Album: Bookends
Year: 1968
. . .
One of the things I’ve realized writing these posts: Paul Simon is a helluva guitar player. Every single song I’ve written about after “The Sound of Silence” has a killer acoustic guitar part. I just hadn’t really noticed before, because a) acoustic guitar and b) they’ve always been in the service of the song.
And so it goes with perhaps his best guitar playing on a Simon & Garfunkel track, the twisty and tangled playing that drives their massive 1968 smash, “Mrs. Robinson.”
Now, of course, “Mrs. Robinson” is and was all tangled up with the film it was kinda sorta written for, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate, a masterful satire of sex and high society (he wrote, not having seen The Graduate for at least a decade) (Hopefully, film Twitter won’t jump all over me.) The story goes that Mike Nichols’ had asked for some new material for the film, and while he rejected the first couple songs, when heard “Mrs. Robinson” (which was originally titled “Mrs. Roosevelt,”) he utterly flipped, even though they didn’t have anything but a chorus.
But of course, it was this chorus . . .
And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
Whoa, whoa, whoa
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
In the film, the early arrangement of “Mrs. Robinson” has a Bo Diddley beat and slightly different lyrics, but it also contains the same “dee dee dee doo doo doo” placeholders the single does.
Which open in medias res, like somebody turned on the recorder in the middle of Simon’s opening lick, big thick and wooden while Hal Blaine surrounds him with a congas and shaker-filled lighter-than-air rhythm, at least until the relatively straightforward beat of the choruses — Blaine playing the backbeat on his hi-hat — which alternate with the verses, and its that alternation that gives “Mrs. Robinson” such power, especially when they start fucking around with the lyrics of the chorus later in the song.
The first fucking around is simply a playful jab at the Beatles.
Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
Wo, wo, wo
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
But the second fucking around, well, that’s a whole different thing, isn’t it?
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Woo, woo, woo
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
A zillion fucking words have been written about this chorus, and I’m not sure I have any more insight, outside of the fact that it was a happy accident that “Joe-Di-Ma-ggi-o” fit so nicely there — though for fuck’s sake, “Ted-Will-i-ams” would have also fit — and that apparently people didn’t understand that question was a metaphor for a lost place and time (which, of course, never really existed in the first place, but that’s OK.) Or at least — in a story that seems apocryphal but apparently isn’t — Joe DiMaggio didn’t know, since he was still around, hawking Mr. Coffee, until Paul Simon explained the whole metaphor thing to him.
Oh, and speaking of Joe DiMaggio, in the mid-90s, Rox used to work in an East Bay Italian restaurant where the aforementioned Joltin’ Joe was a regular, usually coming in with his daughter for lunch. And apparently he was unfailingly polite and a very good tipper. But now we have the answer to where Joe DiMaggio went: he went to Strizzi’s!!
In any event, “Mrs Robinson” was a massive massive hit, topping the U.S. charts for three weeks, and being the first rock ‘n’ roll song to win the Record of the Year Grammy. It also kicked off a decade where Paul Simon — both with and without Art Garfunkel — would have 10 Top Ten hits and be a ubiqutious cultural presence. And not just on the radio, where you couldn’t escape him, but also appearing in films like Annie Hall, hosting Saturday Night Live a few times, and even starring in his own — Lorne Michaels-produced, of course — one-hour variety special, called The Paul Simon Special.
“Mrs Robinson”
“Mrs. Robinson” live from the Concert in Central Park, 1981
“Mrs. Robinson” live in NYC, 2003
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