There are many parallels between the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel.
One is the fact that both groups recorded songs about companionship
later in one's life. When I'm 64 is bouncy and optimistic, and
it's a benchmark that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have now passed
(though ironically, 64 was a pretty crummy year for Sir Paul
relationship-wise). Old Friends, by contrast, is wistful and melancholy; its central characters seem about 30 years older than those in When I'm 64
instead of just 6. But while they muse about "how terribly strange" it
is to be 70, there is gentle solace to be found in each other's company.
In Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends, Pete Fornatale explores the
lifelong friendship of the two singers, particularly through the lens
of what he considers to be their greatest album.
Simon and
Garfunkel are my all-time favorite band, so when I found out about this
book, I was anxious to read it, and I figure a volume that so eloquently
ruminates on the ins and outs of two of my musical heroes was a good
choice for my 2100th review. I've read many articles about the band as
well as the biography by Victoria Kingston, which delves more into their
personal lives and post-Simon and Garfunkel careers than this one does.
Fornatale is, as the cover so humbly states, a "legendary New York disk
jockey". Not so legendary that I ever heard of him before picking up
this book, but I'll give him a pass because his work is excellent, and
he brings to it both the affection of a friend and fan and the insight
of a music expert. His writing style is literary but accessible, and I
breezed right through the 120-plus pages of the attractive little
hardcover, which is small enough to fit in my purse.
Along with the introduction and afterward, there are eight chapters. The first, "Daddy, What's a Concept Album?",
is the least Simon and Garfunkel-centric of the chapters, as it focuses
mostly on the history of that form in its various incarnations. Among
early concept albums that might not have been specifically noted as
such, he mentions Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads and several
albums by Frank Sinatra, while pointing out that just about every
Christmas album ever recorded is essentially a concept album. It isn't
until the end of the chapter that he discusses Bookends, claiming it "elevated the grammar and vocabulary of popular music."
In the next chapter, The Early Years,
Fornatale chronicles the men's early lives and musical influences.
Throughout the book he includes many reflections by the singers
themselves, and these are quite revealing. For instance, though I've
heard them talk about the music they listened to as kids, I never knew
that the songs that turned them on to rock and roll were Earth Angel by the Penguins (for Art) and "Gee" by the Crows (for Paul). Other territory is more familiar: their roles in a sixth-grade Alice in Wonderland
play, their one-hit wonder days as Tom and Jerry, their first major
break-up (evidently because Art was hurt that Paul made a solo record).
Fornatale mentions a lot of the tracks I discovered on the album Before the Fame,
which is a charming piece of history for the serious enthusiast but
certainly not up to the quality of the music they began to produce
together several years later.
In the third, fourth, fifth and sixth chapters (Folk, Folk Rock, 1967 and The Graduate) Fornatale provides details on the making of Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., Sounds of Silence, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and the soundtrack of The Graduate,
often offering his analysis of the songs in a manner that seems
informed rather than merely his subjective musings. Since most of my
favorite music stems from the sixties or early seventies, I appreciated
the fact that Fornatale mentions many other artists as his way of
placing Simon and Garfunkel more fully into a cultural context. The
Beatles, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, the Weavers and Peter Paul and Mary
are just a few of the musicians who pop up, and of course, he has plenty
to say about Paul and Art's primary influences, the Everly Brothers.
Fornatale sets the stage for the seventh chapter, the in-depth discussion of Bookends
around which the whole book is based, by pointing out the maelstrom of
climactic events that occurred in 1968, most notably the assassination
of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just a day after the album was released.
Fornatale also bemoans the fact that on CDs, there is no side one and
side two, which lessens the impact of this particular album since only
the first side is part of the "concept". He also complains that the
covers are so much smaller, making the stark black and white image of
the duo less striking.
Fornatale gives every track on the
album special consideration while exploring overarching themes such as
youth, isolation, old age and, of course, friendship. He talks about how
the songs are both incredibly personal and tap into universal emotions
and experiences. Sprinkled throughout the chapter are anecdotes from
various people associated with the project in one way or another. One
story I found especially interesting was a reflection by Mike Nichols on
how he wound up with the ending shot of The Graduate, whose feeling of jubilant journeying morphs into blank confusion, a process Fornatale compares to the progress of the song America. The discussion of side two yielded the revelation that At the Zoo
was a controversial song when it came out, owing to references to
turned-on hamsters and drunken zookeepers. A shame, since that's one of
the few genuinely cheerful songs Simon and Garfunkel ever recorded!
Despite the general melancholy of Bookends, it was the
centerpiece of what may be considered Simon and Garfunkel's biggest
year; at one point in 1968, the top three albums on the charts were all
by Simon and Garfunkel.
Only one chapter, cleverly titled Post-Graduate,
has much to say about Paul and Art's lives for the past 40 years, and
even then it's almost exclusively in the context of their interaction
with one another. It's in this chapter that Fornatale makes the pointed
observation that Bridge Over Troubled Water, generally considered
Simon and Garfunkel's best album, is "more a documentation of a
partnership being shredded rather than pulled together." But he doesn't
conclude with that severing of a long-held friendship. Instead, he takes
readers to Paul's reflection on the 1981 reunion concert in which he
acknowledges that the sight of Simon and Garfunkel reuniting was
powerfully symbolic for a lot of people, an indication that "wounds can
be healed, things can go back to the way they were. Life has a happy
ending." In light of that, the vision of Paul and Art sitting next to
each other on a park bench three years from now, quietly enjoying one
another's company, seems all the more probable. For this Simon and
Garfunkel fan, that's a scene worth hoping for, and this is a book well
worth reading.
