Why Paul Simon couldn’t stand listening to Art Garfunkel: “I didn’t like the songs”
The biggest rule of the industry when Paul Simon was making his first songs was about not being a snob about music.
Even though many people had their different factions of artists that they gravitated towards whenever they bought their favourite records, Simon understood that there wasn’t much of a difference between what made The Rolling Stones sound great and the kind of journey that you could go on when listening to Bob Dylan. Each of them had the power to move someone, but he was the first to say when something didn’t really fit with what he wanted to hear.
But compared to every other songwriter in the world, Simon and Garfunkel seemed like one of the most agreeable bands out at the time. They didn’t always have the best time deciding on what material they were going to use on their albums, but when their voices blended together on those harmony lines, it was unlike anything that the world had ever heard when they listened to ‘The Sound of Silence’ for the first time.
This was a band that was willing to make music for the heart rather than for the charts, but there were more times when Simon realised that he needed to go a little bit further than what Garfunkel was willing to give him. His partner wanted the chance to make more sophisticated music, and that wasn’t going to satisfy Simon making classical-adjacent pieces of music every single time he walked into the studio.
And looking at his first few solo albums, he was clearly ready to break out of his shell without Garfunkel’s shadow looming next to him. He wanted to emphasise the rhythmic aspect of his music a lot more, and while his solo career did help break down doors and usher in world music into the cultural conversation on tunes like ‘Graceland’, Garfunkel was interested in a much safer approach to rock and roll.
Even though Hearts and Bones almost got them back on the same page, a lot of what Garfunkel was singing were the traditional ballads everyone expected. It’s not like he was doing a bad job making a lot of these songs, but compared to Simon’s track record for thinking outside the box, he felt that Garfunkel’s music was far too vanilla for him to take all that seriously when he took a listen to his records.
They were all competently played and sung beautifully, but Simon felt that there wasn’t really any kind of personality behind it for him, saying, “I myself didn’t like them. I didn’t like the songs. I thought they weren’t really as bright as he was. He is much more complex than they were. He was just singing songs that didn’t reflect that. He was more interested in making a sound with his voice that was pleasing.”
While that last sentence literally defines every single pop singer that has tried to make a hit in the past 50 years of music, it’s not like he doesn’t have a point. Garfunkel wasn’t exactly breaking any new ground on any of his records, and while he was willing to put himself out there and even include one of his tunes during their famous concert in Central Park, he wasn’t on the cutting edge when making tunes like ‘BRight Eyes’, even if the song itself was great.
There’s nothing wrong with choosing that path as a singer, but it all has to do with what Simon was getting at when talking about his partner’s strengths as a singer. Garfunkel was capable of so much more than what his records were delivering, and for Simon, it was going to be much more exciting to make music that had a sense of adventure to it than going on the same journey that he had been down too many times before.
