Homeward Bound (19 page)

*   *   *

Nearly everything Paul said onstage that night in London was true. After
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
flopped so spectacularly, options for the duo's future had dwindled toward zero. When Paul came back to New York City for a visit in April, he and Artie scheduled a meeting with Tom Wilson, who filled them in on the latest excitement around Columbia and the New York industry: Dylan had hired a rock band to play with him on his just-released album,
Bringing It All Back Home
, while the just-signed Byrds had released their own sparklingly electric cover of Bobby's “Mr. Tambourine Man.” So much more was on the near horizon, and just as Paul would tell his audience in London a few months later, Wilson popped the question: Why don't you guys give it a try, too?

If Paul had any reservations about keeping his folk music pure, they didn't keep him from getting to work on this new assignment. Starting with the opening chords of Davy Graham's “Anji” and the “Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.” opening lyrics, he came up with the swaggering “Somewhere They Can't Find Me,” which they recorded with a full rock band, percussion, and a horn section. They spent the rest of the session on another minor chord rocker, sung this time by a lover determined to keep his baby from leaving him because, as the title asserts (with notably eccentric spelling), “We've Got a Groovey Thing Goin'.” The second song runs on an appealingly funky keyboard riff, and the more prominent horns give it a kick, but the paper-thin lyrics (“I never done you no wrong, / Never hit you when you're down / Always gave you good lovin', / Never ran around…”) make it the slighter work, a B-side if ever there was one.

With that, they satisfied their producer's request and pushed the Simon and Garfunkel ball as far as their record label would allow. Still, Columbia Records didn't issue that or any new Simon and Garfunkel single. As far as Paul and Artie could see, their career as a duo was over, at least for the time being. Paul went back to England. Artie spent the summer traveling in Europe and prepared for another year of labor on his PhD in mathematics. The Beat sound of
Bringing It All Back Home
took Dylan to
Billboard
's top three, while the Byrds' version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” lodged itself at the top of the singles charts. Tom Wilson's reputation soared, too, and not just in the Columbia offices. But he was still sensitive about the colossal flop Simon and Garfunkel had made for him, and when Stan Kavan, the label's chief of promotions, buttonholed him in the hall to tell him that
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
had sold a thousand copies, the producer grimaced. He'd heard that sad number months earlier. He knew the record was a flop. No need to rub it in now, man. The executive laughed. He wasn't talking about
that
thousand copies. He was talking about the thousand copies the supposedly dead-as-a-doornail album had
just
sold in Miami. Did Wilson have any idea why that had happened?

A few months later
Billboard
made the chain of highly unlikely events into a feature article, an object lesson in how good intracompany communication can lead to the most unexpected, and delightful, places. Not that it didn't take a while. Reports of a burst of
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
sales in Dallas that February didn't impress anyone in the label's New York headquarters; nor did early news of the Miami outbreak in early May. Instead, they told Southeast region distributor Mark Weiner to forget about that folk music flop and spend his time on records that actually had a chance. But Weiner wouldn't shut up about it. As he knew, the trigger in Dallas and in Miami was “The Sound of Silence.” It was a very simple calculus. Once a radio station started playing the song, listeners rushed out to buy the album. Yet there was no “Silence” single on the market. The big execs still didn't believe it, but when Weiner saw Wilson at a company meeting, he gave him a crucial suggestion. Instead of releasing the original “Silence” as a single, they should get some electric guitars and drums on the track and make a folk-rock record out of it. That got Wilson's attention.

At a Dylan recording session a few weeks later, Wilson asked a few of the musicians to stay late to help him on another small project. He played them the original acoustic recording of “The Sound of Silence” and gave them a little while to figure out parts for electric guitar, electric piano, bass, and drums. Once they had the feel, it took only a few tries to get it onto tape. Wilson, who hadn't needed his artists' permission to alter their record, waited until the session was over to tell Artie what he was up to. At first Artie shrugged it off. He could tell they were trying to turn Simon and Garfunkel into the Byrds, and as far as he was concerned it sounded kind of cute. “I was mildly amused, and detached with the certainty that it was not a hit.” He passed the news of the recording session in a letter to Paul in London, who had almost exactly the same response. “I was at that point sort of successful on the folk scene in England,” he recalled forty years later. “No, more than sort of successful. I was
very
successful; I was one of the most sought-after performers.”

He'd found a kind of success, for sure. But, really, he had no idea. He really didn't.

*   *   *

Columbia released the “The Sound of Silence”/“We've Got a Groovey Thing Goin'” 45 on September 13. The record broke across the Boston radio stations a few weeks later and soon spread to other cities. It made the lower reaches of the
Billboard
national charts in October, and as it drew closer to the Hot 100 in November, Artie called Paul to say that something had started to happen. Paul was delighted—or he didn't pay much mind, or else he was deeply offended and thoroughly outraged. His recollection of that key moment in his career depended on where he was, whom he was talking to, and when the conversation was taking place.

When Paul's copy of the record was delivered to Piepe's address that fall, Al Stewart was there to experience his flatmate's anger and angst. He was
furious
! Columbia was so determined to make him and Artie pop stars they had taken Paul's very serious song and dressed it up in a clown suit. Argh! Actually, Paul's biggest problem with the record that afternoon was that he couldn't get it to play correctly. The house record player had only the thin 33 rpm spindle, and because all British records were designed for that size, they didn't have one of those plastic doodads that fill in the wider hole of American 45 rpm discs. Stewart helped Paul fashion a 45 adapter with coins, beads, and other random bits, but it was far from perfect. You could see the disc going a bit wobbly on the turntable. No matter. Paul thumbed the needle into the groove. And of course it sounded off: the drums quavering, the guitars out of tune, and everything going
geeerrrr-wahhhh
and
eee-ew-waaaaang
. Paul's cheeks went red.
What the fuck is
that
?
When the song ended he plunked the needle back to the start, and got even angrier.
Fucking hell!

With Stewart watching, Paul dialed the Columbia Records offices in New York and demanded they withdraw the offending record from the shops as soon as possible. He could do a much better job electrifying the song himself; just give him a shot. The voice on the other end tried to soothe him: did Paul know that the record was No. 1 in Boston and catching fire all over New England? They couldn't pull the plug on it now, even if they wanted to, which they didn't. Why didn't he take a week to think it over? Seven days later he called back, and this time the record executive laughed at him. Now “The Sound of Silence” was No. 1 all over New England, had jumped into
Billboard
's Top 50, and was a good bet to hit No. 1. Instead of complaining, he needed to get his ass on an airplane, get back to New York, and climb aboard for the ride. “So that's when it sort of hit him,” Al Stewart says. “And then he did get on an airplane and buggered off for New York.”

In another room with someone else, Paul shrugged it off with a smile. “I don't feel it at all,” he told a
New Musical Express
reporter within a day or two of his raging around Piepe's flat. “I'm here in England, and I'm goin' to folk clubs, and I'm working like I was working always. It hasn't changed me at all. Oh, I'm happy, man. I've got to say I'm very pleased. It's a very nice gift!” Two years later he couldn't even remember being angry about anything. “I wasn't violently against it. It sounded okay after a couple of hearings. I didn't think it was great, though. I didn't say, ‘Oh, they screwed up my song.' … I was pleased with that. It grew on me. Now I strongly prefer the electric version.”

In 2006, Paul described the episode as an old-fashioned hero's journey, recalling how he'd monitored the
Billboard
charts from London, noting the jump “Silence” made from 111 to 101 and realizing that the next week's chart held the key to his future. If the song hit the Hot 100 above the No. 80 spot, it would come in with a bullet,
Billboard
's symbol for fast-rising records, which would guarantee far more radio station pickups and a chance to climb a lot higher. He was headed to Denmark to play some clubs that week, and after taking an overnight ferry from Arhus to Copenhagen that landed at 6:00 a.m., he realized he had to wait four hours until he could get into the offices of his Danish publisher and check the new numbers in
Billboard
's international edition.

Paul spent the time walking past the towering glass-fronted skyscrapers and comic book–colored wooden structures and feeling his future hanging in the balance. When 10:00 a.m. finally arrived, he skipped to the publisher's door and followed the secretaries inside. They handed him the morning's
Billboard
, and he fingered his way to the Hot 100 with his heart fluttering in his chest. The suspense was excruciating. He figured he'd focus his search by starting with the lowest twenty slots, Nos. 100 to 81, knowing that if “The Sound of Silence” wasn't there, it meant one of two things: the song had either collapsed entirely or jumped high enough to earn bullet status, a crucial designation for a rising hit. After not seeing it there, and feeling optimistic, he checked the 79–70 segment. Nothing. Then he started taking it slot by slot, up through the 60s. Still no “Sound of Silence.” “I said, ‘
Shiiiit.
' It didn't make it. I'm really dragged, you know.” But he couldn't give up now; he had to keep looking, just to see.

And then he saw it. “The Sound of Silence” had leaped all the way to No. 59, where it resided next to a bullet. A
fifty-two
slot leap.

“I remember this very clearly,” he said. “I'm alone in the Danish publishing office, and I thought, ‘
My life is irrevocably changed
.'”

One of those versions of the story has got to be true. Or maybe none of them is, or maybe all of them are. What mattered is that “The Sound of Silence” was exploding in the United States, and no matter how successful he'd been in England and Europe, no matter his many friends, no matter how free and happy he'd been there, no matter his love affair with Kathy, he had just discovered where his destiny lay. But knowing it didn't mean he knew how to accept it.

Not yet, anyway. He still had shows to play, fans to win over, a perfectly happy existence to live, doubts about American pop stardom to entertain. After Copenhagen, Paul headed to Holland, where CBS's affiliated record company Artone had set up a show at a folk club in Haarlem, to draw attention to its releases of
Songbook
and
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
. Harry Knipschild, the young executive who had set up Paul's visit and accompanied him as he made his rounds to a newspaper interview, a seasonal Sinterklaas (Santa Claus) event, and then to the night's gig, listened to Paul vent about that “Sound of Silence” single. The thing was, Paul hated folk-rock—Dylan, the Byrds, Sonny and Cher, all of it. Folk wasn't supposed to be commercial; that was the whole point. “I'd rather not have a hit at all than hit with a folk-rock song,” Paul declared.

That evening, a sparse audience of maybe twenty people greeted Paul at the Haarlem club owned by Dutch folksinger Cobi Schreiber. He wasn't going to earn anything for his work, but he gave the show his all, playing a set list packed with, yes, folk-rock songs. By the end of the evening, Knipschild had seen enough of the chest-first way Paul walked, the confidence in his voice, and the assurance in his playing and singing to understand one thing: no matter how much he complained and fretted about fame, Paul already had the kingly bearing of a star.

 

CHAPTER 10

IT MEANS NOTHING TO US

The legend puts Paul and Artie in the front seat of Paul's car, parked beneath a tree on a dark corner one chilly Sunday evening in late December. Paul has been back in New York for a few weeks, and they're both living in their parents' houses, so they have to sneak off somewhere to get stoned. This is why they're in the shadows of 70th Road and 141st Street, passing a joint between them as they listen to the week's top hits march to the No. 1 spot, just as they'd been doing for more than a decade. Up to the top of the charts! The king of the mountain! Who would it be this time? Actually, they already knew. This was the week “The Sound of Silence” reigned at No. 1. It was still too strange to take it in. So they sat there listening to the song, passing the reefer, and gazing silently through the cloudy windshield. A minute or two into the song, Artie exhaled drily.

“Simon and Garfunkel.”

“Yeah,” Paul said.

“Number one in the nation.”

“Incredible.”

“I bet those guys are having a great time right now.”