Fact #113791
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Paul Simon : Simon And Garfunkel, as Artie said to me … was the songs of Paul Simon, which people liked, and the voices of Paul Simon and Arthur Garfunkel, which combined to make a sound that people really liked. And no question, without Arthur's voice, I never would have enjoyed that success. And so the whole world was big Simon And Garfunkel fans. But I wasn't.
Actually, I'm a rock-'n'-roll kid. I grew up with rock'n'roll. My main influences in early music were Fifties R'n'B, Fifties doo-wop groups, Elvis Presley and The Everly Brothers. But Simon And Garfunkel was a folkie act. I liked the blend of our voices, but a significant part of me just wasn't a folkie. What we were doing was too sweet. I was too serious.
Victoria Williams (singer-songwriter) : There were so many great songs on that record. It had April Come She Will, Somewhere They Can't Find me, I Am A Rock … oh, gosh. I would say that one really influenced me. 'I am a rock, I am an island.' That one was really cool. 'And a rock feels no pain … and an island never cries.' I loved the lyric to that. I loved the whole Simon And Garfunkel thing. They were really beautiful.
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SOUNDS OF SILENCE by Johnny Black
Unknown to the record-buying public, Simon And Garfunkel's first hit album came into being solely because of studio trickery and the vision of a producer.
In June 1965, when Bob Dylan ran late for a Highway 61 Revisited recording date, producer Tom Wilson found himself with a studio full of musicians twiddling their thumbs. "We had no idea what we were going to work on," remembers guitarist Vinnie Bell. "There were no artists … and we had no music. They just played a demo of these two guys singing."
The two guys were, of course, Paul Simon And Art Garfunkel, a folksy acoustic New York duo who had broken up when their debut album stiffed. The track, The Sound Of Silence, wasn't actually a demo, it came from that failed album, Wednesday Morning, 3AM. Wilson got the studio crew to add electric instruments to the track, and the result was so successful that it was released as a single which, with folk-rock emerging as a new genre, promptly shot to No1.
Simon And Garfunkel quickly reunited and were given a month in which to cobble together a cash-in album. As Garfunkel recalls, "We were under the influence of big business. We had this No1 single, and it was a case of business trying to make the music conform to the situation."
Astonishingly, the pressure-cooked duo came up with a genuinely memorable album which includes not just the classic title track, but another Simon-composed cornerstone of the genre, I Am A Rock.
Source : by Johnny Black, first appeared in the book Albums from Backbeat Press, 2007)
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Actually, I'm a rock-'n'-roll kid. I grew up with rock'n'roll. My main influences in early music were Fifties R'n'B, Fifties doo-wop groups, Elvis Presley and The Everly Brothers. But Simon And Garfunkel was a folkie act. I liked the blend of our voices, but a significant part of me just wasn't a folkie. What we were doing was too sweet. I was too serious.
Victoria Williams (singer-songwriter) : There were so many great songs on that record. It had April Come She Will, Somewhere They Can't Find me, I Am A Rock … oh, gosh. I would say that one really influenced me. 'I am a rock, I am an island.' That one was really cool. 'And a rock feels no pain … and an island never cries.' I loved the lyric to that. I loved the whole Simon And Garfunkel thing. They were really beautiful.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SOUNDS OF SILENCE by Johnny Black
Unknown to the record-buying public, Simon And Garfunkel's first hit album came into being solely because of studio trickery and the vision of a producer.
In June 1965, when Bob Dylan ran late for a Highway 61 Revisited recording date, producer Tom Wilson found himself with a studio full of musicians twiddling their thumbs. "We had no idea what we were going to work on," remembers guitarist Vinnie Bell. "There were no artists … and we had no music. They just played a demo of these two guys singing."
The two guys were, of course, Paul Simon And Art Garfunkel, a folksy acoustic New York duo who had broken up when their debut album stiffed. The track, The Sound Of Silence, wasn't actually a demo, it came from that failed album, Wednesday Morning, 3AM. Wilson got the studio crew to add electric instruments to the track, and the result was so successful that it was released as a single which, with folk-rock emerging as a new genre, promptly shot to No1.
Simon And Garfunkel quickly reunited and were given a month in which to cobble together a cash-in album. As Garfunkel recalls, "We were under the influence of big business. We had this No1 single, and it was a case of business trying to make the music conform to the situation."
Astonishingly, the pressure-cooked duo came up with a genuinely memorable album which includes not just the classic title track, but another Simon-composed cornerstone of the genre, I Am A Rock.
Source : by Johnny Black, first appeared in the book Albums from Backbeat Press, 2007)