Sunday morning’s the best morning for Simon & Garfunkel… though I prefer to play them at night, in the dark.
Though they’re rightfully inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, the music biz’ mechanizations have sort of put the duo’s albums in the same folk package as Judy Collins or Carole King. No knock on those two giants, but it kinda infuriates me… as I feel S&G’s records should be scattered amongst the best of Hendrix, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Stones, Who.
For Simon & Garfunkel not only created some of the most important songs of the 20th century, they – with the help of producer Roy Halee – recorded fantastic albums. Paul Simon has said they they were really a trio, and that’s not reaching. Halee’s work should be compared to Sir George Martin’s, or Brian Wilson’s.
This was vinyl for the stereo age, with walls of sound at least as intricately crafted as Phil Spector’s earlier mortar work. A perfect example of this is “The Boxer” and the vessel that carried it, 1969’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. Damn, what a record.
Roy Halee leaned heavily on the vaunted Wrecking Crew of studio musicians, who were only too happy to indulge him in exploring his echo fetish. The chorus vocals were recorded in a chapel at Columbia University; Hal Blaine‘s rifle-shot drums were captured on a tiled sweet spot in front of the studio’s elevators.
“The Boxer” is in my top 3 S&G songs, largely because of the imagery. But not necessarily the lament-painting that Simon conjures in the first half. In my mind, that is a life-retrospective that leads to a life-crisis – perhaps the end of one – presented in the second, orchestral half. When that deep boom (Early synth? Gated tuba? I can’t remember) sounds, I imagine a grey, weary man in a grey, dreary field… facing this giant spectre of death suddenly looming over him.
Does he live to fight another day? The song-circling, drop-off coda is non-committal. For me, this is a very emotional, epic song. “Lie la lie” speaks a thousand words. Most battles are not fought with fists; if only it were that easy.
Curious thing, the imagination. Stirring it is the magic behind “The Boxer.”
- Steve Stav, along with cohost Mitch Hurst, is the proprietor of an enlightening Facebook page called The Big Music, which focuses on the music, movies and culture of Generation X. A podcast with the same name and hosts is in the planning stage.
