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Simon & Garfunkel: Bookends

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Columbia Records
Released: 1968
Time:
 29:45
Category: Pop/Folk
Producer(s): Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel
Rating: *******... (7/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.simonandgarfunkel.com
Appears with: Paul Simon
Purchase date: 1998.02.28
Price in €: 14,99



 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s

[1] Bookends Theme (P.Simon) - 0:32
[2] Save the Life of My Child (P.Simon) - 2:[8
[3] America (P.Simon) - 3:35
[4] Overs (P.Simon) - 2:18
[5] Voices of Old People (A.Garfunkel/P.Simon) - 2:07
[6] Old Friends (P.Simon) - [:05
[7] Bookends Theme (P.Simon) - 2:35
[8] Fakin' It (P.Simon) - 1:23
[9] Punky's Dilemma (P.Simon) - 3:19
[10] Mrs. Robinson (P.Simon) - 2:17
[11] A Hazy Shade of Winter (P.Simon) - 2:17
[12] At the Zoo (P.Simon) - 2:22

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Paul Simon - Guitar, Vocals, Producer
Art Garfunkel - Vocals, Producer

Roy Halee - Producer, Engineer
Jimmie Haskell - Arranger, Arrangement Preparation
Bob Johnston - Production Assistant
Jim Marshall - Photography
John Simon - Production Assistant
Bob Irwin - Reissue Producer
Vic Anesini - Mastering
Angela Skouras  -  Art Direction
Richard Avedon - Cover Photo
Bud Scoppa - Liner Notes
Mike Cimicata - Packaging Manager

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s

1968 LP  Columbia 9259
1968 CS Columbia CK-9529
1968 CS Columbia PCT-420
1987 CD Sony Mid-Price 63101
1998 CD Mobile Fidelity 732
1990 CS Columbia 9529
2003 CD Sony International 95
2007 CD Sony 1484
2007 CD Sony Japan 1484

Recorded between September 7, 1966 and October 16, 1968.

Originally released on Columbia Records (9529).

The song "Mrs. Robinson" is from the motion picture "The Graduate".

Simon & Garfunkel's first consistently excellent album, 1968's BOOKENDS is a brief (12 songs in less than 30 minutes) but beautiful song cycle that sums up all of Paul Simon's '60s themes of alienation and identity in a newly orchestrated and elegant style far removed from the skeletal folk-rock oftheir earlier albums. The entire first half, bracketed by the lovely "Bookends Theme", has a suite-like feel even though it encompasses songs as varied as the chaotic "Save the Life of My Child" and the subtle acoustic reverie "Overs", notto mention the anthemic "America" and Art Garfunkel's audio-verite "Voices of Old People".
The second half is the closest Simon & Garfunkel ever came to rock & roll, featuringnot only the classics "Mrs. Robinson" and "Hazy Shade of Winter", but the lesser-known, quirky gems "Fakin' It" and "Punky's Dilemma", two of Simon's weirdest and most playful songs. An eclectic and multi-dimensional album, BOOKENDS is probably Simon & Garfunkel's masterpiece.



Bookends is a literary album that contains the most minimal of openings with the theme, an acoustic guitar stating itself slowly and plaintively before erupting into the wash of synthesizers and dissonance that is "Save the Life of My Child." The classic "America" is next, a folk song with a lilting soprano saxophone in the refrain and a small pipe organ painting the acoustic guitars in the more poignant verses. The song relies on pop structures to carry its message of hope and disillusionment as two people travel the American landscape searching for it until it dawns on them that everyone else on the freeway is doing the same thing. The final four tracks, "Mrs. Robinson," the theme song for the film The Graduate, "A Hazy Shade of Winter," and the album's final track, "At the Zoo," offer as tremblingly bleak a vision for the future as any thing done by the Velvet Underground, but rooted in the lives of everyday people, not in the decadent underground personages of New York's Factory studio. But the album is also a warning that to pay attention is to take as much control of one's fate as possible.

Thom Jurek -All Music Guide



Track for track, this is Simon & Garfunkel's best album. By 1968, Simon had shed his more precious tendencies as a songsmith. Meanwhile, the duo and coproducer/engineer Roy Halee had become adept studio technicians. "America" and "Mrs. Robinson" displayed the kind of sonic breadth that would flower even more fully two years later with "The Boxer" and "Bridge over Troubled Water." Bits of whimsy ("Punky's Dilemma," "At the Zoo") and melancholy ("Old Friends," "A Hazy Shade of Winter") complete this autumnal album. (The 2001 reissue adds two bonus tracks, including a demo of "Old Friends.")
   
Steven Stolder - Amazon.com essential recording



In March of 1968, Robert Kennedy was still alive and offering a vision for a way out the America that had deeply entrenched itself in the Vietnam War. The inner-city rebellions in 1967 had shaken the youth culture's image of their own summer of love in that year. The beginning of America's crippling identity crisis had begun to shudder through the culture that would erupt with the death of Kennedy later that spring and the tragedy of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later that summer. Before it was all over, Martin Luther King Jr. had also lost his life. In pop culture, rock was exploding everywhere in Western culture. The impact of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds both made in 1966 and the appearance of Jimi Hendrix on the pop scene in 1967 had ushered in a new way of making records, a way that not only referred to and portrayed everyday life but was part of its acceptance for what it was before attempting to transcend it. Earlier that spring, Simon and Garfunkel had slipped their fourth album into the bins with a whisper, the confoundingly literary, profoundly poetic and stunningly beautiful Bookends. Columbia Legacy has presented us S&G's entire catalog painstakingly remastered with extra tracks. The sound on these discs and Bookends in particular is amazing. It is literally true that there are instrumental passages and studio atmospherics that have never before been audible. As a pair, the two were seemingly equal collaborators with producer and engineer Roy Halee on a highly textured, multi-layered song cycle that offered observations on everything from urban crises that were symptomatic of larger issues, the prospect of old age and death, the loss and dislocation of those who desperately wanted to inherit an American Dream but not the one offered to them, surreal yet wistful reflections on youthful innocence lost forever to the cold winds of change.

Bookends is a literary album that contains the most minimal of openings with the theme, an acoustic guitar stating itself slowly and plaintively before erupting into the wash of synthesizers and dissonance that is "Save the Life of My Child." The uneasy rock & roll that carries the song through its disaster and the revelation of "Oh my grace, I've got no hiding place," which is the mere hint of what is to come in this wide open terrain of the previously familiar but completely unknown. The classic "America" is next, a folk song with a lilting soprano saxophone in the refrain and a small pipe organ painting the acoustic guitars in the more poignant verses. The song relies on pop structures to carry its message of hope and disillusionment as two people travel the American landscape searching for it until it dawns on them that everyone else on the freeway is doing the same thing. Its sweetness and sophisticated melodic invention are toppled by the message of the song and it becomes an ellipsis, a cipher, turned back on itself into disappearance, wondering what question to ask next. The sound of a lit cigarette is the opening of "Overs," a balladic study in the emptiness at the end of the relationship. The sound of inhaling and exhaling of the smoke tells the entire story. Also woven into the mix is a two-minute field recording of the voices of old people made by Garfunkel, collected from nursing homes and centers for the aged. The disembodied voices are chilling and heartbreakingly beautiful in their different observations, entire lifetimes summed up in a few seconds. This interlude leads into "Old Friends," which carries the message deeper as the image of two old men sitting on a park bench in languid statements of life lived ordinarily but poetically share not only their memories but also the commonality of their fear. A horn section threatens to interrupt the reverie, carrying the chaos they feel, their lack of control over current events, but is warded off as denial and the gentleness of the melody returns and fades into the album's opening theme, suggesting that we preserve our memories. As "Fakin' It" kicks to the fore, we feel the separation inherent in Simon's generational view of the unconscious separation of heart and mind. The tune is as full of hooks as a fishing boat and Halee swipes a bit from the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" and eases orchestral layers into the mix, subtly of course, but ever-present and recognizable nonetheless. With "Fakin' It," the depth of the album's meditation presents itself in earnest. Synth lines and handclaps give way to snare drums and acoustic guitars, and the first appearance of loss shows itself for what it is, the passing of life, moment by moment, memory by memory so quickly, that pretending is somehow preferable to the reality of everyday life. When the horn section and strings bring the crescendos and the lyric asserts, "This feeling of fakin' it/I still haven't shaken it/I know I'm fakin' it/I'm not really makin' it." Even Leonard Cohen's dark prophecies never stated the case so plainly in a folk-rock tune. The identity crisis inherent in the jazzy "Punky's Dilemma" melds the loss of innocence and childhood with the cynicism of present-day living. The final four tracks of the original album, "Mrs. Robinson," the theme song for the film The Graduate, "A Hazy Shade of Winter," and the album's final track, the George-influenced "At the Zoo," offer as tremblingly bleak a vision for the future as anything done by the Velvet Underground, but rooted in the lives of everyday people, not in the decadent underground personages of New York's Factory studio. But the album is also a warning that to pay attention is to take as much control of one's fate as possible. The bonus tracks, a different take of "Old Friends" and "You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies" which ended up as the B-side of "Hazy Shade of Winter" add dimension to what was easily the most ambitious recording of Simon & Garfunkel's career. Its problematic themes, spare yet striking arrangements, and augmented orchestral instrumentation created a backdrop for the sounds of a generation moving through a workaday world they no longer accepted as real, a world they never understood in first place. That S&G never overstate the case here, never preach to the converted but instead almost journalistically observe the questions in the process of their being asked is a monumental achievement. That they did so in three- and four-minute pop songs is almost inconceivable for the time.

All Music Guide
  

 L y r i c s


BOOKENDS THEME

Instrumental


SAVE THE LIFE OF MY CHILD

"Good God!  Don't jump!"
A boy sat on the ledge.
An old man who had fainted was revived.
And everyone agreed it would be a miracle indeed
If the boy survived.

"Save the life of my child!"
Cried the desperate mother.

The woman from the supermarket
Ran to call the cops.
"He must be high on something," someone said.
Though it never made The New York Times.
In The Daily News, the caption read,
"Save the life of my child!"
Cried the desperate mother.

A patrol car passing by
Halted to a stop.
Said officer MacDougal in dismay:
"The force can't do a decent job
'Cause the kids got no respect
For the law today (and blah blah blah)."

"Save the life of my child!"
Cried the desperate mother.
"What's becoming of the children?"
People asking each other.

When darkness fell, excitement kissed the crowd
And made them wild
In an atmosphere of freaky holiday.
When the spotlight hit the boy,
The crowd began to cheer,
He flew away.

"Oh, my Grace, I got no hiding place."


AMERICA

"Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together"
"I've got some real estate here in my bag"
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And we walked off to look for America

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said "Be careful his bowtie is really a camera"

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"
"We smoked the last one an hour ago"
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
All gone to look for America


OVERS

Why don't we stop fooling ourselves?
The game is over,
Over,
Over.

No good times, no bad times,
There's no times at all,
Just The New York Times,
Sitting on the windowsill
Near the flowers.

We might as well be apart.
It hardly matters,
We sleep separately.

And drop a smile passing in the hall
But there's no laughs left
'Cause we laughed them all.
And we laughed them all
In a very short time.

Time
Is tapping on my forehead,
Hanging from my mirror,
Rattling the teacups,
And I wonder,
How long can I delay?
We're just a habit
Like saccharin.

And I'm habitually feelin' kinda blue.

But each time I try on
The thought of leaving you,
I stop...
I stop and think it over.


VOICES OF OLD PEOPLE

Art Garfunkel recorded old people in various locations in New York and
Los Angeles over aperiod of several months. These voices were taken from
those tapes.


OLD FRIENDS

Old friends, old friends,
Sat on their parkbench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
of the high shoes of the old friends
    
Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today,
Sharing a parkbench quietly
How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends, memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears


BOOKENDS

Time it was and what a time it was it was,
A time of innocence a time of confidences.

Long ago it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you


FAKIN' IT

When she goes, she's gone.
If she stays, she stays here.
The girl does what she wants to do.
She knows what she wants to do.
And I know I'm fakin' it,
I'm not really makin' it.

I'm such a dubious soul,
And a walk in the garden
Wears me down.
Tangled in the fallen vines,
Pickin' up the punch lines,
I've just been fakin' it,
Not really makin' it.

Is there any danger?
No, no, not really.
Just lean on me.
Takin' time to treat
Your friendly neighbors honestly.
I've just been fakin' it,
I'm not really makin' it.
This feeling of fakin' it--
I still haven't shaken it.

Prior to this lifetime
I surely was a tailor.
("Good morning, Mr. Leitch.
Have you had a busy day?")
I own the tailor's face and hands.
I am the tailor's face and hands and
I know I'm fakin' it,
I'm not really makin' it.
This feeling of fakin' it--
I still haven't shaken it.


PUNKY'S DILEMMA

Wish I was a Kellogg's Cornflake
Floatin' in my bowl takin' movies,
Relaxin' awhile, livin' in style,
Talkin' to a raisin who 'casion'ly plays L.A.,
Casually glancing at his toupee.

Wish I was an English muffin
'Bout to make the most out of a toaster.

I'd ease myself down,
Comin' up brown.

I prefer boysenberry
More than any ordinary jam.
I'm a "Citizens for Boysenberry Jam" fan.

Ah, South California.

If I become a first lieutenant
Would you put my photo on your piano?
To Maryjane--
Best wishes, Martin.
(Old Roger draft-dodger
Leavin' by the basement door),
Everybody knows what he's
Tippy-toeing down there for.


MRS. ROBINSON

And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)

We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself
Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home

And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)

Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes
It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair
Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids

Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo, woo, woo)
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)


HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hear the salvation army band
Down by the riverside, it's bound to be a better ride
Than what you've got planned
Carry your cup in your hand
And look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, it's the springtime of my life

Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime

But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Look around, leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground...


AT THE ZOO

Someone told me
It's all happening at the zoo.

I do believe it,
I do believe it's true.

It's a light and tumble journey
From the East Side to the park;
Just a fine and fancy ramble
To the zoo.

But you can take the crosstown bus
If it's raining or it's cold,
And the animals will love it
If you do.

Somethin' tells me
It's all happening at the zoo.

The monkeys stand for honesty,
Giraffes are insincere,
And the elephants are kindly but
They're dumb.
Orangutans are skeptical
Of changes in their cages,
And the zookeeper is very fond of rum.

Zebras are reactionaries,
Antelopes are missionaries,
Pigeons plot in secrecy,
And hamsters turn on frequently.
What a gas!  You gotta come and see
At the zoo.

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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