The Simon and Garfunkel song Art Garfunkel initially refused to sing
There are plenty of musical “what ifs” out there. What if John Lennon had lived on? What if Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham stayed together? What if the 27 club members had stuck around to make more music? The mind could spiral for days on the multitude of answers and options. But one of the biggest comes down to Simon and Garfunkel, and what if they never sang ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’?
It was a scenario that very nearly happened. Simon and Garfunkel’s story is surprisingly messy and dramatic, considering their music’s sweet nature. The duo started young as they met in elementary school and began their earliest bands together, spending their formative years figuring out harmonies and honing their craft together. When they finally decided to give music a serious go and released their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M, in 1964, the history that came after it is littered with several splits and hiatuses.
It’s understandable to a certain extent. Few bands that formed so early manage to stay together in the long run. Take, for instance, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. Despite remaining friends since their school days, even their strong songwriting partnership needed some space as tensions escalated in the 1980s. Even the closest of friends would find it challenging to navigate a personal and increasingly stressful professional relationship.
But when it comes to Simon and Garfunkel, the world almost lost out on one of their biggest and most beloved songs in the crosshairs of one of these off moments. By the time their 1970 album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, came out housing the title track, the band had been through it all. Their debut flopped, leaving them to split for a while and work on solo projects. Then fate seemed to bring them back together as an old track was picked up and popularised without their knowing. From then on, throughout the second half of the 1960s, the two friends were thrust into the limelight of the new folk scene, becoming an accidental voice of counterculture through their involvement with The Graduate. By the end of the decade, they were the biggest duo in the world, but their friendship was at its weakest.
“They both envied the other’s place in the team,” their old manager, Mort Lewis, said of the rift. “Paul often thought the audience saw Artie as the star because he was the featured singer, and some people probably thought Artie even wrote the songs. But Artie knew Paul wrote the songs and thus controlled the future of the pair.” With tensions building and building as their success grew and grew, the splinter was irreparable by the start of the 1970s.
Garfunkel served the final blow as he took an acting role in the 1970 film adaptation of Catch-22 without consulting his musical partner. It highlighted the disjointed nature of their process as Garfunkel explained, “Our way of working was for Paul to write while we recorded. So we’d be in the studio for the better part of two months working on the three or four songs that Paul had written, recording them, and when they were done, we’d knock off for a couple of months while Paul was working on the next group of three or four songs. Then we’d book time and be in the studio again for three or four months, recording those.”
But this time round, he refused to be available, adding, “Rather than wait for Paul to write the next bunch of songs, I went off and did this movie.”
So, while Garfunkel went off to shoot, Simon was left alone to work on the record in a move that very nearly cost them one of their biggest songs. After he wrote ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, the now timeless ballad, he reached out to his partner, asking him to come and sing it as the lead vocal. At first, Garfunkel refused. Obviously, he later changed his mind, but the damage was done.
He claimed it was simply down to thinking Simon should merely sing the falsetto part and that it would suit his voice more. But in the context of their broken-down friendship and the fact that this record would be the last, Garfunkel’s near-miss of refusing to sing one of their top hits proved that the duo would never truly come back as the death knell for their personal and professional relationship rang out.
