That's the original 1964 version which languished until a producer added (without Simon's or Garfunkel's knowledge)* faux "live applause," electric guitar and bass, and drums. But those changes got the public's attention and the immortal song climbed the charts 50 years ago.
The original version above has a sort of underlying purity; it's not an "unplugged" version of "Sound of Silence." The popular version was a studio creation -- much the same way that The Rolling Stones put together "It's Only Rock And Roll (But I Like It)." link
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*Paul Simon was horrified when he first heard the remixed version after its release. The problem was that the original recording's tempo was uneven, and the studio musicians had to impose one. There's a point in the remixed song -- right about at the line "and the people bowed and prayed" where the drummer sort of stutters and resets the tempo. I find this whole story ironic in view of Columbia Records using the same studio musicians for the overdub that they used for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" (sans Al Kooper). It was Kooper who famously couldn't keep the tempo in that song, forever giving it that characteristic "leading from behind" organ signature.
9 comments:
I read on Wikipedia, or it might have been one of your post, that Simon wrote this song in the bathroom. something about the acoustic quiet of the room helped his creative juices.
Was there really a "live applause" effect in the studio version? I recall the drums and electric guitar, but not that.
Oh strum strum strummy strummy strum strum strum.
Oh strum strum strummy strummy strum strum strum.
Strummy
Strummy strummy strum strum strum.
strumstrumstrumstrum
Oh strummy
Strum
Strum strummy.
And the sign said the words of the prophet are written on the subway wall and tenement halls that is to say pure nonsense.
And in the light I saw ten thousand naked people, maybe more. Their speaking-listening skills deplore...
able...
to fall like silent raindrops and yet still echo down the halls of silence which is much better than the hounding ringing of tinnitus.
Hum hum hummy hummy hu....um
Ho hummy hummy hummy hu~um.
Could never stand this oh so precious song.
I love that you hate this song, ricpic.
You too, Chip.
Thanks for uploading. An eternally beautiful song. I knew the story of Paul Simon's discovery of the unauthorized chart-climbing remix upon returning from a stay abroad, but never heard this version before. It reminds me of the one that they played in Central Park in 1980-something.
It's probably better for them that they did the remix, which undoubtedly made it more popular. The other thing that bothers me about the album released version, though, is you can hear a really dissonant added electric guitar chord change mixed in near the end of the second or third verse.
Naked light not naked people.
Isn't that coming from someone who gets indignant when non-artists criticize his work...
It's structured and voiced like a late-period biblical prophetic vision, one-part Daniel, one-part Ezekiel, and one-part Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And if you don't pay attention, it's nothing more than that - a neon-and-graffiti beat gloss on mene, mene tekel upharsin.
But if you carefully listen, you realize that the crowd in the vision *created* the neon sign that is telling them that the "words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls". It's the late-modern golden calf that is flattering the crowd that vox populi, vox dei. This is the "sound of silence" that is growing like a cancer - the echo-chamber phatic reassurance that God is in man, and the desires and wishes of men in aggregate are the will of God made manifest for those that can find the signal.
Thanks for the comment Mitch. You're a man of letters among rubes.
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