Simon & Garfunkel hadn’t yet fully reached the height of their powers when Sounds of Silence was released. In fact, the duo had toiled in relative obscurity for nearly a decade prior. The childhood friends met and wrote their first song together in sixth grade, were signed to their first record contract at the age of 15, performed as “Tom & Jerry” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand alongside the legendary Jerry Lee Lewis, pivoted to folk music and changed their name to “Kane & Garr” in the 60’s, paired up with producer Tom Wilson, released their debut album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. as Simon & Garfunkel, and then subsequently went their separate ways for college after their debut flopped with only 3,000 copies sold.
That could have been the end of the ampersand-loving duo, but fate struck when the acoustic version of “Sounds of Silence” from their first album was picked up on East Coast college radio. Tom Wilson caught wind of this, and inspired by the success he had in transitioning a folk Bob Dylan to an electric sound with his hit single “Like A Rolling Stone”, brought in guitarist Al Gorgoni and drummer Bobby Gregg from the Dylan sessions, added guitarist Vinnie Bell and bassist Bob Bushnell, and overdubbed that recording on top of Simon & Garfunkel’s unevenly timed original recording. The new single was a smash hit and immediately shot to the top of the Billboard 100.
The craziest thing about this whole story is that both Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were completely unaware of this overdubbed version until they saw their song on top of the charts. Seriously. Completely, blissfully unaware. This was apparently rather commonplace in the 60’s when bands were no longer working entities, but it seems absolutely nuts in retrospect.
The rest is history– the song hit #1, their record label CBS rushed an order for a full-length, Sounds of Silence was hastily recorded in three weeks, rush-released the next, sold like hotcakes, and Simon & Garfunkel would go on to become one of the most iconic folk groups in history.
As an album Sounds of Silence doesn’t have the end to end horsepower of Bookends or Bridge Over Troubled Water (the latter being my favorite album of theirs)– while it contains stone cold classics like “I Am A Rock”, “Kathy’s Song”, and the eponymous title track, the songwriting is a little spotty at points and it’s clear that Paul Simon hadn’t fully formed into one of the greatest songwriters of all-time and graced us with Graceland when he embarked on his solo career in the 70’s.
But Sounds of Silence was where it all started, the genesis, the stroke of luck that launched a thousand ships. And without it, the face of folk would have never been the same.
Standout Songs: “I Am A Rock”, “A Most Peculiar Man”, “Kathy’s Song”, “The Sound of Silence”
