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| Headline | Sound of Silence |
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| Author | Comment |
Rosemary N Time
Aug-04-2005, 16:02 GMT
IP:
United Kingdom
 | Here´s some information just received from the "Fancy That" department:
It has always been reported that the electric version of Sound of Silence was made without P Simon´s knowledge or participation. Usually the story is told as though it all happened behind his back in NY and he scarcely even knew about it till the single came out. But the b-side of that single was Somewhere They Can´t Find Me - a new electric recording in which Mr Simon and his chum Arthur most definitely participated because it´s a substantial remake of Wednesday Morning 3AM. The notes to the Columbia Studio Recordings 1964-70 say that Somewhere They Can´t Find Me was recorded in April 1965. The single Sound of Silence/Somewhere They Can´t Find Me was released in November 1965. So the single must have been planned for over 6 months before it was actually released. Thus even if S&G were not present during the electrifying of the a-side (which I don´t necessarily believe) they were clearly party to the decision to go for the electric market and had been involved in that little marketing ploy for months.
Fancy that. |
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Klausi
Aug-05-2005, 07:57 GMT
IP:
Germany
 | Surely not true! |
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John Whapshott
Aug-05-2005, 12:04 GMT
IP:
Sweden
 | I can certainly believe S&G knew about it. But consider these things. They were virtually unknown, and if they were told that adding electricity would boost their sales, would they object? But considering the amateurish way the guitars and drums are over-dubbed, it´s unlikely they were directly involved. I don´t think PS would have put up with such a mess if he had been there.
Why the denial? Well, when you thnik of the reception that Dylan got when he plugged his guitar into the mains, it´s not surprising that S&G were reluctant to admit their involvement. Folk singers who went electric were about as popular as Michael Jackson at a Scout camp. Hence, I hypothesise, they were involved with, or at least knew about, the electrifying of SoS, but denied it publicly.
As if it matters now...! |
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BingFrisby
Aug-05-2005, 18:21 GMT
IP:
United Kingdom
| On the overdubbed electric SOS version there is a part where the band plays too fast and S&Gs voices appear to have to catch up....have a careful listen as I forget which line it is....I prefer the original anyway....and the Songbook version better than that. |
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Klausi
Aug-05-2005, 18:39 GMT
IP:
Germany
| Again, this is a rumour.
SOS made the charts in late 1965.
It is said that Simon got the news when playing his songs in Denmark. Having recorded an album of his own months before in England.
That was long after the release of "Wednesday morning, 3 a.m.", which was a total flop.
There was a "disk-jockey" and a radion station in the US with a lot of requests for this (acoustic) song.
So Columbia produced the hit-single.
Simon was very eager to get popular in those times. Why should he have waited with an "Ace In The Hole"? |
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Rosemary N Time
Aug-05-2005, 21:52 GMT
IP:
United Kingdom
| A rumour? What is a rumour? That Paul Simon mysteriously "got the news when playing his songs in Denmark"? Or that he actively participated in the preparation of the single over a period of 6 months and then tried to deny it? One version of this story is very enchanting, with subtle allusions to Hamlet and the lovely upright honesty of small town Scandinavia in the 1960s. Unfortunately it´s not the true version of the story!! |
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Klausi
Aug-06-2005, 06:03 GMT
IP:
Germany
| Let`s try to rely on the facts. |
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Rosemary N Time
Aug-06-2005, 07:01 GMT
IP:
United Kingdom
| Yes, that´s exactly my point! |
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Mimi
Aug-06-2005, 12:46 GMT
IP:
Austria
 | The version that I know about it is that they knew about what was planned with the song and gave there o.k.and Art somewhere said, that he even heart the version before it was released but both did not think, that this was going to be a hit. But it was another try. And the big Surprise for them both was, that this new version was climbing the charts up to number 1.
Mimi |
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Klausi
Aug-07-2005, 05:19 GMT
IP:
Germany
| You can hear and see the true story on the "Born At The Right Time" - video of Simon, his career and this tour from both Simon and Garfunkel "first hand".
I can see no reason why they should have lied. |
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Klausi
Aug-07-2005, 06:17 GMT
IP:
Germany
| In this recommendable report (two hours running) of 1993 Simon says:
"A year after the song was released (on Wednesday morning 3 am) a radio station in Florida got requests for the song "The Sound of Silence".
Garfunkel: "This information came to New York and in the summer of 1965 THEY overdubbed it with electric guitars, drums etc. We knew nothing about this".
At the end of 1965 it became No 1 (not in the UK; there "Homeward Bound" was their first Top ten hit). |
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Rosemary in time
Aug-07-2005, 09:30 GMT
IP:
United Kingdom
| From the "Where My Heart Lies" bootleg, Paul Simon to audience at unidentified concert with Garfunkel at the beginning of September 1965:
"The man responsible for this whole folk pop movement is a guy by the name of Tom Wilson who is an A & R man - an artists and repertoire man - for Columbia Records in New York. And he is responsible for recording all of the folk people on Columbia Records, so he records Dylan and Pete Seeger and the Clancy Brothers. He records Art and myself, he records Judy Roderick - a few of the people. And it was his idea to put beat musicians behind Dylan, you see. So if there are any poison pen letters to be sent out Tom Wilson is the man to do it. Anyway there is, er - let me think . . . oh yeah - various groups in the States doing it - Johnny and his Mental Eunuchs and so forth. Well, being recorded by Wilson ourselves we have had very little chance to escape this thing, so what he said to us was: why don´t you do a folk pop record. You know. So we said: what the hell, we´re not selling any folk records, we might as well do that." |
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Klausi
Aug-09-2005, 15:32 GMT
IP:
Germany
| On the 3-cd-Old Friends collection you can see the recording dates:
SOS acoustic: 3.th of October 1964
Somewhere they can`t find me: 5.th of April 1965
We´ve got a groovy thing goin` baby : 5.th of April 1965. This was the B-side of Sounds Of Silence "electric", not "Somewhere they can`t find me".
So it is right, that S&G did two (very fast and fairly bad) "Folk -rock" songs on one day, probably because they were in New York and Folk-rock just became famous.
SOS "electric" was produced by Tom Wilson on 15.th of June 1965 without the knowledge of S&G and without any change of the original tape - that`s because there were the problems with the tempo. Simon got a copy in autumn 1965 sent by Wilson to him in England - he did not like it.
But this version got more and more popular at radio stations and then was released as a single. Usually disk-jockeys are given examples of singles before to test their hit-potential.
Release date was probably in September/early autumn 1965, it entered the charts in November, the album SOS was recorded in December. |
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Klausi
Aug-09-2005, 16:02 GMT
IP:
Germany
| Correction:
SOS acoustic was recorded on March 10, 1964. |
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Rosemary in time
Aug-09-2005, 17:29 GMT
IP:
United Kingdom
| Thank you for this excellent research, Klausi. Sources on the Internet disagree on whether SOS was released in September, October or November and on whether the b-side was Groovy Thing or Somewhere, but I am happy to accept your findings. To me it is very interesting that S&G had recorded two electric songs shortly before Tom Wilson electrified SOS. The story has always been told as if Paul & Art had no idea of what Tom Wilson was doing. The truth is clearly more complicated than that.
Two footnotes. First, was the famous Chez tape recorded during the April trip to NY on which the two folk rock songs were made? That would have been just before the Paul Simon Songbook was recorded in London in May.
Second, it is often said that SOS was recorded with the band that appeared on Bob Dylan´s first electric album Bringing It All Back Home. In fact Dylan was recording his next album - Highway 61 Revisited - on 15 June. The single Like A Rolling Stone was recorded with that band on the following day. |
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