“Horrified”: The 1965 song Paul Simon will always regret
Any artist that has been forever usually has a fair bit of songs that didn’t work out for them.
Whether it was them not having time to finish them before release or not getting their point across in the right way, there are always those moments when musicians wish they could have more time to work on their records. It’s the curse of the industry that they have to come out at some point, but Paul Simon had more reason to be pissed off when looking back on certain parts of his catalogue.
Unlike many artists who regret songs because of creative decisions they personally made, Simon’s frustration stemmed from losing control of one of his most important recordings. It was a rare example of a defining moment in his career being shaped by someone else’s intervention.
Then again, Simon has always been one to call his own shots ever since Simon and Garfunkel called things off. Even if not everything that he did had the same impact as ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, it was better for him to follow his muse than the relentless arguments around which songs should be included on the album or having to wait around for Garfunkel to become available.
There’s nothing wrong with that, either. Some artists simply drift apart without much explanation, but considering how joined at the hip they were in the beginning, it felt like two brothers going their separate ways in many respects. Both of them were kindred spirits to each other whenever they harmonised, but if all they had to go on was Wednesday Morning 3am, though, they probably wouldn’t have made it beyond the streets of New York.
While it’s far from a terrible record by any means, there are pieces of the album that would have never made a dent in the 1960s. This was right after The Beatles had started becoming one of the biggest names in music, so what would anyone have to do with songs like ‘Bleecker Street’ or their version of ‘Go Tell it on the Mountain’? That’s not to dissuade from these songs, either. They’re quite good, in fact, but in a Bob Dylan world, it wouldn’t light the charts on fire.
So, for a brief period, it looked like Simon and Garfunkel would be another folk duo that didn’t work out, but producer Thom Wilson had an idea when he heard ‘The Sound of Silence’. It had all the semblance of a counter-culture hit, but since there wasn’t enough energy behind it, Wilson figured the next best thing would be for other musicians to record around their take and send it out to radio.
The decision would prove commercially inspired, helping transform a relatively overlooked album track into a cultural phenomenon. Yet it also raised questions about artistic ownership that Simon would wrestle with long after the song became a hit.
Simon wasn’t even aware that the song had been re-recorded, and when he finally got back home to figure out what was happening, he thought they had butchered his tune, with his friend Al Stewart saying, “Paul was horrified when he first heard it … [when the] rhythm section slowed down at one point so that Paul and Artie’s voices could catch up.”
Aside from the raw performance version of it, though, the acoustic version actually works a lot better. The electrified version may have helped give them some more exposure on the radio, but even when they played the tune later in their career, the solemn version with only the duo and an acoustic guitar is far more haunting than hearing the faint wisps of electric guitar getting sprinkled into the mix.
While there have been many tunes that Simon has come to regret releasing, it’s more frustrating when the whole thing is out of your hands. Simon could do anything he wanted with his music, but once he handed it to his record company, seeing people take everything out of the can felt like someone mutilating his child.
In retrospect, the irony is impossible to ignore. The version of ‘The Sound of Silence’ that Simon disliked helped launch Simon & Garfunkel into superstardom and changed the course of his career forever. Yet his reaction also reveals how deeply he cared about the integrity of his work. Commercial success was welcome, but for Simon, preserving the original artistic vision always mattered more than simply scoring a hit.
