Two and a half decades after Graceland, Simon reminded us why he remained a master. ![]() But Side One was an exquisite suite of urgency and remembering – the distance and despair within families in “Save the Life of My Child,” the passing of this nation’s ideals in “America” – ending with the eerie, prophetic intimacy of “Old Friends” and the early warning in “Bookends Theme.” “Preserve your memories,” the duo sang. ![]() Side Two was ultimately an unrelated melange of recent singles. These high school pals from Queens were three years into their stardom – the biggest, most creatively ambitious act to come out of the folk revival since Bob Dylan – when they made this classic, gorgeous and unprecedented album: a look back at the Sixties even before they ended, as hard lessons and now-distant dreams. Here, in the wake of Simon’s recent 75th birthday, is our comprehensive guide to his life’s work, from 1957 up through the present. From precocious teen pop upstart in the Fifties to prophetic folk icon in the Sixties and globalist-minded, breathtakingly poetic solo singer-songwriter in the Seventies, Eighties and beyond, he has consistently found ways to both remain relevant and reinvent his sound. Bookends is the fourth studio album by American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel.For more than five decades, Paul Simon has exerted a massive influence over the American musical landscape. Produced by Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel and Roy Halee, the album was released on April 3, 1968, in the United States by Columbia Records. The duo had risen to fame two years prior with the albums Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and the soundtrack album for the 1967 film The Graduate.īookends is a concept album that explores a life journey from childhood to old age. Side one of the album marks successive stages in life, the theme serving as bookends to the life cycle. Side two largely consists of previously-released singles and of unused material for The Graduate soundtrack. Simon's lyrics concern youth, disillusionment, relationships, old age, and mortality. Much of the material was crafted alongside producer John Simon (no relation), who joined the recording when Paul Simon suffered from writer's block. The album was recorded gradually over the period of a year, with production speeding up around the later months of 1967. Initial sales for Bookends were substantial in the US, and the album produced the number-one single " Mrs. ![]() The album sold well in the US and in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at number one. Bookends was considered a breakthrough for the duo, placing them on the same level as artists such as Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones at the forefront of the cultural movement in the 1960s. The album has continued to receive critical acclaim and is debated by critics as to whether it or Bridge Over Troubled Water is Simon & Garfunkel's best album. Simon & Garfunkel first burst onto the American scene when their hit single " The Sound of Silence" made waves on radio in 1965, during a period in which the duo had broken up due to the failure of their debut release, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Following another release, Sounds of Silence (1965), the duo recorded and released Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), which brought new critical and commercial success to the duo. Simon, then 25, felt he had finally "made it" into an upper echelon of rock and roll, while most importantly retaining artistic integrity ("making him spiritually closer to Bob Dylan than to, say, Bobby Darin", wrote biographer Marc Eliot).
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