FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
about Simon & Garfunkel, I have been listening back to their studio albums. Undoubtedly one of the greatest duos ever, the sensational vocal blends of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel is sublime and timeless. With genius songwriting from Simon, it is no wonder the five studio albums from them are so good! Their third album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, is one that you definitely should get on vinyl. Released on 24th October, 1966, Simon & Garfunkel regrouped after a time apart while Columbia issued their second album, a rushed collection titled Sounds of Silence. On Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, they spent almost three months in the studio - for the first time, they employed a perfectionist nature both in terms of instrumentation and production. The album largely consists of songs that were mostly written during Paul Simon's period in England the previous year. It is a magnificent collection of songs that includes Scarborough Fair/Canticle, Homeward Bound and The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy). It is hard to say which Simon & Garfunkel album is the best. In terms of the sheer breadth of sounds and lyrics, they do not come much better than Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. I have been listening back over the past week or two. The 1966 album is coming up to its fifty-fifth anniversary.
It still sounds amazing and utterly compelling all these years later! Before I wrap it up, I am putting together a couple of reviews. Critics were keen – upon its release and in the years since – to praise the exceptional Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. In an extensive and deep review, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“Simon & Garfunkel's first masterpiece, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was also the first album on which the duo, in tandem with engineer Roy Halee, exerted total control from beginning to end, right down to the mixing, and it is an achievement akin to the Beatles' Revolver or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, and just as personal and pointed as either of those records at their respective bests. After the frantic rush to put together an LP in just three weeks that characterized the Sounds of Silence album early in 1966, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme came together over a longer gestation period of about three months, an uncommonly extended period of recording in those days, but it gave the duo a chance to develop and shape the songs the way they wanted them. The album opens with one of the last vestiges of Paul Simon's stay in England, "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" -- the latter was the duo's adaptation of a centuries-old English folk song in an arrangement that Simon had learned from Martin Carthy. The two transformed the song into a daunting achievement in the studio, however, incorporating myriad vocal overdubs and utilizing a harpsichord, among other instruments, to embellish it, and also wove into its structure Simon's "The Side of a Hill," a gentle antiwar song that he had previously recorded on The Paul Simon Songbook in England. The sonic results were startling on their face, a record that was every bit as challenging in its way as "Good Vibrations," but the subliminal effect was even more profound, mixing a hauntingly beautiful antique melody, and a song about love in a peaceful, domestic setting, with a message about war and death; Simon & Garfunkel were never as political as, say, Peter, Paul & Mary or Joan Baez, but on this record they did bring the Vietnam war home.
The rest of the album was less imposing but just as beguiling -- audiences could revel in the play of Simon's mind (and Simon & Garfunkel's arranging skills) and his sense of wonder (and frustration) on "Patterns," and appreciate the sneering rock & roll-based social commentary "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine." Two of the most beautiful songs ever written about the simple joys of living, the languid "Cloudy" and bouncy "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," were no less seductive, and the album also included "Homeward Bound," their Top Five hit follow-up to "The Sound of Silence," which had actually been recorded at the sessions for that LP. No Simon & Garfunkel song elicits more difference of opinion than "The Dangling Conversation," making its LP debut here -- one camp regards it as hopelessly pretentious and precious in its literary name-dropping and rich string orchestra accompaniment, while another holds it as a finely articulate account of a couple grown distant and disconnected through their intellectual pretensions; emotionally, it is definitely the precursor to the more highly regarded "Overs" off the next album, and it resonated well on college campuses at the time, evoking images of graduate school couples drifting apart, but for all the beauty of the singing and the arrangement, it also seemed far removed from the experience of teenagers or any listeners not living a life surrounded by literature ("couplets out of rhyme" indeed!), and understandably only made the Top 30 on AM radio. "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" was a romantic idyll that presented Art Garfunkel at his most vulnerable sounding, anticipating such solo releases of his as "All I Know," while "Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall" was Simon at his most reflectively philosophical, dealing with age and its changes much as "Patterns" dealt with the struggle to change, with a dissonant note (literally) at the end that anticipated the style of the duo's next album.
"A Simple Desultory Philippic," which also started life in England more than a year earlier, was the team's Dylanesque fuzz tone-laden jape at folk-rock, and a statement of who they weren't, and remains, alongside Peter, Paul & Mary's "I Dig Rock & Roll Music," one of the best satires of its kind. And the last of Simon's English-period songs, "A Poem on the Underground Wall," seemed to sum up the tightrope walk that the duo did at almost every turn on this record at this point in their career -- built around a beautiful melody and gorgeous hooks, it was, nonetheless, a study in personal privation and desperation, the "sound of silence" heard from the inside out, a voice crying out. Brilliantly arranged in a sound that was as much rock as film music, but with the requisite acoustic guitars, and displaying a dazzling command and range of language, it could have ended the album. Instead, the duo offered "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night," a conceptual work that was a grim and ironic (and prophetic) comment on the state of the United States in 1966. In retrospect, it dated the album somewhat, but that final track, among the darkest album-closers of the 1960s, also proved that Simon & Garfunkel weren't afraid to get downbeat as well as serious for a purpose. Overall, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was the duo's album about youthful exuberance and alienation, and it proved perennially popular among older, more thoughtful high-school students and legions of college audiences across generations. [The August 2001 reissue offers not only the best sound ever heard on this album in any incarnation, but also a few bonuses -- a slightly extended mastering of "Cloudy" that gives the listener a high-harmony surprise in its fade; and, as actual bonus tracks, Simon's solo demos of "Patterns" and "A Poem on the Underground Wall." Raw and personal, they're startling in their intimacy and their directness, and offer a more intimate view of Paul Simon, the artist, than ever seen.]”.
There is so much history behind Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. I was not aware of the relevance of the 1966 in the context of the Folk scene in the U.S. The BBC reflect on this in their review of the masterful album:
“Forged in a crucible of dizzying change, Simon and Garfunkel’s second album reflected the social upheaval of the mid-60s while playing as substantial a part in folk rock’s evolution as Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Where Dylan was climbing into higher musical stratospheres to free himself from folk’s gravitational pull, Simon and Garfunkel were gently pulling it away from its finger-in-the-ear past, a less unpalatable option for traditionalist gatekeepers than Dylan’s electric revolution.
Not that the duo had any less to say about the modern world, with Parsley, Sage… marking Simon and Garfunkel out as counter-cultural spokesmen. Traditional opening track Scarborough Fair/Canticle, The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine and The 59th Street Song (Feelin’ Groovy) may seem slight on the surface, but their joy at merely being alive reflected the optimism of youth in a time of crisis.
On the flipside, with the Vietnam War rapidly escalating and the civil rights movement boiling over into raging confrontation, closing track 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night’s juxtaposition of the Christmas peace hymn with an increasingly grim newscast – announcing the overdose of comedian Lenny Bruce, student demonstrations, Martin Luther King’s move into Chicago, Richard Nixon’s claim that anti-war sentiment was the biggest hindrance to winning quickly in ’Nam – made their thoughts on America’s woes implacable.
The Dylan-mocking A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission) is cheekily disingenuous but, like The Sound of Silence a year before it and The Boxer many after, the existential questing of Homeward Bound and its less celebrated companion Patterns adds to the album’s creeping unease: within Paul Simon’s homesickness and self-doubt is a tear for the loss of less confusing times.
While hardly a groovy influence to drop, Simon’s craft and care helped set a template for literate, thoughtful songwriting, with a direct emotional eloquence Dylan often eschewed in pursuit of more visceral obfuscation. Art Garfunkel, meanwhile, possesses one of the most achingly beautiful voices of any genre. The talents of both haven’t been lost on Elbow’s Guy Garvey.
Over 40 years on, while the albums of many contemporaries (Joan Baez, Donovan, The Lovin’ Spoonful) seem like museum pieces, the boldest themes of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme are still worryingly pertinent today”.
I would encourage everyone to listen to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, as it is such a beautiful album where many of the songs and lyrics are pertinent today. Even though some of the songs made their way on the first Paul Simon solo album, I consider those tracks at their best on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. The more I listen to the Simon & Garfunkel album, the more that…
I love it.