Paul Simon’s aspirations for his musical collaboration with Art Garfunkel far exceeded their success, which surpassed his wildest dreams. Naturally, the project evolved into something more significant than any individual involved, and Simon found himself unable to connect with one of their songs.
While widespread success is the end goal for most artists, sometimes, it can be more enticing in dreams than when reality beckons. Before Simon and Garfunkel unexpectedly hit the big time, Simon was content with his career after moving to the United Kingdom, immersing himself within the folk community, and starting afresh.
The duo released their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., in 1964, but it failed to gain attention, and they moved on to pastures new. However, when ‘The Sound of Silence’ started to gain traction on radio, leading to a commercial re-release, which topped the charts, Simon returned from England to reunite with Garfunkel.
Although it wasn’t in his plans to reignite Simon & Garfunkel, it would have been an unthinkable tragedy if the duo hadn’t seen how far they could take their career. For a while, the good times carried on rolling; they sold millions more copies, and the duo made four more albums before parting ways in 1970 following Bridge Over Troubled Water.
The album’s title track became a number-one hit for the group but was made during a challenging time for the pair, and two years after its release, Simon disowned the song. During an interview with the New York Times in 1972, the singer-songwriter, who’d now embarked on a solo career, explained why he could no longer relate to ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’.
He told the publication: “That song was bigger than anyone expected, especially me. I hear it now and sometimes I can’t even remember when I wrote it. It doesn’t feel attached to me at all. But at the time there was no sense that it would be a hit of such enormous proportions.”
“We were just working on a record, and we were fighting. Our patience was running out and there was sort of vaguely the presence of Mike Nichols around, which was disconcerting to me,” Simon continued.
By this stage, Simon had moved on from Simon and Garfunkel, despite reuniting for a one-off appearance, and wanted to focus primarily on his solo career.
They were both opinionated artists, who had become crippled by creative differences, and the recording process was an arduous chore for Simon. Furthermore, their status following ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ was another reason he needed to escape the mechanism his songs had built.
In the same interview, he explained: “Simon and Garfunkel had become so big it was scary. But we were still two individuals, and after a certain point, it became very hard to take criticism from each other. I used to feel, ‘I don’t have to audition my songs for anyone.’ I didn’t want to have to say to Artie, ‘Would you like to sing this song?’ I wanted to say, ‘Here’s the song; let’s do it.’”
While Simon’s opinion on ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ may have changed over the last 50 years, in 1972, he felt nothing but apathy towards the song.
The Simon and Garfunkel classic disowned by Paul Simon
