BEST OF A GREAT POP DUO

Simon & Garfunkel: ‘Old friends’

By Dave Veitch

Calgary Sun, November 30, 1997

Paul Simon is among pop music’s finest songwriters but, during the 1960s, he was also a barometer, reflecting the day’s musical climate, as this three-CD box set amply documents.

Simon & Garfunkel’s early material is earnest Greenwich Village folk; out of this period came ‘the sound of silence’ and the beautiful, ruminative ‘Bleecker street’, but also many sub-Bob Dylan diatribes on war and society sapped of their outrage by Simon & Garfunkel’s pretty, sanitized harmonies.

When Dylan went electric, so did Simon & Garfunkel –and immortality was theirs. The middle third of ‘Old friends’ contains superlative folk-rock that finds Simon writing his first batch of timeless songs (‘I am a rock’, ‘Homeward bound’, ‘A hazy shade of winter’), remarkable for their effortless melodic flow and warm-hearted poeticism. By the end of the 1960s, when The Beatles were making elaborate studio recordings, Simon & Garfunkel did, too, leading to stately, moving songs such as ‘The boxer’ and their hymn-like swan-song ‘Bridge over troubled water’.

‘Old friends’ documents a rare occurrence in popular music –a group improving with each passing year, only to break up at the peak of their powers (…).