have any words. But it's not a failure of
Speaker 1: songwriting because people like that and they put enough meaning
Speaker 1: into it, and the rest of the song has enough
Speaker 1: power and emotion I guess to make it go. So
Speaker 1: it's all right. But for me, every time I sing
Speaker 1: that part, I'm a little embarrassed, which is cute.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, it's just kind of interesting that he
Speaker 2: went with that because like, coming from a folk background,
Speaker 2: like there's so much like there is a lot of
Speaker 2: non lexical stuff in that, and it's all like, you know, diity, diity,
Speaker 2: like whatever. I guess what I should say is it's
Speaker 2: interesting that he took a non lexical word that also
Speaker 2: has like a double meaning to it, you know, right,
Speaker 2: instead of simply singing law or like any of that.
Speaker 2: Like hearing lie as part of the folk tradition doesn't
Speaker 2: exactly square up to me. I'm not sure how many
Speaker 2: other instances there are of.
Speaker 1: That, you know, And maybe it's just because it's so
Speaker 1: ingrained in my head right now, a law or a
Speaker 1: daw or something like that, just even just phonetically, it
Speaker 1: seems too uplifting. Yeah, li lah lay seems like something
Speaker 1: an accusation. Well, yes, there are theories out there, and
Speaker 1: this is like.
Speaker 2: People who oh, I wasn't even gonna give space to
Speaker 2: the Dylan theory. But I meant like, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: on this song. I think this song is incredible. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that guy his assessment of yes, but like I think,
Speaker 2: you know, so much of this song is kind of
Speaker 2: about the tension of like I'm just trying to do
Speaker 2: this one thing, like why has everything been so hard?
Speaker 2: Why was I sold this myth that I could do
Speaker 2: these things? And then to me, it's like almost like
Speaker 2: a cosmic cry back, like you've all lied to me,
Speaker 2: but I'm still gonna stick around because you haven't killed
Speaker 2: me yet, you know, asking only for workman's wages, looking
Speaker 2: only for a job. You people all lied to me,
Speaker 2: but I'm still here. Don't look at me like that. No,
Speaker 2: I mean that's with that emotion in your eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, that's a varianize, a deeper
Speaker 1: level of ar connection.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a much better theory than this ridiculous
Speaker 1: theory that.
Speaker 2: The Dylan theory is so funny, please go on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Apparently there are some people who think that the
Speaker 1: Eli La Lae chorus is meant to be Paul Simon
Speaker 1: accusing Bob Dylan about of lying about his musical intentions,
Speaker 1: which I oh, I mean.
Speaker 2: This would have been on the heels of the Judas concert, right,
Speaker 2: which was preceded by somebody yellingly literally like you lie, right.
Speaker 1: That's okay, that's a good point. I hadn't thought. But
Speaker 1: that was like teen sixty six. This was late nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. I mean that he had already released Jean.
Speaker 2: Was like a turbulent It was a turbulent decade. Brownier
Speaker 2: Brown here second reference. Wow.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Simon himself rejected this theory because it's dumb. Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: ended up covering this song on self Portrait, although he
Speaker 1: replaced the word glove from every Glove that Laid him
Speaker 1: down with every blow that laid him down, which I
Speaker 1: would imagine if your Paul Simon and Bob Dylan changes
Speaker 1: your lyrics, that's got to be a tweak, right, Like well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's.
Speaker 2: Also like probably the one person where Paul Simon would
Speaker 2: actually sing go true. That's a good edit, Jim.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about their relationship, No, neither. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting you. I Yeah, great song, great song, And
Speaker 1: I think that was if I recall that, that would
Speaker 1: probably have been the first song recorded for uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the first song recorded for these sessions in
Speaker 1: November nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2: Don't do it?
Speaker 1: Do it?
Speaker 2: Okay? Well you punched it in for me. So while
Speaker 2: they recorded the Box or the Fall of nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: sessions for what became Bridge Over Troublewater began in earnest
Speaker 2: in the summer of nineteen sixty nine. Oh, summer of
Speaker 2: sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now it's Not'spratt Adam.
Speaker 2: Soon Simon decided to use La as the base of
Speaker 2: operations to make it easier for Art, who was, as
Speaker 2: you recall, filming Catch twenty two on the West Coast.
Speaker 2: He really you know, he might have been grumbly about it,
Speaker 2: but he did try to make this work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, That's the main thing I came away
Speaker 1: with after researching this.
Speaker 2: The pair settling in la was one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why they declined to perform at Woodstock.
Speaker 1: And they also kind of bombed at the Monterey Pop
Speaker 1: Festival too, I think if I remember correct, well.
Speaker 2: I mean, were they slated between like Otis Redding and
Speaker 2: Jimmy Hendrix and like several of the other most electrifying
Speaker 2: performances of all time, and then they just got on
Speaker 2: there and saying about feeling groovy, cooking spices and feeling groovy.
Speaker 2: Sometimes festival programming, I'm just like, when when I hear
Speaker 2: about people being like, oh, they bombed at this famous festival,
Speaker 2: I'm like, that was the promoter's fault. Don't put come
Speaker 2: next to that anyway. In a sense, Bridge is Paul
Speaker 2: Simon's equivalent of Paul McCartney's Yesterday. In other words, it
Speaker 2: arrived to him so quickly. There's a great phrase that
Speaker 2: I remember from the reading The Grateful Dead annotated lyrics
Speaker 2: and the intro to by Robert Hunter. He has this
Speaker 2: great phrase where he talks about songs like that and
Speaker 2: the turn is fast as the pen would pull.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, great, that is great.
Speaker 2: So Paul Simon would say an all timer of a
Speaker 2: quote from twenty eleven. I have no idea where it
Speaker 2: came from. It came all of a sudden. It was
Speaker 2: one of the most shocking moments of my songwriting career
Speaker 2: at the time. I remember thinking, this is considerably better
Speaker 2: than I usually write. He'd say that the essence of
Speaker 2: the song, presumably the melody and the lyrical theme, took
Speaker 2: about twenty minutes, and the first two verses were completed
Speaker 2: in two hours. He continued, The melody was something like
Speaker 2: fifteen notes, which is long. It just seemed to flow
Speaker 2: through me in a way you don't feel where you
Speaker 2: can really even call it your own. But then again,
Speaker 2: it's nobody else's. I didn't know where it came from,
Speaker 2: but I knew it was exceptional. It's as if there's
Speaker 2: this chemical feeling the creation of something that is so exceptional.
Speaker 2: It's addictive. It's one of the things that keeps you
Speaker 2: writing your whole life. You're trying to get to that
Speaker 2: place again.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that and being the nerd
Speaker 2: that I am. I've heard so many musicians talk about that.
Speaker 2: Like I've heard about like everyone from like Tom Waits
Speaker 2: to Benjo Virtuoso Bay Laflex talking about just try getting
Speaker 2: into like their floasting and just being like just sitting
Speaker 2: around and you know, plucking and noodling and chewing over
Speaker 2: a phrase or a thing and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: fast as the pen would pull, you know, beautiful. Who
Speaker 2: said you've got to grab them before they get to
Speaker 2: Burt Bachack or some other son of a bitch.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know, but that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Damn, I've never heard that.
Speaker 1: That's great. I mean, Michael Jackson would say that he
Speaker 1: didn't like to go to sleep because he was afraid
Speaker 1: that when he slept God, they'd give the good ideas
Speaker 1: the Prince. Oh, I've never heard that. That's amazing.
Speaker 2: I might be said Alex Eigel, said Alex Higle a rich, No,
Speaker 2: it was, man, I'm so hard pressed. It was. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I think that was like the gist of the quote, like,
Speaker 2: you know, there are all these songs just floating around
Speaker 2: out in the air, and you've got to grab them
Speaker 2: before somebody else like Burt Backack or it does.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was this where we should.
Speaker 1: Punch it in which, oh yeah, folks, we're not about
Speaker 1: to head to Really one of my favorite segments of
Speaker 1: this show.
Speaker 2: It's Heigel's Woke Corner. Yes, that's right, folks, it's time
Speaker 2: to come on down to Heigel's Woke Corner, where I
Speaker 2: advance the radical theory that people who aren't straight white
Speaker 2: men deserve rights.
Speaker 1: Uh Paul.
Speaker 2: Paul is a checkered cat, right, Like, he has a
Speaker 2: long history of engaging with other people's art as a
Speaker 2: playground for his own and then taking it and doing
Speaker 2: cool stuff with it. Yes, again, creating Banker.
Speaker 1: It's where it's just like I'm gonna make this louder. Okay,
Speaker 1: hold on, buddy, that's that's not you say things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have a problem. Zepp rolls up cityus tattoos.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 2: Paul would later say that he has was listening to
Speaker 2: a lot of gospel music in this period, which obviously
Speaker 2: influenced the musical feel bridge over Troubled Water, but that
Speaker 2: also inspired the title. He was listening to a nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine track by the Swan silver Tones called Mary
Speaker 2: Don't You Weep that is a very old spiritual and
Speaker 2: that he heard a vocal ad lib from one of
Speaker 2: the singers saying, I'll bring your bridge over deep water
Speaker 2: if you trust in my name.
Speaker 6: Whis that handsomebody to have me?
Speaker 9: Call me?
Speaker 4: Yeah? May Hill he agree over deep water in trust
Speaker 4: in my name?
Speaker 6: I'm gonna weird. I don't know, lazy, How did you.
Speaker 7: About a call of.
Speaker 2: Me till you may remember the Swan Silvertones from another
Speaker 2: song that Paul wrote called she Loves Me Like a
Speaker 2: Rock That sounds a whole lot like an old gospel song.
Speaker 2: In fact, the Swan Silverstones recording that I just mentioned.
Speaker 1: Is that an out there thing like I'd never seen
Speaker 1: that or read that. But I was just listening to
Speaker 1: that Swan Silvertones song today just to hear.
Speaker 2: You can punch it in, dude like you you have
Speaker 2: the power.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna wear. I don't belive it.
Speaker 2: What's funny is that when he went to go record
Speaker 2: Love Me Like a Rock, he got background vocals from
Speaker 2: the Dixie Hummingbirds, who are contemporaries of the Swan silver Tones,
Speaker 2: so that a score to settle, I mean just but
Speaker 2: like the brass Ones on him, like, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: basically rewrite this other gospel songs, and can I get
Speaker 2: this other gospel group to just do what they did
Speaker 2: on it? I mean that's there's such a level of
Speaker 2: like disconnect between the level of empathy and warmth that
Speaker 2: he achieves in his vocals and how he just seems
Speaker 2: to view intellectual property and folk traditions and people's art
Speaker 2: and people themselves as just things that he can move
Speaker 2: around and play with. But then again, this is a
Speaker 2: guy who broke apartheid Boycott's because Henry Kissinger told him
Speaker 2: it was okay. So anyway, to his credit, at this point,
Speaker 2: Paul was very open about this lift. I had an
Speaker 2: interview in the Dick Cavit Show where he said, I
Speaker 2: guess I stole that.
Speaker 1: That is the exactly exact quote from nineteen seventy too,
Speaker 1: So I mean it's like, yeah, it wasn't like this
Speaker 1: thing that got dredged up in the woke era. Like
Speaker 1: he was very open about it.
Speaker 2: But this is also cool, according to gospel producer and
Speaker 2: historian Anthony Heilbutt, who wrote this book called The Gospel Sound,
Speaker 2: which I've read. It is the definitive history of gospel
Speaker 2: music in America. It's wonderful hours of enjoyment for not
Speaker 2: just the stories, but all the rabbit holes that will
Speaker 2: send you down for musicians, So I highly recommend that.
Speaker 2: But Simon later acknowledged this debt to Claude Jeter of
Speaker 2: the Swan Silvertones in person handed him a check as compensation.
Speaker 2: Of course, does that guy's name pop up in the
Speaker 2: writing credits, Sure doesn't. Classic. Here's a Cadillac for all
Speaker 2: the right to your songs. Yeah, this is you know. Oh,
Speaker 2: and now we go right over to the other corner
Speaker 2: of Jordan's obligatory beatles shoehorning in Jordan, what do you
Speaker 2: have for us today?
Speaker 1: Yeah? This hole is just like cutting the guy a check.
Speaker 1: Move is the same thing that Paul McCartney did to
Speaker 1: Jimmy Scott, a Nigerian conga player, an acquaintance in the
Speaker 1: mid sixties who taught Paul the phrase oh bloody, oh
Speaker 1: blood doah, life goes on brah. His name does not
Speaker 1: appear on oh bloody Obla dah. In fact, John Lennon's does,
Speaker 1: although he had absolutely nothing to do with the song,
Speaker 1: Yeah go figure, Paul cut the guy a check. He
Speaker 1: also had another phrase, nothing too much, just out of sight,
Speaker 1: which Paul also wrote a song about for the two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight album that he did with the producer
Speaker 1: Youth called Electric Arguments.
Speaker 2: There are also people who contended that Jimmy Scott might
Speaker 2: be the guy playing congos and sympathy for the devil.
Speaker 1: That would make sense because he played at Ronnie Scott's
Speaker 1: Jazz club in Soho and London in the sixties and
Speaker 1: that was where all the Stones and the Beatles and
Speaker 1: the Who all hung out, so that would make sense.
Speaker 2: But maybe we're coming about this whole thing from the
Speaker 2: wrong angle, because after all, Paul Simon also stole from
Speaker 2: white people. He admitted that some of the melody for
Speaker 2: Bridge Over Trouble Water was stolen from Johann Sebastian Bach's
Speaker 2: Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded. Paul originally wrote the song
Speaker 2: on guitar, but he transposed it to the piano to
Speaker 2: maximize the gospel effect. He hired Wrecking Crew session player
Speaker 2: Larry Nektel, a favorite of Elvis Ray, Charles the Doors,
Speaker 2: Brian Wilson, and many others and garfam remember that they
Speaker 2: worked hard on the turnarounds or the embellishments that happened
Speaker 2: from the end of the chorus to the beginning of
Speaker 2: the new verses. They also booked fellow Wrecking Crew members
Speaker 2: Hal Blaine and Joe Osbourne, who we mentioned earlier. Joe
Speaker 2: Osborne once again Hallie put him back to his favorite
Speaker 2: task of over dubbing two basslines. I do wonder though,
Speaker 2: the famous bit about Walk on the wild Side is
Speaker 2: that Herbie Flowers recorded two basslines on that to claim
Speaker 2: that he was playing two instruments and collect double his
Speaker 2: session fee. I wonder if that's just a British thing,
Speaker 2: because Transformer was cut in England and if Joe Osborne
Speaker 2: tried to do that, they would have laughed him out
Speaker 2: of the office.
Speaker 1: Aha.
Speaker 2: Anyway, just a fun little note. Co producer Roy Holly
Speaker 2: gave a demo of the song to arranger Ernie Freeman,
Speaker 2: who had worked with people like Frank Sinatra and Old.
Speaker 2: Ernie apparently phoned it in for this one because when
Speaker 2: he came back with the score, Paul discovered that Art's
Speaker 2: name was spelled wrong, which probably gave Paul a thrill
Speaker 2: right up all five foot three of him. The title
Speaker 2: of the song was listed not as like a bridge
Speaker 2: over troubled water, but like a picture of water. He
Speaker 2: was less amused by this. I was pissed off, he
Speaker 2: told Robert Hilburn, and Hilburn's lotioned hand job of a book.
Speaker 2: It looked like he didn't listen to the demo long
Speaker 2: enough to get the right title. I hated the arrangement
Speaker 2: so much that I walked out of the studio. I
Speaker 2: was abrasive at times in the studio, but that's my
Speaker 2: job to protect the music. Doesn't matter what anyone thinks
Speaker 2: of me. I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to
Speaker 2: a piece of work. It's like your child. Hallie tinkered
Speaker 2: with the arrangement in the mix, so it wasn't a
Speaker 2: total loss and they didn't have to call session musicians
Speaker 2: back in for another pass. But even so, Simon apparently
Speaker 2: isn't thrilled with the arrangement to this day, believing the
Speaker 2: strings to be too syrupy.
Speaker 1: I think that's correct. The final chord that Bridge over
Speaker 1: Troubled Water ends on is let me check this is
Speaker 1: insanely mawkish. It's I find it cringey, Like it's not
Speaker 1: my favorite song, but like I admit that it's a
Speaker 1: great song and whatever. But that last chord that it
Speaker 1: ends on is so corny and so dramatic and so bad,
Speaker 1: Like even if it just faded a little early.
Speaker 2: I mean, half of that is just that this Every
Speaker 2: single instrument on here is peaking so hard to tape.
Speaker 2: They pushed this so hard.
Speaker 1: You're right, it's just a bad move, like that's hallmark,
Speaker 1: even if they just brought the cello back in to
Speaker 1: play a couple octaves lower to ground it.
Speaker 2: I haven't listened to this in a while. This sounds
Speaker 2: like Norwegian black metal. It is so blown out. Yeah
Speaker 2: yeah yeah yeah. Like I said, I don't listen to
Speaker 2: this version, but it's just so pinned in the red,
Speaker 2: like every single thing in here fighting for space. It's
Speaker 2: all like his voice is distorted so much. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that high note is like a Disney voicing for sure.
Speaker 2: That last chord isn't like a when you wish upon
Speaker 2: a story like Disney voicing.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm glad we agreed about this.
Speaker 2: Great Moving forward, the.
Speaker 1: Instrumental track for Bridge over Troubled Water is recorded over
Speaker 1: five days in Los Angeles, and Garfunckle's vocal was recorded
Speaker 1: over two days in New York a short time later,
Speaker 1: and of course Paul and Art fought about it. From
Speaker 1: the jump. Paul imagined Art singing his precious neo hymnal
Speaker 1: in his quote white choir boy way. Unfortunately, Artie wasn't
Speaker 1: all that into.
Speaker 2: It, could I just I'm going to fully own something here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan of Keith Jarrett, and I don't
Speaker 2: think I learned until like four years ago that he
Speaker 2: was a white man. So it is just a hilarious
Speaker 2: bit of Miles Davis apocrypha that at one point when
Speaker 2: Keith Jarrett was playing in Miles seventies band, Miles toward
Speaker 2: everyone else that when Keith quote starts playing that Catholic
Speaker 2: schoolboys layout, don't follow him, which is essentially, if he
Speaker 2: starts doing that, pop out and make him and keep
Speaker 2: him out there on his own for as long as
Speaker 2: he's willing to do it before he gets back in Dune.
Speaker 2: It gets back to the rest of the god that's
Speaker 2: very funny at Catholic schoolboyshit yep.
Speaker 1: Continue Unfortunately, Art really didn't much care for the song.
Speaker 1: Paul was so thrilled that he wanted he was offering
Speaker 1: his dear friend what he thought was his finest piece
Speaker 1: of work to sing and Art he offered this devastating quote.
Speaker 1: Paul felt it was his best song. I felt it
Speaker 1: was something less than his best song, but a great song,
Speaker 1: which is kind of my take. Art was apparently very
Speaker 1: diplomatic in the studio. It's a great song. Art reportedly said,
Speaker 1: you wrote it, you sing it beautifully, serve to do it,
Speaker 1: and Paul last Dance Voice, took this personally. He took
Speaker 1: this as an insult. He would later complain in an interview,
Speaker 1: it's my best song and it's not good enough for
Speaker 1: Arty to want to do it. Kim and even worse,
Speaker 1: Artie had some notes, here is my best song. I
Speaker 1: want you to do it.
Speaker 9: Nah, you do it?
Speaker 1: Also, I got some thoughts on it. Yeah, already felt
Speaker 1: that the tuverse song was too short and it needed
Speaker 1: one more verse for a bigger ending.
Speaker 2: Oh and by the way, Paul, you do those, So
Speaker 2: do you go off to do that. I'll just nip
Speaker 2: off for a bit.
Speaker 1: Go one are my walks.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go burn one.
Speaker 1: Thus, Paul banged out a quick third Stanza in the studio,
Speaker 1: which he really hated doing and rarely, if ever did.
Speaker 1: He still doesn't like this verse, believing it to be
Speaker 1: less cohesive than the first two, and he was also
Speaker 1: likely turned off by a rumor that spread across the
Speaker 1: United States, where it was believed that the soul he
Speaker 1: sings about is a reference to a heroin Needle. In reality,
Speaker 1: it's a reference to his new wife, Peggy Harper, who
Speaker 1: had just discovered her first grace. She'd been married to
Speaker 1: Paul Simon for less than a year and discovered her
Speaker 1: first grades. Why Paul decided to immortalize them and what
Speaker 1: he believed was his greatest song, I'll never know The
Speaker 1: song Bridge over Troubled Water would be a sore point
Speaker 1: between Paul and Art for many years to come. Paul
Speaker 1: complained bitterly about Garfunkle's association with Bridge. In a nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two Rolling Stone interview. He said he didn't want
Speaker 1: to sing it himself, he couldn't hear it for himself.
Speaker 1: He felt I should have done it, and many times
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I didn't do it. The way they handled
Speaker 1: this beef is a true masterclass in simmering passive aggression,
Speaker 1: which should probably be taught in New England schools. When
Speaker 1: they came to perform the song in concert, Simon would
Speaker 1: graciously insist on leaving the stage, giving Garfuncle the full spotlight.
Speaker 1: But at the same same time, Paul couldn't help feel
Speaker 1: a sense of envy at the thunderous applause. This was
Speaker 1: his song and he could have easily sung it, but
Speaker 1: garfunk could never have written it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if he could easily have sung it.
Speaker 2: The highest note in that is an F above two
Speaker 2: octaves above middle C.
Speaker 1: There's a demo, there's a guitar demo from Paul where
Speaker 1: that's out there, and if you've heard it, maybe i'll
Speaker 1: punch it in here.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you could do it falsetto. I don't think
Speaker 2: he could have done it as a belt.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you're totally right. But there was an arrangement
Speaker 1: that Paul had of this song. It was very, very good.
Speaker 2: But you need that chest belt like that's I think
Speaker 2: what's even though it sounds like horrible in that mix,
Speaker 2: Like that's what you need to sell carry that song forward.
Speaker 2: If you just have someone hitting it in like a
Speaker 2: quavering falsetto, like that's not you know, I think, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't know. I see both way.
Speaker 1: I think it was pitched down where he wasn't in
Speaker 1: a falsetto. He's in his chest voice, and it was
Speaker 1: it was good. I got to relisten and listen in
Speaker 1: a while. But he had an affecting version of it.
Speaker 7: When you're weary, feel sad, when he's say, you see.
Speaker 9: I would be there, do bring you see winters up
Speaker 9: and may a life to trouble waters.
Speaker 3: Are wary me, No, my god, rouble waters are.
Speaker 1: Ward, Paul would say many times on stage though, when
Speaker 1: I'd be sitting off to the side and Larry Nektall
Speaker 1: will be playing piano and already would be singing bridge,
Speaker 1: people would stomp and cheer when it was over, and
Speaker 1: I would think, that's my song man, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I wrote that song. Paul's wife, Peggy, would frequently grumble
Speaker 1: about the fact that Art never once invited Paul out
Speaker 1: to take a bow for the song, which it's literally
Speaker 1: it's kind of a weird thing to do.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, that's a bitch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got well, I mean I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think it would be weird for you to just bring
Speaker 1: the guy who wrote the song out on stage to
Speaker 1: tick a bow when he's already coming back on stage
Speaker 1: to sing with you anyway.
Speaker 2: I mean, god forbid you mentioned he wrote this song.
Speaker 1: Like everybody would assume that. I don't know, all right, most.
Speaker 2: People didn't, though. I mean, look at some of these
Speaker 2: album covered there's literally the Celia Celia single. The front
Speaker 2: cover is our carl uncle's face. True, that cover is
Speaker 2: Paul Simon's face. Yes, I would be a little miffed.
Speaker 1: Too, Okay, you're right, oh. Paul Simon's belief in the
Speaker 1: song Bridge over Troubled Water. He did not believe it
Speaker 1: had hit single potential. I didn't think it was a smash,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was something exceptional. I thought it
Speaker 1: was probably too long for a commercial record. It was
Speaker 1: all piano up until the last verse. I didn't think
Speaker 1: it was a hit. Art unsurprisingly agreed, saying as a
Speaker 1: single it was too long, too slow, but Clive Davis
Speaker 1: got behind it all the way, embolded by Columbia's success
Speaker 1: with Like a Rolling Stone five years earlier, a five
Speaker 1: plus minute song in an era when commercial radio mandated
Speaker 1: songs under three minutes. Davis insisted that they released Bridge
Speaker 1: Over Troubled Water uncut, Bigger, Longer, and uncut. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break, but we'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more too much information in just a moment.
Speaker 2: And the rest. Now, we have to get to all
Speaker 2: the other songs, starting with El Condor de Pezza. As
Speaker 2: we touched on, Paul Simon was inordinately proud of writing
Speaker 2: Bridge over Troubled Water. So let's touch on a song
Speaker 2: that he didn't write, although he initially did claim credit
Speaker 2: for doing so. Yes, folks, let's bring it right around
Speaker 2: back to Heigel's woke Corner, where we advance the radical
Speaker 2: notion that people who aren't straight white men should have rights.
Speaker 2: It's Heigel's woke corner, folks may remember from our Graceland episode.
Speaker 2: Even leaving aside the whole breaking an international boycott over
Speaker 2: at Parthid because Henry Kissinger said it was a cool
Speaker 2: thing to do. Old Polly Walnuts doesn't have the best
Speaker 2: track record when it comes to, let's call them charitably,
Speaker 2: his collaborations with black or brown people. Members of the
Speaker 2: band Los Lobos contend that they were fresh off a
Speaker 2: Grammy of their own. Their label pushed them to work
Speaker 2: with Simon, who was in a fallow point of his career.
Speaker 2: He just came and, according to them, sat in the
Speaker 2: control room for a few days silently just watching them play.
Speaker 5: I liked it.
Speaker 2: He perked up when he heard David guitarist David Hitaligo
Speaker 2: playing a song that the band had been working on
Speaker 2: for their next album. That song would eventually appear on
Speaker 2: Graceland as All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints,
Speaker 2: credited solely to Simon. Band member Jeff Berlin said that
Speaker 2: when Los Lobos reached out to Paul's team for more information,
Speaker 2: Paul's reaction was, sue me see what happens anyway. As
Speaker 2: we mentioned with some of the Swan silvertone stuff, that
Speaker 2: trend started so much earlier than eighty six. Elcandor Pezza
Speaker 2: was written by the Peruvian composer Daniel Alomia Robrez, who
Speaker 2: based it off the traditional music of the Andes and
Speaker 2: specifically Peru. This song partially because yes, I mean I
Speaker 2: might as well saying this song because of Paul Simon,
Speaker 2: has become something of the national anthem of Peru. But
Speaker 2: it's interesting because Robez was a bit of an Alan
Speaker 2: Lomax character. He ditched his a career in medicine to
Speaker 2: just journey through the Andes and study folk music. So
Speaker 2: right away we have a bit of this conflict of
Speaker 2: like an Alan Lomax situation of like, did this guy
Speaker 2: just actually notate a song that had been circulated for
Speaker 2: centuries and then claim credit for it? So there's there's layers, man,
Speaker 2: there's layer layers.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So Daniel Alomio Robez premiered the song of Condo Pazza
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirteen at the Tiatro Mazie in Lima as
Speaker 2: part of a Zarzuela, a Spanish light opera that featured
Speaker 2: social commentary in a hilarious bit of irony. This zarzuela,
Speaker 2: in particular concerned Peruvian miners in Cerl do Pasco and
Speaker 2: their struggle with a foreign mining company. Do you guys
Speaker 2: get it? Do you get the resonance? My favorite gags
Speaker 2: in Don't Be a Menace, the parody movie by the
Speaker 2: Ways Brothers that they have one of the Wayans constantly
Speaker 2: popping in from out of frame going message I forgot
Speaker 2: about that. Marcella Rolls granddaughter of Daniel contends that this
Speaker 2: operetta was performed something like three thousand times at that
Speaker 2: opera house. Twenty years later, piano arrangement of the melody
Speaker 2: was legally registered by Roblas courtesy of the Edward Bimurk's
Speaker 2: Music Corporation with the Library of Congress under the number
Speaker 2: ninety six four three. So you can probably guess where
Speaker 2: this is all going. Regarding Paul Simon, while in Paris
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five, Simon heard a version of this
Speaker 2: song by the band Los Incas, who, interestingly enough, were
Speaker 2: formed in Paris nine years prior by an Argentinian and
Speaker 2: two Venezuelans, no Peruvians. When he asked the band about it,
Speaker 2: they told Simon that the song was a piece of
Speaker 2: Andean folk music, but that their arrangement was by Jorge Milchberg,
Speaker 2: who was an Argentinian born to Polish immigrants. Simon took
Speaker 2: this white man at face value, wrote his own English
Speaker 2: lyrics to the tune and didn't credit Robles as the
Speaker 2: initial composer. However, Milchberg, I'm so sorry. The guy's name
Speaker 2: is Milchberg. At least they weren't Nazis, right, Maybe is Italian.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, dude, Polish German, last name in Argentina.
Speaker 2: The guy was born in nineteen twenty eight. What's the
Speaker 2: over under on that anyway? Now, I frontloaded this with
Speaker 2: a lot of salt, but it actually had quite a
Speaker 2: happy ending. In nineteen seventy, Armando Robles Godoy, the original
Speaker 2: composer's son and who's since become a filmmaker in Peru,
Speaker 2: filed suit against Simon, pointing out that his dad had
Speaker 2: held the copyright to the song in America since nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty three. It was an almost friendly court case because
Speaker 2: Paul Simon was very respectful of other cultures. This man said,
Speaker 2: according to a wicked I can no longer verify it
Speaker 2: was not carelessness on his part, And then he called
Speaker 2: the entire court thing a court case without further complications,
Speaker 2: adding that he held no ill will towards Simon for
Speaker 2: what he considered a misunderstanding and an honest mistake. Paul
Speaker 2: Simon amended the writing credits and went away, vowing never
Speaker 2: ever to be so weak as to credit an original
Speaker 2: writer of a song, and we are so much the
Speaker 2: richer for it. Then to add insult to injury, Perry
Speaker 2: Como released a version of Alcondo Pesa also in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Oh god, what yeah, I mean, I assume it's horrendous.
Speaker 2: Take a listen.
Speaker 10: I'd rather biggest sparrow than a slam. Yes, I would,
Speaker 10: I surely would.
Speaker 2: Nope, this is unlistenable.
Speaker 9: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that blows. That's terrible. Okay, yeah, all right, now
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about Cecilia, a song until this afternoon
Speaker 1: I thought was Cilia. I don't hear the first syllable
Speaker 1: in the chorus. Nope, okay, I don't eare good, thank you?
Speaker 2: I feel better.
Speaker 1: This is a song that I used to hate, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of grown on me in recent years. It
Speaker 1: originated at a small party that Paul Simon held in
Speaker 1: the summer of sixty nine. I can't even say it, sorry,
Speaker 1: first reed six streme modulate tone. Not long after the
Speaker 1: Manson murders occurred nearby.
Speaker 2: I got my first real six string.
Speaker 1: The gathering took place at Paul's rented home at fifteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven Blue Jay Way. And if that street name
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, that's because it's the same house George Harrison
Speaker 1: rented in nineteen sixty seven, which led him to write
Speaker 1: the Magical Mystery Tour track of the same name, Blue
Speaker 1: Jay Way.
Speaker 2: Dude, I love that song. That is such a great
Speaker 2: deep cut. I find it so like sinister in free be.
Speaker 1: Like boom long please do.
Speaker 2: It's uh it shivers thinking about it.
Speaker 1: But Cello or whatever that is, it's like, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Listened to it a lot and on acid in college.
Speaker 2: That might have something to do with it.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's that's an odd choice. It seems
Speaker 1: like you were actively seeking out bad trips A yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's definitely like a couple like you know,
Speaker 2: when you're like tripping, you don't really want to hear
Speaker 2: like the early chit. You want to hear the like
Speaker 2: I'm a Tibetan monk singing from the mountainous stuff.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: So Magical Mystery Tour has a couple of good ones
Speaker 2: on that white album, you know, good, good trippy.
Speaker 1: Anyway, back to Blue Jay Way, Paul Simon is having
Speaker 1: a house party. Let's all take ourselves there. Wayne's World
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. The Manson murders just happened nearby, but
Speaker 1: at Paul Simon's house on Blue Jay Way.
Speaker 2: It's a party.
Speaker 1: It is. It is a party.
Speaker 2: The room smells terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yes, Paul's there.
Speaker 2: You hear a gentle squeak at your shoulder. You look down.
Speaker 2: It's all four foot six of Paul side our garf
Speaker 2: uncle towers over him, stoned out.
Speaker 1: Of his mind with a road map in his hand,
Speaker 1: looking for places to go on extended walks. Yeah, Paul
Speaker 1: and Art are there. Paul's brother Eddie, Eddie Simon. We
Speaker 1: all know Eddie Simon. He's there. Perhaps a few others.
Speaker 1: Memories are hazy. They all came to play with this
Speaker 1: new fangled Sony Real, the Real tape deck, which came
Speaker 1: equipped with a reverb switch, and so they all started
Speaker 1: doing these improvised percussion patterns on their legs. And because
Speaker 1: this tape machine had a reaver effect, it added a
Speaker 1: little more punch to their their thighs slapping. And as
Speaker 1: the party progressed, Paul and Art they slapped their thighs.
Speaker 1: Eddie Simon offered a four to four beat on a
Speaker 1: padded piano bench. Another friend strummed the d TUN's guitar
Speaker 1: with slack strings that was basically just a rhythm instrument.
Speaker 1: Could chuck it, Yeah, exactly apparently they did this for
Speaker 1: a few hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's what you do.
Speaker 1: Paul would say, Perhaps we lost track of time, but
Speaker 1: for days to come. Paul would come back to this
Speaker 1: infectious groove that he had on the tape, and he
Speaker 1: composed a simple melody and guitar line to it. He
Speaker 1: excized a minute and fifteen second section of the original
Speaker 1: tape and turned it into a loop, which in pre
Speaker 1: digital times was a very literal thing. You had a
Speaker 1: giant loop of tape that stretched around the studio because
Speaker 1: it was a minute in fifteen seconds. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of tape. This formed the bed of the track Cecilia,
Speaker 1: the percussive bed, onto which Paul and already improvised other
Speaker 1: rhythmic elements, like dropping drumsticks onto a parquet floor in
Speaker 1: the studio, and also doing random notes on a xylophone
Speaker 1: that were somehow compressed to such an effect that the
Speaker 1: actual note didn't matter anymore. It was just became another
Speaker 1: percussive sound.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's actually so. When you're doing that, you know,
Speaker 2: compressors have a tack and release function, and that basically
Speaker 2: is how quickly the squashing of the note happens and
Speaker 2: then how you know how much it takes before it
Speaker 2: releases that effect. So if you're diming those or if
Speaker 2: you're turning one of those all the way they up,
Speaker 2: but the other way the other you get these really
Speaker 2: wacky effects where you can literally just get like just
Speaker 2: the percussive hit on a note that doesn't have any
Speaker 2: real body or pitch to it. It's just sort of
Speaker 2: a side trick of how they get those gated drums
Speaker 2: that are so popular, where you compress the shit out
Speaker 2: of the drums and then like a really really fast attack,
Speaker 2: so it's an ultra fast attack and then a really
Speaker 2: short reverb tail and then you gate, so you cut
Speaker 2: off the tail the reverb. So all of those phil
Speaker 2: call In songs and like a lot of the shit
Speaker 2: on Gracelaine that we talked about, you get that gated
Speaker 2: snared gated percussion sound by sort of the same effect
Speaker 2: where you're essentially compressing it to the point where you've
Speaker 2: squashed out all pitch and just shortening it to the attack.
Speaker 2: It's a neat trick. Yeah, And I love this because
Speaker 2: like this is the it was making bone machine with
Speaker 2: its It's literally the exact same process where he was like,
Speaker 2: I just go into a room and I just go like, oh, merger,
Speaker 2: and he's like, yeah, well, Paul Simon got there first.
Speaker 2: Pal is the fun song some Nights not alarmingly similar
Speaker 2: to this.
Speaker 1: Though, Oh yeah, I think that's been commented on, possibly
Speaker 1: with Okay lawyers involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, worth a punch because it I just checked
Speaker 2: it out again and it still pisses.
Speaker 9: Me any.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: By Simon's own admission, the lyrics to Cecilia were something
Speaker 1: of an afterthought, so he explained an interview with Rolling Stone.
Speaker 1: Every day I'd come back from the studio working on
Speaker 1: whenever we were working on, and I played this pounding
Speaker 1: thing on tape. And then I said, let's make a
Speaker 1: record out of that. So we copied it over and
Speaker 1: extended it. So now I pick up the guitar and
Speaker 1: I start to go, well, this will be like the guitar.
Speaker 2: Part Dunk Chicken, Dunk Chicken, Dunk Chicken, and.
Speaker 1: Lyrics were virtually the first lines. I said, you're breaking
Speaker 1: my heart. I'm down on my knees. They're not lines
Speaker 1: at all, but it was all right for the song,
Speaker 1: and I liked that it was like a little piece
Speaker 1: of magical fluff, but it works. I theorized by my friend,
Speaker 1: the music journalist David Brown, a wonderful journalist, that the
Speaker 1: name Cecilia is derived from Saint Cecilia.
Speaker 2: The patron saint of music, which I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: One line that did stick out to listeners at the
Speaker 1: time was making love in the afternoon with Cecilia up
Speaker 1: in my bedroom. The lyric was Simon's most explicit to date,
Speaker 1: and he'd recall a conversation with a veteran who'd recently
Speaker 1: returned from Vietnam. Soon after the song's release. Leavet said
Speaker 1: that he and his fellow soldiers heard the line and said, whoa,
Speaker 1: you can say that in a pop song. Things must
Speaker 1: be really changing back home. I've said this before, but
Speaker 1: it's interesting to note the parallels between the breakup of
Speaker 1: Simon and Garfunkel and the fracturing of the Beatles, who
Speaker 1: split publicly around the same time in the spring of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: Oh, Jordan, have you said that before? Jordan said's an
Speaker 2: unexpected opinion on would advanced from you, but please go on.
Speaker 1: The Beatles ended their last album they recorded, nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine's Abbey Road, with a track called the end, which
Speaker 1: featured solos from each member, as if allowing each to
Speaker 1: take a curtain call. Simon and Garfunkle made an equally
Speaker 1: poignant farewell on the last album that they.
Speaker 2: Recorded together, but Jovia Troubled Water.
Speaker 1: They revisited their early passion for the Everly Brothers with
Speaker 1: a cover of Bye Bye Love. The idea came after
Speaker 1: they performed it in concerts in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, and Simon liked the fact that the audience
Speaker 1: clapped along on the two of four, and they decided
Speaker 1: that they should record it live quote with the audience
Speaker 1: as our drum.
Speaker 2: And that's an extending quite a bit of grace to
Speaker 2: your average white audience at this time period.
Speaker 1: I mean, you were correct, because they never got a
Speaker 1: take that was satisfactory that they recorded live.
Speaker 2: Well, our buddy Wes, you know, who played in the
Speaker 2: same band of mine that you played in, went and
Speaker 2: saw New Young at Carnegie Hall and it was like
Speaker 2: just Neil acoustic. And so he's doing one of his
Speaker 2: songs and people start clapping along and he fully stopped
Speaker 2: the song and was like, please don't do that. The
Speaker 2: acoustics in here are just like such that your off
Speaker 2: time clapping is now throwing me off? Oh yeah, like
Speaker 2: launched right back into the song, just like ah Man
Speaker 2: are probably autistic. King from the North, Yes, but.
Speaker 1: Yes, simonc. Goarth never got a live version of Bye
Speaker 1: Bye Love that was satisfactory, so they recorded it in
Speaker 1: the studio and then took that version to their next concerts,
Speaker 1: played it live to the audience and said, here, clap
Speaker 1: along to this, we're gonna record. We're going to record you,
Speaker 1: which is amazing. I've never heard of that being done ever.
Speaker 1: So they just live overdubbed the clapping onto the version
Speaker 1: of Bye Bye Love that you hear on Bridge over
Speaker 1: Troubled Water.
Speaker 2: Was that preferable to bringing a metronome on stage or
Speaker 2: a drummer? I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 1: But that cover of Bye Bye Love with the crowd
Speaker 1: cheers against a song that they did in their bedroom
Speaker 1: when they were dreaming of being musicians, and now they're
Speaker 1: doing it on stage to a huge packed auditorium and
Speaker 1: you can hear them singing it, and you can hear
Speaker 1: the crowd cheering, and then it dies away, which is
Speaker 1: a very sweet way to end with me. They kind
Speaker 1: of figured was going to be the end of their career,
Speaker 1: and it segues into the final track on the Bridge
Speaker 1: Over Troubled Water album song for the Asking, and it's
Speaker 1: been described as an olive branch from Simon to Garfunkle
Speaker 1: and vice versa. In the making of the Bridge Over
Speaker 1: Troubled Water album documentary, Simon admits that there's a note
Speaker 1: of contrition in the song. He said, that's just to
Speaker 1: say I haven't forgotten what I did. I was not
Speaker 1: an angel, that's for sure. And he would add it's
Speaker 1: a sweet song. It's almost embarrassing, which is the second
Speaker 1: time this episode that he characterizes an authentic display of
Speaker 1: a deeply held emotion as embarrassing, which I find endearing.
Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, that's time yea.
Speaker 1: Cyberon and Garfuckle intended the Bridge Over Troubled Water album
Speaker 1: to have twelve tracks, but in a beautiful metaphor, they
Speaker 1: crashed over the twelfth song to include. Simon had written
Speaker 1: a song called Cuba c Nixon No Golf Vuncer was
Speaker 1: turned off by its overt political commentary. Instead, Art suggested
Speaker 1: doing a Haitian creole corral called Foyo. Neither side would
Speaker 1: budge and Paul would tell Rolling Stone. We were fighting
Speaker 1: over what was going to be the twelfth song, and
Speaker 1: then I said, screw it, put it out with eleven songs.
Speaker 1: If that's the way it is. We were at the
Speaker 1: end of our energies over that, and as they wrapped
Speaker 1: the album Deceummer nineteen sixty nine, they had a feeling
Speaker 1: it would be their last. Paul said, at that point
Speaker 1: I just wanted out, and in this instance scarfunk Will agreed.
Speaker 1: We just went our separate ways without ever officially agreeing
Speaker 1: to this band.
Speaker 2: Well they should have waited. No Bridge Over Troublewater was
Speaker 2: released January twenty sixth, nineteen seventy. Critical appraisal was initially
Speaker 2: not great. In Melody Maker in February of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: Richard Williams identified quote a few dull moments on the album,
Speaker 2: while adding that they're worth enduring for the jewels they
Speaker 2: surround fair Williams concluded, not perhaps another classic like book Ends,
Speaker 2: but still worth hearing for Simon's constantly surprising timing and
Speaker 2: for the way he can make his guitar sound like
Speaker 2: a small orchestra and the orchestra sound like a big guitar.
Speaker 2: This enforces your opinion that book Ends is the superior album.
Speaker 2: New York Times critic John S. Wilson was even more
Speaker 2: savage in his review of the title track, writing, in
Speaker 2: its mawkish, undiluted sentimentality, it was reminiscent of the songs
Speaker 2: of faith that were once great favorites on the lesser
Speaker 2: circuit concerts. Uh that's yeah, that's kind of on the nose,
Speaker 2: man like. They went from singing like actual spirituals and
Speaker 2: stuff to uh, a pastiche, yes, a pastiche in. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a great song. It's a good song.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But in an off repeated refrain on this show, what
Speaker 2: did the critics know? Damn them in their eyes, making
Speaker 2: Paul Simon write the boxer and hurting his little feelings.
Speaker 2: He's just a little guy. Bridge Over Troublewater was the
Speaker 2: best selling album in nineteen seventy, seventy one and seventy two,
Speaker 2: and was at the time the best selling album of
Speaker 2: all time until those English misanthropes in Pink Floyd came
Speaker 2: around and blew their echoplex Leyden meditations on death right
Speaker 2: over the honey soaked harmonies of the Nice Boys from Queens.
Speaker 2: It remained CBS Record's best selling album, Simon CARFN one
Speaker 2: not Dark Side of the Moon until the release of
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson's Thriller in nineteen eighty two. Bridge Over Trouble
Speaker 2: Watt took home the Grammy Award for Album of the
Speaker 2: Year and Best Engineered Recording's title track on the Grammy
Speaker 2: for Song of the Year, Best Contemporary Song, Best Arrangement
Speaker 2: Accompanying Vocalists, and Record of the Year in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: beating out James Taylor's Firing Rain Good, The Carpenter's Close
Speaker 2: to You, Noah p and the Beatles Let It be Well.
Speaker 2: This was the Specter one, right, Yeah, yeah, I have
Speaker 2: no opinion about that. Interestingly, this was to be the
Speaker 2: first Grammy ceremony where the winners were not announced in advance.
Speaker 2: They were hoping to mimic the Oscars for the kind
Speaker 2: of show Busy Suspense by Danny Rose. So Simon and
Speaker 2: Garfunk was sweep is poignant in retrospect because on stage
Speaker 2: the duo could barely make eye contact with one another.
Speaker 2: Clearly they knew what they were walking away from.
Speaker 1: Art said in twenty ten, when Bridge Over Troubled Water
Speaker 1: was over, I wanted a rest from Paul the amount
Speaker 1: that we were in the studio in each other dueling
Speaker 1: for what makes a great record. That duel was tiring,
Speaker 1: Simon agreed. Yet another wedge between them was their ill
Speaker 1: fated TV special Songs of America in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: and Yes, It's as bloated as the title would suggest.
Speaker 1: Clive Davis had the right idea, thinking that they could
Speaker 1: parlay their massive post graduate success Postgraduate the.
Speaker 2: Film not Arts their doctorate work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, had parlay that into a primetime TV concert a
Speaker 1: La Elvis's Comeback Special, which had aired the previous December,
Speaker 1: But unfortunately the duo had way too much creative control.
Speaker 1: Paired with the young Charles Grodin Arts co star in
Speaker 1: Catch twenty two and future Dad in the Beethoven Movies,
Speaker 1: they crafted a special that basically registered as lefty Pinco
Speaker 1: communist bunk to their sponsors Bell Telephone. It's described in
Speaker 1: Robert Hilburn's Paul Simon biography as quote a documentary style
Speaker 1: show about how they saw themselves. Paul Simon arc ourfuncle
Speaker 1: saw themselves in sixties America and saw America in the sixties,
Speaker 1: with footage interspersed of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson,
Speaker 1: Ralph David Abernathy, and Robert Kennedy, bits from Woodstock and
Speaker 1: newsreel footage of Vietnam. Although today the show looks relatively tame,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine, Songs of America had a startlingly
Speaker 1: radical feel to it, more Woody Guthrie than Greatest Hits
Speaker 1: That Sounds Awesome. Its visual style edgy and jump cut
Speaker 1: for an hour, usually filled with the music of Perry Como,
Speaker 1: Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. It was one of the
Speaker 1: most daring shows ever presented on network television. It's okay,
Speaker 1: I've seen some of it, Okay. The show began with
Speaker 1: aerial shots of what looked to be Vietnam, which then
Speaker 1: cross faded into overhead shots about soundtracked by Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: well no, it was soundtracked by America. Because the Vietnam
Speaker 1: cross faded into overhead shots of American highways, Pittsburgh and
Speaker 1: a new Jersey Turnpike, poverty shacks, police, African American poor,
Speaker 1: and garbage heaps. Both sides dug in a little too
Speaker 1: deep when it came to trying to get this show
Speaker 1: onto the air. Paul and Lady Maybe didn't need to
Speaker 1: do a moody documentary piece with footage of RFK and
Speaker 1: mlk's funeral trains. They didn't even do any concert footage
Speaker 1: until the last fifteen minutes of the hour long documentary.
Speaker 1: That being said, the censors were being jerks. First off,
Speaker 1: they were pissed that Paul had turned in the finished
Speaker 1: version a week before air, which was his strategy to
Speaker 1: ensure that they messed with it the least, But then
Speaker 1: they flipped when they saw the content. Paul was very displeased.
Speaker 1: He said, you mean there are certain people in this
Speaker 1: country who will object if we say you must feed
Speaker 1: everyone in this country.
Speaker 2: Oh you sweet, sweet boy.
Speaker 1: And they said, your god damn right, someone will object.
Speaker 1: You have to change this. It's not going on. And
Speaker 1: we said, well, too bad, then it's not going on
Speaker 1: because we're not changing anything. The sponsors also complains that
Speaker 1: the Bridge over Troubled Water montage playing over JFK, RFK
Speaker 1: and mlk's funeral footage was quote unbalanced, and Paul said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean, how is it unbalanced? They're all Democrats,
Speaker 1: came the reply. Ah, Paul said, no, they're all assassinated.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 1: A compromise was eventually reached, and a re edited, slightly
Speaker 1: toned down version of the special was on November thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: I got you know, I didn't know about this man.
Speaker 2: It actually makes me like both of them more.
Speaker 1: It's pretty wild. It's I mean, check it out.
Speaker 2: It's on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It bombed completely. As Charles Groden later said during the
Speaker 1: first commercial, which came just after Robert Kennedy's funeral train,
Speaker 1: one million people turned over to a Peggy Fleming figure
Speaker 1: skating special. It was just too honest for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. We mentioned all this because, over the course
Speaker 1: of the production of these songs for America Special, Charles
Speaker 1: Groden accidentally let it slip to Paul that Art had
Speaker 1: agreed to make another movie with Mike Nichols, a comedy
Speaker 1: drama titled Cardinal Knowledge. Paul would later say that quote
Speaker 1: something was broken between them after that.
Speaker 2: Wait, I thought they'd already decided. I thought they'd already
Speaker 2: decided to break up.
Speaker 1: Though. This was before the Bridge Over Troubled Water album
Speaker 1: came out. This was during the session. This was like
Speaker 1: fall sixty nine.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: It was basically like a you know, a very parental.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that you did it, but that you lied.
Speaker 1: Kind of situation. Simon confronted his partner. He said, I
Speaker 1: asked why he didn't tell me he was going to
Speaker 1: do this movie, and art said he was afraid I
Speaker 1: would stop working on Bridge over Troubled Water.
Speaker 2: In other words, he hit it from me a reasonable fear.
Speaker 1: He hit it from me. He knew how I'd feel,
Speaker 1: but he did it anyway. It's like an old married couple.
Speaker 1: He knew I'd feel, and he did it anyway. Mike
Speaker 1: Nichols told Artie that he was going to be a
Speaker 1: big movie star and already couldn't say no. He later
Speaker 1: told me he didn't see why it was such a
Speaker 1: big deal to me. He would make the movie for
Speaker 1: six months and I could write the songs for the
Speaker 1: next album in that time. Then he thought we could
Speaker 1: get together in the studio again and record them. I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to do that. And the
Speaker 1: truth is, I think if Artie had become a big
Speaker 1: movie star, he would have left. Instead of just being
Speaker 1: the guy who sang Paul Simon songs, he could be
Speaker 1: Arc Garfunkel, a big star all by himself and This
Speaker 1: made me think about how I could still be the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote songs and sing them. I didn't need Artie. Peggy,
Speaker 1: his new wife, encouraged me. She thought it was time
Speaker 1: for me to leave and do what I wanted. The
Speaker 1: duo played their last concert as a dedicated team on
Speaker 1: July eighteenth, nineteen, at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, not
Speaker 1: far from where they grew up together, and afterwards they
Speaker 1: reportedly walked to the parking lot, paused, shook hands, and
Speaker 1: quite literally went their separate ways. He was an unspoken split.
Speaker 1: Paul placed a call to Columbia Records head Clive Davis
Speaker 1: at some point around that same time, saying, before others
Speaker 1: find out, I want you to know I've decided to
Speaker 1: split with Artie. I don't think we'll be recording together again.
Speaker 1: Once words spread throughout the music industry, Paul got a
Speaker 1: call from George Harrison. They'd become friendly after Paul took
Speaker 1: over his lease on the Blue Jay White House, drawing
Speaker 1: on his own experience with the Beatles. You know those guys. George,
Speaker 1: who was then flying high with the success of All
Speaker 1: Things Must Pass and his worldwide hit My Sweet Lord,
Speaker 1: urged Paul, to use this opportunity to see what he
Speaker 1: could really do as a solo performer. Fuck yeah, but
Speaker 1: Paul he faltered slightly. He began teaching the aforementioned class
Speaker 1: at New York University, assuming it was to compete with
Speaker 1: arts mathematics doctorate from Columbia.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 1: This theory is bolstered by the fact that he's quoted
Speaker 1: as telling a friend in this period, you can't teach
Speaker 1: someone how.
Speaker 2: To write a song, yeah, but you can still get
Speaker 2: paid for Crucially, he.
Speaker 1: Started going to analysis three times a week and feared
Speaker 1: that his rural retreat in Bucks County, Pennsylvania wasn't secluded enough.
Speaker 1: So Paul, I think it's worth saying he was having
Speaker 1: a breakdown. He's going through something. It's like Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: going up to his farm in Scotland. The Beatles broke up,
Speaker 1: but eventually, in the early months of nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: he began work on his self titled post Sarmon and
Speaker 1: Garfunkle debut, which rules, Oh so good, Duncan check out
Speaker 1: that song that I love Duncan.
Speaker 2: Man, That song is so good. Mother and Child Reunion.
Speaker 2: What Let's just look at this. Let's look at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's it's laden with bangers, Mother and.
Speaker 2: Child Reunion, duncan everything put together. He's got me and
Speaker 2: me and Julia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Paranoia Blues is really is really completely undersold in his catalog.
Speaker 2: I also love this album because he got Stephan Grippelli
Speaker 2: to play violin on Hobo On Hobo's Blues. Stephan Grippelli
Speaker 2: was a peer of Django Ryan Right and one of
Speaker 2: the principal architects of what is semi derogatorily or problematically
Speaker 2: these days called gypsy jazz. They prefer the term jazmine nouche,
Speaker 2: but that's crazy.
Speaker 10: Man.
Speaker 2: He just called up like a seventy something year old
Speaker 2: jazz legend and was like, hey man, come slap some
Speaker 2: violin on this song. Like I had not heard that
Speaker 2: George Harrison thing before. Man, that whips so hard. Hey man,
Speaker 2: I was chafing under a bunch of unreasonable egomaniacs for
Speaker 2: a long time. And look at me now, and look
Speaker 2: at me now on top of the fucking world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, their relationship is cute. Then they performed on the
Speaker 1: SNL a few years later, uh, doing homework band together
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, their relationships, very sweet art. Garfuncle released
Speaker 1: his solo album Angel Claire on September eleventh, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: It would hold the title of the worst thing to
Speaker 1: happen on September eleventh for almost two decades.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Boy, that date just had it out from the start. Huh.
Speaker 1: Fans have long debated what went wrong between the pair ego,
Speaker 1: personality differences, artistic differences.
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
Speaker 1: But let's get the last word to Quincy Jones. Shall
Speaker 1: we just why not? Just as an exactly tree. Yes,
Speaker 1: the relationship was too restrictive, he said. Simon wanted the
Speaker 1: freedom to move beyond the mostly soothing folk strains that
Speaker 1: lifted Simon and Garfunkle the superstar status in rock. He
Speaker 1: heard a whole new world of music in his head,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to pursue it. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of factors that comprise great artistry, including passion, musical curiosity,
Speaker 1: and fearlessness, and the first rule of being an artist
Speaker 1: is you've got to protect all three. If Paul hadn't
Speaker 1: left Garfuncle, a piece of an artistry could have died.
Speaker 1: He did what he had to do.
Speaker 2: Is that your kicker, that's my kicker. Okay, my kicker
Speaker 2: is if any of you are in a creative partnership
Speaker 2: and you find yourself not doing the bulk of the
Speaker 2: work and still being the bulk of the ego, learn
Speaker 2: from art.
Speaker 1: Learn from art.
Speaker 2: No, that's a terrible kicker. Let me take that back.
Speaker 2: Rather than going out on a note of richly deserved
Speaker 2: hate or art garfuncle, I would like to look down
Speaker 2: to all six inches of Paul Simon and really applaud
Speaker 2: him for sticking with it as long as he did
Speaker 2: and giving this albatross around his neck as many chances
Speaker 2: to make things work as he possibly could. And I
Speaker 2: have my gripes with the guy, but you know, the
Speaker 2: art stands on its own, bald one lie scoreboard. Great job, Paul.
Speaker 1: Maybe all be free of our albatrosses and go on
Speaker 1: to a.
Speaker 2: Rich career stealing from those less fortunate from Yes, maybe
Speaker 2: we all emancipate ourselves from the burden of those who
Speaker 2: take from us and instead become the taker. The Paul
Speaker 2: Simon story. This has been too much information. I'm Alex
Speaker 2: and I'm Jordan, and we'll love you like a rock
Speaker 2: Next time. Baby, will l condor pesare signing off with
Speaker 2: some Paul Simon lyrics El condor pasa Uh that's the
Speaker 2: drum from me and j Yeah, there's also pan flutes
Speaker 2: on Duncan. Maybe he actually called some Indians on that one,
Speaker 2: or probably not, though probably just a probably just Argentinian
Speaker 2: Nazi again because he already had him in the rollodex
Speaker 2: right saleon silver Birds. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Too Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog.
Speaker 1: The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.
Speaker 2: The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog
Speaker 2: and Alex Heigel.
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
Speaker 1: us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows