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Rating: Overwhelmed by the sudden and unexpected success of "The Sounds of Silence," Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel hastily reunited in 1965 to record an album that bore the same title as that song, achieving the same triumph of criticism and audience. Thanks to Simon's songwriting, quickly established as one of the most talented composers of the moment, Garfunkel's icy voice, and the electric touch - very Byrds of Mr. Tambourine Man, very Dylan of Highway 61, but after all, the year running is that 1965 - skillfully given by producer Bob Johnston, the duo had become a major star in the newly-born American folk rock firmament.
Moreover, the same folk rock label was a bit tight for the two, especially for Simon, who if he was a folksinger, it was of a decidedly peculiar and poetic variant. So at the beginning of 1966, when they had to start working on a new album, they found themselves at a crossroads, whether to continue on the path of the previous album, with the electrified folk pieces, or to change, at least in part, musical and other choices...
Thus Paul’s poetry consecrates a man, in whom he undoubtedly recognizes himself, as the central figure of his lyrics; a young man, raised in the city, still without a direction, a precise sense of life, constantly searching for points of reference. A young man who self-analyzes, discovering the inner fragmentation as a human condition, who shuns those who always have a truth in their pocket, from the intellectualoids who discuss nothingness, from the false myth of progress, and media massification. He not only shuns them, but he also mocks them, scratches them with sarcasm and irony, the only weapons he possesses. But behind these weapons, hides an insecure, uncertain, dreaming person, the only woman he can love is ideal and idealized, like a medieval troubadour’s, he doesn't know her but he knows that sooner or later he will discover her. He seeks simple but true, sincere pleasures, the affection and warmth of a domestic hearth rather than the miserable and precarious one of celebrity. To smile at an often gray present, he takes refuge in friendship, that pure and authentic one, that of childhood (which is in fact the one with Garfunkel), clinging to the happy memories of an already distant age. A man who like the contemporary one, struggles to be understood by those around him, and if to interact with others he writes on the subway walls, what is wrong, Simon wonders. He will be an alienated, others will say, but maybe, Paul wants to tell us, the whole society is alienated.
But "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" is not just poetry, it is also music.
In "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" and "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" we rediscover the ancient English folk tradition, learned by Simon the previous year during a stay in England where he had the chance to meet and play with distinguished musicians like Davy Graham (and during which many of the songs of this album and "Sounds of Silence" were written). But it also looks at home, at the New York backyard, as demonstrated by those delightful Broadway-style vignettes of "Cloudy" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song". Or it explores almost Morricone-like western sounds, as in "Patterns". But there are also more electric pieces, which however are perhaps the least inspired and most forced, with the exception of the tender "Homeward Bound", one of the gems of the album.
If "Sounds of Silence" was the album of worldwide success, "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" was that of consecration, granting Simon and Garfunkel that aura of artistic respectability that allowed them, at a time when one had to produce two albums a year, to release one every two. They were the soundtrack of a generation, in life and in cinema. For us, they are gems of a past era, telling thoughts, feelings, stories of two New York friends from the Sixties, ultimately not too different from ours.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Scarborough Fair / Canticle (03:11)
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
Remember me to one who lives there -
She once was a true love of mine.
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt:
(On the side of a hill in the deep forest green,)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
(Tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground,)
Without no seams nor needlework,
(Blankets and bedclothes, a child of the mountains)
Then she'll be a true love of mine.
(Sleeps unaware of the clarion call)
Tell her to find me an acre of land:
(On the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves.)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
(Washed is the ground with so many tears,)
Between the salt water and the sea strand,
(A soldier cleans and polishes a gun.)
Then she'll be a true love of mine.
Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather:
(War bellows blazing in scarlet battalions,)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
(Generals order their soldiers to kill)
And gather it all in a bunch of heather,
(And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten.)
Then she'll be a true love of mine.
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
Remember me to one who lives there -
She once was a true love of mine.
02 Patterns (02:45)
The night sets softly
With the hush of falling leaves,
Casting shivering shadows
On the houses through the trees,
And the light from a street lamp
Paints a pattern on my wall,
Like the pieces of a puzzle
Or a child's uneven scrawl.
Up a narrow flight of stairs
In a narrow little room,
As I lie upon my bed
In the early evening gloom.
Impaled on my wall
My eyes can dimly see
The pattern of my life
And the puzzle that is me.
From the moment of my birth
To the instant of my death,
There are patterns I must follow
Just as I must breathe each breath.
Like a rat in a maze
The path before me lies,
And the pattern never alters
Until the rat dies.
And the pattern still remains
On the wall where darkness fell,
And it's fitting that it should,
For in darkness I must dwell.
Like the color of my skin,
Or the day that I grow old,
My life is made of patterns
That can scarcely be controlled.
03 Cloudy (02:15)
cloudy
the sky is grey and white and cloudy
sometimes i think its hanging down on me
and its a hitchhike a hundred miles
im a ragamuffin child
pointed finger, painted smile
i left my shadow waiting down the road for me a while
cloudy
my thoughts are scattered and theyre cloudy
they have no borders, no boundaries
they echo and they swell
from tolstoy to tinkerbell
down from berkeley to carmel
got some pictures in my pocket and a lot of time to kill
hey sunshine
i havent seen you in a long time
why dont you show your face and bend my mind
these clouds stick to the sky
like a floating question why
they linger there to die
they dont know where theyre going
and my friend, neither do i
cloudy [repeat 6 times]
04 Homeward Bound (02:30)
I'm sittin' in the railway station
Got a ticket for my destination
On a tour of one night stands
My suitcase and guitar in hand
And every stop is neatly planned
For a poet and a one man band
Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
Everyday's an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me
The movies and the factories
And every stranger's face I see
Reminds me that I long to be
Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
Tonight I'll sing my songs again
I'll play the game and pretend
But all my words come back to me
In shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me
Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
Silently for me
Silently for me
07 The Dangling Conversation (02:40)
It's a still life watercolor
Of a now late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtain lace
And shadows wash the room
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives
And you read your Emily Dickenson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are persons out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time
And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives
Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
Can analysis be worthwhile
Is the theatre really dead
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow
I cannot feel your hand
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives
08 Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall (02:14)
Through the corridors of sleep
Past shadows dark and deep
my mind dances and leaps in confusion
I don't know what is real
I can't touch what I feel
And I hide behind the shield of my illusion
Chorus:
So I'll continue to continue to pretend
my life will never end
and flowers never bend
with the rainfall
The mirror on my wall
cast an image dark and small
but I'm not sure at all it's my reflection
I'm blinded by the light
of God, and truth and right
and I wander in the night without direction
Chorus
(It's) no matter if you're born
to play the king or pawn
for the line is thinly drawn 'tween joy and sorrow
so my fantasy
becomes reality
and I must be, what I must be, and face tomorrow
Chorus
09 A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission) (02:12)
I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored.
I been John O'Hara'd, McNamara'd.
I been Rolling Stoned and Beatled till I'm blind.
I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed.
That's the hand I use, well, never mind!
I been Phil Spectored, resurrected.
I been Lou Adlered, Barry Sadlered.
Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay.
And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,
And all my wealth won't buy me health,
So I smoke a pint of tea a day.
I knew a man, his brain was so small,
He couldn't think of nothing at all.
He's not the same as you and me.
He doesn't dig poetry. He's so unhip that
When you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man ain't got no culture,
But it's alright, ma,
Everybody must get stoned.
I been Mick Jaggered, silver daggered.
Andy Warhol, won't you please come home?
I been mothered, fathered, aunt and uncled,
Been Roy Haleed and Art Garfunkeled.
I just discovered somebody's tapped my phone.
10 For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (02:04)
What I dream I had:
Pressed in organdy;
Clothed in crinoline of smoky Burgundy;
Softer than the rain.
I wandered empty streets
Down past the shop displays.
I heard cathedral bells
Tripping down the alley ways,
As I walked on.
And when you ran to me
Your cheeks flushed with the night.
We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight,
I held your hand.
And when I awoke and felt you warm and near,
I kissed your honey hair with my grateful tears.
Oh I love you, girl.
Oh, I love you.
11 A Poem on the Underground Wall (01:56)
The last train is nearly due
The Underground is closing soon
And in the dark deserted station
Restless in anticipation
A man waits in the shadows
His restless eyes leap and scratch
At all that they can touch or catch
Hidden deep within his pocket
Safe within his silent socket
He holds a coloured crayon
Now from the tunnel's stony womb
The carriage rides to meet the groom
And opens wide in welcome doors
But he hesitates, and withdraws
Deeper in the shadows
And the train is gone suddenly
On wheels clicking silently
Like a gently tapping litany
And he holds his crayon rosary
Tighter in his hand
Now from his pocket quickly flashes
The crayon, on the wall he slashes
Deep upon the advertising
A single-worded poem comprised of
Four letters
And his heart is laughin', screamin', poundin'
The poem across the tracks reboundin'
Shadowed by the exit light
His legs take their ascending flight
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night
12 7 O'Clock News / Silent Night (01:59)
This is the early evening edition of the news.
The recent fight in the House of Representatives was over the open housing
section of the Civil Rights Bill.
Brought traditional enemies together but it left the defenders of the
measure without the votes of their strongest supporters.
President Johnson originally proposed an outright ban covering discrimination
by everyone for every type of housing but it had no chance from the start
and everyone in Congress knew it.
A compromise was painfully worked out in the House Judiciary Committee.
In Los Angeles today comedian Lenny Bruce died of what was believed to be an
overdoes of narcotics.
Bruce was 42 years old.
Dr. Martin Luther King says he does not intend to cancel plans for an open
housing march Sunday into the Chicago suburb of Cicero.
Cook County Sheriff Richard Ogleby asked King to call off the march and the
police in Cicero said they would ask the National Guard to be called out
if it is held.
King, now in Atlanta, Georgia, plans to return to Chicago Tuesday.
In Chicago Richard Speck, accused murderer of nine student nurses, was brought
before a grand jury today for indictment.
The nurses were found stabbed an strangled in their Chicago apartment.
In Washington the atmosphere was tense today as a special subcommittee of the
House Committee on Un-American activities continued its probe into anti-
Viet nam war protests.
Demonstrators were forcibly evicted from the hearings when they began chanting
anti-war slogans.
Former Vice-President Richard Nixon says that unless there is a substantial
increase in the present war effort in Viet nam, the U.S. should look forward
to five more years of war.
In a speech before the Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in New York,
Nixon also said opposition to the war in this country is the greatest single
weapon working against the U.S.
That's the 7 o'clock edition of the news,
Goodnight.
Silent night
Holy night
All is calm
All is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.
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