(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover)
Sun 29 March 2026 21:00, UK
There was no chance that Paul Simon was going to be able to keep Simon and Garfunkel alive for very long after the 1960s had ended.
Being in a duo is always a lot more difficult than being in a band, and while each of them complemented each other’s voice perfectly whenever Simon came out with a song, it was all about the extra-curricular stuff around the songs that they had a problem with. But even though there isn’t a single song that Simon wasn’t proud of by the time they finished, it’s not like there weren’t a few projects that he wished he could have taken back if he could.
Then again, when anyone starts writing that young, there are bound to be a few pieces of their work that aren’t necessarily perfect. Simon knew that ‘The Sound of Silence’ was going to be around forever when he finished it, but since it was from the same album that had arrangements of songs like ‘Go Tell it On the Mountain’, it’s not like he was completely confident in himself yet. It took a few more records before he felt that things were great, and by Bookends, he felt that he could do no wrong when it came to their voices.
But when looking at the greater problems in the world, it’s not like both of them saw eye to eye on everything. He and Art Garfunkel each had different thoughts about what was going on during the Vietnam War, and while they could have easily put their differences aside when it came to making a decent song, Simon wasn’t willing to roll over when working on Bridge Over Troubled Water.
He had his chance to make the greatest songs of his career, and while you can hear where he was starting to go in his solo career with more exotic songs like ‘El Condor Pasa’, not everything sat well with Garfunkel. He vetoed a song that Simon wrote about Richard Nixon during this time, but aside from their own personal differences, the movie Catch 22 didn’t exactly do them any favours with Garfunkel being absent from many of the album sessions and leaving Simon by himself.
If you look at the finer details, though, the duo could have managed to stay in each other’s orbit had Simon been cast in the movie as well. The original plan was to have both of them in the movie, but after the script started getting pared down more and more, Simon’s role seemed to be less and less necessary. The guitarist was more than happy to get back to work, but seeing how he and his friend fell out so quickly afterwards, he felt that he could have done without the movie throwing a wrench into things.
It wasn’t going to suddenly heal their friendship, but Simon felt the need to at least mention the effect the movie had on them, saying, “I guess the bigger picture was that him flying down to Mexico (to film Catch 22) was a disappointment I was trying to block out. Artie went to Mexico and that was the main reason Simon & Garfunkel broke up. But I think we would have broken up anyway. All duos do.”
But if we look at what could have been, it might have been a lot easier if the duo had made songs for the film in between their next record. Bookends does feel like two separate albums in one thanks to the songs they wrote for The Graduate, but if you look at those tunes, it’s not like Simon was incapable of making some fantastic tracks even if he was writing for a work job like ‘Mrs Robinson’.
Even if they had managed to pull something together for the film, though, the writing was on the all that they needed to separate. Both of them were still at the top of their game from a musical perspective, but when they are both on a completely different creative page, you can’t expect them to play nice with each other when they’re both trying to shoehorn in their own ideas into the mix.
