"Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon & Garfunkel: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, the
show that brings you the little known details and secret
histories behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more.
We are your folk rock duos of details, your childhood

(00:23):
frenemies of facts, your bridges over the troubled waters of Wikipedia.
One of us does all the work and the other
has curly hair, and away with the phrase. My name's
Jordan Roun talk.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
That was a sick birth. Thanks, and I'm Alex Eigel.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Sorry, guys. Hosting schedule has been my fault lately, but
you know, onward and upward. The only way out is
through once more, end of the breach, et cetera. Yes, Jordan,
what are we talking about today?

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Buddy oh man, I am so excited today we're talking
about one of my favorite musical acts in history. Is
that a cliche take? Maybe, but I don't care. I
think the quality of their melodies, their harmonies, and their
poetry has seldom been equalled, and their songs seem to
mean more to me with each passing year. I'm talking
about the prototypical sensitive boomer band perfect for staying in

(01:13):
by yourself and brooding, or sitting under a tree at
recess by yourself and daydreaming, or being in transit by yourself. Basically,
if you spend a lot of time by yourself and
any phase of your life, these guys were excellent company.
I'm talking about Simon and Garfunkle now. To me, they
articulated a certain kind of romance that came with adolescent solitude.

(01:35):
Along with Brian Wilson rhapsodizing his childhood room and his
own sense of isolation, this para mythologized the teenager's inner sanctuary,
perhaps better than anyone else in this era. It's a
home with your thoughts escaping, your music playing, and sometimes
your love life waiting quietly for you. And if there
was no love life to speak of, your sanctuary was

(01:55):
a place where you could seek solace in the silence
and convince yourself that you were a rock, an island,
a fortress deep and mighty, when in reality you knew
that you were just an overly sensitive, bookish kid. Heigel,
what do you think of Simon a Garfunkle.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
I mean they're hilarious, like lol, the hilarity of like
two of the neediest men in recorded music. Singing songs
about about how they don't need anyone and they're tough
and their survivors is so endlessly funny to me. Yes, yes, yes,
I'm a rock I'm a boxer. Also, please be nice

(02:33):
to me at all costs. No, I mean, look, man,
Paul Simon's one of my favorite artists. I am sure that, like,
because I acknowledge his ass hattery, it may come across
as not that one.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
It's so hard with him even I'm gonna have to
like take shots in this episode. And I love him.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
I think he's I mean, honestly, I know Dylan probably
got there first in terms of, you know, rewriting the
rules of the music industry as far as like making
songwriters composers a thing and disrupting that whole flow and
XYZ and everything else that Dylan gets credit for. But like,
Paul Simon is above Dylan for me because his lyrics

(03:13):
are on par and frankly like I think a little
less caricature role.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, very much so.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, his highs are like similarly high and his lows
are not as low as like God gave names to
all the animals or any of the other like outtakes
that are not even I think that's on the record.
It's not an outtake or any of the stuff that
like Dylan, people want to ignore when they're filating him.
Paul is a once in a generational talent, and because

(03:40):
not only is he an incredible guitarist, he writes these
beautiful melodies. His own voice is incredible, you know, and
regardless of how much of a little pisser he is,
like he did open so many people's eyes to so
many other forms of music around the world, and that
is like the most checkered part of his legacy that like, yeah,

(04:03):
he treated some of these people poorly and made some missteps,
and like those are not to be taken lightly, of course,
but also like people heard this from him in a
lot of cases, you know, and I think that is
you can't take that away from him, for good or bad.
And like, yeah, man, I go to sleep crying to
American Tune sometimes, like what about it? That's how I

(04:27):
feel about Booke NDS.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
I was going to try to quote from it in
this episode, and I even just typing the lyrics out,
I got choked up. I was like, oh, I can't,
I can't speak.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
These Graceline that does that to me, like I don't understand,
Like like the fact that like you can call me
al is like such a memorable song, like the most
like gutting lyrics that I've Like, I why am I
soft in the middle of the rest of my life
so hard? That's I mean, yeah, the whole song is
like I don't want to end up a cartoon in
a cartoon graveyard. Like if that doesn't dig at you

(04:58):
at a certain point, then and I'm just going to
assume you have no interior life or capacity for introspection.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I feel as though so many of his songs and
it's sort of how I feel about some of Brian
Wilson's songs too. You appreciate them more with each passing year.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, And that is like a form of emotional clairvoyance.
It is truly, like very few people possess that as writers. Yes,
And for him to be kind of up there is
not It's also not to be taken light.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Linth There's a guy I know, a journalist. I should
be nice because I do know him, but he wrote
an op ed for NBC News a couple of years ago.
He's a big Dylan guy and he said something about
how Paul Simon will be The headline was something like,
Paul Simon sold this catalog to Sony for millions, he'll
still end up a historical footnote to Dylan. And people
went like that piece became a headline on like TMZ

(05:52):
and Slate like all these other places because people were furious.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, I mean, you know, Bob Dylan doesn't need any
more shooters. Yeah, like Paul Simon. You know, Paul Simon
doesn't either. Let's be frank. I mean he's like a
ruthless little power broker and richer than you know, crecious.
But like, that's a stupid take. That's a dumb take.
Sorry guy. Also, we're all gonna end up in side

(06:17):
notes in history. The country has like fifty years left
top Uh. All of that said, I rarely, if ever
listened to Simon and Garfuncle on purpose. Interesting, I grew
up the son of Boomers. Yeah, I heard all of
these songs by Osmosis, and I would simply rather listen
to Paul Simon at this point in my life. I

(06:38):
also hate the song Feeling Groovy.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
I get it, I get it.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
That pushes me into like near inarticulate rage. And I
would much rather listen to Paul Simon flex all of
his chops at once than like have him be constrained
by this tall dweeby egomaniac ginger beta male Garfum who
has a lovely voice, but scoreboard like ball, don't lie, baby,

(07:04):
where is your career?

Speaker 4 (07:06):
My pal?

Speaker 2 (07:07):
You're like a big He's a big book reader. I'm
told that's what he's been sitting on his ass and
like doing with his residuals for like the past forty years.
Is like he like writes about the books that he reads.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, his memoir, if you could call it that. I
had to read it for work and we were going
to review it, and I was like, I don't know how.
It's like riddles and lists of books.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I like the songs off
this record, obviously, Like there are great songs, but there
are Paul Simon songs. Sorry, ark harmony singers are not
in short supply, as it turns out, And you know,
all these songs are great and you can hear all
the evidence of their genius in all of the songs
Paul Simon wrote without him, So I don't have any
particular nostalgia explicitly for this band. And if I'm being like,

(07:53):
if I want to dig another level deeper, I find
this particular brand of like Cardigan folk to be the
absolute needier of that genre. Like I obviously, and look,
I'm fully admitting this. I'm sitting here as a guy
with tattoos who really like inside Lewin Davis, and like,
of course I'm gonna be like, well, I like Dave

(08:13):
van Wrong because he's more authentic. I realize him walking
into a trap of self parody when I say that,
But it is like the most illustrative thing that I
can describe about this is Dave van Wrong talking about
when Simon and Garfuncle would go in and with their
little like little teing renaissance harmonies be like hello darkness,
my friend, and just the whole coffee house would just

(08:35):
burst out laughing at them.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
I'd never heard that.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, that's that's in some documentary somewhere of just him,
of everyone being like, oh, like, come off it, I
you know whatever, I get it. So but sorry, I'm sorry,
I'm that guy. I'm that cliche. You know, Art's got
a great voice, he.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Does, but I know you're your preferred version of Bridge
lays elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, dude, you've got a great voice,
but also Aretha has a better one.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, that's my version of Bridge over Troubled Water. I mean,
like she it's a complete, like almost rearrangement of this song,
and it's got to practically a new song. But I'm
also like, yeah, cool high notes, man, you know, like
other people can do that, right, Maybe you shouldn't have
been such an.

Speaker 5 (09:24):
Well.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
I mean, I think I mentioned this on a lot
of episodes. My parents kind of went out of their
way to not force the music of their youths onto me,
So by and large I found a lot of my
beloved boomer music on my own. I kind of, I mean,
I hate to use this expression, but I kind of
came to it, honestly. But there were a few artists
who they kind of intimated to me were important and

(09:46):
worth paying attention to. And the Beatles were obviously one,
and pet Sounds was another, and obviously these guys, and
I think, perhaps more than anything else, for me, the
music of Simon and Garfunkl introduced me to, for better
or worse, the concept that nostalgia part of this was
undoubtedly how much their music was tied to boomer documentaries
and movies and other media. But I think it's more

(10:08):
than that, and I think we kind of touched on
this earlier. A huge part of their brilliance is that
for me, they provided nostalgia in real time. Like I
grew up watching The Wonder Years on Nick at Knight
and it's one of my favorite shows. And to me,
the music of Simon and Garfunkle was like Daniel Stearns's
voiceover narration as the adult version of the main character,

(10:29):
Kevin Arnold. The poetry in Simon and Garfunkle, to me,
was like a voice from the future urging you to
preserve your memories because at the end of the day,
that's all that's left you. And I mean, to me,
the definitive Simon and Garfunkel song is Bookends. It's a
fragmentary piece about a time of innocence and confidences in

(10:50):
all of our lives. And so to hear that in
what would I've been seventh grade, like twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
I don't know, it kind of instilled this sense of
appreciation of this moment in my life that I knew
was special, and I knew was fleeting, and it was
kind of it gave me that awareness in that moment
to kind of hold on to it as much as

(11:12):
I could and really savor it, which is to me
a huge gift of Simon and Garfunkel's music.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
I got that with Kiss No No, I mean, yeah, man,
But again that's Paul Simon.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Right, yeah, okay, yeah, yea, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I
mean's you know what it is though, that you forget
how young. I think we have this quote in here
somewhere where Paul Simon he's given an interview on Alec
Baldwin's podcast, and he's like, he said it slightly less
egotistically than I'm about to paraphrase. Yeah, it's crazy how
much I wrote in like three years. The Simon and

(11:48):
Garfunkle period was like nineteen sixty five, mid mid to
late nineteen sixty five, t like early nineteen sixty nine.
There's an innocence to those songs that I think.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
But let's not you know, Credence nailed out three albums
in a year, and those albums have are like wall
to wall bangers, So let's dial it.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Back bangers, Yes, but I think lyrically speaking, and I'm
not even really a lyric guy.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Okay, does does Paul Simon have a riff that gets
placed in every single piece of media about the nineteen sixties?

Speaker 1 (12:19):
I mean probably sounds silence Missus Robinson.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, shut up, all right, you're right. I can see
I like Cecilia. I like Cecilia. It's cool. I like
this p It's like proto Beatman cool whips.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah it does.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, it does. I wonder if Art did that.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
No, no he didn't. No. To all this being said,
we're not talking about Bookends, which is my favorite Simon
a Garth funk, but we're talking about Bridge over Troubled Water,
which turned fifty five earlier this year. I have to
be honest at the risk of sounding like a hater.
I know the title track has been embraced by millions
as a modern hymnal. It's not one of my favorites

(12:56):
of theirs. It's sort of how I feel about Imagine
and to a lesser that let it be.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Wow, I just engine sucks. Okay, Yeah, Imagine sucks. I'm sorry, Like,
you can't divorce that song from its hypocrisy, or it's
like I just don't like it as a sound. Profound
thoughts for babies, like lyrical engagement level. Let it be
at least as a cooler vocal performance.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, it does a guitar sol.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
I wouldn't say anybody who tries to sing let it
be because they think it'll be fun and or easy.
You are in for a hell of a ride on
that chorus, my foolish friends. This album is yeah, No,
there's incredible. There's incredible songs on here. I like Bridge
Over Trouble as a song. As a composition, I mean
that melodies so again, melodies just a beautiful, lilting melodies.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Not one of my favorites. It's weird. I know, it's
like one of those ones that I know is an
important song with a capital I and a capital S.
But to me, it's it's a little too sweet for me.
It's a little too soccer and it's churchy compared to
some of their other song. I mean, it's still obviously
gorgeous song, but but yeah, I mean the story behind

(14:07):
it is incredible. The album it's off of which we'll
talk about. Everything on the album is amazing. Yeah, Heigel
is a hard out, so we should probably dive in
no fact teasers for you on this episode, folks, here's
everything you didn't know about Bridge.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkle.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Wow I called this section taken it to the Bridge
the early years.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
There are so many great Bridge puns in here.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Those are all for you. Yes, before we go any further,
we should give a brief recap of Simon and Garfunkle's relationship,
because that'll make the pettiness of their squabbles just so
much richer. Unsurprisingly, Simon and Garfunkle, we're childhood friends, or
more like childhood frenemies. They met as classmates growing up
in Queen's and Paul Recount's meeting Art in the fourth

(14:59):
grade in a school auditorium while waiting for the buses
to come and to pass the time, they held an
impromptu talent show. Art stood up and sang and blew
everyone away with his version of Too Young, which had
recently been a hit for Nat King Cole, and Paul,
who was the son of a musician himself, was struck
both by the beauty of Art's voice and the impact

(15:20):
it had on girls. Art and Paul became closer when
they were cast together in a school production of Alice
in Wonderland. Simon was the White Rabbit and Garfunkel was
the cheshire Cat. The casting is incredible.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
I just want to note that too Young is indeed
what you think it's about.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
But it's sung by a fourth grader, so that's endearing.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
It was later covered by Michael Jackson. Really Oh no, oh,
I mean it's about it's about they say we're too
young to like go steady, we're too young for this relationship,
blah blah blah. But when I was just wiki and
I was like, Michael Jackson released a version later, I
was like, as a bye hole, it was young Michael.

(16:02):
It was Michael in seventy three, So I guess that's fine, Okay.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Paul and aren't used to sing together after school, honing
their vocal blends somewhat obsessively. They used to sing in
such close proximity that they were able to study how
their tongues touched the roof of their mouths and formed words,
so that they could really really tweak that harmony.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
That harmony singing is actually really interesting to me because
whether they were doing this knowingly at the time, that's
like indigenous folksing. Oh well, yeah, it's in a talking
head song. It's in naive melody, like singing into my mouth.
And that's I believe David Byrne has at some point
been like yo, I was like reading a book about
like folks singing and like various indigenous like singing practices,

(16:43):
and that was like a thing that certain cultures do
where they're literally like they just they use each other's
mouths as resonating chambers. And it's like it's actually, that's
actually like you know, diseasive side, like it's a post
COVID world, but like it's actually like very intimate and
very I think, quite beautiful actually you know, oh yeah
and really and yeah that's man. That's how you get

(17:04):
good at harmonies is by eliminating. You know. The thing
that I always like to that I always compare with
harmonies is like the band versus like the Beach Boys
or the Beatles, where it's like you have, you know,
these these wide harmonies with the band where it's like
they're not agreeing on phrasing, they are not agreeing on
vibrato length, they are not agreeing on even the right
way to pronounce words. Sometimes but they're just still so

(17:25):
in sync that it works, and it's a value neutral approach, right.
But like close harmony singing is much harder because you
do have to like literally align your phonemes. Because I
don't know if anyone's taken singing lessons or anything, but
like specific vowel sounds need to be placed at specific
parts in your mouth to get them to come out
with a certain amount of resonance and with a certain

(17:46):
amount of uh, with the right air control behind them
to keep them on pitch. So, like getting to that
degree of indistinguishable between two people actually singing is something
that is like, yeah, man, you see it in like
indigenous tribes and brothers and these two were like, let's
just go to the basement and hammered out.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, I was reading something about I'm sure it was
through the Beach Boys, because that's obviously one of my
other great loves. But how siblings who sing together are
able to achieve a level of harmony singing that others
can just by virtue of the fact that just micro
pronunciations and not to mention just the resonance of the

(18:24):
vocal cords vibrating in such a similar way yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Oh yeah, he's it was a picture of Eskimos that
he had seen David Burne. Yeah, this is from eighty
eight Rolling Stone interview. He said he had seen a
picture of Eskimo's throat singing and doing it like right
into each other's mouths.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
I wonder if there are videos of that on YouTube.
I've never seen that. I'd like to see that.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Probably. That is interesting.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Well, one afternoon, while Paul and Art were singing into
each other's mouths trying to recall the lyrics to the
Everly Brothers Hey Doll Baby, the fifteen year olds accidentally
stumbled onto words for an original song written in under
an hour and it kind of sounds it. Hey Schoolgirl
became their party piece, performed at amateur stages across Queens.

Speaker 6 (19:11):
Your Mind, Your Mind in the second row the teachers
looking was the way down, he said, Bah, let's.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Meet I do that. The enterprising teams sought a record
deal and decided to record a demo that they could
hand out to executives because performing in offices in the
Brill building was just too awkward. Basically and in a
movement seems straight out of the movies. A promoter named
Sid Prosen happened to overhear their demo session and offered

(19:48):
to sign the pair on the spot, but they feared
their given names were quote too ethnic sounding to play
in Middle America, so they picked flashy showbiz pseudonyms. Arcarf
Uncle said on Tom Graff, a reference to his love
of mathematics and his habit of making the chart position
of his favorite pop songs on graph paper. Paul Simon

(20:11):
christened himself Jerry Landis, after the surname of his then girlfriend,
Sue Landers. It's so funny. Jerry Landis doesn't sound like
a stage name now, No.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
It sounds like one of John land murderer John Landis's
extended family.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Together, they were Tom and Jerry, obviously. After the cartoon,
their new manager slipped DJ Allen Freed two hundred bucks
to play Hey Schoolgirl on his influential radio program, where
it quickly gained traction. Alan Freed famously went down for
the payola scandal a few years later. But he's also
the guy who is credited with coining the term rock

(20:47):
and roll, although that's probably not actually true but or stolen. Yeah, sure,
Hey Schoolgirl by Tom and Jerry got the number forty
nine on Billboard, and they even napped a spot on
American Bandstand and alongside Jerry Lee Lewis. So you've got
like fifteen year old Paul Simon sharing a stage with
Jerry Lee Lewis, which is incredible.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
I must have scared the shit out of it. Did Yes,
it did.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Paul and Art's success made them legends in their neighborhood,
but Paul's teenage in security was made infinitely worse by
constantly being paired with Art, who was taller, more handsome,
and had this angelic voice. Years later, Paul would recall
Art saying during a photo session, no matter what happens,
I'll always be taller than you.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
That is all. That's awful, that's iconic, that is apex
level petty.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
And also they're like fifteen, So that's not like strictly true,
but it was, but it was.

Speaker 7 (21:45):
It was.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yes, Simon was so insecure that he stopped growing. He
was so anxious.

Speaker 7 (21:52):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Garfunkle meanwhile, was battling insecurities of his own. He was
rarely comfortable in his role as a teen pop star.
He would say, it was all over my head. I
never would have done it. If Paul hadn't pulled me along,
I was too fearful of the competitive adult world of
rock and roll. After earning two thousand dollars in royalties
from Hay school Girl Art, put it in the bank
and resumed his studies to enroll at Columbia University. Paul

(22:18):
Simon meanwhile doubled down on the life of a young
rock star. He took his share of the royalties and
bought a fire red Chevy and Pollock convertible.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
He also quietly inked a solo side deal and started
recording under the name True Taylor. He wrote a song
with his father, Lee, who he mentioned earlier was a musician.
He was a bassist and dance bandleader, and the song
they wrote was called true or False And to hear
it now, maybe I'll splice it in. It sounds like
a song that a kid in the fifties would write

(22:49):
with his dad. The lyrics consist of questions put to
a potential love interest. Do you like to call me
on the telephone? Are you excited to make a date?
Are you sad when I go away? Terrible?

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Is he talking to a dog?

Speaker 8 (23:12):
He acted, gentleman, Uncle, Please an answer as you acted
Jimble last way, please answer Afons.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
But the name True Taylor would prove ironic because when
Art Garfunkle learned of his musical partners extracurricular endeavors, he
took it as a serious betrayal. Things got even uglier
when their parents got involved, creating tension between the neighboring families.
And in Art's memoir he said that his friendship with
Paul had been quote shattered. And this was nineteen fifty eight.

(23:53):
This was many years before Simon and Garfunkle. He already
said that their relationship was shattered. This whole True Tailor's
Side Deal incident would be a sore point between them
for decades to come, establishing a pattern of distrust and
ego blows that would underscore their entire relationship kind of
to this day. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I

(24:16):
don't think Paul did anything that egregious, but karma came
from young Paul Simon. In the midst of the True
Tailor fallout, Paul's Prize Chevy and Paula exploded. He was
cruising through Queen's one night and a freak electrical accident
caused the car to overheat, smoke billowed from under the hood,
and the terrified team barely managed to escape the vehicle

(24:39):
before it burst into flames just outside the Garfunkle's house.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
He like looks up and arts slowly closes a curt
non everything in Rosemary's Baby or something. He's like, I
did that, arguably even worse.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Paul Woul ultimately become extremely embarrassed by these early songs
in the wake of his career as you know, way
serious voice of a generation songwriter. He even went to
court in nineteen sixty seven to successfully block the release.
Here's a I think really good even though I know
it is objectively bad song released under the name Jerry
Landis in nineteen sixty two called there Goes the Lone

(25:17):
teen Ranger, which basically parodies the Lone Ranger TV show.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
The bopp.

Speaker 9 (25:26):
Relay, the.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
The Launting Rangers.

Speaker 6 (25:34):
This same soul I can't get at and you know
who's to blame. It's the naughty rangel Jane around. My
girlfriend's not the same.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
She even kiss the TV said, Oh, it's.

Speaker 6 (25:49):
A crying shame goes He Goes.

Speaker 9 (25:51):
Bank Bank lo Ranger.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, that song sucks. I was going to try and
listen to that good faith, and I didn't make it
all the way through. I respect that, though, man, Like,
no one's entitled to your rough drafts.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
No, that's how I know. That's how like stand culture
works these days. And like you know, obviously we have
the president of like Kurt Cobating writing in his now
published journals. Please don't publish my journals when I'm dead.
But yeah, man, I respect that. It's like if it's
like I died, someone went in and found out my
like dog like logic demos that I made super baked

(26:30):
in the middle of the night in twenty thirteen, like
I would haunt you.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
How do you feel about, uh, Paul inking a side
deal while art was clearly not all that into being
a musician and was preparing to go off to college.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, that's not a bad movie, I dud. Yeah him,
I'd like funny if your loser buddy is like I
would like to go and study books, like and you
have all this talent literally flowing out of every orifice
and limb of your body, Like yeah, oh ethic, No,
Paul Simon does me any terrible things later, Let's not
start castigating him for his ethics at this juncture.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Okay, good, I agree with you.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
So based on all of that, Simon and Garfunkle would
not have a meaningful conversation again for years. Art went
to Columbia and Paul spent time at the Brill Building
with Carol King, another Queen's college student, must be said,
trying to sell demos, which he would later describe hilariously
as fodder for you. Nux is away with words. I mean, yeah, dude,
great American lyricist. The pair drifted. Simon and garfunk well

(27:29):
not Carol King, drifted in and out of each other's
orbit until they came together in nineteen sixty three as
a Greenwich Village folk act. It was another case of
putting the talent and music ahead of their own relationship,
which Art admitted was already quote strained. They were signed
to Columbia Records in late nineteen sixty three and recorded
the album that would become Wednesday Morning, three Am with
producer Tom Wilson a short time later. The album tanked

(27:52):
upon its release in the fall of nineteen sixty four,
selling an abysmal three thousand copies at a time when
you know any person with a Bone Structure was making
a recording If I Had a Hammer and selling out
Carnegie Hall. Simon went abroad to England and Artie went
back to school. Then a year later, producer Tom Wilson

(28:13):
went back and added a twelve string electric guitar part
and drums and bass guitar to Sound of Silence to
make it sound more like the then trendy folk rock
Sounds of the Birds and the Buffalo Springfield and like
a rolling Stone. So out of nowhere, Simon and Garfunkle
had a hit on their hands and almost an unwelcome
interruption for their solo lives. Art and his Precious Little

(28:35):
Books and Paul's time abroad where he was having sex.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
And he released an album over there too, called The
Paul Simon's Song Book, which.

Speaker 9 (28:45):
Good for him.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Have you ever heard that? It's a lot of early
like Kathy's Song and Flowers that Ever Bound Fall type
stuff like stuff on the first two Simon and Garfunkle records,
But it's just him. It's pretty good. It's it's interesting, yeah,
but I mean it's it's so weird to me that
Sarmon Garfunkle very nearly never happened had this producer not thought, Okay,

(29:07):
I'll just take this song and without the knowledge of
the people who wrote it or performed it, just completely
redo it with electric guitar and release it.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Tom Wilson was a genius, ye, I mean, he like
was seeing things that they and hearing things that they
did not. Yeah, so I'm I mean, I guess is
an artist. I would be somewhat red asked about that,
but sure he was correct.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, but it's just weird to me that they they
had a hit and they didn't know basically, like, that's
so great, and they had already moved on with their
lives and then suddenly they were just yoped back together
and you know, you knew it in that lens, it
kind of makes sense. I mean, I'm almost surprised that
they made as much music as they did in the
next five years.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Sure. Yeah, Well, as you mentioned this, yoking had a
largely negative effect on Paul and Artie's already shaky frente
of me sh By the end of the nineteen sixties,
creative differences and long held resentments made the union a
ticking time bomb. They both envied each other's place in
the team. Art resented that Paul got first billing, complaining
that Simon and Garfunkle sounded like a law firm. Paul,

(30:15):
having done everything in the band, had the correct opinion,
which is that he thought the audience saw Art as
the star because he was the featured singer, and some
people probably thought Art even wrote the songs. But Artie
knew that Paul wrote the songs and thus controlled the
pair's future. And what's more, he never got over what
had happened with Tom and Jerry.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
You really got mad when that frying paint came down
on that mouse. That was really just a bridge too far.
Oh that different Tom and Jerry.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Okay, Art mustering his entire chest to say this in
a trembling voice barely above the snores of a kitten.
I never forget and I never forget Ooh anyway, Paul,
for his part, thought that Art was phoning it in.
He was continuing coursework for a mathematics doctorate at Columbia,

(31:07):
and Paul's rejoinder to that was, Okay, I'll go teach
a songwriting course at NYU in nineteen seventy love it.
He felt Art was also a little bit too much
on the old wacky Tobaccy, which had an effect on
his vocals and made him less than professional regarding deadlines.
He showed up late to rehearsals and he wants even

(31:29):
completely missed a flight to London that forced a sold
out concert to be canceled. Yeah, I mean sorry, man,
You know I gotta go ahead and say that, like
Paul actually gave Garfuncle so much more than he was due.
Because this is also the era when like you had
a hit and then you sent out a band that

(31:49):
wasn't the actual artist, ye to go capitalize on the
hit if the artist was not available, like without promo
photos and from the back of a hall. You know,
people didn't know that it wasn't the five to seven
Jumpstart boys performing there smash hit Let's get happy together
in a car like so this was already an established practice.

(32:10):
This happened all over the place. And for Simon to
be like, I'm sorry, I'm going to pull an audible
and find another tall guy with a high voice, like
very generous art is infuriating. He's a deeply infuriating human. Jordan,
this is where you will punch in about thirty seconds
to a minute of art Garfunkle's studio Chatter, in which
he waxes poetic on a single take of a song

(32:35):
from the single Yes, a single vocal take of a song.
He is hilariously in a reverb chamber. So as he's
doing this, he's in a big plate reverb chamber, and
you can hear the this saint of an engineer occasionally
punching in and going, So, did you want to do
another take? Should we maybe move on to the next one? Well,

(32:59):
Garfunkle just wax is poetic about the heart and element
of the song that has now been gotten away from it.

Speaker 5 (33:05):
Never it wanted to have air to mix with its
I don't know start. I think I'm starting to hate it,
but except I know I love it. It's been chased
away somehow, somehow, something wonderful was lurking behind all of
the pausing and the techno realities of our job. That

(33:26):
here's a classic case of whatever.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
Was fertile about the song which I was connected with
about an hour and a half ago, has ground down.
I can't find well you want to put down one
take like that will take out all these extra drum things,
something like starting from the beginning feels like the right
thing to do, because it is it seems to me

(33:50):
to be tremendously respected. What does the singer feel like
singing it at? Where since he knows his own chops,
will he be pacing most naturally? And then the rest
is for you to say, I see the kind of
record that would lead to. But let me try something
and then I'll take direction. But first I would think
comes this fat, fabulous.

Speaker 5 (34:10):
Thing called what comes natural, which is really to be respected.

Speaker 9 (34:15):
I think we should move on, and we have.

Speaker 4 (34:18):
The way I sang the opening is a good interpretation.
It's it's very close to the mic and easy. It's
not pushed at all, but it's a good way to
record me. It's one of my sounds, and I think
it worked good on that take, and that's a good
frame of reference.

Speaker 5 (34:32):
As a vocal. Let's move on, Okay, let's move ahead.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
More light footedly anyway. One incident that Jordan feels worth
highlighting is recounted in journalist Robert Hilburn's book Paul Simon
The Life, which comes with the caveat that it is
a book so packed with gratuitous spawning over Paul and
cheap potshots at art that one could assume it was
originally supposed to be a ghost written Paul Simon memoir.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Have you read it? I have not. It's pretty egregious.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
In the wake of the gargantuan success of the Graduate
soundtrack in nineteen sixty eight, Simon and Garfunkle were booked
to play prestigious gig at Boston's Symphony Hall. Their manager
hired a private plane for them as a treat, but
Artie wanted to hitchhike to quote the book that made
everyone else nervous, because then something could happen and he
might not get to the show on time, but Garfunkle insisted.

(35:21):
On the day of the concert, Garfuncle headed for the highway,
where a young Boston bound couple in a VW gave
him a ride. Garfuncle was sitting in the back seat
when he noticed the husband who was driving staring at
him in the review mirror. Finally, the driver said, uh,
you look like that singer in Simon and you know
Simon and the other guy. Garfunkle replied, that's me, Art Garfuncle.

(35:46):
Somewhere a single spring lily bloom. The driver counter, don't
kid me. There's no way Art Garfunkle would be hitchhiking,
and Garfuncle spent the rest of the trip trying to
convince the couple that he really was the pop star,
but the driver of the car refused to even look
at Artie's driver's license. When they let him off at
the outskirts of Boston, Garfuncle gave it one final try,

(36:07):
give me your name and I'll leave a couple of
comps for you at the box office. As he drove away,
the husband snapped, why don't you grow up? It's even
funnier if he was just give him the classic just
like few.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
It's gonna do it a Boston Yeah, honk, Why don't
you grow up? Like? That's a hard one to say
in a Boston.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Good though, Garfunkle managed to get to Symphony Hall just
in time for the five o'clock soundcheck, but Simon didn't
enjoy that kind of suspense.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
No thanks on the private jet, I think on it
sh so.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Just like art Garfuncle, the eternal Beto male, like in
a car in the back seat, desperately trying to convince
people who knew who he was who he was and
failing and in fact infuriating them.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yes, the process believing them. I prefer to think they
just left him on like a toll plaza.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
He hitched him out of the car. It was like,
get out of it here, not Art.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
That's why I included a ancdote. I just love it
so much. But the main fissure in Paul on Art's
relationship occurred in late in nineteen sixty eight, when director
Mike Nichols, who'd worked with the pair on the Graduate,
offered them both roles in his next project, an adaptation
of the book Catch twenty two by Joseph Hiller. Art
was cast as Captain nately Well. Paul was initially approached

(37:24):
to play the character of Dunbar. Naturally, we were thrilled.
Paul recalled to Mojo in twenty eleven. Then, a few
weeks before shooting was due to start, Mike Nichols called
me up and said, look, the screenplays so long. We're
gonna have to write your character out, and I guess
that means ARTI will be out too. I said, no,
don't take him out just because I'm out.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
What a sweet thing to do for his tall, dorky,
lame ass friend Annie.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
And Paul added that was the main reason Simon A.
Garfunkle broke up, But I think we would have broken
up anyway. All duos do. It's just too hard when
one person does all the the stress is very difficult
to manage. Art meanwhile, did not see the big deal.
I think for him, he thought this was his true
tailor moment. He said in a nineteen ninety interview with

(38:11):
song Talk magazine. Our way of working was for Paul
to write while we recorded, so we'd be in the
studio for the better part of two months working on
two or three or four songs that Paul had written,
recording them, and then when they were done, we'd knock
off for a couple months while Paul worked on his
next group of songs. Rather than wait for Paul to
write the next bunch of songs, I went off and
did this movie.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Okay, I agree with his justification, Yure.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Moreover, Art viewed himself as the junior partner in Simon
and Garfunkle, and he saw this as an opportunity to
boost his standing. In the same song Talk interview, he
likened it to George Harrison taking on an acting role
to quote balance out the Lennon McCartney contribution. I thought
I was gonna help give my side of the group
a little more interest, and I'd be bringing it back

(38:58):
to the duo after we had our rest from each
other and we go on and make more albums. He
thought he was gonna up his own popularity and bring
a new crowd to Simon and Garfunkle.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Sure, man, But like you know, George Harrison was writing
songs that were actively being suppressed by the other two,
and you know you weren't.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
He wrote for Emily Wherever I may find her just
not one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkle songs. But
he wrote us song Is it really that?

Speaker 9 (39:26):
Is it like.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Forty seven to one?

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Check me? I feel like there's a second one that
I don't like even more check me. I think there's
like maybe one more. But for Paul, getting cast in
this Hollywood movie was just another instance of him being
the good looking heart throb. Paul at this stage was
starting to visibly bald and apparently found Art's halo of

(39:52):
blonde curls enormously annoying. So this was already a tense
thing that Art was gonna go be a movie star
and Paul was gonna be, you know, locked away in
the studio with his hair thinning. But then but then
Art forced him to wait, and that really pissed Paul off.
There were delays on the Catch twenty two, said in Mexico,

(40:14):
and it soon became apparent that the three month shooting
schedule was overly optimistic, and ultimately the shoot for Catch
twenty two stretched into eight months. That's some like Wizard
of Oz delays right there.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Sorry. I'm also just now finding out that Art Garfrinkle's
cousin is lou Pearlman of one of the biggest Ponzi
scams in history and founder of the Backstreet Boys and
n Sync. WHOA, that's okay, that's Barfrenkle was not a songwriter,
although he did write the poem Canticle as a rewrite
of a Paul Simon's song for his own debut album

(40:49):
Oh Yeah. He worked as the vocal arranger for the duo,
which seems like something he wrote in his own Wikipedia
as it is unsourced, and is also credited as having
written the arrangement on the Boxer and creating Voices of
Old People, which is an audio montage on Bookends. I
don't even think he wrote this. This is this wiki

(41:11):
is not even giving him credit for writing that song
that you said he didn't write for Emily wherever I
may find her, I mean, I keep looking, but check
me on that.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
I think it's on.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
I think it's on Parsley Sage, rosemar In Time Ostle Sage.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
It sucks.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Who's may and you know what it is is I
don't really like English folk, and there's so much English
folk in there, like little lilting like let's dance around
the maypole.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
I could see you liking Bert Chance though.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
I do like her. I was literally about to say,
like I do like Burt Jansch and I love and
I love Nick Drake. I just have like that pentangle
like again, if it's dance around the if it's dance
around the maypole, hard.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Past, who knows where the time goes? Sandy Danny song
is gorgeous and there's there's some good stuff there.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
But I know it's you mean for Emily has an
uncredited it's uncredited on Wikipedia. The song entry itself says
it was written by Paul Simon. Really, oh wow, song
by art so he is zero for four hundred. Okay, okay,
she let me find I did have the actual discography.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Wow, I could have sworn there was one.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Nope. Art did not even grant you that, my friend.
Oh wow, okay, making it that much harder for you
to defend him.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
I mean, I agree with you. So the shoot for
Catch twenty two was delayed from three months to about
eight and future screenwriting icon Nora Efron profiled the troubled
production and a colorful piece for The New York Times
where she detailed disasters ranging from bad food in the

(42:51):
mess hall to horrible hotel accommodations and problems with telephones.
Her piece featured a memorable quote from comedian Bob Newhart,
who was casting film. We make bets on who's going
to go insane or who's already gone insane. In fact,
maybe we've all gone insane, and we're all together and
we don't know it, and we'll go home and my
wife will call Paramount and say, listen, my husband is insane.

(43:14):
We have no norm here, We have no way of judging.
Art later admitted that he felt bad for just hanging
out in Mexico as this production dragged on, while he
knew that his musical partner was at home growing angrier
and angrier by the day. He would say. Mike held
me in Mexico for like four or five and a
half months, and I should have really said to him,
you know, you don't need me this long. I've got

(43:34):
to work in New York City. Call Paul Simon, what
am I doing down here? I should have said that,
but I was many miles away. And you don't realize
what you're missing when you're out there. You're not in
knom like I mean, were you in the sheep?

Speaker 2 (43:50):
He would say, so, yes, yeah, yes, yes, I was
in the shop Craft.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Services was terrible. As production on the film stretched through
the early months of nineteen sixty nine, Paul Simon found
himself under considerable pressure from Columbia Records chief Clive Davis
to begin work on their next album in order to
capitalize on the success of the Graduate Soundtrack, the recent
Grammy win, and the huge sales of their previous album Bookends.

(44:15):
For a time, Simon de Garfunkle had the top three
album positions in the US, with Bookends at number one,
the Graduate Soundtrack at number two, and their nineteen sixty
six album Parsley Say Ageos Mary in Time at number three.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Also known as PSrT.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Is it no?

Speaker 2 (44:31):
I was like the real heads call a PSrT bro.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
That's really impressive, Like I'm hard. That's crazy to name
another act who's had the three top albums. I don't
think the Beatles even did that.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
This isn't definitive, but Bob Newhart had the number one
and number two albums simultaneously on the Billboard two hundred
with the Button Down Mind and the Button Down Mind
Strikes Back. Guns n' Roses had used Your Illusion one
in two at number one and two respectively in nineten
ninety one and two thousand and four. Nelly had Suit
and Sweat at number one and two. But those are

(45:05):
all double albums or like combined albums, right, I believe, so.
I don't know if anyone's had three separately released albums.
That is wild.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
That's a crazy stat.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with
more too much information after these messages.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Woo, one of the earliest songs that Paul wrote with
the album that would become Bridge Over Troubled Water was
the Only Living Boy in New York, one of my favorites.
Originally he pended as a kind of good luck message
to his old friend Art. He would say, I was saying,
go do it, go off and do the movie, a

(45:49):
kind of Hey Jude type song. I feel compelled to
mention that Paul Simon is dramatically misinterpreting the meaning of
Hey Jude, which, as we all know, was written by
Paul mc cart need to cheer up John Lennon's son
Julian after John left Julian's mom to go be with Yoko.
Thank you. In order to make the meaning of the
song slightly less obvious, Paul Simon evokes their childhood alter

(46:13):
ego in the opening line Tom as in Tom and
Jerry catch your plane right on time. I know your
part will go fine. In other words, go off, do
this movie. The role's gonna go great. It's very sweet,
it's very jalous.

Speaker 9 (46:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
But despite this encouragement, traces of Paul's own alienation and
loneliness managed to bleed through. Art would sum up Paul's
message as I'm the only living boy in New York.
You used to be the other one, and now you're gone.
Despite the small hints of jealousy and the lyrics, it
is undoubtedly a gorgeous song. Artie contributed the melody of

(46:51):
the backing vocal, later recalling it's us around eight times screaming,
and we mixed it down very softly. I started getting
into open math off harmony, which you're describing earlier, in
a very loud, strident way. We were screaming at the
top of our lungs and inside an echo chamber. I
remember that day Dylan, Bob Dylan dropped by to visit.

(47:11):
We came out of the booth after all this screaming,
and there he was also of note instrumentally speaking. On
The Only Living Boy in New York is the exquisite
bassline played by session player Joe Osborne of the iconic
group of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew. He's
playing it on an eight string bass, and I love this,
he would remember years later when he tried to play

(47:33):
it on stage, he couldn't quite do it, and he
couldn't figure out why he couldn't nail his own part,
And then he realized that his bass part on the
record had been camped together and was therefore impossible to
play exactly.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Yeah, I mean, and this wouldn't have been an eight
string bass the way that like six string basses exist now,
this would have been like a twelve string guitar, where
it's four strings of the bass guitar with another string
either a unison or tune in octave above it. That's
crazy because the five string bass and six string basses
them today didn't really exist until the eighties, seventies or eighties.

(48:05):
But yeah, I just want to highlight the production on
these albums, man, Like, it's really down to like a
couple of God yes, you know, it's Hal Blaine of
the Record Crew, one of the most prolific and iconic
drummers of all time. The aforementioned Joe Osborne, who I
think the same thing happened in with his baseline on America.
They also comped together some basslines with that, so you like,

(48:26):
if you're trying to play those like upper register fills
that he plays, it's not it's a it's a studio trickery.
And then Larry Necktell I believe.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Is also.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Was he also in Muscle Shoals.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
I know he was definitely in the rerec and crew
because he played on Pet Sounds and all the Beach
Boys studio stuff and Phil Spector's studio stuff.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
I don't know about muscle shoals. No, he wasn't. Okay,
my mistake, so yeah. And Larry Nekchdel, who was just
like their utility guy because he's played geys and bass,
but you know a lot of the other stuff too,
and especially on these songs, is is Roy Haley Man, Yeah,
the producer on this. I really like it is crazy
to actually think about what he was doing with these. Interestingly,

(49:09):
he never had Simon and garfer go on separate mics.
He only ever had them on one mic.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Well, we talk about this in a bit. There was
some documentary as watching with him where he would always
have them sing their parts together on one mic, like
Everly Brothers style, and then to thicken it he would
then individually have them do their own parts separately.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yes, yeah, And I mean like only Living Boy for example,
is like eight times there's like eight overdubs of them
singing together in an entire echo chamber, which I think
is very cool. Yeah, but yeah, I mean that's Roy Haley.
Should get a lot of credit with that. Same with
you know, same with just doing this stuff on Bridge.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
The drum sound on the Boxer that sounds like a
cannon shot, like, Yeah, a lot of this cool stuff.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, the Boxer. For me, the craziest thing is all
the guitar layers on there. But we'll get to that.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Oh my god, I know, yeah, there's I think it's
in here later. But in some interview I think both
Paul and Art separately said, yeah, it was Simon and Garfunkle,
but we were really a trio with Roy Halley.

Speaker 5 (50:11):
I mean it was.

Speaker 9 (50:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Another song that directly addresses ARTI on Bridge over Troubled
Water is So Long Frank Lloyd Wright, which is basically
a semi affectionate kiss off from Paul to his friend,
who was a one time architecture student. Simon later admitted
in a twenty eleven interview with Mojo, I guess the
bigger picture was that him flying down the Mexico was

(50:34):
a disappointment that I was trying to block out, and
the nostalgic refrain to the song I'll remember Frank Lloyd Wright,
all of the nights we'd harmonized till dawn. I never
laughed so long. So Long, So Long seems too surrendered
to the inevitable. As Art would later say, that's a
wink from Simon to Garfunkle. So long Arty will be

(50:57):
splitting up next year. You may not know it yet.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Oh I'm advancing a new theory here, which is that
maybe Art Garfuncle is an idiot.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Uh. He later said that he had no idea that
the song was in reference to him. This is what
I'm yes, this is what I'm yes, yes, uh, he said,
Paul quote never let me in on that. I find that.
I find that to be a secretive and unpleasant thing
to have done.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
To you, because that presupposes a very stoned Art Garfuncle
sitting around and singing these lines and going, man, it's
crazy that you used to sing in the in your
basement with Frank Lloyd Wright, just like me. That's wild,
and then never addressing that, like not retaking that case later. Yes,
of course that was But no, I was deceived by Paul.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
He later chilled, saying in the liner notes to a
twenty twelve compilation that he's able to ignore the unpleasant
subtext of the song because it's quote just so much
fun to sing, And he says of Paul that quote
one loves the giver of a beautiful gift. I don't
know fine the lyric All of the Nights We'd Harmonize

(52:09):
Till Dawn is a sweet reflection of their early days together,
made all the more poignant by the fact that they
don't harmonize on this song, which is kind of heartbreaking
when you think about it. Art sings a solo, except
when Paul takes a section of the bridge. Architects may
come and architects may go, and never change your point
of view. I think that's very interesting that Paul takes

(52:31):
that one line. People come, people go, They don't change
your point of view. That's I don't know. I find
it telling that he chose that line out of the
entire song. I don't know if that was strictly a
musical decision. The pair in general don't really harmonize much
on Bridge over Troubled Water the whole album in general.
Unlike the Everly Brothers style harmonies on their earlier records,

(52:52):
Bridge was a showcase for separate voices. Paul Simon would
explain in the twenty eleven documentary The Harmony Game. It's
more like a Beatles record than an Everly's record. You
knew the two voices and the two characters well enough
that we could each have our own songs that's the
first time we did that, and that probably would have
been the pattern for the next album or two. Have
we stayed together? And yeah, we talked about earlier about

(53:14):
their specific way of recording their harmonies, how they would
gather around one mic and sing together and then each
double track their vocal part individually afterwards, and Roy Halley
would say, people would say, why don't you just record
them individually so you'll have more control, which makes sense
when you're mixing, but that sounds was never the same.
They needed to look at each other's mouths and see

(53:36):
the way that their tongues touch their soft palate and
really get those phonemes.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Yeah, those fricatives, it's true elves. Yeah, no, I know.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
And speaking of the Beatles, much like John and Paul
struggling to make room for their romantic relationships, Paul and Artie,
Paul Simon and Arc Garfunkle were becoming more involved with
serious partners of their own. While art was on his
way to a session for the Bridge Over Troubled Water
track The Boxer in the fall of nineteen sixty eight,
he was recognized while stepping out of a cab by

(54:09):
part time actress Linda Grossman, he was recognized. He must
have been so happy that he was recognized.

Speaker 5 (54:14):
This time.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
Artie was smitten by Linda Grossman and took the bold
move of inviting her on the spot to the session
he was going to. He'd say, I was ready, My
rhythm was already going. I think I asked I think
I asked her to marry me in the second sentence.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
What a weird thing to say.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Yeah, and when they split up, he would later insist
that he never loved her.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Yeah, okay, like, honestly, anyone please tweeted us right in
if we're if you think have listened to this episode
and think that we're being unfair to this guy, Yes,
come on.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
So Paul wasn't exactly thrilled that art just showed up
to their session with a stranger. Yeah, I mean that
makes the whole like John bringing Yoko, who at least
was known to the rest of the band, seem you know.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Also, Linna Grossman lived in Boston, and if you have
an artistic career in New York, it is really hard
to keep commuting back up to Boston. It's really it's
it's it's a time suck. It's a money suck. It
makes it really really hard to keep things going in
New York, especially if that's where you your your finances
are and you make your money and all the opportunities are.

(55:30):
It's really really, really difficult, let me tell you. And
you know already he was really determined to make that
relationship work, and he commuted back and forth between New
York and Boston at great personal expense, I'm sure, and
tremendous cost to his own sanity. But one of the
downsides of this is that he had even less free

(55:51):
time to record with Paul, who you'll remember was already
pissed about the Catch twenty two shoots. So now he
finally had already back and he was going back and
forth to Boston to be with this rando who stopped
him on the street and say, hey, aren't you our
Garfuncle And he was like, you're pretty yes, I am.
Is presumably how that went down, So now anywhere with you,

(56:11):
Paul was doubly mad. Meanwhile, Paul, this is quite a choice.
He was cementing a relationship with Peggy Harper, who at
the time was married to Simon and Garfuncle's manager mart Lewis.
Once their relationship heated up, Peggy left her husband, who,
may I remind you, was Simon and Garfuncle's manager, Mart Lewis,

(56:33):
and divorced him so she could marry Paul. I can
only assume this was some kind of weird music industry
ediple thing. Yeah, marrying your manager's wife is. That's a
hell of a thing. Paul apparently actively pursued her despite
his personal friendship and professional relationship with her now ex
husband mart Lewis, the manager of Simon and Garfuncle, who

(56:57):
continued to manage Simon and Garfuncle Paul solo after the
breakup of the duo. This Mort guy. This guy either
he was extremely open minded about all this, or he
knew a meal ticket when he saw one. Rather than
feel that Paul had quote taken Peggy from him, Mort

(57:18):
said that he was quote relieved about the divorce and
held no animosity towards Simon when the pair started dating.
He said he and Simon even had a heart to
heart conversation, agreeing not to let the matter disrupt their
business ties, and with that, Paul and Peggy married in
late autumn nineteen sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Look, Paul, you can my wife, but don't fit the money.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Let's go to fifteen percent. You want the divorce signed?
All right.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Paul probably didn't appreciate already bringing in, you know, just
some woman from the street, because she was pretty invalidated him.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
I must have that wrong, Like that's from the hell
Burn book, which is extremely pro Paul. There must be
something I'm going maybe not maybe not? What's over Linda Grossman?

Speaker 2 (58:07):
What There's a line in his Wikipedia page. I'm so excited.
Garfuncle has undertaken several long walks in his life. Yeah,
h writing poetry along the way. Just what a hilarious
thing to put.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
I think they were like extremely long, Like I think, yes.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
They're like forty miles. They're like it's like a long
he's marathon walking. Yeah, just like you know, getting all
the way down there on to personal life. But it's
just he's taken long walks, several long baths. Okay, Sorry.
So I found a nineteen seventy three Rolling Stone interview
where our Carfuncle said I invited Linda to the studio

(58:52):
that night we were working on the Boxer. She was reluctant,
but she thought she'd try it. She came sat over
the engineering console with her chin on her wrist, staring
at me, Paul and Roy for four hours. She was
going to know everything. I was impressed and flattered. I
like people who third degree me, who stare at me.
I feel they're interested. And we went out afterwards and

(59:12):
I was very charmed and we dated a lot. It
took us about three years though, before I had the
courage to ask her to marry me. And the following
sentence is They divorced in nineteen seventy five, with Garfunkle
later claiming he never really loved her.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
So wait, why she was a singer. So I was
going to bring her to the studio to weigh in.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Was that what he means certainly adds to your notion
of Paul Simon not being thrilled that a random person
pulled up and just plopped down at the console. Oh,
they worked on this song. Who's this again, Artie? I
just met her in the street. Her name is Linda.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
We had Bob Dylan in here yesterday, arn and I
didn't listen to him. Yeah, no offense, London. I'm sure
I'm sure you lovely, I'm sure he never loved you. God,
sorry to that woman, all right, all right, all right,
all right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
The sessions for The Boxer were one of the most
difficult songs that Simon and Garfunk put together. Sessions lasted
well over one hundred hours, spread out over Columbia Studios
in Nashville, New York, and also Saint Paul's Chapel at
Columbia University. The church had a tiled dome which was
beloved by the band for the l lailai parts, and
this created a fun challenge for the engineers, who viewed

(01:00:34):
the excursion as a bit of a field trip because
mobile recording technology was not quite where it is today.
Simon would recall that the recording for The Boxer began
in Nashville, where they played with pro session guys like
Charlie McCoy on harmonica, who played on Dylan's Blonde on
Blonde on many other things, Pete Drake on pedal steel
no relation to Nick Drake, the similarly kitten voiced but

(01:00:57):
virtuosic fingerpicking British guitarist, and Fred Carter, who played the
fingerpick and guitar part along with Simon. The first line
is a lick he wrote while his guitar was in
a special tuning Simon later said, ever since guitarists get
their fingers all twisted up trying to play that part
and they can't because they don't know the tuning, I.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Won't tell them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
No, I have the detail on those. Actually, the two
of us played sitting about three feet apart and completely
locked into it. We did it over and over until
we got to take you here on the record. It's
live on the record. No edits Roy and Lardy were
in the control room and they were really happy with
the way the guitars meshed together. That is beautiful. Fred Carter,
in a two thousand and eight interview with Fred Boord Journal,

(01:01:37):
explained it thusly. When we started to record in New York,
I had a baby Martin, it's a smaller bodied model,
and Paul Simon was playing his Martin a DA team.
He was tuned regular in standard tuning EADGB E. So
all I was here in was bits and pieces of
the songs while he was doing his fingerpicking. So I
tried two or three things and then picked up this guitar,
which was about a third above his guitar, and I

(01:01:59):
turned the first string down to D and I turned
the bass string up to a G which put my
guitar in an open G tuning. He says that Paul
was in open C at this point, so if that's true,
what they were essentially doing was playing guitars a fifth
off of each other, which is very interesting. And that's
a studio tactic that you do see in a lot
of places where people will, I think in Nashville as well,

(01:02:21):
where you kpo your capo one guitar at the seventh
threat and then played the same guitar part just a
fifth hire to thicken the sound. As long as you're
not doing any kind of really complicated harmonies, it works out.
And so he said, at the end of the day,
we were just still on the song on my guitar.
They had me miked with about seven mics. They had

(01:02:42):
a near mic, a distant mic, a neck mic, a
mic on the guitar hole. They even miked my breathing.
They micd the guitar in back. Roy Halley was a
genius at getting around the first time we were listening,
they killed the breathing mic and they had an ambient
mic overhead which picked up the two guitars together. So
I was breathing, I guess pretty heavy in rhythm, and
they wanted to take it out, and they took it
out and then said, no, we have to leave that in.

(01:03:05):
And it now sounds like an additional layer rhythm on
the record. So you can actually hear guitarist Fred Carter
Junior's breathing as part of those guitar tracks.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
I never noticed that. I got to re listen to that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
He also played telly and twelve string guitar on that track,
three or four guitars in total, and a six string Doughbro,
which is like the resonator style guitar that you hear
in bluegrass music, not on a slide, he says. So
there are so many guitars on that, which is why
it sounds magic. And one of that central lick is

(01:03:37):
them playing in two different tunings at once. So cool.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
That song I used to always kind of think was
like long and slow and would skip to like Missus
Robinson whatever. Although I get the more that's like, that's
the one that is a magical song. I mean to me,
it's like the musical equivalent of like cool hand Luke too.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
It's just like that, yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah, And
just I don't know, man, I think I do think that,
you know Howie deserves like a lot of recognition for
this he talks about on the Boxer. Also, he put
the brass and the rest of the voices on the
end of that, and then he made this decision to
mix the pedal steel track with a piccolo trumpet part.

(01:04:18):
So the pedal steel was recorded down in Nashville and
this boc esque piccolo trumpet part done in the Columbia church.
And so he had two remote sessions of these two
very distinct instruments and bounce them into one track together.
That's just I love studio magic.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
And it's very much a Phil Specter or Brian Wilson
technique of putting two instruments together playing the exact same line,
and the effect is a completely new third sound that
your brain puts together. I mean, I had no idea
what that sound was. I thought, I think I assumed
it was a pedal steel, but there was something off
about it. I didn't realize that there was a pickle

(01:05:22):
of trumpet on top of it. Pickle trumpets what they
use in penny Land too. It's I mean, it's it's
a it's unusual to be used in like a country.
Tinged record like this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
It's mostly a I mean, you probably wouldn't hear it
on any rock no poke record unless somebody was trying
to make it sound annoyingly baroke. Yeah, yeah, like the Beatles. Yes, continue,
I think you're up. We've got to talk about the drums.
Oh yes, so sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
That's the other great part of the song.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
So the famous drum beat for the Bronxer. It only
has one drum part, and it is played during the
lie live part, and it is an amazing drum part
because it sounds like the hammer of God. It is
played by famed Wrecking Crew player how Blaine, who drummed
on probably ninety five percent of things throughout the nineteen sixties,

(01:06:11):
one hundred and fifty top ten US hits, forty of
which were number ones. He authored the beat that is
now just called the be My Baby beat from the
ron Ads. Wouldn't it be nice? I Got you babe,
mister tambourine man, Agent of Aquarius, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The

(01:06:32):
effect of this sound was achieved not by any kind
of intense like metering of reverb lengths or echo anything.
Hal Blaine said that Roy Halley would just walk around
clapping until he found the sound that he wanted, and
so ultimately he decided to put the drums in the
studio hallway by an elevator shaft for this maximum reverb
in echo and Columbia's records hallways were just always known

(01:06:55):
as apparently being great sources of echo and reverb. Halle
would later joke, I bet Barbara Dreyisen's voice is still
echoing in that hallway somewhere. And so Hal Blaine would
pound the drums at the well, really just one drum
snare right In.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
Different interviews, he said snare and tom tom, But I
mean he was just also super old, so he might
have I don't know, not to be awful, but you know, yeah,
I think it was a snack.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
I mean the definitive I think the definitive one is
the snare, but they might have mixed a low tom
into it to give it a little bit of body.
That actually makes sense anyway, so they would be how
Blaine was just he said, they were all around me
with all these mike cables, my drums, a set of headphones.
When the chorus came around the lie Lie bit Roy
had me come down on my snare drum as hard
as I could in that hallway by the elevator shaft.

(01:07:40):
It sounded like a cannon shot, which was just the
kind of sound that we were after. Unfortunately, at this
exact moment, during one take, the elevator doors open and
an elderly man stepped out, just as how Blaine came
down on a snare drum with all of the force
he could summon. It nearly scared him to death. Blaine recalled,
he jumped back into the elevator, the door and took off.

(01:08:01):
We never saw him again. He later died. No, but
I think I think about his face every time I
hear the boxer and again like this is again just

(01:08:26):
these guys, Hal Blaine, Larry Nechdel, Joe Osborne, engineer, producer,
Roy Halley. And this was the first Simony Garfunkle album
that credited these back musicians in their liner notes. And
this was also an era when that was not even
standard practice, you know. So this is because Motown musicians
were famously not credited. So this is like a measure
of faith that you know they had in crediting these guys,

(01:08:48):
which I think is wonderful. With all of this material,
A standard eight track recorder wasn't cutting it, so Roy
Halle brought Columbia boss Clive Davis into the studio to
lobby for the novel sixteen track recorder. Davis op his
purse strings and bought another eight track recorder, which made
Simon and Garfunkle among the first musicians to use sixteen

(01:09:08):
track recording. But what they were actually doing was doing
two separate eight track recorders that were manually synchronized and
brought together. Hallie talking to Sound on Sound says we
linked up two eight track machines to make sixteen and
going out and making work tapes. The second eight track
would be used as a work tape to go in
overdub voices in the church, do that as a remote,

(01:09:28):
bring it back to the studio and overdub on it.
That wasn't being done at the time, so it was great.
It was very innovative and very creative at that standpoint.
So I don't know how you're gonna handle that. They
edit God Love You and now we have the lost.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Yes, yes, there's actually a missing verse of the Boxer
that was removed after already wrote that Bach like steel guitar, trumpet, melody,
that was his line. That's his saw right, Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
He gets one separate part of one song.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
The verse. The Lost Verse is occasionally reinserted during live
versions of The Boxer and I heard it with them
when I saw Simon and Garfunkle live in two thousand
and three, and it blew my mind because I assumed
that Paul had written it especially for the occasion. It
goes as follows. It's actually very sweet. It actually was
cool that they added it as men in their twilight years.

(01:10:23):
Now the years are rolling by me. They're rocking evenly.
I'm older than I once was and younger than i'll be.
That's not unusual, No, it isn't strange. After changes, upon changes,
we are more or less the same. After changes, we
are more or less the same. That was cool to
see them at like you know, age seventy or whatever

(01:10:48):
singing that to each other. That was really cool. It
was my sixteenth birthday present for my dad seeing Simon
and garfunk and so we went together, which was really cool.
And also as a special guest at the show, they
had the Everly Brothers and then all four so I'm
on a Garfunkle and the two Everly brothers came out
and sang songs together. It was unreal. It was one
of the coolest concerts I've ever been to, one of

(01:11:08):
the best presents I've ever received, really amazing. Yes lyrics, Yes, Yes,
lyrics to the Boxer. Paul reportedly wrote an early draft
of the lyrics of this song on the back of
an airsickness bag related note about sixties songs involving airsickness
bags by people named Paul. It was pointed out to

(01:11:30):
me that the line from back in the USSR all
the way the paper bag was on my knee.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
I always thought it was like contraband or something.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
I don't know what it was. It's an airsickness bag,
That's what that line means. I never knew that. I
never never really made sense to me. Is that I
just blow your mind? Or did you?

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
I don't think I ever really parsed the lyrics. I
don't think about that, my friend. No, I don't think
about it at all.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Yes, okay the Boxer again. I'm not a big lyrics guy,
but the lyrics to the Boxer always stunned me. The
words tell the story of a man struggling to overcome poverty,
and loneliness in New York City. After being presented in
the first person for the first few verses, the final
verse uses the third person sketch of a boxer and

(01:12:14):
the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade,
and he carries the reminders of every glove that laid
him down or cut him till he cried out in
his anger and his shame. I am leaving. I am leaving,
but the fighters still remain. It's the fight seeing cool Endlop,
That's what I always see. Simon has suggested that at
least the spirit of the lyrics are autobiographical. Ah sad

(01:12:39):
news for anyone who ever clung to this song for
strength when they were struggling to overcome major life events.
Paul wrote it after feeling like he was being unfairly
criticized in the press. So no, not the loss of
a loved one or a parent, or grow poverty, just

(01:13:01):
people were mean to him in the music newspapers.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
I mean that that whole first verse, which never really
made much sense to me, suddenly clicked into place. Though
my story is seldom told, I have squandered my resistance
for a pocket full of mumbles such are promises all
lies in jest? Is this just him winging about people
in the press being mean to him that whole first verse?

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
It could be read that way, he says in a
nineteen to eighty four interview with Playboy. I think I
was reading the Bible around that time. That's where I
think phrases like workmen's wages come from and seeking out
the poor recorders. That was biblical. I think the song
was about me. Everybody's beating me up, and I'm telling
you now, I'm going to go away if you don't stop.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
And I never did.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
But by that time we had encountered our first criticism.
For the first few years, it was just pure praise.
It took two or three years for people to realize
that we weren't strange creatures that emerged from England, but
just two guys from Queens who used to sing rock
and roll. And maybe we weren't real folkies at all,
maybe we weren't even hippies. But yeah, Paul's been cagy

(01:14:12):
over the years about whether or not the lyrics were
strictly literal. In Robert Hilbert's biography, which again grain of Salt,
he participated, and he gave many interviews for Paul said,
looking back, I don't recall thinking that I went through
years of struggle. I was never poor and I had
a family that loved me. But I have to say
singing his anger and his shame still makes me feel uncomfortable.

(01:14:35):
So there must have been some anger and shame. I
think some of the feelings in the song started when
I was a kid. It wasn't a traumatic injury you
can point to, but there was something. And Hilburn then
takes the opportunity to theorize that this something he speaks
of included matters of his size, his hair, his failure,
and occasional humiliation of the Jerry Land's solo years as

(01:14:58):
a kid being snubbed by the Greenwich Village folk crowd,
and later having to fight to gain respect in the
rock community. Another biographer, Eric Elliott, that's not his name,
that's a guy with the middle school with another biographer,
Mark Elliott, reads into the lyrical story in a much
more literal way by relating it to Simon's own biography.

(01:15:19):
Like the quote this and full, he writes, the second
verse of The Boxer connects with the album's recurring theme
of abandonment. Set in an autobiographical back to the beginning frame,
The singer is a poor boy leaving home, as Paul
did when he went to England, surrounded by strangers in
a railway station, probably a reference to his girlfriend Kathy
Chitty and the song he would write around that time.

(01:15:41):
Homeward bound. Once at his destination, the narrator lays low
the house he shared in the East End. Looking to
fit in, he tries to join the clique of artists
he found there. The song then switches locales again, back
to New York, but the only offers he gets there
are from the street walkers, an allusion to perhaps the
bands only into making money, the ones that are the

(01:16:03):
ones that horr themselves out.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
The song then breaks into a vocal and instrumental run
of Lila laies. They are a fade in in cinematic
terms that becomes, for a moment, a purely non chronological
exultation the joy of singing now ohk. Next, the singer
laments the passing of the years. This is the lost verse,
the passing of the years and the acknowledgment of changes,

(01:16:27):
already's leaving to make a movie, etc. And sighs to
acknowledge the bandonment as nothing new in his life, that
the more things change, the more they stay the same.
And finally, in the final verse, the singer longs to
go home, yet not home, to somewhere where the harsh
New York winters won't bleed him dry. Mexico. Perhaps we're
already's filming his movie, all of which resolves with the

(01:16:50):
vision of a boxer, a fighter who desperately wants to
get out of the ring, but despite the beating he
has taken, remains in the fight. He is what he
is and will somehow make it through. Are you family
with that?

Speaker 2 (01:17:03):
Charlie Brown had hose tweet?

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
Not No.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
I can theorize though it's a classic bit of Twitter Twitter.
It's just passed into one of those tweets that has
passed into common lore. And I'm reading I'm remembering as
best I can. But it's people will get on here
and just say anything Charlie Brown had hose. No, he didn't,
that's not true. And in similarly, people can just write anything.

(01:17:29):
You know, I'm sorry, I don't. I think I feel
like a lifelong New Yorker who probably took some buses
around the port authority is probably more likely to just
be writing about actual street walkers and poor people than
veiled criticisms of bands just in it for the money,
particularly when Paul Simon is like one of the most

(01:17:50):
money minded cats from when he was a seventeen year old.
That's losers that should have gone back to the editor.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
The course of the Boxer contains non lexical syllables. That's
a great term. Lie la lie. They are extremely effective,
especially following the extremely literate verses. I think it's a
cool way to follow it up. But Paul only intended
the lila lies as a placeholder. He would say, I
didn't have any words. But it's not a failure of

(01:18:21):
songwriting because people like that and they put enough meaning
into it, and the rest of the song has enough
power and emotion I guess to make it go. So
it's all right. But for me, every time I sing
that part, I'm a little embarrassed, which is cute.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Oh, I mean, it's just kind of interesting that he
went with that because like, coming from a folk background,
like there's so much like there is a lot of
non lexical stuff in that, and it's all like, you know, diity, diity,
like whatever. I guess what I should say is it's
interesting that he took a non lexical word that also
has like a double meaning to it, you know, right,
instead of simply singing law or like any of that.

(01:18:58):
Like hearing lie as part of the folk tradition doesn't
exactly square up to me. I'm not sure how many
other instances there are of.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
That, you know, And maybe it's just because it's so
ingrained in my head right now, a law or a
daw or something like that, just even just phonetically, it
seems too uplifting. Yeah, li lah lay seems like something
an accusation. Well, yes, there are theories out there, and

(01:19:25):
this is like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
People who oh, I wasn't even gonna give space to
the Dylan theory. But I meant like, I'm not sure
on this song. I think this song is incredible. I'm
sure that guy his assessment of yes, but like I think,
you know, so much of this song is kind of
about the tension of like I'm just trying to do
this one thing, like why has everything been so hard?

(01:19:51):
Why was I sold this myth that I could do
these things? And then to me, it's like almost like
a cosmic cry back, like you've all lied to me,
but I'm still gonna stick around because you haven't killed
me yet, you know, asking only for workman's wages, looking
only for a job. You people all lied to me,

(01:20:11):
but I'm still here. Don't look at me like that. No,
I mean that's with that emotion in your eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
Yeah, I was gonna say, that's a varianize, a deeper
level of ar connection.

Speaker 10 (01:20:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
I mean, that's a much better theory than this ridiculous
theory that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
The Dylan theory is so funny, please go on.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
Yeah, Apparently there are some people who think that the
Eli La Lae chorus is meant to be Paul Simon
accusing Bob Dylan about of lying about his musical intentions,
which I oh, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
This would have been on the heels of the Judas concert, right,
which was preceded by somebody yellingly literally like you lie, right.

Speaker 1 (01:20:58):
That's okay, that's a good point. I hadn't thought. But
that was like teen sixty six. This was late nineteen
sixty eight. I mean that he had already released Jean.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
Was like a turbulent It was a turbulent decade. Brownier
Brown here second reference. Wow.

Speaker 9 (01:21:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Simon himself rejected this theory because it's dumb. Bob Dylan
ended up covering this song on self Portrait, although he
replaced the word glove from every Glove that Laid him
down with every blow that laid him down, which I
would imagine if your Paul Simon and Bob Dylan changes
your lyrics, that's got to be a tweak, right, Like well,

(01:21:36):
I mean it's.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Also like probably the one person where Paul Simon would
actually sing go true. That's a good edit, Jim.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
I don't know anything about their relationship, No, neither. Yeah,
that's interesting you. I Yeah, great song, great song, And
I think that was if I recall that, that would
probably have been the first song recorded for uh yeah,
it was the first song recorded for these sessions in
November nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
Don't do it?

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
Do it?

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Okay? Well you punched it in for me. So while
they recorded the Box or the Fall of nineteen sixty eight,

(01:22:31):
sessions for what became Bridge Over Troublewater began in earnest
in the summer of nineteen sixty nine. Oh, summer of
sixty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
Yeah, now it's Not'spratt Adam.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
Soon Simon decided to use La as the base of
operations to make it easier for Art, who was, as
you recall, filming Catch twenty two on the West Coast.
He really you know, he might have been grumbly about it,
but he did try to make this work.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
Yeah, oh yeah, That's the main thing I came away
with after researching this.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
The pair settling in la was one of the reasons
why they declined to perform at Woodstock.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
And they also kind of bombed at the Monterey Pop
Festival too, I think if I remember correct, well.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
I mean, were they slated between like Otis Redding and
Jimmy Hendrix and like several of the other most electrifying
performances of all time, and then they just got on
there and saying about feeling groovy, cooking spices and feeling groovy.
Sometimes festival programming, I'm just like, when when I hear
about people being like, oh, they bombed at this famous festival,
I'm like, that was the promoter's fault. Don't put come

(01:23:33):
next to that anyway. In a sense, Bridge is Paul
Simon's equivalent of Paul McCartney's Yesterday. In other words, it
arrived to him so quickly. There's a great phrase that
I remember from the reading The Grateful Dead annotated lyrics
and the intro to by Robert Hunter. He has this
great phrase where he talks about songs like that and

(01:23:54):
the turn is fast as the pen would pull.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
Oh wow, great, that is great.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
So Paul Simon would say an all timer of a
quote from twenty eleven. I have no idea where it
came from. It came all of a sudden. It was
one of the most shocking moments of my songwriting career
at the time. I remember thinking, this is considerably better
than I usually write. He'd say that the essence of
the song, presumably the melody and the lyrical theme, took
about twenty minutes, and the first two verses were completed

(01:24:22):
in two hours. He continued, The melody was something like
fifteen notes, which is long. It just seemed to flow
through me in a way you don't feel where you
can really even call it your own. But then again,
it's nobody else's. I didn't know where it came from,
but I knew it was exceptional. It's as if there's
this chemical feeling the creation of something that is so exceptional.

(01:24:42):
It's addictive. It's one of the things that keeps you
writing your whole life. You're trying to get to that
place again.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
I love that. I love that and being the nerd
that I am. I've heard so many musicians talk about that.
Like I've heard about like everyone from like Tom Waits
to Benjo Virtuoso Bay Laflex talking about just try getting
into like their floasting and just being like just sitting
around and you know, plucking and noodling and chewing over
a phrase or a thing and then all of a sudden,

(01:25:11):
fast as the pen would pull, you know, beautiful. Who
said you've got to grab them before they get to
Burt Bachack or some other son of a bitch.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
Oh, I don't know, but that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Damn, I've never heard that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
That's great. I mean, Michael Jackson would say that he
didn't like to go to sleep because he was afraid
that when he slept God, they'd give the good ideas
the Prince. Oh, I've never heard that. That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
I might be said Alex Eigel, said Alex Higle a rich, No,
it was, man, I'm so hard pressed. It was. Yeah,
but I think that was like the gist of the quote, like,
you know, there are all these songs just floating around
out in the air, and you've got to grab them
before somebody else like Burt Backack or it does.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Yeah, it was this where we should.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
Punch it in which, oh yeah, folks, we're not about
to head to Really one of my favorite segments of
this show.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
It's Heigel's Woke Corner. Yes, that's right, folks, it's time
to come on down to Heigel's Woke Corner, where I
advance the radical theory that people who aren't straight white
men deserve rights.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Uh Paul.

Speaker 2 (01:26:27):
Paul is a checkered cat, right, Like, he has a
long history of engaging with other people's art as a
playground for his own and then taking it and doing
cool stuff with it. Yes, again, creating Banker.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
It's where it's just like I'm gonna make this louder. Okay,
hold on, buddy, that's that's not you say things.

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):
Yeah, you have a problem. Zepp rolls up cityus tattoos.

Speaker 7 (01:26:59):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
Paul would later say that he has was listening to
a lot of gospel music in this period, which obviously
influenced the musical feel bridge over Troubled Water, but that
also inspired the title. He was listening to a nineteen
fifty nine track by the Swan silver Tones called Mary
Don't You Weep that is a very old spiritual and
that he heard a vocal ad lib from one of
the singers saying, I'll bring your bridge over deep water

(01:27:22):
if you trust in my name.

Speaker 6 (01:27:24):
Whis that handsomebody to have me?

Speaker 9 (01:27:26):
Call me?

Speaker 4 (01:27:27):
Yeah? May Hill he agree over deep water in trust
in my name?

Speaker 6 (01:27:40):
I'm gonna weird. I don't know, lazy, How did you.

Speaker 7 (01:27:49):
About a call of.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
Me till you may remember the Swan Silvertones from another
song that Paul wrote called she Loves Me Like a
Rock That sounds a whole lot like an old gospel song.
In fact, the Swan Silverstones recording that I just mentioned.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
Is that an out there thing like I'd never seen
that or read that. But I was just listening to
that Swan Silvertones song today just to hear.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
You can punch it in, dude like you you have
the power.

Speaker 6 (01:28:55):
I'm gonna wear. I don't belive it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
What's funny is that when he went to go record
Love Me Like a Rock, he got background vocals from
the Dixie Hummingbirds, who are contemporaries of the Swan silver Tones,
so that a score to settle, I mean just but
like the brass Ones on him, like, yeah, I'm gonna
basically rewrite this other gospel songs, and can I get

(01:29:33):
this other gospel group to just do what they did
on it? I mean that's there's such a level of
like disconnect between the level of empathy and warmth that
he achieves in his vocals and how he just seems
to view intellectual property and folk traditions and people's art
and people themselves as just things that he can move

(01:29:54):
around and play with. But then again, this is a
guy who broke apartheid Boycott's because Henry Kissinger told him
it was okay. So anyway, to his credit, at this point,
Paul was very open about this lift. I had an
interview in the Dick Cavit Show where he said, I
guess I stole that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:14):
That is the exactly exact quote from nineteen seventy too,
So I mean it's like, yeah, it wasn't like this
thing that got dredged up in the woke era. Like
he was very open about it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
But this is also cool, according to gospel producer and
historian Anthony Heilbutt, who wrote this book called The Gospel Sound,
which I've read. It is the definitive history of gospel
music in America. It's wonderful hours of enjoyment for not
just the stories, but all the rabbit holes that will
send you down for musicians, So I highly recommend that.
But Simon later acknowledged this debt to Claude Jeter of

(01:30:46):
the Swan Silvertones in person handed him a check as compensation.
Of course, does that guy's name pop up in the
writing credits, Sure doesn't. Classic. Here's a Cadillac for all
the right to your songs. Yeah, this is you know. Oh,
and now we go right over to the other corner

(01:31:08):
of Jordan's obligatory beatles shoehorning in Jordan, what do you
have for us today?

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
Yeah? This hole is just like cutting the guy a check.
Move is the same thing that Paul McCartney did to
Jimmy Scott, a Nigerian conga player, an acquaintance in the
mid sixties who taught Paul the phrase oh bloody, oh
blood doah, life goes on brah. His name does not
appear on oh bloody Obla dah. In fact, John Lennon's does,

(01:31:34):
although he had absolutely nothing to do with the song,
Yeah go figure, Paul cut the guy a check. He
also had another phrase, nothing too much, just out of sight,
which Paul also wrote a song about for the two
thousand and eight album that he did with the producer
Youth called Electric Arguments.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
There are also people who contended that Jimmy Scott might
be the guy playing congos and sympathy for the devil.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
That would make sense because he played at Ronnie Scott's
Jazz club in Soho and London in the sixties and
that was where all the Stones and the Beatles and
the Who all hung out, so that would make sense.

Speaker 2 (01:32:05):
But maybe we're coming about this whole thing from the
wrong angle, because after all, Paul Simon also stole from
white people. He admitted that some of the melody for
Bridge Over Trouble Water was stolen from Johann Sebastian Bach's
Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded. Paul originally wrote the song

(01:32:47):
on guitar, but he transposed it to the piano to
maximize the gospel effect. He hired Wrecking Crew session player
Larry Nektel, a favorite of Elvis Ray, Charles the Doors,
Brian Wilson, and many others and garfam remember that they
worked hard on the turnarounds or the embellishments that happened
from the end of the chorus to the beginning of
the new verses. They also booked fellow Wrecking Crew members

(01:33:08):
Hal Blaine and Joe Osbourne, who we mentioned earlier. Joe
Osborne once again Hallie put him back to his favorite
task of over dubbing two basslines. I do wonder though,
the famous bit about Walk on the wild Side is
that Herbie Flowers recorded two basslines on that to claim
that he was playing two instruments and collect double his
session fee. I wonder if that's just a British thing,

(01:33:29):
because Transformer was cut in England and if Joe Osborne
tried to do that, they would have laughed him out
of the office.

Speaker 1 (01:33:35):
Aha.

Speaker 2 (01:33:37):
Anyway, just a fun little note. Co producer Roy Holly
gave a demo of the song to arranger Ernie Freeman,
who had worked with people like Frank Sinatra and Old.
Ernie apparently phoned it in for this one because when
he came back with the score, Paul discovered that Art's
name was spelled wrong, which probably gave Paul a thrill
right up all five foot three of him. The title

(01:33:58):
of the song was listed not as like a bridge
over troubled water, but like a picture of water. He
was less amused by this. I was pissed off, he
told Robert Hilburn, and Hilburn's lotioned hand job of a book.
It looked like he didn't listen to the demo long
enough to get the right title. I hated the arrangement
so much that I walked out of the studio. I
was abrasive at times in the studio, but that's my

(01:34:19):
job to protect the music. Doesn't matter what anyone thinks
of me. I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to
a piece of work. It's like your child. Hallie tinkered
with the arrangement in the mix, so it wasn't a
total loss and they didn't have to call session musicians
back in for another pass. But even so, Simon apparently
isn't thrilled with the arrangement to this day, believing the
strings to be too syrupy.

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
I think that's correct. The final chord that Bridge over
Troubled Water ends on is let me check this is
insanely mawkish. It's I find it cringey, Like it's not
my favorite song, but like I admit that it's a
great song and whatever. But that last chord that it
ends on is so corny and so dramatic and so bad,

(01:35:02):
Like even if it just faded a little early.

Speaker 2 (01:35:31):
I mean, half of that is just that this Every
single instrument on here is peaking so hard to tape.
They pushed this so hard.

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
You're right, it's just a bad move, like that's hallmark,
even if they just brought the cello back in to
play a couple octaves lower to ground it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:47):
I haven't listened to this in a while. This sounds
like Norwegian black metal. It is so blown out. Yeah
yeah yeah yeah. Like I said, I don't listen to
this version, but it's just so pinned in the red,
like every single thing in here fighting for space. It's
all like his voice is distorted so much. Yeah, and
that high note is like a Disney voicing for sure.

(01:36:09):
That last chord isn't like a when you wish upon
a story like Disney voicing.

Speaker 1 (01:36:13):
All right, I'm glad we agreed about this.

Speaker 2 (01:36:16):
Great Moving forward, the.

Speaker 1 (01:36:18):
Instrumental track for Bridge over Troubled Water is recorded over
five days in Los Angeles, and Garfunckle's vocal was recorded
over two days in New York a short time later,
and of course Paul and Art fought about it. From
the jump. Paul imagined Art singing his precious neo hymnal
in his quote white choir boy way. Unfortunately, Artie wasn't

(01:36:39):
all that into.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
It, could I just I'm going to fully own something here. Yeah,
I'm a huge fan of Keith Jarrett, and I don't
think I learned until like four years ago that he
was a white man. So it is just a hilarious
bit of Miles Davis apocrypha that at one point when
Keith Jarrett was playing in Miles seventies band, Miles toward

(01:37:00):
everyone else that when Keith quote starts playing that Catholic
schoolboys layout, don't follow him, which is essentially, if he
starts doing that, pop out and make him and keep
him out there on his own for as long as
he's willing to do it before he gets back in Dune.
It gets back to the rest of the god that's

(01:37:22):
very funny at Catholic schoolboyshit yep.

Speaker 1 (01:37:26):
Continue Unfortunately, Art really didn't much care for the song.
Paul was so thrilled that he wanted he was offering
his dear friend what he thought was his finest piece
of work to sing and Art he offered this devastating quote.
Paul felt it was his best song. I felt it
was something less than his best song, but a great song,

(01:37:50):
which is kind of my take. Art was apparently very
diplomatic in the studio. It's a great song. Art reportedly said,
you wrote it, you sing it beautifully, serve to do it,
and Paul last Dance Voice, took this personally. He took
this as an insult. He would later complain in an interview,
it's my best song and it's not good enough for
Arty to want to do it. Kim and even worse,

(01:38:14):
Artie had some notes, here is my best song. I
want you to do it.

Speaker 9 (01:38:19):
Nah, you do it?

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
Also, I got some thoughts on it. Yeah, already felt
that the tuverse song was too short and it needed
one more verse for a bigger ending.

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
Oh and by the way, Paul, you do those, So
do you go off to do that. I'll just nip
off for a bit.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
Go one are my walks.

Speaker 2 (01:38:39):
I'm gonna go burn one.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):
Thus, Paul banged out a quick third Stanza in the studio,
which he really hated doing and rarely, if ever did.
He still doesn't like this verse, believing it to be
less cohesive than the first two, and he was also
likely turned off by a rumor that spread across the
United States, where it was believed that the soul he
sings about is a reference to a heroin Needle. In reality,

(01:39:05):
it's a reference to his new wife, Peggy Harper, who
had just discovered her first grace. She'd been married to
Paul Simon for less than a year and discovered her
first grades. Why Paul decided to immortalize them and what
he believed was his greatest song, I'll never know The
song Bridge over Troubled Water would be a sore point

(01:39:25):
between Paul and Art for many years to come. Paul
complained bitterly about Garfunkle's association with Bridge. In a nineteen
seventy two Rolling Stone interview. He said he didn't want
to sing it himself, he couldn't hear it for himself.
He felt I should have done it, and many times
I'm sorry I didn't do it. The way they handled
this beef is a true masterclass in simmering passive aggression,

(01:39:47):
which should probably be taught in New England schools. When
they came to perform the song in concert, Simon would
graciously insist on leaving the stage, giving Garfuncle the full spotlight.
But at the same same time, Paul couldn't help feel
a sense of envy at the thunderous applause. This was
his song and he could have easily sung it, but

(01:40:08):
garfunk could never have written it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:11):
I'm not sure if he could easily have sung it.
The highest note in that is an F above two
octaves above middle C.

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
There's a demo, there's a guitar demo from Paul where
that's out there, and if you've heard it, maybe i'll
punch it in here.

Speaker 2 (01:40:22):
I'm sure you could do it falsetto. I don't think
he could have done it as a belt.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
Oh no, you're totally right. But there was an arrangement
that Paul had of this song. It was very, very good.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):
But you need that chest belt like that's I think
what's even though it sounds like horrible in that mix,
Like that's what you need to sell carry that song forward.
If you just have someone hitting it in like a
quavering falsetto, like that's not you know, I think, I
don't know, I don't know. I see both way.

Speaker 1 (01:40:48):
I think it was pitched down where he wasn't in
a falsetto. He's in his chest voice, and it was
it was good. I got to relisten and listen in
a while. But he had an affecting version of it.

Speaker 7 (01:41:00):
When you're weary, feel sad, when he's say, you see.

Speaker 9 (01:41:15):
I would be there, do bring you see winters up
and may a life to trouble waters.

Speaker 3 (01:41:46):
Are wary me, No, my god, rouble waters are.

Speaker 1 (01:41:58):
Ward, Paul would say many times on stage though, when
I'd be sitting off to the side and Larry Nektall
will be playing piano and already would be singing bridge,
people would stomp and cheer when it was over, and
I would think, that's my song man, thank you very much.
I wrote that song. Paul's wife, Peggy, would frequently grumble

(01:42:19):
about the fact that Art never once invited Paul out
to take a bow for the song, which it's literally
it's kind of a weird thing to do.

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):
So, yeah, that's a bitch.

Speaker 1 (01:42:29):
Yeah, I've got well, I mean I don't know. I
think it would be weird for you to just bring
the guy who wrote the song out on stage to
tick a bow when he's already coming back on stage
to sing with you anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:42:39):
I mean, god forbid you mentioned he wrote this song.

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):
Like everybody would assume that. I don't know, all right, most.

Speaker 2 (01:42:45):
People didn't, though. I mean, look at some of these
album covered there's literally the Celia Celia single. The front
cover is our carl uncle's face. True, that cover is
Paul Simon's face. Yes, I would be a little miffed.

Speaker 1 (01:42:58):
Too, Okay, you're right, oh. Paul Simon's belief in the
song Bridge over Troubled Water. He did not believe it
had hit single potential. I didn't think it was a smash,
but I thought it was something exceptional. I thought it
was probably too long for a commercial record. It was
all piano up until the last verse. I didn't think
it was a hit. Art unsurprisingly agreed, saying as a

(01:43:18):
single it was too long, too slow, but Clive Davis
got behind it all the way, embolded by Columbia's success
with Like a Rolling Stone five years earlier, a five
plus minute song in an era when commercial radio mandated
songs under three minutes. Davis insisted that they released Bridge
Over Troubled Water uncut, Bigger, Longer, and uncut. We're going

(01:43:43):
to take a quick break, but we'll be right back
with more too much information in just a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:44:01):
And the rest. Now, we have to get to all
the other songs, starting with El Condor de Pezza. As
we touched on, Paul Simon was inordinately proud of writing
Bridge over Troubled Water. So let's touch on a song
that he didn't write, although he initially did claim credit
for doing so. Yes, folks, let's bring it right around
back to Heigel's woke Corner, where we advance the radical

(01:44:24):
notion that people who aren't straight white men should have rights.
It's Heigel's woke corner, folks may remember from our Graceland episode.
Even leaving aside the whole breaking an international boycott over
at Parthid because Henry Kissinger said it was a cool

(01:44:45):
thing to do. Old Polly Walnuts doesn't have the best
track record when it comes to, let's call them charitably,
his collaborations with black or brown people. Members of the
band Los Lobos contend that they were fresh off a
Grammy of their own. Their label pushed them to work
with Simon, who was in a fallow point of his career.
He just came and, according to them, sat in the

(01:45:05):
control room for a few days silently just watching them play.

Speaker 5 (01:45:09):
I liked it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:12):
He perked up when he heard David guitarist David Hitaligo
playing a song that the band had been working on
for their next album. That song would eventually appear on
Graceland as All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints,
credited solely to Simon. Band member Jeff Berlin said that
when Los Lobos reached out to Paul's team for more information,
Paul's reaction was, sue me see what happens anyway. As

(01:45:36):
we mentioned with some of the Swan silvertone stuff, that
trend started so much earlier than eighty six. Elcandor Pezza
was written by the Peruvian composer Daniel Alomia Robrez, who
based it off the traditional music of the Andes and
specifically Peru. This song partially because yes, I mean I
might as well saying this song because of Paul Simon,

(01:45:58):
has become something of the national anthem of Peru. But
it's interesting because Robez was a bit of an Alan
Lomax character. He ditched his a career in medicine to
just journey through the Andes and study folk music. So
right away we have a bit of this conflict of
like an Alan Lomax situation of like, did this guy

(01:46:19):
just actually notate a song that had been circulated for
centuries and then claim credit for it? So there's there's layers, man,
there's layer layers.

Speaker 1 (01:46:28):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:46:30):
So Daniel Alomio Robez premiered the song of Condo Pazza
in nineteen thirteen at the Tiatro Mazie in Lima as
part of a Zarzuela, a Spanish light opera that featured
social commentary in a hilarious bit of irony. This zarzuela,
in particular concerned Peruvian miners in Cerl do Pasco and

(01:46:51):
their struggle with a foreign mining company. Do you guys
get it? Do you get the resonance? My favorite gags
in Don't Be a Menace, the parody movie by the
Ways Brothers that they have one of the Wayans constantly
popping in from out of frame going message I forgot
about that. Marcella Rolls granddaughter of Daniel contends that this

(01:47:15):
operetta was performed something like three thousand times at that
opera house. Twenty years later, piano arrangement of the melody
was legally registered by Roblas courtesy of the Edward Bimurk's
Music Corporation with the Library of Congress under the number
ninety six four three. So you can probably guess where
this is all going. Regarding Paul Simon, while in Paris

(01:47:37):
in nineteen sixty five, Simon heard a version of this
song by the band Los Incas, who, interestingly enough, were
formed in Paris nine years prior by an Argentinian and
two Venezuelans, no Peruvians. When he asked the band about it,
they told Simon that the song was a piece of
Andean folk music, but that their arrangement was by Jorge Milchberg,

(01:47:59):
who was an Argentinian born to Polish immigrants. Simon took
this white man at face value, wrote his own English
lyrics to the tune and didn't credit Robles as the
initial composer. However, Milchberg, I'm so sorry. The guy's name
is Milchberg. At least they weren't Nazis, right, Maybe is Italian.

(01:48:24):
I mean, come on, dude, Polish German, last name in Argentina.
The guy was born in nineteen twenty eight. What's the
over under on that anyway? Now, I frontloaded this with
a lot of salt, but it actually had quite a
happy ending. In nineteen seventy, Armando Robles Godoy, the original
composer's son and who's since become a filmmaker in Peru,

(01:48:46):
filed suit against Simon, pointing out that his dad had
held the copyright to the song in America since nineteen
thirty three. It was an almost friendly court case because
Paul Simon was very respectful of other cultures. This man said,
according to a wicked I can no longer verify it
was not carelessness on his part, And then he called
the entire court thing a court case without further complications,

(01:49:09):
adding that he held no ill will towards Simon for
what he considered a misunderstanding and an honest mistake. Paul
Simon amended the writing credits and went away, vowing never
ever to be so weak as to credit an original
writer of a song, and we are so much the
richer for it. Then to add insult to injury, Perry
Como released a version of Alcondo Pesa also in nineteen seventy.

Speaker 1 (01:49:34):
Oh god, what yeah, I mean, I assume it's horrendous.

Speaker 2 (01:49:40):
Take a listen.

Speaker 10 (01:49:43):
I'd rather biggest sparrow than a slam. Yes, I would,
I surely would.

Speaker 2 (01:50:00):
Nope, this is unlistenable.

Speaker 9 (01:50:01):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:50:01):
Yeah, that blows. That's terrible. Okay, yeah, all right, now
we're gonna talk about Cecilia, a song until this afternoon
I thought was Cilia. I don't hear the first syllable
in the chorus. Nope, okay, I don't eare good, thank you?

Speaker 2 (01:50:14):
I feel better.

Speaker 1 (01:50:15):
This is a song that I used to hate, but
it's kind of grown on me in recent years. It
originated at a small party that Paul Simon held in
the summer of sixty nine. I can't even say it, sorry,
first reed six streme modulate tone. Not long after the
Manson murders occurred nearby.

Speaker 2 (01:50:33):
I got my first real six string.

Speaker 1 (01:50:38):
The gathering took place at Paul's rented home at fifteen
sixty seven Blue Jay Way. And if that street name
sounds familiar, that's because it's the same house George Harrison
rented in nineteen sixty seven, which led him to write
the Magical Mystery Tour track of the same name, Blue
Jay Way.

Speaker 2 (01:50:54):
Dude, I love that song. That is such a great
deep cut. I find it so like sinister in free be.

Speaker 1 (01:51:00):
Like boom long please do.

Speaker 2 (01:51:06):
It's uh it shivers thinking about it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:09):
But Cello or whatever that is, it's like, yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:51:13):
Listened to it a lot and on acid in college.
That might have something to do with it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:17):
But you know, that's that's an odd choice. It seems
like you were actively seeking out bad trips A yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:51:24):
I mean, there's definitely like a couple like you know,
when you're like tripping, you don't really want to hear
like the early chit. You want to hear the like
I'm a Tibetan monk singing from the mountainous stuff.

Speaker 9 (01:51:33):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:51:33):
So Magical Mystery Tour has a couple of good ones
on that white album, you know, good, good trippy.

Speaker 1 (01:51:39):
Anyway, back to Blue Jay Way, Paul Simon is having
a house party. Let's all take ourselves there. Wayne's World
nineteen sixty nine. The Manson murders just happened nearby, but
at Paul Simon's house on Blue Jay Way.

Speaker 2 (01:51:52):
It's a party.

Speaker 1 (01:51:53):
It is. It is a party.

Speaker 2 (01:51:55):
The room smells terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:51:57):
Yeah, well, yes, Paul's there.

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
You hear a gentle squeak at your shoulder. You look down.
It's all four foot six of Paul side our garf
uncle towers over him, stoned out.

Speaker 1 (01:52:09):
Of his mind with a road map in his hand,
looking for places to go on extended walks. Yeah, Paul
and Art are there. Paul's brother Eddie, Eddie Simon. We
all know Eddie Simon. He's there. Perhaps a few others.
Memories are hazy. They all came to play with this
new fangled Sony Real, the Real tape deck, which came

(01:52:29):
equipped with a reverb switch, and so they all started
doing these improvised percussion patterns on their legs. And because
this tape machine had a reaver effect, it added a
little more punch to their their thighs slapping. And as
the party progressed, Paul and Art they slapped their thighs.
Eddie Simon offered a four to four beat on a
padded piano bench. Another friend strummed the d TUN's guitar

(01:52:53):
with slack strings that was basically just a rhythm instrument.
Could chuck it, Yeah, exactly apparently they did this for
a few hours.

Speaker 2 (01:53:00):
Yeah, well that's what you do.

Speaker 1 (01:53:02):
Paul would say, Perhaps we lost track of time, but
for days to come. Paul would come back to this
infectious groove that he had on the tape, and he
composed a simple melody and guitar line to it. He
excized a minute and fifteen second section of the original
tape and turned it into a loop, which in pre
digital times was a very literal thing. You had a

(01:53:23):
giant loop of tape that stretched around the studio because
it was a minute in fifteen seconds. That's a lot
of tape. This formed the bed of the track Cecilia,
the percussive bed, onto which Paul and already improvised other
rhythmic elements, like dropping drumsticks onto a parquet floor in
the studio, and also doing random notes on a xylophone

(01:53:44):
that were somehow compressed to such an effect that the
actual note didn't matter anymore. It was just became another
percussive sound.

Speaker 2 (01:53:52):
Oh yeah, that's actually so. When you're doing that, you know,
compressors have a tack and release function, and that basically
is how quickly the squashing of the note happens and
then how you know how much it takes before it
releases that effect. So if you're diming those or if
you're turning one of those all the way they up,
but the other way the other you get these really

(01:54:14):
wacky effects where you can literally just get like just
the percussive hit on a note that doesn't have any
real body or pitch to it. It's just sort of
a side trick of how they get those gated drums
that are so popular, where you compress the shit out
of the drums and then like a really really fast attack,
so it's an ultra fast attack and then a really

(01:54:35):
short reverb tail and then you gate, so you cut
off the tail the reverb. So all of those phil
call In songs and like a lot of the shit
on Gracelaine that we talked about, you get that gated
snared gated percussion sound by sort of the same effect
where you're essentially compressing it to the point where you've
squashed out all pitch and just shortening it to the attack.

(01:54:56):
It's a neat trick. Yeah, And I love this because
like this is the it was making bone machine with
its It's literally the exact same process where he was like,
I just go into a room and I just go like, oh, merger,
and he's like, yeah, well, Paul Simon got there first.
Pal is the fun song some Nights not alarmingly similar

(01:55:36):
to this.

Speaker 1 (01:55:37):
Though, Oh yeah, I think that's been commented on, possibly
with Okay lawyers involved.

Speaker 2 (01:55:41):
Yeah, okay, worth a punch because it I just checked
it out again and it still pisses.

Speaker 9 (01:55:46):
Me any.

Speaker 4 (01:56:23):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:56:23):
By Simon's own admission, the lyrics to Cecilia were something
of an afterthought, so he explained an interview with Rolling Stone.
Every day I'd come back from the studio working on
whenever we were working on, and I played this pounding
thing on tape. And then I said, let's make a
record out of that. So we copied it over and
extended it. So now I pick up the guitar and
I start to go, well, this will be like the guitar.

Speaker 2 (01:56:44):
Part Dunk Chicken, Dunk Chicken, Dunk Chicken, and.

Speaker 1 (01:56:47):
Lyrics were virtually the first lines. I said, you're breaking
my heart. I'm down on my knees. They're not lines
at all, but it was all right for the song,
and I liked that it was like a little piece
of magical fluff, but it works. I theorized by my friend,
the music journalist David Brown, a wonderful journalist, that the
name Cecilia is derived from Saint Cecilia.

Speaker 2 (01:57:07):
The patron saint of music, which I think is interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:57:11):
One line that did stick out to listeners at the
time was making love in the afternoon with Cecilia up
in my bedroom. The lyric was Simon's most explicit to date,
and he'd recall a conversation with a veteran who'd recently
returned from Vietnam. Soon after the song's release. Leavet said
that he and his fellow soldiers heard the line and said, whoa,
you can say that in a pop song. Things must

(01:57:32):
be really changing back home. I've said this before, but
it's interesting to note the parallels between the breakup of
Simon and Garfunkel and the fracturing of the Beatles, who
split publicly around the same time in the spring of
nineteen seventy.

Speaker 2 (01:57:45):
Oh, Jordan, have you said that before? Jordan said's an
unexpected opinion on would advanced from you, but please go on.

Speaker 1 (01:57:51):
The Beatles ended their last album they recorded, nineteen sixty
nine's Abbey Road, with a track called the end, which
featured solos from each member, as if allowing each to
take a curtain call. Simon and Garfunkle made an equally
poignant farewell on the last album that they.

Speaker 2 (01:58:05):
Recorded together, but Jovia Troubled Water.

Speaker 1 (01:58:08):
They revisited their early passion for the Everly Brothers with
a cover of Bye Bye Love. The idea came after
they performed it in concerts in the fall of nineteen
sixty nine, and Simon liked the fact that the audience
clapped along on the two of four, and they decided
that they should record it live quote with the audience
as our drum.

Speaker 2 (01:58:27):
And that's an extending quite a bit of grace to
your average white audience at this time period.

Speaker 1 (01:58:32):
I mean, you were correct, because they never got a
take that was satisfactory that they recorded live.

Speaker 2 (01:58:36):
Well, our buddy Wes, you know, who played in the
same band of mine that you played in, went and
saw New Young at Carnegie Hall and it was like
just Neil acoustic. And so he's doing one of his
songs and people start clapping along and he fully stopped
the song and was like, please don't do that. The
acoustics in here are just like such that your off

(01:58:57):
time clapping is now throwing me off? Oh yeah, like
launched right back into the song, just like ah Man
are probably autistic. King from the North, Yes, but.

Speaker 1 (01:59:10):
Yes, simonc. Goarth never got a live version of Bye
Bye Love that was satisfactory, so they recorded it in
the studio and then took that version to their next concerts,
played it live to the audience and said, here, clap
along to this, we're gonna record. We're going to record you,
which is amazing. I've never heard of that being done ever.

(01:59:33):
So they just live overdubbed the clapping onto the version
of Bye Bye Love that you hear on Bridge over
Troubled Water.

Speaker 2 (01:59:39):
Was that preferable to bringing a metronome on stage or
a drummer? I couldn't tell you.

Speaker 1 (01:59:47):
But that cover of Bye Bye Love with the crowd
cheers against a song that they did in their bedroom
when they were dreaming of being musicians, and now they're
doing it on stage to a huge packed auditorium and
you can hear them singing it, and you can hear
the crowd cheering, and then it dies away, which is
a very sweet way to end with me. They kind
of figured was going to be the end of their career,

(02:00:08):
and it segues into the final track on the Bridge
Over Troubled Water album song for the Asking, and it's
been described as an olive branch from Simon to Garfunkle
and vice versa. In the making of the Bridge Over
Troubled Water album documentary, Simon admits that there's a note
of contrition in the song. He said, that's just to
say I haven't forgotten what I did. I was not

(02:00:31):
an angel, that's for sure. And he would add it's
a sweet song. It's almost embarrassing, which is the second
time this episode that he characterizes an authentic display of
a deeply held emotion as embarrassing, which I find endearing.

Speaker 2 (02:00:49):
Man. Yeah, that's time yea.

Speaker 1 (02:00:52):
Cyberon and Garfuckle intended the Bridge Over Troubled Water album
to have twelve tracks, but in a beautiful metaphor, they
crashed over the twelfth song to include. Simon had written
a song called Cuba c Nixon No Golf Vuncer was
turned off by its overt political commentary. Instead, Art suggested

(02:01:12):
doing a Haitian creole corral called Foyo. Neither side would
budge and Paul would tell Rolling Stone. We were fighting
over what was going to be the twelfth song, and
then I said, screw it, put it out with eleven songs.
If that's the way it is. We were at the
end of our energies over that, and as they wrapped
the album Deceummer nineteen sixty nine, they had a feeling

(02:01:33):
it would be their last. Paul said, at that point
I just wanted out, and in this instance scarfunk Will agreed.
We just went our separate ways without ever officially agreeing
to this band.

Speaker 2 (02:01:45):
Well they should have waited. No Bridge Over Troublewater was
released January twenty sixth, nineteen seventy. Critical appraisal was initially
not great. In Melody Maker in February of nineteen seventy,
Richard Williams identified quote a few dull moments on the album,
while adding that they're worth enduring for the jewels they

(02:02:06):
surround fair Williams concluded, not perhaps another classic like book Ends,
but still worth hearing for Simon's constantly surprising timing and
for the way he can make his guitar sound like
a small orchestra and the orchestra sound like a big guitar.
This enforces your opinion that book Ends is the superior album.
New York Times critic John S. Wilson was even more

(02:02:27):
savage in his review of the title track, writing, in
its mawkish, undiluted sentimentality, it was reminiscent of the songs
of faith that were once great favorites on the lesser
circuit concerts. Uh that's yeah, that's kind of on the nose,
man like. They went from singing like actual spirituals and
stuff to uh, a pastiche, yes, a pastiche in. Yeah,

(02:02:52):
it's a great song. It's a good song.

Speaker 1 (02:02:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:02:56):
But in an off repeated refrain on this show, what
did the critics know? Damn them in their eyes, making
Paul Simon write the boxer and hurting his little feelings.
He's just a little guy. Bridge Over Troublewater was the
best selling album in nineteen seventy, seventy one and seventy two,

(02:03:16):
and was at the time the best selling album of
all time until those English misanthropes in Pink Floyd came
around and blew their echoplex Leyden meditations on death right
over the honey soaked harmonies of the Nice Boys from Queens.
It remained CBS Record's best selling album, Simon CARFN one

(02:03:36):
not Dark Side of the Moon until the release of
Michael Jackson's Thriller in nineteen eighty two. Bridge Over Trouble
Watt took home the Grammy Award for Album of the
Year and Best Engineered Recording's title track on the Grammy
for Song of the Year, Best Contemporary Song, Best Arrangement
Accompanying Vocalists, and Record of the Year in nineteen seventy one,
beating out James Taylor's Firing Rain Good, The Carpenter's Close

(02:03:59):
to You, Noah p and the Beatles Let It be Well.
This was the Specter one, right, Yeah, yeah, I have
no opinion about that. Interestingly, this was to be the
first Grammy ceremony where the winners were not announced in advance.
They were hoping to mimic the Oscars for the kind
of show Busy Suspense by Danny Rose. So Simon and

(02:04:19):
Garfunk was sweep is poignant in retrospect because on stage
the duo could barely make eye contact with one another.
Clearly they knew what they were walking away from.

Speaker 1 (02:04:28):
Art said in twenty ten, when Bridge Over Troubled Water
was over, I wanted a rest from Paul the amount
that we were in the studio in each other dueling
for what makes a great record. That duel was tiring,
Simon agreed. Yet another wedge between them was their ill
fated TV special Songs of America in nineteen sixty nine
and Yes, It's as bloated as the title would suggest.

(02:04:50):
Clive Davis had the right idea, thinking that they could
parlay their massive post graduate success Postgraduate the.

Speaker 2 (02:04:56):
Film not Arts their doctorate work.

Speaker 1 (02:04:59):
Yeah, had parlay that into a primetime TV concert a
La Elvis's Comeback Special, which had aired the previous December,
But unfortunately the duo had way too much creative control.
Paired with the young Charles Grodin Arts co star in
Catch twenty two and future Dad in the Beethoven Movies,
they crafted a special that basically registered as lefty Pinco

(02:05:22):
communist bunk to their sponsors Bell Telephone. It's described in
Robert Hilburn's Paul Simon biography as quote a documentary style
show about how they saw themselves. Paul Simon arc ourfuncle
saw themselves in sixties America and saw America in the sixties,
with footage interspersed of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson,
Ralph David Abernathy, and Robert Kennedy, bits from Woodstock and

(02:05:46):
newsreel footage of Vietnam. Although today the show looks relatively tame,
in nineteen sixty nine, Songs of America had a startlingly
radical feel to it, more Woody Guthrie than Greatest Hits
That Sounds Awesome. Its visual style edgy and jump cut
for an hour, usually filled with the music of Perry Como,
Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. It was one of the
most daring shows ever presented on network television. It's okay,

(02:06:09):
I've seen some of it, Okay. The show began with
aerial shots of what looked to be Vietnam, which then
cross faded into overhead shots about soundtracked by Yeah. Actually,
well no, it was soundtracked by America. Because the Vietnam
cross faded into overhead shots of American highways, Pittsburgh and

(02:06:29):
a new Jersey Turnpike, poverty shacks, police, African American poor,
and garbage heaps. Both sides dug in a little too
deep when it came to trying to get this show
onto the air. Paul and Lady Maybe didn't need to
do a moody documentary piece with footage of RFK and
mlk's funeral trains. They didn't even do any concert footage

(02:06:53):
until the last fifteen minutes of the hour long documentary.
That being said, the censors were being jerks. First off,
they were pissed that Paul had turned in the finished
version a week before air, which was his strategy to
ensure that they messed with it the least, But then
they flipped when they saw the content. Paul was very displeased.

(02:07:14):
He said, you mean there are certain people in this
country who will object if we say you must feed
everyone in this country.

Speaker 2 (02:07:19):
Oh you sweet, sweet boy.

Speaker 1 (02:07:22):
And they said, your god damn right, someone will object.
You have to change this. It's not going on. And
we said, well, too bad, then it's not going on
because we're not changing anything. The sponsors also complains that
the Bridge over Troubled Water montage playing over JFK, RFK
and mlk's funeral footage was quote unbalanced, and Paul said,

(02:07:43):
what do you mean, how is it unbalanced? They're all Democrats,
came the reply. Ah, Paul said, no, they're all assassinated.

Speaker 2 (02:07:52):
People.

Speaker 1 (02:07:54):
A compromise was eventually reached, and a re edited, slightly
toned down version of the special was on November thirtieth,
nineteen sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (02:08:02):
I got you know, I didn't know about this man.
It actually makes me like both of them more.

Speaker 1 (02:08:06):
It's pretty wild. It's I mean, check it out.

Speaker 2 (02:08:09):
It's on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (02:08:10):
It bombed completely. As Charles Groden later said during the
first commercial, which came just after Robert Kennedy's funeral train,
one million people turned over to a Peggy Fleming figure
skating special. It was just too honest for a lot
of people. We mentioned all this because, over the course
of the production of these songs for America Special, Charles

(02:08:30):
Groden accidentally let it slip to Paul that Art had
agreed to make another movie with Mike Nichols, a comedy
drama titled Cardinal Knowledge. Paul would later say that quote
something was broken between them after that.

Speaker 2 (02:08:43):
Wait, I thought they'd already decided. I thought they'd already
decided to break up.

Speaker 1 (02:08:46):
Though. This was before the Bridge Over Troubled Water album
came out. This was during the session. This was like
fall sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (02:08:52):
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 (02:08:53):
It was basically like a you know, a very parental.
It wasn't that you did it, but that you lied.
Kind of situation. Simon confronted his partner. He said, I
asked why he didn't tell me he was going to
do this movie, and art said he was afraid I
would stop working on Bridge over Troubled Water.

Speaker 2 (02:09:07):
In other words, he hit it from me a reasonable fear.

Speaker 1 (02:09:10):
He hit it from me. He knew how I'd feel,
but he did it anyway. It's like an old married couple.
He knew I'd feel, and he did it anyway. Mike
Nichols told Artie that he was going to be a
big movie star and already couldn't say no. He later
told me he didn't see why it was such a
big deal to me. He would make the movie for
six months and I could write the songs for the
next album in that time. Then he thought we could
get together in the studio again and record them. I thought,

(02:09:32):
you know, I'm not going to do that. And the
truth is, I think if Artie had become a big
movie star, he would have left. Instead of just being
the guy who sang Paul Simon songs, he could be
Arc Garfunkel, a big star all by himself and This
made me think about how I could still be the
guy who wrote songs and sing them. I didn't need Artie. Peggy,
his new wife, encouraged me. She thought it was time

(02:09:53):
for me to leave and do what I wanted. The
duo played their last concert as a dedicated team on
July eighteenth, nineteen, at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, not
far from where they grew up together, and afterwards they
reportedly walked to the parking lot, paused, shook hands, and
quite literally went their separate ways. He was an unspoken split.

(02:10:17):
Paul placed a call to Columbia Records head Clive Davis
at some point around that same time, saying, before others
find out, I want you to know I've decided to
split with Artie. I don't think we'll be recording together again.
Once words spread throughout the music industry, Paul got a
call from George Harrison. They'd become friendly after Paul took
over his lease on the Blue Jay White House, drawing

(02:10:37):
on his own experience with the Beatles. You know those guys. George,
who was then flying high with the success of All
Things Must Pass and his worldwide hit My Sweet Lord,
urged Paul, to use this opportunity to see what he
could really do as a solo performer. Fuck yeah, but
Paul he faltered slightly. He began teaching the aforementioned class

(02:10:57):
at New York University, assuming it was to compete with
arts mathematics doctorate from Columbia.

Speaker 10 (02:11:04):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:11:04):
This theory is bolstered by the fact that he's quoted
as telling a friend in this period, you can't teach
someone how.

Speaker 2 (02:11:09):
To write a song, yeah, but you can still get
paid for Crucially, he.

Speaker 1 (02:11:14):
Started going to analysis three times a week and feared
that his rural retreat in Bucks County, Pennsylvania wasn't secluded enough.
So Paul, I think it's worth saying he was having
a breakdown. He's going through something. It's like Paul McCartney
going up to his farm in Scotland. The Beatles broke up,
but eventually, in the early months of nineteen seventy one,
he began work on his self titled post Sarmon and
Garfunkle debut, which rules, Oh so good, Duncan check out

(02:11:39):
that song that I love Duncan.

Speaker 2 (02:11:41):
Man, That song is so good. Mother and Child Reunion.
What Let's just look at this. Let's look at it.

Speaker 1 (02:11:46):
Yeah, it's a it's it's laden with bangers, Mother and.

Speaker 2 (02:11:51):
Child Reunion, duncan everything put together. He's got me and
me and Julia.

Speaker 1 (02:11:56):
Yeah, man, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:11:57):
Paranoia Blues is really is really completely undersold in his catalog.
I also love this album because he got Stephan Grippelli
to play violin on Hobo On Hobo's Blues. Stephan Grippelli
was a peer of Django Ryan Right and one of
the principal architects of what is semi derogatorily or problematically

(02:12:20):
these days called gypsy jazz. They prefer the term jazmine nouche,
but that's crazy.

Speaker 10 (02:12:26):
Man.

Speaker 2 (02:12:26):
He just called up like a seventy something year old
jazz legend and was like, hey man, come slap some
violin on this song. Like I had not heard that
George Harrison thing before. Man, that whips so hard. Hey man,
I was chafing under a bunch of unreasonable egomaniacs for
a long time. And look at me now, and look
at me now on top of the fucking world.

Speaker 1 (02:12:47):
Yeah, their relationship is cute. Then they performed on the
SNL a few years later, uh, doing homework band together
and stuff. Yeah, their relationships, very sweet art. Garfuncle released
his solo album Angel Claire on September eleventh, nineteen seventy three.
It would hold the title of the worst thing to
happen on September eleventh for almost two decades.

Speaker 4 (02:13:10):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:13:11):
Boy, that date just had it out from the start. Huh.

Speaker 1 (02:13:15):
Fans have long debated what went wrong between the pair ego,
personality differences, artistic differences.

Speaker 2 (02:13:20):
Et cetera.

Speaker 1 (02:13:21):
But let's get the last word to Quincy Jones. Shall
we just why not? Just as an exactly tree. Yes,
the relationship was too restrictive, he said. Simon wanted the
freedom to move beyond the mostly soothing folk strains that
lifted Simon and Garfunkle the superstar status in rock. He
heard a whole new world of music in his head,

(02:13:42):
and he wanted to pursue it. There are a lot
of factors that comprise great artistry, including passion, musical curiosity,
and fearlessness, and the first rule of being an artist
is you've got to protect all three. If Paul hadn't
left Garfuncle, a piece of an artistry could have died.
He did what he had to do.

Speaker 2 (02:14:02):
Is that your kicker, that's my kicker. Okay, my kicker
is if any of you are in a creative partnership
and you find yourself not doing the bulk of the
work and still being the bulk of the ego, learn
from art.

Speaker 1 (02:14:15):
Learn from art.

Speaker 2 (02:14:17):
No, that's a terrible kicker. Let me take that back.
Rather than going out on a note of richly deserved
hate or art garfuncle, I would like to look down
to all six inches of Paul Simon and really applaud
him for sticking with it as long as he did
and giving this albatross around his neck as many chances

(02:14:40):
to make things work as he possibly could. And I
have my gripes with the guy, but you know, the
art stands on its own, bald one lie scoreboard. Great job, Paul.

Speaker 1 (02:14:52):
Maybe all be free of our albatrosses and go on
to a.

Speaker 2 (02:14:56):
Rich career stealing from those less fortunate from Yes, maybe
we all emancipate ourselves from the burden of those who
take from us and instead become the taker. The Paul
Simon story. This has been too much information. I'm Alex
and I'm Jordan, and we'll love you like a rock

(02:15:16):
Next time. Baby, will l condor pesare signing off with
some Paul Simon lyrics El condor pasa Uh that's the
drum from me and j Yeah, there's also pan flutes
on Duncan. Maybe he actually called some Indians on that one,

(02:15:38):
or probably not, though probably just a probably just Argentinian
Nazi again because he already had him in the rollodex
right saleon silver Birds. We'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (02:15:59):
Too Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio.

Speaker 2 (02:16:02):
The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog.

Speaker 1 (02:16:05):
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

Speaker 2 (02:16:08):
The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog
and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (02:16:12):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
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Jordan Runtagh

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