Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme: One More Reason Simon and Garfunkel are True Loves of Mine

I am rather disgusted with myself that, huge Simon and Garfunkel fan that I am, I still haven’t reviewed all of their albums yet. I’m long past due for reviewing Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, Simon and Garfunkel’s third album, so here it is…

The liner notes for this album are probably my favorite of the five albums they produced as a duo. Written by Ralph J. Gleason, they praise Simon and Garfunkel for their tight musicianship, intellectual lyrics, and broad appeal. As he says, the “New Youth of the Rock Generation” has “taken the creation of the lyrics and the music out of the hands of the hacks and given it over to the poets.” This is a beautiful album which features several lesser-known songs from the middle of Simon and Garfunkel’s life as a duo.

Side One

Scarborough Fair / Canticle - One of Simon and Garfunkel’s most famous songs, this is an old English folk song which was introduced to Simon while he was living across the ocean. It features the counter-melody, Canticle, whose lyrics originally bore the title On the Side of a Hill and were written very early in Simon’s songwriting career and whose tune was written by Garfunkel to fit into the crevices left in Scarborough Fair’s melody. The result is a gorgeous track with tight-woven harmonies and a subtle anti-war tone (“Generals order their soldiers to kill and to fight for a cause they’ve long ago forgotten.”). Also the source of the album’s title.

Patterns - This one has an interesting beat to it. Very ethnic sounding, it focuses on the patterns that form our lives. Ultimately a pretty bleak song, it shows life as a grind filled with darkness and despair. “Like a rat in a maze, the path before me lies, and the pattern never alters until the rat dies.”

Cloudy - A drastic change from Patterns, this song is as light as the former is dark, as whimsical as the former is dire. It’s got the same sort of tone as Feelin’ Groovy, the much more well-known song that’s two tracks down, but has the airy feeling that Groovy, at least in the studio version, lacks. It makes me want to fling myself down in a meadow and go cloud-watching. “And it's a hitchhike a hundred miles. I'm a rag-a-muffin child, pointed finger-painted smile. I left my shadow waiting down the road for me a while.” There’s also an especially nice choral-sounding harmony on the verses and some really nice vocals by both Simon and Garfunkel here.

Homeward Bound - Great song about the desire of a wandering musician to return home. Probably pretty autobiographical. There is a plaque marking the train station in England where Paul Simon supposedly wrote this. I prefer the live version, but this track is great as well, just a little bit faster-paced. It does little to glamorize the life of a traveling singer, and its forlorn lyrics apply to anyone who’s far from home and missing the ones they love. “All my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity. Like emptiness in harmony, I need someone to comfort me.”

The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine - Featured in The Graduate, but you have to listen close to notice it. It plays as Benjamin and Elaine go to the drive-in movies and pokes fun at commercials promising the world with their products. “There’s no need to complain. We’ll eliminate your pain. We can neutralize your brain.” Interestingly, one of two songs from this album not included in the recent Old Friends 3-CD set.

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) - Just what it says. A good old-fashioned natural high. Paul came up with this one when he had been feeling really down in the dumps, then he happened to be walking along the 59th Street Bridge and suddenly the world started looking up. (I just got a heads-up that this wasn't really what the song is all about, but having read this explanation from Paul once, I'll leave it in; I'd rather interpret it as a natural high than an LSD trip!) A very peppy song, so a little too peppy for my liking here – I prefer the slower, more laid-back live version, which also is much less heavy on the percussion. It’s also this slower version which James Garfunkel frequently sings at his father’s concerts. A very feel-happy song. “Let the mornin’ time drop all its petals on me. Life, I love you. All is groovy.” (What a shame that word has fallen out of favor…)

Side Two

The Dangling Conversation - A gorgeous and very complicated song, considered one of Simon and Garfunkel’s most intellectual. So intellectual, in fact, that it was snubbed by many, including, eventually, Simon himself. But I find it a beautiful, despairing song about the drifting apart of two people. Could also apply to the two performers themselves and their often tumultuous relationship. The vocals are impeccable, and the lyrics are very finely crafted with references to the likes of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Freud. A very neat portion refers to the fact that the two are “verses out of rhythm, couplets out of rhyme, in syncopated time,” with Art providing the harmony on the last phrase in syncopation. One of their best and most unappreciated efforts.

Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall - Paul has also parted ways with this song, calling it too clichéd, but I like it a lot. It has that tone of despair that so many Simon and Garfunkel songs have (his twenties must have been a rough decade for Paul…), but it is overridden by optimism. Idle optimism, perhaps, but the tambourine-backed chorus is idealistic enough to allow us to forget that. Really great harmony in this song as well. I particularly like Art’s high “so” at the beginning of each chorus. “So I’ll continue to continue to pretend my life will never end and flowers never bend with the rainfall.”

A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission - I never quite got how a “desultory philippic” could be “simple”… As far as songs where Paul complains go, this one takes top billing as the whiniest and most paranoid. It’s just Paul here; I can’t see that Art had much of anything to do with this track, other than showing up towards the end as a verb (“I’ve been mothered, fathered, aunt and uncled, Roy Haleed and Art Garfunkeled.). He seems quite paranoid (“I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded Communist, ‘cause I’m left-handed; that’s the hand I use, well, never mind!” “I just discovered somebody’s tapped my phone.”) It’s basically a list of how everyone in the world is bringing him down, and it is droned Dylan-style (“everybody must get stoned”) rather than sung. Really weird song. The second not included in Old Friends.

For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her - A gorgeous song, though again I prefer the live version with Art’s soaring, impeccable vocals and again this is a song that Paul has now decided is for the birds. A tribute of sorts to Emily Dickinson, it’s hazy and dreamlike with lush lyrics (“pressed in organdy, clothed in crinoline of smoky burgundy softer than the rain”) that culminate in a happy ending.

A Poem on the Underground Wall - Art Garfunkel says this is the weirdest song Simon and Garfunkel ever did, though I think that distinction goes to Save the Life of My Child, from the Bookends album. This song tells the tale of a graffiti artist who rushes to complete his masterpiece before he is caught. The painting of a crude word becomes a religious experience (“he holds his crayon rosary tighter in his hand”). The live version on Old Friends features a lengthy, humorous introduction by Art Garfunkel detailing their own troubles with the famous four-letter word when they realized they had been shooting an album cover with it plainly in sight.

7 O’Clock News / Silent Night - Lovely, simple, and sad, this is simply Simon and Garfunkel harmonizing perfectly on the first verse of the beloved Christmas carol as a news broadcast reveals that peace on earth is far from the present reality. It is also the only song on which Art Garfunkel played an instrument; he accompanies their voices with a simple piano arrangement.

Altogether, a masterpiece of an album, leading into the last two albums, which compete for the title of most popular Simon and Garfunkel record. This is Simon and Garfunkel in their stride, not allowing producers to rush them or compromise their standards. The result is a tapestry of superior lyrics, instrumentation and vocals. As Gleason says in the conclusion of the liner notes, “The songs in this album are songs for all time.”