My longtime Simon & Garfunkel fandom is re-awoken (thanks, Honda Accord commercials)

It started innocently enough: I was watching television one day when a Honda Accord car commercial came on. The background music was of a song I knew very well, a song I had first heard when I was about 13 years old and had grown to love more and more over the ensuing 30 years. The ad only featured the last part of the song: the vocalists’ multi-tracked voices singing, “Aaaaaaahhhh-aaahhh-aaahhh-aaahhhhhhh, heeeeere, I ammmm.” The song is “The Only Living Boy in New York” and the singers in question are Simon & Garfunkel, and hearing that song in that commercial soon led me to dig out my old Bridge Over Troubled Water CD, an album I hadn’t listened to in…well, I can’t remember how long. It has been a few years at least.

Not too long after digging out BOTW, I learned of a soon-to-be-released 40th anniversary edition of the album, containing the remastered music (actually, probably just a repackaged version of the 2001 remaster) plus a bonus DVD with S&G's infamous and very obscure 1969 television special, Songs for America , AND a brand-new "making of the album" documentary, The Harmony Game, featuring new interviews with Paul, Artie, Roy Halee (plus some of the surviving musicians who played on BOTW, famed Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine and bassist extraordinaire Joe Osborn. I knew right away that I would have to snag it--and I did. At $18.01 (including tax) it was worth every penny. Oh year, in my newly rediscovered Simon & Garfunkel frenzy, I finally picked up the 2001 CD remaster of Sounds of Silence, and the soon-to-be-deleted Warner remasters of Paul Simon's solo albums Hearts and Bones and Graceland.

As I mentioned, I first became interested in Simon & Garfunkel at age 13, back in 1981(or early '82), when I saw their reunion "Concert in Central Park" on HBO. I fell in love with their music right away, and was mesmerized by Art Garfunkel's halo of reddish-blonde frizzy hair. I'd love to be really cool and say that Led Zeppelin or The Kinks were the first 1960s/1970s era group with which I became obsessed, but I have to admit it was Simon & Garfunkel, the two relatively clean-cut folkies from Queens. I don't know how many times I re-watched "Concert in Central Park", but it had to have been close to a half-dozen viewings. My parents had two S&G albums, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme and Bridge Over Troubled Water. I distinctly remember listening to those records alone on the old Motorola console stereo. I was alternately haunted and mesmerized by such tunes as "The Boxer", "7 O'clock News/Silent Night", "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her", and "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" (to name just a few from those two great albums). When The Concert in Central Park album was released in February 1982, I made a beeline to Camelot Music, in Saginaw's Fashion Square Mall to buy my copy of the album. (Thankfully, I didn't have to wait four days to hitchhike from Saginaw, my parents drove me home). It was a double-album, so it was quite a financial investment for a 13 year-old. My mom insisted that we already possessed a couple Simon & Garfunkel albums that already contained many of the songs from the concert, so purchasing the Central Park album was unnecessary. I wasn't having any of that, though--I simply had to have that album.

I remember bringing that album home and immediately playing it on my crappy little record player in my bedroom, pouring over the lyrics in the booklet and gazing at the various photos of S&G, from different periods of their partnership--from the squeeky clean "Tom and Jerry" days of the late '50s to an awkward mid-'70s photo of the two standing uncomfortably side-by-side in front of Paul Simon's boyhood home in Queens. (I haven't listened to my copy of The Concert in Central Park in many years. The last time I heard the album was when someone played it several years ago at Schuler Books & Music, and it seemed a little bit limp to me).

Over the next few years, I bought the rest of the S&G discography (not too difficult to obtain since the duo only released five studio albums). As I've gotten older, my devotion to Simon & Garfunkel has ebbed and flowed. There were times in college and in my twenties when S&G didn't seem terribly cool, and other more hip and stylish music took precedent, but I always managed to return to Paul and Artie.

Lately, I've grown to truly appreciate how incredibly well-crafted their albums were. Paul Simon may not have been particularly prolific as a songwriter (and, in fact, may have set the record for writing the most songs that make reference to writer's block) but what he did create was almost always good-to-great). "The Harmony Game" (making of Bridge Over Troubled Water) documentary sheds considerable light on what master craftsman Simon, Garfunkel, and producer Roy Halee were in the studio. First of all, they worked with excellent studio musicians throughout their career--(one thing I've noticed while revisiting the S&G catalog is how impeccable the musicianship is throughout)--but this reached a pinnacle on BOTW. From Larry Knechtel's brilliant piano playing on the title song, to Joe Osborn's amazing, melodic bass work on "The Only Living Boy in New York" (a sound created by an 8-string bass), and Fred Carter, Jr's acoustic finger-picking on "The Boxer", the playing on this album is amazing, yet understated.

Simon, Garfunkel, and Halee's use of innovative recording techniques rivals that of The Beatles and George Martin. For example, the "aah-aah-aah, here I am" vocals of "The Only Living Boy in New York" were achieved--if I'm remembering this correctly--by having Paul and Art sing in a cathedral, then multitracking their voices. The effect is otherworldly and incredibly moving.

I've always read, from various critics over the years, that S&G were “safe” and/or “square.” I realize that with their oxford shirts, sweaters, and short (for the time) haircuts, (not to mention their gentle music), this assessment may be somewhat justified, but I see S&G as about the most quietly subversive group/band of the ‘60s. They made anti-war sentiments and a questioning of America's direction, during a time of war and unrest, more palatable to the establishment—i.e. the middle American moms and dads of the young hippies who were gathering at Monterey, Woodstock, and Altamont. Perhaps in a small way, Simon & Garfunkel's decency, intelligence, and accessible music helped to bridge some of the generation gap. They did it in a way that more overtly rebellious musicians like The Doors, Bob Dylan, or the Rolling Stones never could. S&G were literally "bridges over troubled water" during a difficult time in America.