Then a reworked version really took off, finally topping the charts in January 1966. Yet, slowly, radio stations began playing The Sound Of Silence, first in Boston then in other parts of the country, when students went home during the holidays and requested the song on their local stations. The name Simon & Garfunkel was agreed upon, despite concerns that it sounded like a law firm, and they recorded an album, Wednesday Morning, 3AM, which was ignored by the press when it was released in November 1964, so Simon and Garfunkel went their separate ways once more. Garfunkel was impressed by his friend’s new songs, and on the basis of one song in particular, The Sound Of Silence, Columbia signed them. By then, Simon had finished university and had been performing in folk clubs in England, while Garfunkel was an architecture student but had put out some records. Simon and Garfunkel wouldn’t have a meaningful conversation until they ran into each other again in the summer of 1963. ‘I used to say to him, “Don’t stand next to me at the party – people will think we’re salt and pepper shakers,”’ she joked. ‘I remember during a photo session Artie said, “No matter what happens, I’ll always be taller than you.” Did that hurt? I guess it hurt enough for me to remember 60 years later.’Ĭarrie Fisher, the Star Wars star with whom Simon had a long-term relationship and a short-term marriage, was the same size as him. Simon told me in 2017 that he had been sensitive about his short stature all the way back to the Tom & Jerry days. The split caused a wound so deep in Garfunkel that it would never heal fully.ĭespite his huge success, Simon would often struggle with negative feelings and saw psychiatrists several timesīut there was resentment on both sides. The Paul Simon single and the new Tom & Jerry singles all flopped, so by the autumn of 1958, Tom & Jerry were history, personally and professionally. Garfunkel knew he had a wonderful voice but also that he was dependent on Simon for songs, which meant that Simon had all the power while he would always be in danger of being tossed aside He was crushed when he found out he felt betrayed. The mistake he and Prosen made – and it was a massive one – was not telling Garfunkel about their plan. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Simon agreed and recorded two songs. These would be in addition to the Tom & Jerry record. When the record was a minor hit, reaching number 49 in the charts, Prosen asked Simon if he had any songs for the second single, and then suggested to him that he could record a couple of tunes on his own. Sid Prosen, boss of a small label called Big Records, liked the song and released it after renaming the pair Tom & Jerry. They soon felt good enough about their music to take it public by singing in school assemblies, and, on October 16, 1957, three days after Simon’s 16th birthday, they went into a Manhattan studio and recorded an Everly Brothers-type number called Hey Schoolgirl. They would record their vocals to measure how well their voices blended, and as Simon got more comfortable on the guitar, he and Garfunkel raised their ambitions again by trying to write their own songs – almost always patterned after something they had heard on the radio. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel first started getting together to sing after they had performed in a school production of Alice In Wonderland. How had it come to this for two old friends, who had met at the age of 11 and gone on to become one of the best-selling groups of their generation? ‘I genuinely believed that if there had been a knife on the table, one of them would have used it,’ Rascoff said. Joseph Rascoff, Simon’s business manager, literally had to position himself between the pair’s dressing rooms to guard against trouble. The review opened a lot of old wounds and the atmosphere backstage became toxic. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel first started getting together to sing at age 11 after they had performed in a school production of Alice In Wonderland
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