Art Garfunkel picks his favourite song by The Beatles
In the 1950s, Art Garfunkel and his Forest Hills High School friend Paul Simon set off on their remarkable yet fractious collaborative career as the duo Tom & Jerry. Heavily influenced by The Everly Brothers, the pair broke out with their 1957 single ‘Hey, Schoolgirl’. In 1963, following a hiatus, they regrouped with a Columbia record deal under the new name Simon & Garfunkel and soon became one of the decade’s most cherished folk-rock acts.
Both Simon and Garfunkel cite The Everly Brothers as their most important early influence, without whom they may never have realised their ambition. “The arrival of The Everly Brothers really captured my attention and took hold of my life,” Garfunkel revealed in a 2014 interview with Music Radar. “That magnificent two-part harmony was fused together so beautifully.”
Continuing, the singer revealed a soft spot for Phil Everly. “I’ll so miss Phil forever,” Garfunkel said of the singer, who passed away in January 2014. “I have to pause for a moment and just bow to the brilliance of that harmony singer. They say that Don was his parents’ favourite. They had a radio show, and Don was their pet singer. When the other kid came along – Phil Everly, two years younger – Don felt, ‘What do we need him for?’ So Phil got into the group by being so damn fabulous, and then it was undeniable: The Everly Brothers.”
The Everly Brothers helped to establish Garfunkel’s passion for music and vocal harmony, but he and Simon kept abreast of the latest trends throughout the 1960s. Above all others, it would seem The Beatles made the next monumentally perspective-changing impact on Garfunkel’s artistic outlook.
“To be honest, I was chasing The Beatles,” Garfunkel admitted. “Once there was Rubber Soul and Revolver, I saw the model. Paul and I were in love with the 12-song album and how we could work with this new thing – how to sequence it, how to put a nice cover on it and make it an entity. On the other hand, what’s wrong with a great three-minute and fifty-second song? You can’t say there’s anything less exciting. ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ by Ike & Tina Turner – who needs 11 other songs?”
Beyond their lesson in album construction and marketing, The Beatles also inspired Simon & Garfunkel with a progressive approach to pop music. Garfunkel was particularly fond of the 1966 album Revolver and ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, its beautiful, harmonious ballad penned by Paul McCartney.
“‘Here, There and Everywhere’ – of all The Beatles’ records, this one truly intoxicated me,” Garfunkel beamed. “It’s beautiful in every way a song can be. What was going through Paul McCartney’s life the week he wrote this? You have to be in some kind of magical mood to come up with something this enchanting.”
Garfunkel continued, recalling that he once collaborated with Geoff Emerick, the engineer who worked on Revolver. “I worked with Geoff Emerick, The Beatles’ engineer – we made a couple of albums together; we were co-producers,” he continued. “One day, he was working in the control room, cutting tape as you did in those days. He had his back to me while he did an edit, and we were talking about The Beatles, something we hardly did – I thought, ‘He’s probably bored having his brain picked about the great Beatles.’ But once I ventured into the subject, he threw out over his shoulder, ‘Did you like ‘Here, There and Everywhere’?’
“I knew it was a test question, and I melted over the reference. And he looked at me like, ‘OK, you passed the test.’ [Laughs] Nothing is quite like this song. If music can be defined as that which perfumes the atmosphere, then ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ does it like no other single I’ve ever heard. It’s supreme.”
Listen to Art Garfunkel’s favourite song by The Beatles below.
