“The Sound of Silence”, originally “The Sounds of Silence”, is a song by the American music duo Simon & Garfunkel. The song was written by Paul Simon over several months in 1963 and 1964. The song was recorded in March 1964 at Columbia Studios in New York City for inclusion on their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. In 1965, the song began to attract airplay at radio stations in Boston, Massachusetts, and throughout Florida. The growing airplay led Tom Wilson, the song’s producer, to remix the track, overdubbing electric instruments and drums. Simon & Garfunkel were not informed of the song’s remix until after its release. The single was released in September 1965. The song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending January 1, 1966, leading the duo to reunite and hastily record their second album, which Columbia titled Sounds of Silence in an attempt to capitalize on the song’s success. (More from Wikipedia)
Not all of the news is bad, however. Sometimes “what might have been” turns out to be more than anyone could ever have expected. The history behind the glorious hit single “The Sounds of Silence” (now identified as “The Sound of Silence”) by Simon and Garfunkel requires me, as usual, to make a big detour in the process, and to pick up the Bob Dylan story from earlier in this post.
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Meanwhile, during March 1964, Tom Wilson was the producer for the first album by Simon and Garfunkel, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Like Bob Dylan’s first album, it was a fairly conventional folk album with numerous traditional folk songs and cover songs, including “The Times They Are A-Changin’”; there were only four songs that had been written by Paul Simon.
Anyway, in its initial release in October 1964, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. was unsuccessful, possibly overshadowed by the Beatles. Of one song on the album, “The Sounds of Silence” – performed acoustically, like all the rest – Art Garfunkel wrote in the liner notes: “‘The Sounds of Silence’ is a major work. We were looking for a song on a larger scale, but this is more than either of us expected.”
Wikipedia describes what happened next: “On June 15, 1965, immediately after the recording session of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, [Tom] Wilson took the original acoustically instrumented track of Simon and Garfunkel’s 1964 version, and overdubbed the recording with electric guitar (played by Al Gorgoni and Vinnie Bell), electric bass (Joe Mack), and drums (Buddy Salzman), and released it as a single without consulting [Paul] Simon or [Art] Garfunkel. The lack of consultation with Simon and Garfunkel on Wilson’s re-mix was because, although still contracted to Columbia Records at the time, the musical duo at that time was no longer a ‘working entity’. Roy Halee was the recording engineer, who in spirit with the success of the Byrds and their success formula in folk rock, introduced an echo chamber effect into the song. Al Gorgoni later would reflect that this echo effect worked well on the finished recording, but would dislike the electric guitar work they technically superimposed on the original acoustic piece.”
“The Sounds of Silence” began climbing the charts and was the #1 single in the country for the first three weeks of 1966 (sandwiched between a Dave Clark Five song and a Beatles song). Simon and Garfunkel began working together again and went on to have one of the most storied careers in American popular music. “The Sounds of Silence” is among several Simon and Garfunkel songs that were used in the 1967 film The Graduate; using existing songs in a soundtrack was unusual in those days, though it is commonplace now. In 1999, BMI said that “The Sounds of Silence” was the 18th most performed song of the 20th Century.
(June 2013/2)
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Items: The Sounds of Silence
