The career of Simon & Garfunkel is the subject of Uncut's new Ultimate Music Guide special edition magazine. The special issue, which is out this week, was published in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the pair's final album, Bridge Over Trouble Water, chronicles the duo's entire catalogue — together and apart — their film careers, studio collaborations, reunion tours, with a healthy dose of archival interviews, that originally ran in the UK music weeklies.
Paul Simon recalled how in 1965, legendary producer Tom Wilson dubbed electric guitars, bass, organ and drums on to the existing acoustic-based track of “The Sound Of Silence,” resurrecting the song from certain obscurity on Simon & Garfunkel's 1964 debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.: “First of all, I didn't even hear about until it was already out and sort of making a little bit of noise. 'The Sound Of Silence' was out, had come out for a year on an album called, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. — and that album came out and disappeared. So when they decided to overdub whatever they wanted; first of all, no one asked me, second of all, it was already a dead issue, so I didn't really mind.”
Art Garfunkel says that 50 years after recording “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” he never tires of performing it live: “Well, here we are, years later, I'm still singing it from town to town, and it's completely alive and fresh to me. There is nothing dated, or any feeling of the past — I love doing it. Thank the Lord the feeling — the goose bumps — constantly checks in every time I do it.”