After watching this video on YouTube, I checked the song out on Wikipedia. Paul Simon wrote Sound of Silence 50 years ago this year, 50!!! Simon & Garfunkel recorded the original, simple acoustic version for Columbia Records on March 10, 1964, and when they performed it audiences laughed. A year later, one late-night DJ in Boston spun the song and it caught on with Harvard and Tufts students. A month later, it got heavy airplay in Cocoa Beach, FL where lots of college kids spent spring break. Simon & Garfunkel had already split up. Simon traveled to England and Garfunkel returned to college. But once a Columbia Records producer heard the song was getting a small audience, he hired the same musicians Bob Dylan worked with on Like a Rolling Stone to overdub rock instrumentation to the song.This was unbeknownst to Simon & Garfunkel. In December of 65, it hit #1 on the Billboard 100 and had sold one million copies by January. As this was happening Simon returned to NY from England. He described how he learned that the song went #1, I had come back to New York, and I was staying in my old room at my parents house. Artie was living at his parents house, too. I remember Artie and I were sitting there in my car one night, parked on a street in Queens, and the announcer [on the radio] said, Number one, Simon & Garfunkel. And Artie said to me, That Simon & Garfunkel, they must be having a great time. Because there we were on a street corner [in my car in] Queens, smoking a joint. We didnt know what to do with ourselves. This is the song that put S&G on the map to a long career, which never would have happened but for that late night DJ in Boston. This week, Im going to seek out someone being laughed at, and give them a shot. Sometimes, thats the only thing that matters. BTW, anyone want to write a song?
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 03:54:30 +0000