SIMON AND GARFUNKEL: SONGS OF AMERICA

    Simon and Garfunkel aren't to blame for the Me Decade, but a 1969 CBS television special they did called Songs of America might well have helped to pave the way.   The special is featured on a DVD included with the 40th anniversary reissue of their iconic final album Bridge Over Troubled Water.
    This was well before cable television, so a one-hour special on one of the three networks was a gigantic platform.  That kind of power was not only a testament to Simon and Garfunkel's immense commercial stature, but to the fact that, in those days, the Establishment was obsessed with (and, to be honest, also repulsed by) What Young People Think.   A cerebral and softly tuneful folk-rock act seemed like a safe escort into the hearts and minds of this huge new consumer demographic.   And of course the special was also some nifty corporate cross-promotion: CBS happened to be a sister company of Simon and Garfunkel's record label, Columbia. But the suits didn't quite get what they expected.
    It's worth looking at the credits — Songs of America was "conceived and executed" by Charles Grodin and Simon and Garfunkel, basically meaning that Grodin directed and Simon and Garfunkel were the producers.   (Grodin and Garfunkel had made friends on the set of Catch-22, in which both men played small parts.  Simon was also reportedly in the film but his part wound up on the cutting room floor.)   That was a tremendous amount of creative control, especially considering the team had almost no experience: Simon and Garfunkel, after all, were just a pop group, and Grodin's chief television production credits, by his own admission, were having been fired three times in a six-week period from the TV comedy show Candid Camera.   (Presumably to bring some credibility to the project, the executive producer is Robert Drew, who happens to be the godfather of American cinema verité and worked with the likes of D.A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock and the Maysles brothers.)
    The one thing CBS and the show's sponsors hadn't counted on was Simon and Garfunkel's apparent need to stake out some cred.  There's a curious moment when we hear Simon confessing in voiceover, "I can feel in the air that's there's something great going on all around.  And I'm just...  I have a feeling that I'm just missing it.   That it's just right there and I'm right in the midst of it, but I can't quite get it."  Songs of America seems like maybe it was an attempt to be a part of that great something that was going around.
    Actor Robert Ryan, a well known progressive and pacifist, does a brief introduction, so the show's tone is set before it even begins.   For the benefit of the squares in the audience, Ryan establishes Simon and Garfunkel's bona fides: "These two young men have attracted a tremendous following among the youth of America," which is another way of saying they might be able to explain what the hell kids are on about these days.
    Ryan also promises Simon and Garfunkel's "lyrical interpretation of the world we live in," which is a fair enough description, but the songs don't actually have the overtly topical slant that this special claims for them — it's only when Grodin slaps some newsreel footage on them that they take on any kind of political resonance.  And so America got its first listen to "Bridge Over Troubled Water" as the screen filled with footage of John F. Kennedy, who had been murdered only six years earlier, a profound tragedy still fresh in the nation's heart and soul.  That's followed by footage of Martin Luther King, who had been assassinated only the year before, and the cross-country funeral train of Robert F. Kennedy, still deeply moving to those of us of a certain age.  In this very fraught context, lines like "When darkness comes and pain is all around" take on a very specific weight, but it's almost like playing Dark Side of the Moon while watching The Wizard of Oz.
    "America" is set to footage of mostly rural and nature vistas, purple mountains' majesty and all that — until it abruptly switches to a gigantic garbage dump, a squalid ghetto, rock-throwing rioters, and a bewildered black man bleeding from the head.  It's a heavy-handed tack.   Grodin pulls the same trick a couple of more times: as "Scarborough Fair" unfurls in its pristine splendor, the visuals unspool a montage of idyllic hippie communion at Woodstock (which Simon and Garfunkel declined to play), then cut to horrific scenes from Vietnam, all spectacular explosions and writhing soldiers.  Is that really what the song is about?   For "Frank Lloyd Wright," clips of American cultural heroes like Flash Gordon, Hopalong Cassidy and Mickey Mantle give way to — horror of horrors — Lenny Bruce.  The point is hammered home with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the shins: despite the best efforts of a smiley-face façade, there are some serious problems in America.
    Grodin's irreverent wit only comes through as the self-consciously whimsical "Punky's Dilemma" plays under footage of various leading politicians of the day (Hubert Humphrey, Cyrus Vance, Ted Kennedy, et al.) looking bored at meetings.
    And then it goes from the ridiculous to the sublime.   We're on a soundstage somewhere, workers walking around, musicians at their instruments, and a rehearsal is in progress.   "And here it goes," Garfunkel says, and commences singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water."   His voice is unspeakably beautiful.
    It's now past the halfway point of the show, the bludgeoning newsreel collages are all finished,  and we move on to some priceless footage: Paul 'n' Art working out the sublime "Frank Lloyd Wright" with mainstay producer Roy Halee; an astonishingly intimate scene where they're sitting together on a hotel room bed somewhere out on the road, singing "Feelin' Groovy"; working on the obscure BOTW outtake "Cuba Si, Nixon No"; and excerpts of live versions of "The Boxer," "Sounds of Silence," "For Emily," and a killer "Mrs. Robinson."
    But Songs of America remains an extended political statement.   "I think that much of what we're saying is extremely obvious," Simon declares between musical interludes.   "Until they stop the war, until they feed the people, until they make everyone free and have equal opportunity — or as much as that can be done within this society, then it's the function of people to point it out and continually remind us."   And those are brave and righteous words: the political atmosphere was toxically partisan then too.  It's difficult to imagine a mainstream pop group doing anything remotely like Songs of America today, for fear of alienating a segment of their audience or getting boycotted by right-wing radio networks.
    This was during a particularly turbulent social moment when people actually looked, in all seriousness, to pop musicians for political direction.  Throughout the show, it's clear that these are a couple of bright Jewish guys from Queens who are all too consciously aware that they wield great influence, and that it was de rigeur for hip musicians to make sweeping political statements.  Despite being terrifically intelligent and well spoken, both men sometimes fall prey to their own vanity — acutely aware that they're on camera, they sure say some dumb things sometimes.
    One scene finds the duo heading somewhere in the back seat of what used to be known as a "station wagon."   Simon mentions it's Beethoven's 200th birthday.  Garfunkel scoffs knowingly, "He was a fool, Beethoven."   It's difficult to tell whether he's kidding, but 1969 was many years before irony was invented, and so we should fear the worst.   Especially when the camera cuts to the priceless expression on Simon's face.
    But then it's Simon's turn to make us wince. Garfunkel notes that in a few years, America's 200th birthday is coming up too.  Simon waits a beat, obviously aware of the golden opportunity to make a Big Statement, and oh-so-gravely intones, "Think it's going to make it?"
    Now, Garfunkel was an architecture major, which amply explains his pompousness.  Who knows where Simon got his, although massive fame, money and critical adulation would be one good explanation.  The combination of all that attention and immense, nearly unprecedented record sales must have inflated egos beyond all comprehension.  And so we have Art Garfunkel saying things like "all human beings have this wish to take their inner self and fuse it with the rest of humanity."  Right then and there, you can hear the baby boomer-fueled Me Decade being born.
    AT&T paid for the production but withdrew its name once they saw the finished product — the film's outspoken opposition to the war in Vietnam was a non-starter.  "You're using our money to sell your ideology!" raged a rep for AT&T's ad agency, also complaining that the film's strong stand for civil rights would alienate southern affiliates.   The AT&T rep even criticized the sequence about the Kennedys and Martin Luther King — because "they were all Democrats."  "We think of them," replied Simon, "as assassinated people."
    The show's new sponsor became Alberto VO5 shampoo, who must have been delighted about the lengthening hair of the nation's youth.
    Commercially, AT&T made the right call. Songs of America was not your usual entertainment variety special of the era, with sparkling, brightly lit sets pointedly oblivious to the tumult going on outside the studio walls. Americans just did not want to hear what Songs of America had to say.   According to Grodin, a million people stopped watching Songs of America after the first round of commercials, likely switching over to NBC for a Peggy Fleming ice skating special co-starring José Feliciano.  As Simon notes in a documentary about Bridge over Troubled Water that also appears on this DVD, "I think we were naïve kids from the northeast who thought that's the way the world was, and everybody thought that way.  But they didn't."
     For all the popularity of their music, Simon and Garfunkel lacked the common touch.  "We're still no good at that — talking to an audience," Garfunkel admits late in the show.  And the candid passages of Songs of America do reveal that the smugness, opacity and frostiness that hung around their all too impeccable music was rooted in their own personas.   Songs are a way of venting feelings, Simon acknowledges, "But I don't think about getting through to somebody."  Exactly.
    The expectation that these soft-rock superstars could be spokesmen for a generation was unreasonable and pushed them and their music into places they didn't quite belong — like a one-hour network TV special about the state of the nation.   As it turned out, being unable to rise to the occasion and instead covering themselves in self-importance and self-indulgence was an all too accurate portent of what was to come.

Comments

[Mark Fleury]

Hi Michael. Just my two cents: It's disingenuous to start your article by saying that the Me decade wasn't S&G's fault and then later in the article explicitly say, based on something Garfunkel said, that "Right then and there you can hear the baby boomer fueled Me decade being born." But to me the theory that Simon and Garfunkel helped pave the way for the Me decade is one of the stupider ideas I've read, and it reminds my why music journalism is often so irritating. Cause and effect is never so simplistic. Besides, someone could follow you or me, or anyone, around with a camera for awhile and then edit the footage together in such a way as to make us look, well, as John Lennon said: "human." Even more irritating is the condescending phrase "soft rock superstars."

[Michael Azerrad]

I'm sorry you're having a bad day, Mark.

[Mark Fleury]

Hey Michael. It looks like you're wrong about something besides S&G being responsible for the Me decade: my day.

[Michael Azerrad]

Mark, I am glad that I can be a punching bag for your unhappiness about whatever, but the more you belabor the point, the worse you look. So by all means, do yourself a favor and quit while you're behind.

[Mark Fleury]

You're right. I was taking something out on you, and I apologize. I just get so tired of reading pompous, sloppy writing in relation to poets and musicians for whom I feel deeply indebted to. Sometimes I just boil over and try to defend them even though it's invariably a lost cause, just like with you. I did this against my better judgement. But you're right. I shouldn't have said anything. I'll let you get back to your life.