Credit: Far Out / Columbia Records / ABC Television
November 1st, 2026 · 8:00pm GMT
Unless you happen to be a Rolling Stone, the idea of becoming a musician for the riches is like joining the army to ‘see the world’; in other words, you’re probably going to have a rather miserable time. Still, you probably wouldn’t expect to be cheated out of your first big payday by beloved TV personality Dick Clark.
Much like how Top of the Pops was the place where the UK population got their fix of new music for decades, American Bandstand was an institution of music and television in America from 1952 right through to 1989, and Dick Clark was the host.
During those decades, viewers tuned in to see everybody from The Beach Boys, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chubby Checker to Madonna, Devo, and Talking Heads. You can essentially track the development of pop music in America by scrubbing through the archives of Bandstand episodes.
Given the legendary reputation of his show and the invaluable public service it provided to the TV audiences of the States, it is easy to view Dick Clark himself as a kind of musical guru, willing to give a leg-up to up-and-coming artists. However, the reality of American Bandstand wasn’t quite so glamorous, at least according to Paul Simon.
Simon and Garfunkel would become a regular sound on the show during the 1960s, as their chart prowess demanded they play over the standings for black-and-white audiences to dance to. Their only live performance on the show, however, happened way back in 1957, when it was in its first national series, and Simon and Garfunkel were still seven years away from the release of their debut LP.
At that time, the pair were operating under the name Tom and Jerry, and their sound was less folk-oriented and more indebted to the prevailing rock ‘n’ roll sounds of the day. They performed their debut single ‘Hey, Schoolgirl’ on Dick Clark’s show, and Paul Simon later called it “It was a teenage dream,” per Howard Stern.
Nevertheless, the pair soon came to find that Clark’s programme wasn’t as lucrative as they had hoped. In fact, the presenter regularly took payments from artists in exchange for his televisual exposure, and occasionally ended up with royalty credits for the songs themselves. As Simon recalled, “The union scale was like $221, the idea that we were gonna get paid $221 a piece; we were thrilled”.
Further reading: From The Vault
“You had to sign the check over to [Dick],” he went on. “You endorsed the check, and he kept it”. In other words, the first big pay packet that he was due for his performance, alongside that of Art Garfunkel, was snatched away from the pair by the very person that gave them that opportunity.
In the long run, it is fair to say that Simon made that money back and then some, with Simon and Garfunkel becoming one of the most successful acts of the 1960s. However, in Dick Clark’s eyes, they were little more than a teenage songwriting duo who, seemingly, he felt okay exploiting for their pay cheque.
There is no telling how many similarly young and naive performers came into the Bandstand studios over the years, without going on to amass the same success as Paul Simon.
