The legendary 1950s act Paul Simon thought epitomised “American culture”
When looking at the absolute pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll history, most roads lead to Elvis Presley. With his onstage charisma and unmatched ability to unify people from all walks of life, The King’s significance speaks for itself, a guiding principle for all those who wish to walk in the same footsteps.
Paul Simon, however, argues that there’s one group that was even more significant and influential than anything the almighty rock ‘n’ roll star ever did. Growing up, Simon’s influences were about what you’d expect, covering everything from jazz and gospel to those seminal figures in early rock ‘n’ roll.
While it’d be interesting to try to pin his journey to a single genre, it’s more telling to look at why Simon got into the business in the first place: his deep-rooted love for great, powerful musical expression that resonates because it feels real.
A big part of this was the narrative aspect of music. When Simon met Art Garfunkel at 11 years old, they performed together in Alice in Wonderland before singing together at 13, when Simon wrote their first song, ‘The Girl for Me’, about a girl with flowers in her hair that he’ll always love. A local hit, the song set the pair on a path to telling more stories people would love, and in the 1960s, Simon & Garfunkel were officially a force to be reckoned with.
Around this time, the pair were a more mellow presence among the other chaotic rock ‘n’ roll performers, often adorning the stage the only way they knew best, just their simple harmonies and guitar. When we think of the legacy of Simon & Garfunkel today, that’s precisely what we think of: two voices who captured the quiet contemplations of an entire generation, even when life felt like the loudest thing in the world.
But they were only able to excel by doing that after learning what it felt like to exist in the chaos. And a big part of that was learning from the best, like Presley and the explosive ways he lit up a stage whenever he performed live. Or learning the ropes from the one iconic duo that Simon argued was even more important than ‘The King’ himself, The Everly Brothers.
As Simon once told Rolling Stone, the “roots” of The Everly Brothers are “very, very deep in the soil of American culture”. He went on, arguing that their influence was “perhaps even more powerful than Elvis Presley” because of how they “melded country with the emerging sound of ’50s rock and roll.”
He also went into all the ways the duo impacted the scene, influencing some of the more era-defining giants in music history like Paul McCartney and John Lennon, as well as the ways they guided both himself and Garfunkel in the early days when they were figuring out what it meant to establish a voice as a rock duo during a time when the industry was deafening and at its most competitive.
“When we were kids,” he said, “Artie and I got our rock and roll chops from the Everlys. Later, as Simon & Garfunkel, we put ‘Bye Bye Love’ on Bridge Over Troubled Water, and much later, Phil and Don both sang on the song ‘Graceland’.”
