Bookends

Certain Songs #2216: Simon & Garfunkel – “Mrs. Robinson”

November 1, 2021 by Jim Connelly

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.

Certain Songs #2215: Simon & Garfunkel – “Fakin’ It”

October 30, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bookends
Year: 1967

. . .

During the entire year of 1967, when their peers were releasing at least one, sometimes two albums per year — plus accompanying non-album singles — Simon & Garfunkel put out a grand total of two singles. There were a few reasons for this: Paul Simon had become caught up in the seriousization of rock ‘n’ roll, and decided to focus on album writing instead of single writing. At the same time, he ran into a case of writers block, These two things were probably somewhat related, as raising your ambitions means that every outpouring from your muse is that much more suspect.

Also, he’d been roped into contributing to the soundtrack for Mike Nichol’s The Graduate, which — well, let’s talk about that in the next post..

Certain Songs #2214: Simon & Garfunkel – “A Hazy Shade of Winter”

October 29, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bookends
Year: 1966

. . .

“A Hazy Shade of Winter” was originally recorded for Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album, but at some point, they decided to instead release it as a single, perhaps figuring that a more rock-and-roll oriented song would do better than their previous single, the chamber-pop “The Dangling Conversation,” which was their first single not to go top 5, stalling out at a (relatively) dismal 25.

And so, based upon a cooly dynamic Paul Simon guitar riff and a relentless double-time drum part by Hal Blaine — which either he or Art Garfunkel augmented by stealing the tink-tink-tink three-beat tambourine offbeat from “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” giving the whole thing the satisfying thwacka-thwacka-tink-tink-tink, thwacka-thwacka-tink-tink-tink which drove the earlier song.