2. Simon & GarfunkelBridge Over Troubled Water
Going back to the familiar, there’s me as a second grade kid growing up in Wisconsin who loved music and who would sift through anything he could find that his mother brought home. My mom and dad both loved this album, and I listened to it and discovered that it had plenty to keep me interested. I would sit with my head between the speakers, because this is a beautifully produced album as well. But I would be lying if I said that I recognised immediately at the age seven that what I was listening to was fantastic songwriting. You don’t realise that at that age. You just know that it becomes a part of you. And this album has so many great tunes on it that it just became a part of me. I can’t really tease apart parts of ‘The Boxer’, or ‘So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright’, or ‘The Only Living Boy In New York’ from some of the songs that I’ve written myself. In fact, Bad Religion have a song called ‘Flat Earth Society’ [from 1990’s Against The Grain album] which has a melody that features the words "lie lie lie," and that was a homage to ‘The Boxer’.
