It was the song that made Simon & Garfunkel musical legends. Yet if it hadn’t been for the foresight of a producer — and the work of a handful of session musicians — we might never have heard of the duo.
Written by a 21-year-old Paul Simon, the original bare-bones acoustic guitar version of “The Sounds of Silence” was one of the earliest songs of his career. The darkness greeted in its opening line was literal.
“I wrote it in the bathroom in my parent’s house because the room was tiled, so there was an echo,” Simon told Uncut. “I used to turn the lights off and leave the water running. It was like white noise.”
Simon knew “The Sounds of Silence” was a step up from anything he’d composed before. “My brother says it was amazing that I wrote it, because everything I’d written before that was way below it in quality.
“I just took it as, ‘That’s a good one, I could close my act with this one.’”
On the strength of the song alone, Simon & Garfunkel secured a recording contract with Columbia Records. The duo recorded their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., in 1964 under the watchful eye of producer Tom Wilson, who had recently produced Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’.
The album featured the song under the slightly altered title “The Sounds of Silence,” but when Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. was released, it went nowhere. The commercial failure led to the duo’s untimely split. Simon headed to London, immersing himself in the city’s burgeoning folk-rock scene, while Garfunkel returned to his college studies.
Back in the U.S., folk-rock was gaining traction. Bob Dylan was leading the way, while the Byrds’ jangly guitar interpretation of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” gave the genre an additional boost by topping the U.S. charts. As folk-rock swept the nation, “The Sounds of Silence” began receiving marginal airplay on some East Coast college radio stations.
Wilson became aware of the song’s growing popularity. Having recently produced Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, an album that saw Dylan introduce electric instruments into his music and expand his audience in the process, Wilson believed “The Sounds of Silence” could achieve a similar result if it were augmented with electric instruments and drums.
Without informing Simon & Garfunkel, he decided to overdub the original recording with bass, drums and electric guitars. Among the musicians he called was session guitarist Al Gorgoni, who had already worked with Dylan and would go on to appear on countless recordings by some of the biggest names in popular music.
“I was one of the first-call players, so we got called for almost everything,” Gorgoni tells Guitar Player today. “Tom Wilson was a very successful producer, but not a hands-on producer. What he did was call the right people and turn them loose in the studio. In this case, it was to add a rhythm section to the two guys singing with a guitar accompaniment.”
Tom Wilson was a very successful producer, but not a hands-on producer. What he did was call the right people and turn them loose in the studio.”
— Al Gorgoni
Wilson also brought in Dylan session drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Bob Bushnell and second guitarist Vinnie Bell. Having booked the studio for a three-hour block, the four musicians set up their gear and prepared to record.
Gorgoni armed himself with a Gibson L-5 and an Ampeg amp. Bell, meanwhile, had his own preferred setup, which Gorgoni says he regularly arranged as the go-to rig for sessions in the various studios where they worked.
With Wilson at the helm and Roy Halee engineering, tracking began. But the session quickly proved difficult. Because the original recording had no drums and had not been recorded to a click track, its tempo was inconsistent, repeatedly faltering throughout the song.
“It was chaotic,” Gorgoni reveals. “We had to match the recording. They even tried using echo, but that didn’t disguise the uneven tempo.”
The guitarist recalls that Wilson’s hands-off method meant the musicians were left to their own devices.
“There was no arranger or any real guidance for the players from the booth, either. So they kept playing the track until we made up our parts. They made lots of takes. Eventually they chose the one that became the hit.”
I’m not surprised he didn’t like it. The recording is crude in my view, but it proves the power of a song.”
— Al Gorgoni
Released as a single in September 1965, the revamped version of “The Sounds of Silence” aligned perfectly with the folk-rock sound dominating the airwaves. The new mix connected with a wider audience, and the single slowly began its ascent up the American charts, reaching the top of the Billboard Hot 100 on January 1, 1966. The Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out” knocked it out the following week, but the song returned to number one on January 22.
Simon, still living in London, knew none of this. The first he heard about the new version was when he picked up a copy of the music trade magazine Cashbox. Reportedly, when he heard what Wilson had done to his song, he was enraged.
“I’m not surprised he didn’t like it,” Gorgoni says. “The recording is crude in my view, but it proves the power of a song. Paul is a great songwriter and also an excellent guitar player. And he was part of the new breed of singer-songwriters who were writing more sophisticated lyrics as the pop music scene was evolving.”
Soon afterward, Simon returned from London and reunited with Garfunkel. At the request of their record label, the duo quickly recorded an album titled Sounds of Silence to capitalize on the single’s momentum.
The strategy worked. The album produced two more Top 10 U.S. hits, “Homeward Bound” and “I Am a Rock.” Simon & Garfunkel’s career was back on track.
Over the years, Simon has acknowledged how those three hours Wilson and the musicians labored in the studio transformed not only the song but his life. Had the musicians not managed to build a new arrangement around its uneven tempo, Simon & Garfunkel might never have made their mark on popular music.
“I’m sure he and Art were happy to have such a great career,” Gorgoni says. “And it was launched by that recording.”
