Who is Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Mrs. Robinson’?
It was originally just meant to be a paycheck job. Simon and Garfunkel had survived the first fall of folk music in New York and managed to come out the other side intact. After being contacted directly by director Mike Nichols, the duo agreed to write new songs for the film The Graduate. Nichols didn’t need songs that specifically related back to the film’s narrative: he was simply obsessed with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s music, insisting that they add their folk harmonies to the movie.
Almost all of the material that the duo provided to the soundtrack of The Graduate had been previously recorded and released. ‘The Sound of Silence’ was the hit that propelled the duo to superstardom, appearing on the albums Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. and Sounds of Silence. ‘Scarborough Fair/Canticle’ and ‘The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine’ were both originally featured on the duo’s previous album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.
Simon and Garfunkel had already started preparations for their fourth studio Bookends. Simon was kicking song ideas around, but his commitment to The Graduate was still in the back of his head. Simon had agreed to write at least one new song for the film, and after collecting a few chords centred around a rollicking beat, Simon had the basic framework for a new track.
“Paul had been working on what is now ‘Mrs. Robinson’, but there was no name in it and we’d just fill in with any three-syllable name,” Garfunkel remembered in the book Paul Simon: A Life. “And because of the character in the picture we just began using the name ‘Mrs. Robinson’ to fit […] and one day we were sitting around with Mike talking about ideas for another song. And I said, ‘What about Mrs. Robinson.’ Mike shot to his feet. ‘You have a song called ‘Mrs. Robinson’ and you haven’t even shown it to me?’ So we explained the working title and sang it for him. And then Mike froze it for the picture as ‘Mrs. Robinson’.”
That story underlines a key point: Simon hadn’t originally envisioned the song to be about the mom that sleeps with Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock. Instead, the titular figure was “Mrs. Roosevelt”, likely taken from Elanor Roosevelt. The former first lady would have fit in with Simon’s lyrics detailing the contrasts between older and younger generations, but when Nichols got a hold of it, he insisted that it become ‘Mrs. Robinson’.
Check out Paul Simon talking about the origins of ‘Mrs. Robinson’ down below.
