Say something interesting about Bridge Over Troubled Water

-the coda of so long f.l.wright is a highlight. i always figure joao gilberto should've covered this song.

-baby driver always reminds me of that e.e.cummings poem about the sexy car

-if you took out the piano intro, and let it begin with a very quiet guitar strum and soft singing, and then kept the orchestra out too, the title track would be a pretty good first song for a belle and sebastian album.

-when i was a kid i made a mix tape which included two segues i was real proud of, of isolated endings of beatles songs crossfaded into s&g songs: the drum loop thing at the end of strawberry fields -> fakin' it, and the outro of hello goodbye -> cecilia.

-the boxer is one of those all things to all people tracks. anyone can appreciate it on some level. the lyric's pretty sharp, the folksy first half is groovy with an especially tasty intro, the melody lines are nice and long and feel real natural, the lailalai bit is totally classic with those ice-cold strings, and just when you think it goes on too long it modulates back to the spine-tingling finish. sure, "only living boy" is a very very nice song, even more natural feeling, although i would aver that the garfunkel solo bit is totally formulaic for s&g. and it isn't genius: and the boxer is. (so's the title track, but that's more a case of a love it or hate it tune, kinda like macarthur park or something)

-song for the asking is a total dud, a nonentity

That's a hell of a big crashing drum sound towards the end of the title track.

... Writing on the guitar in the key of G, Simon came up with a stately melody and two verses in which a narrator (who could be God, a parent, a lover, or a friend) pledges to help someone in adversity, to be "like a bridge over troubled water." Later deciding the song was too short, he added a third verse in a slightly different style, beginning with the line, "Sail on, silver girl, sail on by." Commentators have since suggested that this was a reference to the Swan Silvertones or to Simon's prematurely gray fiancée, and one extreme interpretation held that it was a reference to heroin and that, in fact, the whole song was about drugs, a particularly fanciful case of late-'60s/early-'70s drug paranoia.

I loooooove "Cecilia." Maybe Simon's first sign of polyrhythmic exploration?

Do be quiet, won't you? Thanks awfully.

"My girlfriend at the time was particularly saddened upon finding a few grey hairs in her brush, lamenting that she was getting older. I wrote that lyric as a tribute and inside joke to her."

I never dug this because we had to sing it in 6th grade music class, a young nun was trying to make school more "relevant" to der kids.

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
Musician

Well it was Lennon's theory

JOHN 1980: (Let It Be) "That's Paul... I think it was inspired by 'Bridge Over Troubled Water.' That's my feeling, although I have nothing to go on. I know he wanted to write a 'Bridge Over Troubled Water.'"

there was some "making of" doc about this album on last night that had a bunch of great archival footage and interesting bits in it. I had no idea, for example, that the percussion track for Cecilia was a tape loop from a home recording Art & Paul made.

-song for the asking is a total dud, a nonentity

― mig (mig), Wednesday, October 6, 2004 7:08 PM (6 years ago)

ALL MIGHTY RONG OF ALL RONGNESS

yeah there are some strange opinions on this thread

album is classsssic, not a single dud track. i was listening to a live show from 1969 recently and the audience was giggling thru "frank lloyd wright," which seemed wrong, but i guess it is a sort of funny thing to sing. mainly that song is just pretty/sad as hell.
would like to see that doc.

not that revelatory or interesting a statement and alfred beat me to it years ago but yeah, much prefer aretha's version

I love how the title track, on pretty much any other fucking album ever, would have been the closing track... the unfollowable end of album epic. Here, the mad bastards opened the LP with it!

Also, love the buried in the mix "SO LONG ALREADY, ARTIE!" during the outro to 'So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright', which must have stung Garfunkel a bit when he found out what the song was about.

Also, they spent fucking ages making this LP for the time... 'The Boxer' was recorded November '68 and the LP didn't come out until '70.

must have stung Garfunkel a bit when he found out what the song was about.

hate to admit this never dawned on me either until you pointed it out

'The Only Living Boy In New York' is about Garfunkel fucking off to make Catch-22 ... so that's two songs about him on the record!

yeah I knew that one cuz I was aware of Garfunkel's acting career, didn't know about the architecture connection tho. what a weirdo Artie is.

I love this album.

Also, they spent fucking ages making this LP for the time... 'The Boxer' was recorded November '68 and the LP didn't come out until '70

They had done that on their previous album too - Bookends came out in '68 but "Hazy Shade of Winter" was from '66

When they were the duo "Tom & Jerry", Garfunkel's stage name was Tom Graph, so called because he liked to draw graphs of records going up and down the charts.

Awhile back, when Rolling Stone did one of those polls of the greatest albums ever, it was mentioned in the notes that Garfunkel drafted his ballot by hand, and that his handwriting was neater than most people's typing.