The song Paul Simon called one of the best he ever made
Any songwriter would consider themselves lucky to have half of what Paul Simon wrote during his lifetime.
It’s hard to imagine any of his songs being any more perfect than they already are, and even when looking at the lower lights of his catalogue, even songs he hates like ‘The 59th Street Bridge Song’ are still miles above anything else some no-name acoustic songwriter could ever hope to achieve. But even through all of the artists that he’s played with, there are always going to be those certain songs where the stars align, and the perfect melody falls into your lap without even realising it.
After all, that’s what happens to all the greatest songwriters. John Lennon wasn’t going out of his way to write ‘Across the Universe’, nor did Robert Plant envision writing every single word that turned up on ‘Stairway to Heaven’. There’s often some force that’s guiding people towards their best material, and the ones that stick around are those who go with the flow and let that muse in to work its magic.
That’s not to say that it didn’t come without some hard work, though. Simon was woodshedding for years before he started working on his first albums, and while Wednesday Morning 3 am already had ‘The Sound of Silence’ in its purest form, even then, the public wasn’t ready for it until it got its folk-rock makeover. So if that was what the public wanted, Simon and Garfunkel knew that it was better to lean into being a bit experimental.
They were never going to get away with being a singing duo with an acoustic guitar for the rest of their lives, and listening to records like Bookends, you can feel them trying to break loose from those shackles. ‘Mrs Robinson’ was a bit more playful, and ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’ saw them starting to hone their craft as rock and roll musicians, but it wasn’t until the next record that they got the best and the worst out of each other.
Simon didn’t want to sit around and have Art Garfunkel criticise his ideas, and when listening to every record he made solo, it’s not like he didn’t have more to offer. It would have been a shame having to hear him repeat all his old tricks and never hearing a tune like ‘Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes’ or ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard’, but ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ was the kind of song that no one could really poke holes in.
Art Garfunkel may have received a lot of the glory for singing the tune, but what Simon did writing it went much further back than rock and roll. He had started listening to the work of Bach when he began writing it, and while it sat around as a half-formed idea for a little while, it wasn’t until it started to take shape in the studio that Simon realised what it was. The record was a masterpiece, and there was no way for him to suddenly take it back from his friend.
And while Simon was known as the fingerpicking legend, there was no other way for him to translate the tune except on piano, saying, “I was working with really gifted pianists like Richard Tee, Barry Beckett, they might change the chord subtly. So the song might evolve harmonically because of some musician’s input after I took it off the guitar. The original version of that is a very satisfying record. It’s one of the best records I’ve ever made.”
Simon lived to regret not singing the song for a while, but really, there was no other way that it could have been presented. Since he was parting ways with Garfunkel right after the album came out, this was like a parting gift to his friend, and while Simon has made even greater songs later down the line, the magic behind this tune is that you can hear that old camaraderie showing its face one last time.
