The moment Bob Dylan dropped in on Simon & Garfunkel’s session
Simon & Garfunkel were on their last legs by the end of 1969. Despite spending most of the latter part of the decade as folk music’s most commercially successful act, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were ready to end their professional relationship. Simon longed to start a solo career, while Garfunkel began taking on film roles that gave him an identity outside of the group.
Simon sprinkled in allusions to the pair’s real-life work ethic and separation throughout the lyrics of their final album, Bridge Over Troubled Water. ‘Keep the Customer Satisfied’ referenced the duo’s exhausting tour schedule, while ‘So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright’ made both oblique and direct mention of Garfunkel’s imminent departure.
On the flip side of the record was undoubtedly the most autobiographical song about Simon & Garfunkel’s impending implosion. ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ saw Simon wishing Garfunkel well as he flies down to film Catch-22 in Mexico. Alluding to their past work as “Tom and Jerry”, Simon recounts the loneliness he felt knowing that his partnership with Garfunkel was about to end.
“I like that record, and I like the song, too. That was written about Artie’s going off to make Catch-22 in Mexico,” Simon told Song Talk. “I liked the ‘aaahhhs,’ the voices singing ‘aaah.’ That was the best I think that we ever did it. It was quite a lot of voices we put on, maybe 12 or 15 voices. We sang it in the echo chamber. I remember that, too.”
During the recording of ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’, Simon & Garfunkel got a surprise visit from another folk icon: Bob Dylan. The two acts shared a label, and Dylan popped in and out of the CBS studio while recording his infamous 1970 album, Self Portrait.
In the book Simon and Garfunkel — A Musical Biography. Garfunkel recalled the encounter while discussing the song’s overdubbed vocals. “It’s us around eight times screaming, and we mixed it down very softly,” Garfunkel says. “I started getting into open-mouth harmony, in a very loud, strident way. We were screaming at the top of our lungs and inside an echo chamber. I remember that day that Dylan dropped by to visit. We came out of the booth after all this screaming, and there he was. Anyway, we got a very foreign sound.”
Check out ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ down below.
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