Simon & Garfunkel´s crowning masterpiece will be celebrated in March with BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER: 40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION. This deluxe DVD+CD set includes the original 11-song album plus the duo´s never-before-commercially-available ´Songs Of America´ CBS television special from 1969 on DVD. The DVD will also include The Harmony Game: The Making of Bridge Over Troubled Water, a newly-created documentary on Bridge Over Troubled Water featuring new interviews with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. The package will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets starting March 8, 2011, through Columbia/Legacy, a division of SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.
BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER: 40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION´s full-color, 24-page booklet will include rare photography, memorabilia, and separate liner note essays that will provide overviews of the album production (written by former A&R executive and current TV music supervisor Michael Hill) and the ´Songs Of America´ TV special (written by Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Anthony DeCurtis).
´Songs Of America´ (running time approximately 70 minutes) is a beautiful documentary that had its first and only broadcast November 30, 1969, on the CBS television network. The special features footage of Simon & Garfunkel on stage, in the recording studio, and traveling on tour. Interviews and performances are intertwined with news footage from the period, some of it deemed too controversial by original sponsor Bell Atlantic (a subsidiary of AT&T), who in the end refused to air it. Included is footage from the period of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, activist Cesar Chavez, and the Poor People´s March on Washington. The film is a fascinating depiction of two artists struggling to define their role within a society that is splintering apart.
Alongside ´Songs Of America´ on the DVD will be the newly-created documentary, The Harmony Game: The Making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. This insightful feature tells the story behind Simon and Garfunkel´s last studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water. The album has its legacy shrouded in rock ´n´ roll mythology with legendary tales of inspiration, innovation and separation. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel share the journey in their own words and reflect back on its impact 40 years later. Also featured in the documentary are several of the duo´s collaborators from the period: Roy Halee (co-producer/engineer), Hal Blaine (drums), Joe Osborn (bass guitar), Jimmie Haskell (arranger), Mort Lewis (manager), and Charles Grodin (director of the ´Songs Of America´ documentary). The feature includes never-before-seen footage, photos and memorabilia.
Simon & Garfunkel reportedly spent more than 800 hours over a two-year span recording what would be their final studio album together. The title single ´Bridge Over Troubled Water´ won an unprecedented five Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Contemporary Song, Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s), and Best Engineered Recording, with Bridge Over Troubled Water winning the top award as Album Of the Year. (In 1998, ´Bridge Over Troubled Water´ was voted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame, one of many awards that the song and album have won around the world over the past four decades.)
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