My first introduction to Simon and Garfunkel was Paul’s first solo album – The Paul Simon Songbook. It came out in 1965 and I was much impressed.
Then there were all those Simon and Garfunkel singles and albums. I loved the way their voices harmonised – but I still kept going back to that first album.
So today I’m going to be playing that first album.
I was sixteen back in 1965 when this came out. I was listening to Guthrie, Dylan, Blues, Beatles, Stones and Who. Roy Harper hadn’t started up yet but I was well into lyrics and checking out the meaning. This song grabbed me because of its denunciation of war.
I played that Paul Simon album to death, absorbing the songs about civil rights and antiwar avidly. But looking back I can see it was Paul casting around for his true metier. He was trying things out and they really weren’t him. I still love it though.
“The Side Of A Hill”
On the side of a hill, a little cloud weeps
And waters the grave with its silent tears
While a soldier cleans and polishes a gun
That ended a life at the age of seven years
And the war rages on in the land called ‘Somewhere’
And generals order their men to kill
And to fight for a cause they’ve long ago forgotten
While the little cloud weeps on the side of a hill
Back in the sixties I was very much into contemporary folk music – still am. I liked the poetry and stridency of Dylan, Roy Harper and Bert Jansch. I also like Simon and Garfunkel though I was a little snooty and thought that they tended to be too light and poppy.
Folk music had moved out of the realm of love songs and was talking about all manner of issues in novel, poetic ways. Nothing was taboo. Life, sex, race, war, religion and death were all fair game. The structure of songs was up for grabs too.
Paul Simon was a great songwriter. He had an ear for melody, a precision with words and his voice harmonised with Art’s perfectly. It created a very pleasing sound while the poetry provided grist for the mind to mill.
I loved Paul’s first solo album – The Paul Simon Songbook. It was more Paul with his guitar and basic production. Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall was on that and it made me ponder. I was a young teenager at the time and these words spoke to me of the confusion I was feeling, who was I? What did I really Believe? What was life about? What was right and what was wrong? I was searching for meaning and still building my persona. It was a bit of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. I was young. Death was a long way off but I knew it was there. I’d already had friends who were gone. I was very idealistic and passionate. This is a song I used to put on in my room and listen to. It spoke to me and was beautiful.
“Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall”
So I’ll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall.
The mirror on my wall
Casts an image dark and small
But I’m not sure at all it’s my reflection.
I am blinded by the light
Of God and truth and right
And I wander in the night without direction.
So I’ll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall.
It’s no matter if you’re born
To play the King or pawn
For the line is thinly drawn ‘tween joy and sorrow,
So my fantasy
Becomes reality,
And I must be what I must be and face tomorrow.
So I’ll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall.
I was around fourteen or fifteen when this came out and I greatly liked it. I think I’d been having my ups and downs with girls and could relate to the song on that score. There were times when I just wanted to crawl away and not bother with love any more. To turn my back on everyone, develop a shell and pretend I didn’t care.
Now I am a lot older I see the song in a wider context. One can do the same with life. We can see all the big calamities – war, terrorism, cruelty, poverty, inequality, mass migration, environmental destruction, extinctions, religious fundamentalism, Trump, Brexit and climate change, and feel that we are completely helpless. We want to hide away, live our own lives and forget about it. It is too upsetting.
But that is what they want us to do.
Instead we have to look outward, be idealistic and want to make the world a better place. We change what we can and shout loudly about what needs changing.
That is what they don’t want us to do.
It’s too cosy in our rooms with our books and music. Some things – love and life – are worth getting hurt over,
I’ve built walls,
A fortress steep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
Don’t talk of love,
Well I’ve heard the words before;
It’s sleeping in my memory.
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
‘I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest’
There are times when a song conveys a truth to me that nothing else does. The words of this song do that for me. Paul Simon hits the spot. His lyrics are poetry.
I think we all hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. We live in a bubble that reflects our own attitudes back at us. We select the things we listen to and watch. We put our slant on all we see and hear. We listen to the arguments that reinforce the views we hold. We buy in to the lies we are told and still naively believe the promises.
‘Now the years are rolling by me
They are rocking evenly
And I am older than I once was
And younger than I’ll be
But that’s not unusual
No, it isn’t strange
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same
After changes we are
More or less the same’
I often feel that despite all the knocks, disappointments, betrayals, disclosures, realisations and lies I am still the same naïve person I was. I am still the idealist who believes we can make things better. I haven’t changed that much. I’m just older and wiser and a lot more cynical. I’m a little bit more depressed and a bit more desperate.
It seems strange to me.
‘In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains’
Life is a bit of a battle. We carry the scars. But there are things worth fighting for, things worth believing in. There is hope. There is love and there is creativity.
We stand up for what we believe. We speak our mind. We take the consequences.
The moment I stop striving is the moment I am dead.
Paul Simon wrote this early on in his career when he was still a solo act. It is a brilliant song that captures the violence and ugliness of the terror tactics being used by the Klu Klux Klan to terrorise the black population in a vain attempt to stop the civil rights movement.
The civil rights movement came out of the Baptist Church and the white supremacists often targeted churches and the homes of activists for arson attacks. The stuck burning crosses in front of houses, rode through at night firing guns and actually lynched and shot people.
Fortunately a head of steam had been got up and people were not going to be intimidated. They wanted the vote and they wanted equality and freedom.
As Paul said – the idea of emancipation was not merely embellished in bricks and mortar; it was in the minds of the people and their bravery was indestructible.
There’s a way to go! We need more of that bravery now!
Help build a positive zeitgeist!
“A Church Is Burning”
Three hooded men, their hands lit the spark
And they faded in the night, they vanished in the dark
And in the cold light of morning, there was nothing that remained
But the ashes of a Bible and a can of kerosene
A church is burning
The flames rise higher
Like hands that are praying
They glow in the sky
Like hands that are prayin’
The fire ascends
You can burn down my churches
But I shall be free
A church is more than just timber and stone
And freedom is a dark road when you’re walking it alone
But the future is now, and it’s time to take a stand
So the lost bells of freedom can ring out in my land
A church is burning
The flames rise higher
Like hands that are praying
They glow in the sky
Like hands that are praying
The fire ascends
You can burn down my churches
But I shall be free
91. Paul Simon – Songbook
I discovered Paul Simon through this album before he teamed up with Art Garfunkel and went into the more commercial side. This was nice and simple and allowed the songs to shine through. In a way I suppose I thought this album was more pure and honest; it hadn’t had the gloss put on it. These versions were unadorned. They seemed more real and passionate to me.
Paul was obviously attempting to muscle in on the mid-sixties Folk scene which had risen to prominence because of Dylan and Greenwich Village. There were the anti-war sentiments in ‘On the side of a hill’ and the civil rights issues with ‘A church is burning’ and ‘he was my brother’ which became labelled by the media as ‘Protest’ songs. And it is probable that these type of songs were not Paul’s forte. He was naturally inclined to the more personal songs. But I loved the raw versions of ‘I am a rock’, ‘Sound of silence’ and ‘A most peculiar man’. The album was splattered with his delicate love songs.
Paul was living in London and trying to insinuate himself into the vibrant London Folk Scene when he recorded this album. Then the ‘Folk-Rock’ Simon & Garfunkel album took off unexpectedly and he beetled off back to America and a new life.
Paul did not want this album out. He probably thought it would be at odds with the more polished later albums. I prefer it.
92. Cream – Goodbye
Cream had come to the end of their life. Relationships between Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce had deteriorated to the point of violence and animosity. Not only that but Clapton thought that their creativity and innovation had got itself into a rut. Despite the fact that they were taking everywhere by storm and their shows were searing Rock at its very best they wanted out.
The heavy schedule of touring and recording had exacerbated the situation and Ginger blamed his hearing problems on Jack who he said was turning his amp up to max all the time and blasting Ginger with deafening sound.
Eric had also been beguiled by the Band and seemed to want to leave behind his loud Rock style for a more sedate type of music.
They were persuaded, fortunately, to do one last album and this was it. It was supposed to be another double album like ‘Wheels of Fire’ with one album of live and one studio, but there was not enough material for this so they opted for a single album with a live side and a studio side with one live track. I would have liked more but this is still good. The live version of Politician was particularly good. I’ve always loved that song.
Goodbye was not quite the epitaph it could have been. It was good but it could have been even better as that double album with five or six more studio tracks. All three of the studio tracks ‘Badge’, ‘Doing that Scrapyard thing’ and ‘What a Bringdown’ were excellent. Cream certainly had not lost it.
93. Bruce Springsteen – Darkness at the edge of town
This album was made before Bruce had made that breakthrough into becoming a megastar. His song-writing was near its peak and he’d had a big lay-off due to legal battles with his management. The previous album ‘Born to Run’ had broken him into the mainstream and the two year gap enabled him to get his song-writing and recording together for the next one. It also fired him up with anger and frustration that spilled out onto the tracks. You can hear it on ‘Badlands’, ‘Adam made a Cain’, ‘Factory’, ‘Prove it all night’, and ‘Promised land’.
I love this album because you can feel the intensity of the emotion coming straight through. The production was crystal clear and Bruce’s guitar seared with fury. The lyrics were among his best. He had distilled this out of a huge number of songs that he’d spilled out during his enforced rest. Some of those had gone out to other people and loads stayed in the can for a long time. What finally came out made all the waiting worthwhile. This was a landmark album and took Bruce forward a big step. That sound was now crisp and the songs finely honed.
If only a number of other bands, like Cream, had had that same forced period of rest to recover their creative zest they probably would have gone on to make further masterpieces.
94. Roy Harper – Flat Baroque & Berserk
Roy’s expertise had finally come to the attention of the powers that be. EMI had woken up to the fact that there was a burgeoning Underground scene in England and wanted to get in on the act. They wanted to sign up the best psychedelic and progressive bands and Roy was among the first to benefit. They created this new label – ‘Harvest’ and began to harvest the talent.
For the first time Roy was able to record his material in a sympathetic manner, with a produced and engineers who appreciated his songs and a studio, in Abbey Road previously used by the Beatles, which allowed him to give the material the production it deserved. It was a marriage made in heaven.
I was fortunate enough to get invited to the party and watch it all take shape. The control room was often packed with the elite of Rock Music with Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Dave Gilmour and John Bonham popping in to see how things were going and add their contributions. They were heady days.
Roy usually had at least one epic to add to the mix and there were a couple of weighty pieces on this effort. The major song was ‘I hate the Whiteman’ which was a vitriolic blast at European culture and the great edifice of a society that it had created. This was a song in the same vein as that other masterpiece ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ and Roy did not want to see it go the same way. He wanted to ensure it was properly recorded and he wanted it to be live so that all the passion would come across. He recorded it at Les Cousins as the centre-piece of the album.
This album was a real gem with a range of superb songs. The studio and production really did justice to them and superb compositions like ‘Another day’, ‘How does it feel’, ‘East of the Sun’, ‘Tom Tiddler’s Ground’ and ‘Davey’ all came to life.
Strangely, despite its excellence, it failed to become enormous. For all that it is a triumph.
95. Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde
This was the third of Bob’s brilliant string of mid-sixties electric albums. It was a bit different to the two previous in that the song-writing had changed again, the production was different, and Bob had hit upon this new sound that permeated the whole album. It was really created around Al Kooper’s organ and Robbie Robertson’s guitar. This was a double album of superb brilliance and there wasn’t a filler to be found anywhere. The scope was also enormous from the fun and exuberance of ‘Rainy day women #12 and 35’ (a term for a doobie) and the epic slow and melancholy ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’.
This was Dylan motoring at his very best with poetry leaping from his tongue in one long cavorting stream. Nearly all these songs have gone on to become classics and there were so many of them – ‘Stuck inside of mobile with the Memphis Blues again’, ‘Visions of Johanna’, ‘Pledging my time’, ‘One of us must know, (sooner or later)’, ‘Temporarily like Achilles’, ‘Most likely you go your way, I’ll go mine’, ‘Absolutely sweet Marie’, ‘4th time around’, ‘Obviously 5 believers’ and ‘Just like a woman’.
It had raised the bar again.
Sadly it was also the end of an era. Just as the whole sixties thing, that had been inspired by Bob, began to gain momentum and get underway its architect dropped out. It had all got too much and a motorbike accident allowed him the excuse to get out, clean himself up, get rid of his whole unwanted persona as ‘the spokesperson for a generation,’ dump all the expectations, get over his strung-out nerves, and put things in perspective. He decided he didn’t want the shit.
What came after had some great moments but never reached the heights of his two purple patches in the sixties.
96. Beatles – Let it be
The Beatles were also suffering from careeritis. They had got sick of being with each other. There were personality clashes, jealousies over the inclusion of songs, managerial problems and financial concerns. It was all going pear-shaped. They were baling out and putting their solo careers into gear.
There was some dispute over whether this or Abbey Road was the last album by the fab four. It was all to do with recording dates and the shelving of the album ‘Get Back’. It matters little.
The album was brilliant despite the problems between the various members and their spouses. If this is what discord produces then there should be a lot more of it. The album was certainly a great way to go out. The shame of it is that they never got back together again. They were so much better together as we could see from the various solo careers. Both George and John started brilliantly and faded badly and Paul was all middle of the road. It was tragic that by the time they began to put their personal issues behind them we were robbed of any further reunion by a deranged madman who murdered John.
The highlight of the album for me was John’s ‘Across the universe’ which is my favourite Beatle track. But it was packed with other delights such as ‘Get back’, ‘I Me Mine’, ‘One after 909’, ‘Dig it’, ‘Let it be’, ‘Dig a pony’ and ‘The two of us’.
It was immaculate. Thanks guys.
97. Captain Beefheart – Spotlight Kid
The Spotlight Kid is another tour de force of Beefheart and one of my firm favourites. Don went on and on producing the greatest and most innovative Rock sound ever and using a number of different musicians in the process.
This album was a lot more blues based with slightly less discordant structures to the songs that a lot of people find more accessible. It still had all the Beefheart hallmarks though. His voice, lyrics and the sound of the band were all top-notch.
From the opening guitar riffs of ‘I’m going to booglarize you baby’ you get the feeling that this is something special. The second guitar comes in and then the bass. Beefheart growls into he mic and sends a shudder through you. First hearing and I was fully booglarized. ‘White Jam’ started very differently with its absence of guitar and keyboard emphasis but the lyrics were still as good. We won’t go into what this white jam might be. We’re back to guitars on ‘Blabber ‘n’ Smoke’. We’ve all been there. ‘When it blows its stacks’ is back to that ominous riff and growling. I know I wouldn’t want to be around when that blows!
The album goes on and on in the same vein with track after track of outstanding sound. By the time I’d been down the line with ‘Click Clack’ and got myself ready for a sub-aqua existence with ‘Grow fins’, my friend Paul’s favourite, I was certainly ready to believe that there was certainly ‘No Santa Claus on the Midnight train’. We were on our own!
I soared off into the sky in my slightly dirge-like glider.
What a superb album and it wasn’t even one of his best!
98. Family – Family Entertainment
Family were one of those highly talented Progressive Rock groups who emerged on the British Undergound scene in the sixties. They were one of those bands who were better live than on record. Their live performances were scintillating.
Roger Chapman’s voice was extremely distinctive with its great warbling quality. The band were very Tight. Charlie Whitney played most instruments and Rick Grech’s bass was excellent. He was later snaffled by Blind Faith and drunk himself to death in his forties.
This is my favourite album of theirs because it has the epic ‘Weaver of life’, classic ‘Observations from a hill’ and great ‘Hung up down’.
They should have gone on to greater things.
99. Beatles – Please Please Me
If you are looking for the album that made the biggest impact then this is it. You probably have to go back to Elvis Presley and his ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ album in 1957 to get close.
The Beatles exploded upon the scene and sent napalm cascading over the planet. It was the rebirth of Rock Music. Just when the American Establishment began to relax thinking they’d removed the scourge of Rock ‘n’ Roll the Beatles came and kicked everything into space. They released a swell like a burst damn. There was no way it was going to be put back in that bottle.
This album changed the world and paved the way for everything that came after. What poured through the hole they’d blasted transformed society, sparked off the sixties era of social reform and ushered in a whole new wave of liberalisation. All that from a set of songs on a chunk of waste material made from oil.
My friend Tony played me ‘I saw her standing there’ and I was completely blown away. As soon as you heard it you recognised the significance. This was new, different and modern. Not only that but it was also British!
They blew the past away. None of the Underground, psychedelia or Rock Music would have happened without them. This album was transformative. We’d all be wearing short back and sides without it.
Apart from the sound, and the appearance of the performers, the other incredible thing about this debut album was that seven of the fourteen tracks were written by the Beatles. That was unheard of. In general singers sung other people’s songs. Elvis did write songs. Of course there were exceptions such as Buddy Holly but in general the song-writers of the Brill Building in Tin Pan Alley provided the material or it was stolen from black R&B. This was a departure that gave the Beatles a big boost and enhanced their chances of longevity. Not only that but it was instantly obvious that the quality of even their early material – ‘I saw her standing there’, ‘Please please me’ and ‘PS I love you,’ – were every bit as good as the R&B classics that made up the rest of the album. Even their choice of the R&B material was unusual. It was not the usual songs that other Liverpool bands were covering. The Beatles had selected things like ‘Chains’, ‘Anna (go with him)’, ‘Boys’, ‘A taste of honey’ and ‘Twist and Shout’.
It blew the cobwebs out of the social machine!
100. Jimi Hendrix – Are you Experienced?
Talking of brilliant earth-shattering debut albums then this was another. I can still remember hearing ‘Hey Joe’ for the first time on an old portable tinny, plastic radio and sitting bolt upright to concentrate. My ears had never heard a sound like it. Jimmy exploded on us ready-formed.
That first album blew my young innocent mind. In early 1967 I was seventeen and clearly not at all experienced. When ‘Hey Joe’ came out in 1966 my American pen-friend (we are talking archaic social media here) wrote to me telling me that she and her friends liked getting high on grass and listening to Jimi. I imagined them out in a meadow on top of a hill with a portable radio. It did not take too long for me to catch up though.
Everything Jimi produced was mind-blowing. He shifted the whole music scene into another gear and propelled us into Progressive, Heavy and Psychedelic all at the same time.
The first album may have been all short tracks overseen by Chas Chandler but they spoke in Martian. That was lucky because we were all yearning to speak Martian and lapped it up. From ‘Foxy Lady’ to ‘Are you experienced?’ it was non-stop aural explosive delight. Jimi wrenched new sounds out of the guitar, new chords, new feedback and weaved it round his songs to create something from outer space. We loved it.
There are no stand-out tracks because they were all stand-out – ‘Fire’, ‘Love or Confusion?’ ‘Can you see me?’ ‘Manic depression’ ‘Third stone from the sun’ – it went on and on with one crazy new thing after another. The sound was so new, dynamic and loud. This debut was the start of something outrageously special. There’ll never be another Jimi.