HOFFSTACK PLAYLIST #7 - Simon & Garfunkel, "Bridge over Troubled Water"

Until this very moment I thought it was "sail on, silver bird."

Here we are, once again, on Glorious Sunday Morning. This time last week we heard the Dixie Hummingbirds sing the African American Spiritual “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel,” and that group’s association with Paul Simon indirectly led me here, to “Bridge over Troubled Water.” I suppose this is the first entry on the HOFFSTACK PLAYLIST that is a bonafide smash, a song everybody knows, maybe even a song some of you might think you’re sick of. But take a moment to press play on the link below, especially if it’s been a while.

I likely do not need to sell you on the merits of this song. It was #1 on “the charts” for six weeks, and sold a million copies as a single in the United States, six million worldwide. The album Bridge over Troubled Water is 8x platinum in the U.S., and Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits, which houses it, for it is their greatest hit, is 14x platinum. It won the Grammy for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Arrangement (drummer Hal Blaine may have recorded that one bang at the end in an elevator shaft?), and the album won Album of the Year. Sales and awards are not always a marker of excellence, but in this case they are.

It’s also a great song because it annoys Paul Simon.

Paul Simon is a genius but also (not that I’ve met him) an enormous pain in the ass. Watching any interview with this guy is the purest experience of “oh, God, shut up and sing!” I’ve long suspected (and just confirmed, thanks to a cursory peek at the internet) that it nags at him that this is his best song—the one that will lead his obituary—and he’s barely heard on it. “April Come She Will,” the best of the “very little Simon” Simon & Garfunkel songs at least has some of his guitar, but “Bridge over Troubled Water” is truly the Art Garfunkel show.

Art Garfunkel rules. Sure, he’s not a songwriting genius and he did not introduce “world music” to American pop radio like Paul Simon did (by breaking a cultural boycott against apartheid South Africa, but let’s not get into all that right now, or what went down with Los Lobos, either) but you know what Art Garfunkel is? He’s one of the world’s greatest singers. That’s enough!

And a pretty good actor, or at least a good “presence” in movies. Watch Carnal Knowledge again (or maybe don’t, it’s depressing) or Bad Timing.

But most importantly, the dude’s a weirdo. Did you know that he walked across America? It took him 12 years. Before that he walked across Japan, which is even weirder. More recently, he walked from Ireland to Turkey. You can read more about, and look at maps, on his website. If you were Art Garfunkel, why wouldn’t you walk across the world? John Oates: go walk across the world!

There’s a library of scholarship investigating the relationship between Simon and Garfunkel—two Jewish kids from Queens who met in grade school and made some of the most gorgeous music ever recorded and also periodically admit to hating one another. And none of us really know the score. I’ll just say that I’m always on #TeamArt because the lazy approach is to think of him as a hanger-on. Maybe he was in the passenger seat, but he’s still up front.

And that gets us back to “Bridge over Troubled Water,” listening as we are on Glorious Sunday Morning. It’s a tremendous gospel song—in its structure, instrumentation and lyrics—and was immediately seized upon as such, covered marvelously in that mode by Aretha Franklin, Merry Clayton, and, at his Churchy best, Elvis. (The Supremes and Roberta Flack recorded versions, too, but they tamped down the gospel aspect for some reason.)

But here’s what’s important. (Like a good journalist, I’ve saved this til I’m 10 paragraphs deep, when everyone’s stopped reading.) Art Garfunkel is singing this perfect gospel song not like a gospel artist. He’s singing like Art Garfunkel, like a delicate, sincere, emotionally open folkie. And it’s that collision of styles, with totally pure intent, that makes this such a success.

This doesn’t happen often. There are too many examples of white guys trying to sound Black and embarrassing themselves. (Some pull it off: Gregg Allman, Leon Russell and Dr. John weren’t faking it, that’s just how they sounded; Mick Jagger, maybe not as much, let’s be honest.) But, if I may continue to expound on the never-controversial topic of race in America, there are a few white artists who have the confidence to step into the arena, do their thing, and come away making magic. Listen to Robert Palmer’s opening three-song medley from Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley and you’ll see what I mean. (Having support from The Meters surely didn’t hurt; maybe everybody sounds good with them as backup.)

Anyway, this song turns 55 this year, and I'm curious to hear from people old enough to remember when it was new. I can read about sales and awards, but I can’t imagine the cultural impact this had. Some years ago I appeared on the podcast “Blank Check” to talk about the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and my friend Griffin Newman said something that was simultaneously stupid and profound. He joked that you can’t even think about musicians creating the opening sequence to “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” that this is a text that just exists outside of human contemplation. I think about “Bridge over Troubled Water” in a similar way.

You can get a good look at Art Garfunkel’s uvula in this clip from The Concert in Central Park, which took place 11 years after the initial recording of the song. He hits the high note a little better on the album, but on stage he’s wearing a cool vest, so it’s basically a draw.