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Simon & Garfunkel: Sounds of Silence

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Columbia Records
Released: 1966
Time:
 31:56
Category: Pop/Folk
Producer(s): Bob Johnston
Rating: ********** (10/10)
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] The sounds of silence (P.Simon) - 3:07
[2] Leaves that are green (P.Simon) - 2:23
[3] Blessed (P.Simon) - 3:16
[4] Kathy's song (P.Simon) - 3:20
[5] Somewhere they can't find me (P.Simon) - 2:38
[6] Anji (D.Graham) - 2:16
[7] Homeward bound [live version] (P.Simon) - 2:45
[8] Richard Cory (P.Simon) - 2:57
[9] A most paculiar man (P.Simon) - 2:32
[10] April come she will (P.Simon) - 1:52
[11] We've got the groovey thing goin (P.Simon) - 1:59
[12] I am a rock (P.Simon) - 2:51

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


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

Bob Johnston - Producer
Tom Wilson - Producer
Roy Halee - Producer
Bob Irwin - Reissue Producer
Bud Scoppa - Liner Notes
 

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s

1966 LP Columbia 9269
1985 CD Columbia CK-9269
1985 CS Columbia PCT-9269
1989 CD Sony Mid-Price 4609542
1990 CD Sony 9269
2003 CD Sony International 93
2007 CD Sony 1482
2007 CD Sony Japan SICP1482

Recorded between March 10, 1964 and July 8, 1970.
Originally released on Columbia Records (9269).

Though it was their second album, SOUNDS OF SILENCE was therecord that introduced Simon & Garfunkel to the world at large. When the original, acoustic version of the title tune (included on the debut album) was given a rock sheen here, courtesy of a hastily added electric backing track, folk-rock was invented, and Paul and Art were catapulted to superstardom. The songs here follow in that electrified direction for the most part, with the widescreen irony of "Blessed" buoyedby plangent guitar and drums, and the paranoid "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" pushed to neurotic extremes by an insistent rhythm section.
SOUNDS OF SILENCE marked the introduction proper of Simon as sensitive song poet: intellectual, well-read, politely iconoclastic, self-consciously poetic--theperfect '60s folk-pop idol. Fortunately, Simon's melodic and lyrical prowess and the duo's beautiful post-Everly Brothers harmonies were enough to counteract any intrinsic tendencies toward pretension. From the romantic melodrama of "Kathy's Song" to the anthem of alienation "I Am a Rock", SOUNDS OF SILENCE was the ultimate sonic portrait of the artist as ayoung man. Somewhere, a young Morrissey was taking notes.



One suspects that Paul Simon cringes a bit when he listens to Simon & Garfunkel's 1966 breakthrough release. Lines from "I Am a Rock" ("For a rock feels no pain / And an island never cries") and the title track ("Fools, said I, you do not know / Silence like a cancer grows") are the essence of sophomoric poetry. And who but a couple of self-serious young men would sequence the suicide odes "Richard Cory" and "A Most Peculiar Man" back to back? That said, every callow couplet found here is counterbalanced by words that are disarmingly guileless. The unabashed romanticism of "Kathy's Song" is truly poignant; it ranks with "For Emily" and "The Only Living Boy in New York" among the duo's most resplendent performances. "April Come She Will" has a similar innocent appeal, while the title track, despite its overwrought moments and Tom Wilson's tacked-on production, is a folk-rock landmark. It's not hard to find fault with The Sounds of Silence, but it's easier still to bask in its inchoate splendor. (The 2001 reissue adds the bonus track "The Blues Run the Game" plus three unreleased 1970 demos.)

Steven Stolder -  Amazon.com



SSimon & Garfunkel's second album was a radical departure from their first (Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.), owing to its being recorded in the wake of "The Sound of Silence" single, with its overdubbed electric instrument backing, topping the charts. Paul Simon arrived with a large songbag, enhanced by his stay in England over the previous year and his exposure to English folk music (and the work of Martin Carthy and Davy Graham, among others), and the duo rushed into the studio to come up with ten more songs that would fit into the folk-rock context of the single. The result was this, their most hurried and uncharacteristic album -- Simon and Art Garfunkel had to sound like something they weren't, surrounded on many cuts by amplified folk-rock-style guitar, electric piano, and even horns. Much of the material came from The Paul Simon Songbook, an album that Simon had recorded for British CBS during his stay in England, some parts of it more radically altered than others. "Kathy's Song" and "April Come She Will," two of the most personal songs in Simon's output, were close to the stripped-down originals, and among the most affecting (as opposed to affected) folk-style records of their era; Simon's rendition of Davy Graham's folk-blues instrumental "Anji" is also close to his British version, just recorded hotter, while "Leaves That Are Green" is pleasantly ornamented with electric harpischord and features a more prominent rhythm guitar; "Blessed," by contrast, is given a dissonant electric guitar accompaniment that sounds like the Byrds trying very hard to annoy people.

Some of the rest, like "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" and "We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin'," show Simon & Garfunkel sounding more like the Cyrkle later did, with a smooth, hip dual persona far removed from the thoughtful innocence of "April Come She Will" or "Kathy's Song." The record was a rushed job overall, and, apart from the title track, the most important songs here were also, oddly enough, among the least enduring, including "I Am a Rock" and "Richard Cory" -- the former for establishing the duo (and Simon as a songwriter) as confessional pop poets, sensitive and alienated post-adolescents that endeared them to millions of college student going through what later came to be called an "identity crisis" (you had to be there to understand it), and the latter for endearing them to thousands of high school English teachers with its adaptation of Edward Arlington Robinson's poem. Other folk artists, including Phil Ochs, had adapted well-known poems to music, but it was Simon & Garfunkel's effort that took in the classrooms of the era, getting played, discussed and studied at the behest of English teachers who were desperate for anything that would interest and motivate their students -- even if the kids thought it was a joke, it beat reading straight poetry, and the response to "Richard Cory" was kind of radical in the context of the time, when music played on electric instruments wasn't welcomed of even tolerated in most school settings. It earned Simon & Garfunkel a passport to middle-class respectability in official and establishment circles that Bob Dylan, the Beatles, et al., did not yet have. The August 2001 remastering restores the original, uncensored back-cover art (depicting Art Garfunkel holding what the powers-that-were later decided was a decidedly uncool copy of Tiger Beat magazine, airbrushed out of later copies), and also features the first genuinely good sound ever heard on any CD edition of this album, and also includes four bonus tracks. Jackson C. Frank's "Blues Run the Game" (which also appears on the Old Friends box) is the best of them, an acoustic number that offers a more mature folk style, and might have slotted in stylistically on the Sounds of Silence album, except that it fit neither the mood of innocent discovery nor the youthful poet posturing that dominated the rest of the record. "Barbriallen" is a throwback to the duo's Everly Brothers-influenced folk style off their first LP, while "Rose of Aberdeen" is a pleasant if inconclusive example of Simon adapting English folk music, and "The Roving Gambler" is a sweetly sung echo of the folk revival of which Simon & Garfunkel had briefly been a part, outdoing the Everlys (and, for that matter, the Easy Riders) at their own game. Add another half-star to rate the value of the 2001 reissue, for sound and "Blues Run the Game." 

Bruce Eder - All Music Guide



The sudden, if belated, success of the folk-rock version of "The Sounds of Silence" as a single called for an immediate accompanying album, so Simon and Garfunkel, who had more or less disbanded after the commercial failure of Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., quickly reformed and recut many of the songs Simon had recorded in England for his Paul Simon Songbook solo album (issued only in the U.K. at the time). The album did not contain the follow-up hit to "The Sounds of Silence," "Homeward Bound," but it did contain the follow-up to that, "I Am a Rock," as well as Simon's musical rewrite of Edward Arlington Robinson's poem "Richard Cory" and other songs that aspired to poetry with an earnestness that made up for their preciousness... [The 2001 CD reissue on Columbia/Legacy adds four bonus tracks:a cover of Jackson C. Frank's "The Blues Run the Game," which appeared before on the Old Friends box set, and previously unreleased demos of the traditional songs "Barbriallen," "Rose of Aberdeen," and "The Roving Gambler."]

William Ruhlmann - All Music Guide



"...All winsome and alienated...this was their album for teenagers..."

Q (Summer/01, p.126) - 3 stars out of 5



"...A worthy record..."

Uncut (8/01, p.92) - 4 stars out of 5

 

 L y r i c s


THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence.

"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
 are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls."
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence.


LEAVES THAT ARE GREEN

I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song.
I'm twenty-two now but I won't be for long
Time hurries on.
And the leaves that are green turn to brown,
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.

Once my heart was filled with the love of a girl.
I held her close, but she faded in the night
Like a poem I meant to write.
And the leaves that are green turn to brown,
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.

I threw a pebble in a brook
And watched the ripples run away
And they never made a sound.
And the leaves that are green turned to brown,
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.

Hello, Hello, Hello, Good-bye,
Good-bye, Good-bye, Good-bye,
That's all there is.
And the leaves that are green turned to brown,
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.


BLESSED

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit.
Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows.
Blessed are the sat upon, Spat upon, Ratted on,
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I got no place to go,
I've walked around Soho for the last night or so.
Ah, but it doesn't matter, no.

Blessed is the land and the kingdom.
Blessed is the man whose soul belongs to.
Blessed are the meth drinkers, Pot sellers, Illusion dwellers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
My words trickle down, like a wound
That I have no intention to heal.

Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass.
Blessed is the church service makes me nervous
Blessed are the penny rookers, Cheap hookers, Groovy lookers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I have tended my own garden
Much too long.


KATHY'S SONG

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls.

And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day.

And as a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme.

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.


SOMEWHERE THEY CAN'T FIND ME

I can hear the soft breathing of the girl that I love,
As she lies here beside me asleep with the night.
Her hair in a fine mist floats on my pillow,
Reflecting the flow of the winter moonlight.

But I've got to creep down the alley way,
Fly down the highway,
Before they come to catch me I'll be gone.
Somewhere they can't find me.

Oh baby, you don't know what I've done,
I've committed a crime, I've broken the law.
While you were here sleeping and just dreaming of me,
I held up and robbed a liquor store.

But I've got to creep down the alley way,
Fly down the highway,
Before they come to catch me I'll be gone.
Somewhere they can't find me.

Oh my life seems unreal, my crime an illusion,
A scene badly written in which I must play.
And thought it puts me up tight to leave you,
I know it's not right to leave you,
When morning is just a few hours away.

But I've got to creep down the alley way,
Fly down the highway,
Before they come to catch me I'll be gone.
Somewhere they can't find me.


ANJI

Instrumental


RICHARD CORY

They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town,
With political connections to spread his wealth around.
Born into society, a banker's only child,
He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style.

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.

The papers print his picture almost everywhere he goes:
Richard Cory at the opera, Richard Cory at a show.
And the rumor of his parties and the orgies on his yacht!
Oh, he surely must be happy with everything he's got.

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.

He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch,
And they were grateful for his patronage and thanked him very much,
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
"Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head."

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.


A MOST PECULIAR MAN

He was a most peculiar man.
That's what Mrs. Riordan said and she should know;
She lived upstairs from him
She said he was a most peculiar man.

He was a most peculiar man.
He lived all alone within a house,
Within a room, within himself,
A most peculiar man.

He had no friends, he seldom spoke
And no one in turn ever spoke to him,
'Cause he wasn't friendly and he didn't care
And he wasn't like them.
Oh, no! he was a most peculiar man.

He died last Saturday.
He turned on the gas and he went to sleep
With the windows closed so he'd never wake up
To his silent world and his tiny room;
And Mrs. Riordan says he has a brother somewhere
Who should be notified soon.
And all the people said, "What a shame that he's dead,
But wasn't he a most peculiar man?"


APRIL COME SHE WILL

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again.

June, she'll change her tune,
In restless walks she'll prowl the night;
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight.

August, die she must,
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;
September I'll remember
A love once new has now grown old.


WE'VE GOT A GROOVY THING GOIN'

Bad news, bad news!
I heard you're packing to leave!
I come arunning right over;
I just couldn't believe it,
I just couldn't believe it.

Oh, baby, baby
You must be out of your mind.
Do you know what you're kicking away?
We've got a groovy thing goin', baby,
We've got a groovy thing.

I never done you no wrong,
I never hit you when you're down,
I always gave you good loving,
I never ran around,
I never ran around.

Oh, baby, baby
You must be out of your mind.
Do you know what you're kicking away?
We've got a groovy thing goin', baby,
We've got a groovy thing.

There's something you ought to know
If you're fixing to go,
I can't make it without you;
No no no no, no, no, no, no,
No no no no, no, no, no.

Oh, baby, baby
You must be out of your mind.
Do you know what you're kicking away?
We've got a groovy thing goin', baby,
We've got a groovy thing.

We've got a groovy thing goin', baby,
We've got a groovy thing.


I'M A ROCK

A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I've built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Don't talk of love,
But I've heard the words before;
It's sleeping in my memory.
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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