Paul Simon used one song to secretly say goodbye to Art Garfunkel: “I know that your part will go fine”
In the history of music, there have been countless sad band breakups, some in a blaze of fire and fury as members dramatically fell out, while others happened quietly and mournfully, like Led Zeppelin’s decision to call it quits as they grieved John Bonham, but in the case of Simon & Garfunkel, the heartbreak still stings.
It stings because the duo weren’t just a band, they were brothers in every sense of the word except biological. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met way back when they were in school. Plenty of collaborative teams like to claim their relationship started early, but theirs truly did as they spent their school days in doo-wop groups together, or starting their own early two-piece, Tom and Jerry.
That history leads to the devastation, not just because a working relationship that enduring was coming to an end, which is a saddening blow and a maddening one to their fans, but because the friendship ended too, with the very fame and success they spent their youth dreaming up together eventually being the thing that broke them.
They just couldn’t hold on anymore. Things were too hectic as opportunity after opportunity kept coming their way, in the form of film roles for Art Garfunkel, but still just in the form of more songs for Paul Simon. The latter seemed to still have the passion and excitement for the band as the tracks that would make up their final record were spinning around his mind, but his bandmate was nowhere to be seen. Left to do it all on his own, Simon felt lonely and rejected, mildly annoyed, while Garfunkel was tired of being made to feel guilty for saying yes to exciting futures.
The hurtful history was rehashed during the final moments, as Simon sang on ‘The Only Living Boy In New York‘, “Tom, get your plane right on time, I know that your part will go fine,” using their childhood nicknames for perhaps the most intimate address the duo ever delivered to one another. That’s a song begging for an answer as Simon is basically saying, ‘I know you’re leaving this band, please just tell me’, singing “let your honesty shine”.
But after that, it was ‘So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright’ that came as the final goodbye, both in lyrical content and in the fact that it would be the last song they recorded together. While the direct address to “Tom” is an obvious call out, ‘So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright’ is more veiled. Stick with me here: Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect, and a famous one. Garfunkel actually studied architecture and was particularly a fan of Wright’s, so Simon knew using that name would get him.
However, this isn’t a song about architecture at all, nor is it about Wright. In the late summer of 1969, the two members rented a house designed by Wright and essentially forced themselves back into the same space to get Bridge Over Troubled Water recorded. They both knew it would be their last, and in an off-the-cuff conversation, Garfunkel suggested Simon write a song about the house and its designer; instead, Simon wrote it directly to the man he was living in it with.
One glance at the lyrics and that is obvious. “I’ll remember Frank Lloyd Wright / All of the nights we’d harmonise ’til dawn,” Simon wrote. Obviously, he wasn’t harmonising with the famed architect, but with his old friend, and in this track, he’s commemorating and saying goodbye to the nights when he’d “never laughed so long”.
Somehow, though, it took Garfunkel a moment to realise that, despite literally singing on the track. He claimed Simon “never let me in on that” meaning, adding, “I find that a secretive and unpleasant thing to have done to you”. But as the sting of the split faded into a tender love, the song has clearly come to mean a lot to him given that still, at his own concerts, he chooses this track to sing.
