Monocled Alchemist

“The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine” is my pick from the LP | Simon and Garfunkel – ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme’ (Columbia CS 9363) October 1966

Article published in Crawdaddy!, January 1967

Simon and Garfunkel | Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme | (Columbia) 1966 | What is ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme’? First, it is, throughout, a smoothly professional performance by Simon & Garfunkel. Second, it’s a variety of elements unified by the highly individual style that is the trademark of Paul Simon‘s writing and S&G’s arranging. And best of all, when a cut is successful, the album is a subtle and moving experience. You gain a little bit more with every replay.

Take, for instance, “Scarborough Fair/Canticle”: this, the greatest success of the album, is a lovely fragile ballad with words from the old English tradition, haunting and sweet. Add a complex tracking of harmonies and you have a thing of beauty.

But under the main melodic line is interpolated another, melting into the surface harmony, with an almost subliminal lyric intimating the loneliness of the soldier. A song of real significance is created, greater than any of the parts or their sum. This is representative of the album at its best, an arrangement of beauty and significance.

Simon and Garfunkel | The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine | (Columbia) 1966

The lyric, of course, was not written by Simon, but the styling is all S&G. They can be said to have one voice (it is difficult to tell which one is singing at any given time). This is indicative of their own particular sound, the blend of two individual voices into one, weaving a pattern of harmony. This and their arrangements. They have a genius for taking disparate elements from the whole body of pop and folk music and creating a new brew each song.

With this in mind, let’s examine “Patterns.” There is an opening run in razor-back guitar style, then a staccato drum beat introducing the words, accompanied by sliding guitar runs, seemingly isolated from the melody.

The words build a lonely man enclosed in a dark room, his fear and frustration at not being in control of his own life. Suddenly a raga theme, introduced recognizably, the inevitable (in retrospect) conclusion of the earlier guitar runs.

The rising tension of the lyric is enforced by the rapid beat and increasingly complex raga theme. The song builds to a cut: it is a scream sliced off, an unanswered why. This is an extremely successful presentation.

Simon and Garfunkel | Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme | (Columbia) 1966

But what does “Patterns” say? S&G are billed as intellectual leaders of the new, concerned, intelligent audience. Unfortunately, the content of this song does not do much to uphold such an accolade.

The lyric, effectively set forth as it is, attempts to establish its mood for the most part through the use of stock images, to derive power from our almost automatic response to rats in mazes, death, darkness, etc. ad infinitum.

Through the mere pile-up of this type of image the lyric projects its message, but imprecisely. In reaching to evoke meaning, S&G only achieve ambiguity. The song, in other words, isn’t very profound. It is only well done because the arrangement milks every last bit of emotiveness out of the lyric.

Shift to “Cloudy”:the ebullient opening (reminiscent of Buddy Holly) lifts us into an opposing mood, joy at freedom in time and space, the freedom to just plain be. The elation doesn’t quite last throughout; the clouds are.

Patterns

The patterns of life are above you, covering the future and the present too. We know only in retrospect. And here is a light, smooth arrangement with just enough weight to bear the serious burden toward the end.

The lyric is much superior to “Patterns,” but with some of the same flaws. Each song seems to be an expansion of the title word into a symbol. The clouds are progressively redefined throughout “Cloudy”; the “Patterns” remain a relatively static concept. But the crux of the matter is that “Cloudy” does not try too hard to mean something.

Therefore its meaning is presented clearly, without a pile of ambiguous imagery. Of course the recognizable Simon trait of using many similes is still present (everything is “like” something else), but not overly noticeable here.

Simon and Garfunkel | Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme | (Columbia) 1966

A smooth song, “Homeward Bound” deserves the popularity it attained as a single. It is all the more effective because it attempts to say very little, but simply, directly. The only excitement of the lyric is in the triple repetition of “home,” which is backed by a sudden increase in tempo and a break-out in accompaniment. The point is well-taken: the freer we are from ties, the more insecure, lonely, lacking in reference. Not subtle, but moving.

Then a refreshing pause for sound and fury: “The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine.” The key is simple; as the song says, let your brain be neutralized, feel free of thought, you’re being advertised at. Intentionally stock phrases, the big beat, full backing gives the song a thoroughly commercial sound.

You don’t even have to listen to the words, but if you do, you’ll realize that this ingenious song exists fully for its own surface satire, garish and witty. The truly effective irony is that the song is even satirizing itself. It is exactly what it says it is, a pleasure machine, jazzy and brilliant, without meaning. The dog bites its own tail.

Feelin’ Groovy

And then you walk away, “Feelin,’ Groovy.” This song is perhaps the closest S&G come to pure song; the surface images constitute the whole meaning, the tune is bright and lilting. The joy of nonsense syllables set to music, the repeated line (feelin’ groovy) and the images of careless freedom, all seriousness aside, add up to almost purely musical experience.

The patterns of the album begin to emerge. Paul Simon is against meaninglessness. He tries to instill a positive meaning in all his lyrics, and when he tries on a small scale he succeeds.

Even when he tries on a cosmic scale with deep and significant yet imprecise images, symbols without controlling referents, the arrangements tend to enhance his melodies to the point that he seems successful until you try to analyze the lyric. The effect is only general, never cutting to the bone.

Simon and Garfunkel | Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme | (Columbia) 1966

In “Dangling Conversation,” for instance, we can see Simon starting out to write a specific satire on the lack of communication between two people, presumably boy and girl. But there’s the catch. I have to say “presumably” because he never quite pins down the situation even that far, confusing the issue a bit with “is the theater really dead” and such stereotypes from general conversation between any two people.

And these are the most important lines of the lyric, that defines it as satire, that point out the real lack of communication, as opposed to the opening verses which seem to establish a straightforward situation. The tone is basically gentle and the arrangement counterpoints the superficial sensitivity of the delicate people (I’m reminded of “all the lonely people”). But the effect is not entirely satisfactory.

Flowers

“Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall” is a schizoid ballad. The chorus is upbeat (I continue to continue) while the verses ironically give little hope, being concerned with (again) lack of communication, isolation, loneliness, confusion. The arrangement is up tempo, lively even beat with guitar, which seems to negate all bitterness. We are left with two distinct and opposing impressions, unresolved.

A blast of irreverent satire follows, a Dylan imitation that piles up cliches from early Dylan style writing and performance with a concentration of so much hot air and noise that the excess evaporates in laughter. The message: this type of song is evocative nonsense, but always nonsense “A Simple Desultory Phillipic.”

It is interesting that Simon can recognize the faults in Dylan’s style that are so close to his own, Both have over-used the pile-up technique on the theory that one more image must add to the meaning. This is too often untrue. Quantity of imagery can confuse the issue, offering too many alternate meanings.

The words of “To Emily” are lovely if you don’t look too closely; they fall apart under scrutiny. Simon has used too many cliches from teenage trauma songs (without going far enough to make them satirical) together with lists of evocative words (crinoline, lace, flowers) to build an image of that ideal girl we’ve all been searching for. All that is established is that our ideal is nice. This is a terribly thin attempt compared to the depth of the rest of the record.

One of the most interesting cuts S&G have produced yet is “Poem on the Underground Wall.” Simon seems to be fascinated by the “other man,” whose character we only glimpse in “Richard Cory” and “A Most Peculiar Man.”

Simon and Garfunkel | Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme | (Columbia) 1966

“Poem” is an essay in depth and ambiguity. Some of the images work, some don’t, which gives me the impression that Simon again tried to shoot the works by overloading the imagery in hopes that it would turn out consistent, for the song is packed with, almost consists of, vivid flashes of counterposed images.

The excitement of the arrangement races the listener through at a constant high pitch, but leaves one with the shock of connotative words which conflict. We know what happened, but we haven’t the richness of depth which the wealth of images seemed to promise.

What saves the song is the title word “poem.” Without it, the meaning behind the images is a total loss. With it, we have one solid referent. How is the four-letter word on the wall a poem? All the other image clusters relate more or less vaguely to the rather strange idea that the song is about the act of creation in some sense, about art. Altogether a thought-provoking song, not at all a fake. But intentionally?

Silent Night

“Silent Night” is a simple gimmick piece, pretentious but competent. The point is direct and clear, perhaps too clear. There are some good things to be said about it; it is relevant to this Christmas season without doubt. The trick, of course, is the arrangement, fade down Silent Night, fade up newscast. This is done subtly and well. But it is not profound.

So what have we? S&G have produced a pleasurable and valuable album, as much as could be expected. But it is beginning to be apparent that their strength really lies in arranging, in supporting moderately good to excellent lyrics and melodies with superlative and interesting accompaniments.

Their style of lyric is becoming stereotyped. Paul Simon has not broken away from his original repository of imagery or vocabulary. They continue to sound original, due to continually inventive arrangements. But this is dangerous ground for success. Either the lyrics will improve or they will reach a limit within their style very shortly.

DAVID HARTWELL

The Subtle Force Of Simon & Garfunkel

“Simon and Garfunkel | “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” (Columbia CS 9363) sounds like Norman Luboff emasculated and rewired for electricity, a record in which all of the passion and none of the pretension has been allowed to drain off carefully through the centre hole,” wrote Paul Nelson in Sing Out!, a folk music magazine.

“Paul Simon‘s lyrics are surely made of plastic, as are Art Garfunkel‘s deliriously prissy arrangements, and one tired quickly of songs which refuse to do anything but admire their own fashionable postures in a veritable house of mirrors.”

Nelson concludes, “A breath of anything real would demolish the whole album.”

Like many stalwarts of traditional folk music, Nelson seems reluctant to accept the recent revolution in “folk” sounds. Simon and Garfunkel were once “legitimate” folk singers while they were attending college. They had a modest following and an excellent but neglected folk album, “Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.”

One summer, while the boys were in England, singing in coffeehouses and enjoying the leisurely pace of anonymity, some people in America were taking steps that would change everything.

The Subtle Force Of Simon & Garfunkel

A Miami disc jockey began playing a song from their album, “The Sounds Of Silence.” Columbia Records, sensing the song’s potential, overdubbed a drum, electric guitar and Fender bass, added a deep echo and released “The Sounds Of Silence” as a single. It was a hit.

Many of the folk music fans who stoned Bob Dylan for using amplified guitars likewise condemned Simon and Garfunkel for getting into the “Folk-Rock” bag.

The duo isn’t concerned about labelling their music. They just want to communicate. “Those mountain songs didn’t say anything to the kids in the 22-story apartment house,” they explain. Traditional folk music’s loss has provided pop music with some of the most meaningful lyrics to ever shake a transistor.

“Pop music is the most vibrant force in music today,” said Art Garfunkel. “It’s like dope – so heady, so alive.”

The Parsley, Sage album is alive with sounds like “The Dangling Conversation”, “Homeward Bound”, “The Bright Green Pleasure Machine” and “7 O’Clock News/ Silent Night”, each with a subtle message for the young people of today, not for disgruntled folk music critics.

“We are just creating doubts and raising questions,” says Paul Simon.

Listen, and you may find your own answer. (Song Hits, March 1967)