Fact #100576
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Paul Simon : All I can remember is a time on a plane. I had taken a bible from one of the hotels and I was skimming through the bible and I think I saw the phrase "work- man's wages." That's all I remember from that song.
Paul Simon : I recorded the guitars with Fred Carter. He was from Nashville.
Fred Carter : We began to play the song, and so we started making tapes with just two guitars. And Roy said, "Hey, there's a magic going on here." I remember specifically, they had about six microphones for my guitar. The front, the back, the top. Roy even miked my breathing. All I did was tune the small E down to a D.?
Paul Simon : Then we overdubbed the drums. And so we started using drums like, hitting drums in elevator shafts. You know, to get huge echo sounds.
There was an open elevator shaft in this .... Columbia Records' building where they had their studio, and we would put the drums out there. Roy would run the long cables and microphones out to the elevator shaft.
??Hal Blaine (drummer) : Roy found a place right in front of an elevator door. And we were ... I think we were on the fifth or sixth floor of the CBS building, and there was no one in the building except us. It was a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday afternoon. And I would set up with these ... my monster drums right in front of the elevator. Now, I was wearing headsets, of course, listening to the track of "The Boxer". "Lie-la-lie"..., and I would hit those drums. "Lie-la-lie.....", BOOM.
?Well, in perfect synchronisation, at one point, as my hands were coming down to smash the drums, the elevator door opened, and there was a very elderly rent-a-policeman standing there. In his little gray uniform, with a look of disbelief, like he had just been shot with a shotgun or something. As I smashed the tremendous blow to the drums, this , and he stood there petrified. And the doors closed, and away he went, never to be seen again. And I'm sure that he had wished he'd retired years before.??
Paul Simon : The horns were recorded up in this little chapel at Columbia University. Had good echo ... nice echo. Horns and strings were recorded there.?
Roy Halee (engineer) : To me, my personal opinion, it was the best record ever made. It's the best engineered Simon And Garfunkel record. Most creativity went into that record. It was recorded in a lot of different locations. The voices were recorded as a remote .... a chapel at Columbia University. Columbia also went crazy again. "Why do you have to go there? Can't you do that in a studio?" Well, we were at the church doing the voices. We decided to put a piccolo trumpet. A piccolo trumpet, right? Not because of the "Penny Lane" ... A piccolo trumpet over a steel guitar playing that melody ..., then just superimpose that on the pedal steel to give different sound. That's what that is.
?And that pedal steel was recorded in Nashville. And the piccolo trumpet was recorded as a remote in this church where we did the voices. And some classical trumpet player playing that. Also, we brought in a tuba player to play that "Do-do-n", the big pedal note in the chorus, in that church.?
I always said, if anybody knew what went down to do this, they wouldn't believe it. And to this day, if anybody starts ... you know, to .... get this looks-like, it's impossible. I mean, come on, wild strings? How did you get them to sync in? They sync in perfectly. The voices, how did you ... ? Nah. No, no. Du-du-du-du-du-n. Oh, that dub-over. Wild track? Yeah, wild track. Not only wild track, but phased and flanged. Come on. I get this looks-like. Really, you'd write a book about that record. I'm telling you. You could absolutely write a book about how the record was done
.??Art Garfunkel : That song's very much Paul. To say, "I've taken a lot of scars." In those years, Paul was very prominently wearing the poser than needed. "I get not the lot, I never lie." The world was buying our records a lot, but that's ... it's a posture. So I guess he was saying no matter what they do to me, I just keep going.??Paul Simon : Whatever my conscious intention, it seems to me that it's ... you know, an awful a lot about me. Now, I don't remember whether I wrote it that way, or even without awareness at that point. I never liked criticism, and I never had that much belief in the praise. So I was vulnerable.??
Art Garfunkel : "In the clearing stands a boxer." You know, that reminds me so much of Paul. When all this settles down, you're left with somebody who just keeps pushing. Keeps fighting. Right to 1991. Yes, Paul out in the road, with his troop. People are saying yeses and noes to his concert. But he is working. That's the boxer.?It's really a well-made record. It has so many things in it. It plays on what Paul did so well. Play that traverse picking guitar. Dun-du-du-da. He would play that, in such a running-brook way that it was an ideal thing. It made the most of ..... you know, it took what we had learned to do in our teenage years and made the most of it. We were very accurate-blending-singers. So a song like that with its quick run, "When I left my home and family / I was no more than a boy" ... "No more", ... "no more", notice there's two notes on "more". "More", well, if you're playing it to that picking guitar, you know exactly how to break those up. It comes out of the rhythm of the guitar.?The Boxer allows the vocal to do a lot of that stuff. So we're rippling together with the guitar, and it's the perfect way to use our sound. We learned that years earlier.?
The Boxer is more Roy and Paul's great labor's love, and to some degree, I was in Mexico making "Catch 22" during "The Boxer" .... because I came across a letter that Paul wrote me, and it was deeply affectionate. It was about .... "Roy and I are making 'The Boxer'. We're so thrilled with it. When somebody comes in the studio, we play it for them, because, like showing the face of the Buddha, we want them to bow to it. And anybody who doesn't realize it's the world's greatest record, we get them out. We get them out right away. If somebody goes, 'I like it, but I think ...', we don't even stick around. We get them out. They don't know ... how to have religion."?
Paul Simon : The Boxer was a really nice record. I like to listen to that record I think I was reading the Bible around that time. That's where I think phrases such as 'workman's wages' came from, and 'seeking out the poorer quarters'. 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.
(Source : not known)
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Paul Simon : I recorded the guitars with Fred Carter. He was from Nashville.
Fred Carter : We began to play the song, and so we started making tapes with just two guitars. And Roy said, "Hey, there's a magic going on here." I remember specifically, they had about six microphones for my guitar. The front, the back, the top. Roy even miked my breathing. All I did was tune the small E down to a D.?
Paul Simon : Then we overdubbed the drums. And so we started using drums like, hitting drums in elevator shafts. You know, to get huge echo sounds.
There was an open elevator shaft in this .... Columbia Records' building where they had their studio, and we would put the drums out there. Roy would run the long cables and microphones out to the elevator shaft.
??Hal Blaine (drummer) : Roy found a place right in front of an elevator door. And we were ... I think we were on the fifth or sixth floor of the CBS building, and there was no one in the building except us. It was a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday afternoon. And I would set up with these ... my monster drums right in front of the elevator. Now, I was wearing headsets, of course, listening to the track of "The Boxer". "Lie-la-lie"..., and I would hit those drums. "Lie-la-lie.....", BOOM.
?Well, in perfect synchronisation, at one point, as my hands were coming down to smash the drums, the elevator door opened, and there was a very elderly rent-a-policeman standing there. In his little gray uniform, with a look of disbelief, like he had just been shot with a shotgun or something. As I smashed the tremendous blow to the drums, this , and he stood there petrified. And the doors closed, and away he went, never to be seen again. And I'm sure that he had wished he'd retired years before.??
Paul Simon : The horns were recorded up in this little chapel at Columbia University. Had good echo ... nice echo. Horns and strings were recorded there.?
Roy Halee (engineer) : To me, my personal opinion, it was the best record ever made. It's the best engineered Simon And Garfunkel record. Most creativity went into that record. It was recorded in a lot of different locations. The voices were recorded as a remote .... a chapel at Columbia University. Columbia also went crazy again. "Why do you have to go there? Can't you do that in a studio?" Well, we were at the church doing the voices. We decided to put a piccolo trumpet. A piccolo trumpet, right? Not because of the "Penny Lane" ... A piccolo trumpet over a steel guitar playing that melody ..., then just superimpose that on the pedal steel to give different sound. That's what that is.
?And that pedal steel was recorded in Nashville. And the piccolo trumpet was recorded as a remote in this church where we did the voices. And some classical trumpet player playing that. Also, we brought in a tuba player to play that "Do-do-n", the big pedal note in the chorus, in that church.?
I always said, if anybody knew what went down to do this, they wouldn't believe it. And to this day, if anybody starts ... you know, to .... get this looks-like, it's impossible. I mean, come on, wild strings? How did you get them to sync in? They sync in perfectly. The voices, how did you ... ? Nah. No, no. Du-du-du-du-du-n. Oh, that dub-over. Wild track? Yeah, wild track. Not only wild track, but phased and flanged. Come on. I get this looks-like. Really, you'd write a book about that record. I'm telling you. You could absolutely write a book about how the record was done
.??Art Garfunkel : That song's very much Paul. To say, "I've taken a lot of scars." In those years, Paul was very prominently wearing the poser than needed. "I get not the lot, I never lie." The world was buying our records a lot, but that's ... it's a posture. So I guess he was saying no matter what they do to me, I just keep going.??Paul Simon : Whatever my conscious intention, it seems to me that it's ... you know, an awful a lot about me. Now, I don't remember whether I wrote it that way, or even without awareness at that point. I never liked criticism, and I never had that much belief in the praise. So I was vulnerable.??
Art Garfunkel : "In the clearing stands a boxer." You know, that reminds me so much of Paul. When all this settles down, you're left with somebody who just keeps pushing. Keeps fighting. Right to 1991. Yes, Paul out in the road, with his troop. People are saying yeses and noes to his concert. But he is working. That's the boxer.?It's really a well-made record. It has so many things in it. It plays on what Paul did so well. Play that traverse picking guitar. Dun-du-du-da. He would play that, in such a running-brook way that it was an ideal thing. It made the most of ..... you know, it took what we had learned to do in our teenage years and made the most of it. We were very accurate-blending-singers. So a song like that with its quick run, "When I left my home and family / I was no more than a boy" ... "No more", ... "no more", notice there's two notes on "more". "More", well, if you're playing it to that picking guitar, you know exactly how to break those up. It comes out of the rhythm of the guitar.?The Boxer allows the vocal to do a lot of that stuff. So we're rippling together with the guitar, and it's the perfect way to use our sound. We learned that years earlier.?
The Boxer is more Roy and Paul's great labor's love, and to some degree, I was in Mexico making "Catch 22" during "The Boxer" .... because I came across a letter that Paul wrote me, and it was deeply affectionate. It was about .... "Roy and I are making 'The Boxer'. We're so thrilled with it. When somebody comes in the studio, we play it for them, because, like showing the face of the Buddha, we want them to bow to it. And anybody who doesn't realize it's the world's greatest record, we get them out. We get them out right away. If somebody goes, 'I like it, but I think ...', we don't even stick around. We get them out. They don't know ... how to have religion."?
Paul Simon : The Boxer was a really nice record. I like to listen to that record I think I was reading the Bible around that time. That's where I think phrases such as 'workman's wages' came from, and 'seeking out the poorer quarters'. 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.
(Source : not known)