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| Headline | What Bridge!? |
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| Author | Comment |
Forum guest
Mar-29-2010, 18:56 GMT
United Kingdom
 | I was reading the wikipedia on the song ´Bridge Over Troubled Water´ and it says the song was inspired by a bridge in oban and not by the connel bridge or the atlantic bridge. I am an oban resident and a Paul Simon fan and i found this very surprising as i had no clue that paul simon had even been to oban. I for this reason am suspicious of the truth in the article. Can anyone here tell me which bridge (if any) the song was inspired by?
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Bodo
Mar-29-2010, 20:14 GMT
Austria
 | It is new for me that it should have even been a real bridge - this is not a song about bridge-buildings.
What I know is that Paul Simon has taken this phrase from the whole sentence ´I will be a Bridge Over Troubled Water for you´, which some famous black reverent spoke at a prayer. So I see no sense in having a reference to a real bridge. |
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Scaaty
Mar-30-2010, 00:34 GMT
Ireland
 | I had bought a few songs from Paul Simon 1963 -1990 album on iTunes a while back, just taking songs that were of a different length to those I already had. And of course never really sat down to listen to them properly. Yesterday listening to the ipod (set on shuffle) iheard paul simon singing BTOW using words I´ve never heard before! it was a demo song from that album. Can´t say i thougt much of them -they were quite twee and even predictable which are not adjectives you´d normally associate with Simon lyrics, but more like what you´d expect from a sermon. |
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Helen
Mar-30-2010, 01:15 GMT
Australia
 | I Love this interview with Paul by Playboy in 1984 after ´Hearts And Bones´. He´s so intelligent and open here. He talks a bit about Bridge in part 3.
"I´ve burst into tears uncontrollably I was saying something that I had been keeping hidden for a long time.
Playboy : What´s an example?
Simon : In a way, I´m embarrassed to say the one that comes to mind, because now I´ve disowned the song, it´s such a cliché. But when I wrote and first sang the line "Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water, I will lay me down," it happened. Then line came all at once. I didn´t know it was coming. What I was saying was, "I´m going to do this act of generosity for you."
Playboy : For whom?
Simon : Well, I suspect I was thinking of Peggy. That I would lie down and be a bridge for her. It was an overwhelming feeling coupled with that melody. Now it´s been sung so many times by so many people that I have no feeling whatsoever for it. But at the moment of creation, it was huge. |
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Helen
Mar-30-2010, 01:16 GMT
Australia
| Link for the interview is
http://willybrauch.de/In_Their_Own_Words/paulsimon
1.htm
click tabs for parts 2, 3, 4 |
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Bodo
Mar-30-2010, 17:50 GMT
Austria
| Thanks Helen
Well, that sounds different to what Paul said in 1973 (or around that year) at the Dick Cavett show, but anyway, he does not mention where the line ´bridge over trouble water´ comes from in that 1984 interview, or did he? |
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Helen
Mar-30-2010, 22:32 GMT
Australia
| No mention of a real bridge. Would they want to put a plaque there? |
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