7. Simon & GarfunkelBridge Over Troubled Water
I was a teenager living at home with my parents. I did love the movie The Graduate. What’s not to love, as a young guy? I knew a little bit of Simon And Garfunkel, friends had played it, friends had sung it at school, with folk groups. I thought of them as very folky, and it’s a very broad brush, and I didn’t really like folk music for a very long time. I thought, ‘That is not my thing.’ But Bridge Over Troubled Water for me is about being in bed under the covers with my really shitty headphones on that I had at the time, listening to his record when I was supposed to be asleep because I had to go to school the next morning.
The songwriting, man, the harmony vocals. Legendary. I’m a huge vocal fan. My favorite vocal group is the BBC Singers, I think. This was so far beyond, and I didn’t think about this at the time – it’s like someone’s waving a flag and saying, ‘Look what you can do! More than you thought you could do.’ It was so far beyond the soundtrack to The Graduate, but recognizably the same talents. I suppose it’s a great sign of artists growing together. I know it’s a breakup record as well of course. But really, it’s the songwriting, and a wonderful recording by Roy Halee as well. I mean, for the time it just seemed like state-of-the-art stereophonic recording, these beautiful, beautiful songs. Very moved. It imprinted, burned into my teenage brain. I still love the record, of course.
