The Sound of Silence

"The Sound of Silence"
Song

"The Sounds of Silence" is the song that propelled the 1960s folk music duo Simon and Garfunkel to popularity. It was written in February 1964 by Paul Simon in the aftermath of the November 22, 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

The song features Simon on acoustic guitar and both Simon and Garfunkel singing. It was originally recorded as an acoustic piece for their first album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. but on the initiative of the record company was later overdubbed with electric instruments and rereleased as a single in September 1965. The single reached number one on New Year's Day 1966 and was included in the 1966 album Sounds of Silence.

The song was originally called "The Sounds of Silence" and is titled that way on the early albums in which it appeared and on the single. In later compilations it was retitled "The Sound of Silence". Both the singular and the plural form of the word appear in the lyrics. In his book Lyrics 1964–2008 Simon has the title in the singular.

History

Simon began working on the song sometime after the Kennedy assassination. He had made progress on the music but had yet to get down the lyrics. On 19 February 1964 the lyrics apparently coalesced, as Simon recalled:

The main thing about playing the guitar, though, was that I was able to sit by myself and play and dream. And I was always happy doing that. I used to go off in the bathroom, because the bathroom had tiles, so it was a slight echo chamber. I'd turn on the faucet so that water would run — I like that sound, it's very soothing to me — and I'd play. In the dark. 'Hello darkness, my old friend / I've come to talk with you again'.

Simon showed the new composition to Garfunkel the same day, and shortly afterward, the duo began to perform it at folk clubs in New York. In the liner notes of their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., Garfunkel claims:

'The Sounds of Silence' is a major work. We were looking for a song on a larger scale, but this is more than either of us expected.

The duo recorded it for the first time on March 10, and included the track on Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., which was released that October. The album flopped upon its release, and the duo split up, with Simon going to England for much of 1965. There he often performed the song solo in folk clubs, and recorded it for a second time on his solo LP in May 1965, The Paul Simon Songbook.

In the meantime, Simon and Garfunkel's producer at Columbia Records in New York, Tom Wilson, had learned that the song had begun to receive airplay on radio stations in Boston, Massachusetts and around Gainesville and Cocoa Beach, Florida.

On June 15, 1965, immediately after the recording session of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," Wilson took the original track of Simon & Garfunkel, and overdubbed the recording with electric guitar (played by Al Gorgoni), electric bass (Bob Bushnell), and drums (Bobby Gregg), and released it as a single without even consulting Simon or Garfunkel. For the B-Side Wilson used an unreleased track he cut with the duo a few months earlier on which they had tried out a more "contemporary" sound. "Sounds of Silence"/"We've Got a Groovey Thing Going" entered the U.S. pop charts in September 1965 and slowly began its ascent.

Simon learned that it had entered the charts minutes before he went on stage to perform at a club in Copenhagen, Denmark, and in the later fall of 1965 he returned to the United States. By the end of 1965 and the first few weeks of 1966, the song reached number one on the U.S. charts. Simon and Garfunkel then reunited as a musical act, and included the song as the title track of their next album, Sounds of Silence, hastily recorded in December 1965 and released in January 1966 to capitalize on their success. The song propelled them to stardom and, together with two other top-five (in the U.S.) hits in the summer of 1966, "I Am a Rock" and "Homeward Bound," ensured the duo's fame. In 1999, BMI named "The Sounds of Silence" as the 18th-most performed song of the 20th century. In 2004 it was ranked #156 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, one of the duo's three songs on the list.

The original acoustic stereo mix of the song had the duo's vocals on separate channels, spotlighting the delicate harmonies. When the 'rock' version was mixed to stereo, Wilson mixed the vocals in the middle, which is not as clear sounding as the original acoustic version.

On the duo's 1968 album Bookends, the track "Save the Life of My Child" features a distorted sample of Art Garfunkel's "Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you" line from the original recording of "The Sounds Of Silence"). At 2:16 in the song somebody says "echo me"

In 2009, the song was released (along with "I Am a Rock") as a downloadable track for rhythm video game Rock Band 2

Single

"The Sounds of Silence" was released on Columbia Records as 45 rpm catalog number #4-43396. The single has several variations:

• One variation was a promotional release on red vinyl. This copy was unique in that it featured the original acoustic version found on Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. on one side and the electric overdubbed version later featured on Sounds of Silence on the other. This release was mainly distributed to radio stations and carries a white label. This version is hard to find today, and quite valuable to collectors.

• The standard version of the single was released on black vinyl, with a red label, the same Columbia catalog number, and backed with "We've Got a Groovey Thing Goin'." The now-passé adjective is normally spelled "Groovy," as it would be on their later issue, "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)."

• "The Sounds of Silence" was later released in the 1970s on the Columbia "Hall of Fame" series, catalog number 13-3396, which featured back-to-back hits of a group on 45. This time the song was backed by "Homeward Bound."

Use in feature films

The song was used three times in the film The Graduate, played during the opening credits and the closing footage. Its use in "The Graduate" was parodied in the comedy film Old School, when Will Ferrell gets shot with a tranquilizer dart and falls into the pool going into a dream daze and also in Kingpin, when it was played following sexual activity between protagonist Roy Munson and his landlady. In the film Bobby it is played during Robert Kennedy's victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel, just before his assassination. It can also be heard in the last episodes of the Japanese dorama Taiyo to Umi no Kyoshitsu. In the film More American Graffiti, the 1966 recording is heard playing after a rather large bar fight. In 2009's Watchmen the song is featured on the soundtrack for the film and used during The Comedian's funeral.

Cover performances

• Dutch folk duo Nick & Simon have covered this song (in English) in various performances throughout the Netherlands in 2009 and have made their own recording of this cover under their artist name.
• NWOBHM outfit Bitches Sin issued a cover version of this track as a single in October 2009.
• New Zealand singer/song-writer Brooke Fraser covered this song live for her Albertine tour and is available in the Deluxe Edition of her studio album of the same name.
• The Smashing Pumpkins have performed a heavy, extended cover of the song on their 20th anniversary tour, which varies greatly in sound from the original.
• The heavy metal band Nevermore include a cover of the song on their album Dead Heart in a Dead World.
• U.K. girl group Bananarama covered the song as a bonus download only from their 2009 album Viva.
• The Coolies released a punk rock version on their album Take That You Bastards.
• The progressive metal band Heir Apparent recorded their version of the song and included it on the album Triad. It can be freely downloaded from the Heir Apparent webpage (http://www.heirapparent.com).
• The Smashing Pumpkins also released a cover of the song in their Live Smashing Pumpkins album series.
• The Dickies perform a fast paced version of the song.
• All Angels performed the song on their sophomore album.
• The German Death Metal band Atrocity covered the song on its Gemini album.
• The German musical project Gregorian covered the song on its album Masters of Chant.
• Emilíana Torrini covered the song on the compilation album Stone Free.
• Ascension of the Watchers covered the song on their album Numinosum.
• In the 1966 Carlo Rossi translate the song in Italian, with title La tua immagine; this version was recorded by Mike Liddell e gli Atomi (1966), Luisa Casali (1967) e Dino (1968)
• The Stanford Harmonics recorded a rock arrangement of the song with four soloists for their 2008 album Escape Velocity.
• Shaw Blades covered both The Sound of Silence and I Am a Rock on their 2007 album Influence.
• In 2010, the song was parodied by The Fringemunks to recap Fringe episode 2.16, "Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver."

See also

• List of best-selling singles in Japan

External Links

• Biography Paul Simon and Garfunkel