What was the last song Simon and Garfunkel recorded together?
The biggest tragedy surrounding the breakdown of Simon and Garfunkel isn’t even the loss of music. Obviously, that was a blow. The duo were one of the most defining acts of the 1960s, also playing a role in defining the era’s films as well as music. They reshaped folk with their harmonies and melodies. But still, while the end of the band was devastating, it was the breakdown of their friendship that hurt worse.
The loss of the band was really an inevitability. It’s tough to stick it out and grow at the same pace from your early adulthood into your grown-up life, especially when those two people are both fearlessly creative and obviously ambitious. Very few bands survive from an early start to the end game, as even The Beatles came crashing to an end before the members were even into their 30s.
But what at first appeared to be Simon and Garfunkel’s secret weapon really ended up being their undoing. In the beginning, it seemed as though their lifelong friendship could be the thing that would allow them to see it all through. But arguably, the brotherhood between them, and the strain on that friendship, was the thing that brought the end about.
The band didn’t end because the music had dried up – a point perfectly proved especially by Paul Simon’s quick dive into an incredible solo career. Instead, it ended because the tensions were too much to bear, and on both sides, the members took advantage of the idea that the band would always be there.
Probably because it always had. For most of their lives, starting when they were just school kids, Simon and Garfunkel had played and performed together, first in little doo-wop groups, then as Tom and Jerry and then finally as Simon and Garfunkel. When they hit the big time, it seemed like the pair were going to do it all together and continue to be best friends by each other’s side.
The pressure of fame and the mounting of opportunities is good at tear those things apart, though. By the end of the 1960s, they were being pulled in opposite directions. Garfunkel was getting movie offers and was so often away, leaving Simon to carry the brunt of the band and work on the music alone. It left him wondering why he didn’t just do it all fully alone, and then naturally that attitude offended Garfunkel as if he was merely a spare part in the band that was all Simon’s glory.
In the end, it collapsed. Or, in fact, it burned out in a blaze of greatness with one last and incredible album – Bridge Over Troubled Water.
The last song Simon and Garfunkel recorded together
When the duo were making Bridge over Troubled Water, they knew it was the end. It plays out in real-time on the record. On ‘The Only Living Boy In New York’, Simon writes his bittersweet goodbye to his bandmate, asking him to simply be upfront about the end, singing, “Tom, get your plane right on time / I know that you’ve been eager to fly now / Hey, let your honesty shine, shine, shine now.”
Overwhelmingly, it was a tough album for Simon. Summarising the band’s issues perfect, he basically wrote it all while Garfunkel was elsewhere. As they came back together to record, scattering the interrupted sessions throughout the end of 1969 to fit in with Garfunkel’s schedule, it was clearly over.
They knew it was, and in their final ever session, Simon said his goodbyes once again as they recorded ‘So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright’ in October and November of that year, as the final song was laid down for the album.
It would take Garfunkel a long time before he realised what his bandmate was saying on that song. “So long, Frank Lloyd Wright / I can’t believe your song is gone so soon,” Simon wrote, using the name of the architect Garfunkel revered as a step in for his friend’s name. Mourning the loss of their band and the days they spent together, it’s Simon’s closing statement.
At first, Garfunkel hated that. “I find that a secretive and unpleasant thing to have done to you,” he said after finding the true intention of the song. But with the years softening his feelings towards the split, he’s come to love it, and love the writer too, stating, “one loves the giver of a beautiful gift.”
