1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music (31 page)

“The Sound of Silence” became one of the era’s most eloquent warnings against silent complicity in the face of murder—in the South and, later, in Vietnam. Perhaps both Simon’s and Dylan’s protest songs were informed by the Holocaust, as well, as both writers were Jews born in America while the genocide was in progress overseas. But unlike the other civil rights songs on
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
, “Silence” is vague enough to be timeless, allowing
The Graduate
to revive it three years later to express a young suburbanite’s ennui.

Unfortunately, silence was what greeted the album’s release. Disheartened, Garfunkel went back to Columbia. Simon heard that London was ravenous for folk, so he went there to busk. He wrote “Red Rubber Ball” with Bruce Woodley of the Seekers for a hundred pounds; the song defiantly proclaims his resilience in the face of bitter disappointment. He wrote “Someday One Day” for the Seekers as well.

In the wake of British Dylan mania after his May tour, Simon was given the chance to record his own solo LP in June and July. Since it was released only in the United Kingdom, Simon and Garfunkel would later redo a number of the tracks, and thus
The Paul Simon Songbook
is like an unplugged version of the next two Simon and Garfunkel albums, minus Garfunkel, which allows one to see how much the blond singer added to the mix.

Songbook
is almost a concept album of Simon’s battle with depression. (Understandable—he and his buddy finally made an album after seven years with his hero’s producer and it flopped.) In “I Am a Rock,” Simon tries to convince himself that he’s happy living a life of isolation, but in “A Most Peculiar Man,” he turns on the oven and gasses himself like Sylvia Plath. Even in his ode to his English girlfriend, Kathy Chitty (“Kathy’s Song”), the raindrops are dying. À la
Freewheelin’
, Simon put Chitty on the cover with him, sitting on “Sound of Silence” cobblestones.

“April Come She Will” takes its structure from the English rhyme “Cuckoo, Cuckoo, What Do You Do?” Love rests in Simon’s arms in the spring and then prowls the night and flies away. Other seasonal songs include “Leaves That Are Green,” in which he watches the leaves wither after his girlfriend has vanished. Its “hello goodbye” verse perhaps inspired the Beatles’ hit two years later. Simon was already cornering the market on intoxicating folk-pop you feared to listen to lest it stab you in the heart with gorgeous grief. The Simon and Garfunkel version of “Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall,” recorded the following year, boasts a guitar almost as cheerful as the Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen a Face”—until you remember it is about death.

*   *   *

Wilson had forgotten
about
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
because it sold only about a thousand copies. But one day, a promotions guy told him that the album was selling in Florida. “He said, according to our guy in Miami it was ‘Sound of Silence’ they liked, but they wanted a beat put to it. So I took Dylan’s backing band and went and overdubbed it, everything, on my own, ’cause they [Simon and Garfunkel] weren’t around.”
9

“Mr. Tambourine Man” was a week away from being the No. 1 record when Dylan and Wilson recorded “Like a Rolling Stone” on June 15. After Dylan left, on the same day, Wilson gathered a different set of musicians for the “Silence” overdub: guitarists Al Gorgoni (who plays on
Bringing It All Back Home
) and Vinnie Bell, bassist Joe Mack, and drummer Buddy Salzman.

Gorgoni recalled, “I remember listening to Paul’s acoustic guitar part through the headphones and basically just copping it. I had this Epiphone Casino, which had the right sound. People used to think it was a twelve-string electric like the Byrds; it’s not, it’s just me and Vinnie playing together, mixed together onto the same track. And Vinnie added a few bluesy fills that you can hear in there as well. It took us a couple hours, and it was done.”
10
Since the Byrds had used an echo, engineer Roy Halee put an echo on the “Silence” track.

Wilson said, “In fact, the single was held up from July to late September or October, by which time I’d left for MGM—more money.”
11
Before Wilson left, he did the same folk-rock trick with doo-wop icon Dion “The Wanderer” DiMucci, capturing magnificent covers of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and Tom Paxton’s “I Can’t Help but Wonder Where I’m Bound,” along with Dion originals such as the aching “Knowing I Won’t Go Back There.”

Garfunkel wasn’t too impressed when he heard the new version of “Silence.” “It’s cute. They’ve drowned out the strength of the lyric and they’ve made it more of a fashion kind of production. And you never know. I was mildly amused and detached with the certainty that it was not a hit. I don’t have hits.”
12

But then it started its slow but inexorable climb. Simon returned to the States to regroup with Garfunkel. When they played
Hullabaloo
, the show’s guitarist was Vinnie Bell, who plays on the record. But Simon didn’t know him and told the musical director he wanted to show the musician how to play the guitar part. The director said he already knew, but Simon said, “No, I did a special thing on the record that I want him to do with the sound.”

Simon introduced himself to Bell and then said, “I’d like to show you, if you don’t mind, how I did this thing on the record.”

Bell assured him he knew just what to play.

“No, here, just watch my fingers.”

“Paul, I did the record.”

Bell recalled, “And of course there was this silence. And he said, ‘Well … okay … Are you sure you did the record?’ I said, ‘Yeah. It’s
this
, right?’ And I played [sings part]. And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ And I said, ‘Okay, you’ll get that. Don’t worry.’”
13

At Columbia, Bob Johnston took over as Simon and Garfunkel’s producer just as he had for Dylan. They cranked out the
Sounds of Silence
LP in December and released it in January to cash in. LA’s Wrecking Crew performs on some of it: Larry Knechtel on keyboards, Glen Campbell on guitar, and Hal Blaine on drums. Some of the music tracks were recorded in Johnston’s home base, Nashville. The only new songs were “We’ve Got a Groovey Thing Goin’” and “Blessed,” the latter featuring Simon in his favorite pose of brooding through the dark streets among the meth drinkers, pot dealers, hookers, and thieves, wondering why the Lord has forsaken him.

“This is probably my most neurotic song,” Simon would say to introduce “I Am a Rock.”
14
It was rerecorded on December 14. It was touching to see the duo harmonize when they performed the song live, belying the singer’s insistence that he has no need for friendship. It reached No. 3.

Just in case one suicide song (“A Most Peculiar Man”) wasn’t enough, Simon updated “Richard Cory,” a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson about a factory worker who can’t understand why the town’s richest man just shot himself. They also recorded a hit that would be held off for their next album, “Homeward Bound,” written when Simon was missing his girlfriend, Kathy. On January 1, the sepulchral “Sound of Silence” was the No. 1 record, ringing in the New Year with a distinct air of foreboding. After eight years, the two kids from Queens had finally made it.

*   *   *

The folk-rock boom snowballed
into the trend du jour with albums such as
Jan and Dean Folk ’n Roll
,
Johnny Rivers Rocks the Folk
, and even
Waylon Jennings Folk-Country.
It’s ironic that the era’s most iconoclastic writer birthed the most successfully cloned template embraced by the LA producers in the second half of the year. Mix Dylan lyrics (or at least anti-establishment lyrics) with Beatles/Byrds jangle, harmonies and drums, and—presto!—a hip new single.

The Turtles approached their cover of “It Ain’t Me Babe” as if they were the Zombies, and made it to No. 8. In September, Manfred Mann took Dylan’s “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” to No. 2 in the United Kingdom, and also covered “With God on Our Side.” Another group that rose out of the Troubadour’s hootenanny scene, the Association, made its debut in October with Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings.” P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri dubbed themselves the Grass Roots and covered “Mr. Jones (Ballad of a Thin Man)” in the studio, before turning the band over to other musicians to tour. The Four Seasons covered “Don’t Think Twice” under the name the Wonder Who? The Leaves did “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” the Daily Flash did “Queen Jane Approximately.” The Myddle Class bravely took on “Gates of Eden.” Even the Beach Boys recorded “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Odetta released a full album of
Odetta Sings Dylan.
Eventually, Dylan’s label would take out ads reading, “Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan.” Though perhaps that should have been amended to “Except for Mouse and the Traps,” a Texas garage band fronted by Ronnie Weiss whose “A Public Execution” was the most hilarious spot-on Dylan imitation of the decade.

When Donovan first met Dylan in London in May, they sat around playing each other songs. Donovan played a song he’d written about “darling tangerine eyes” based on a melody he’d heard at a festival—and the song was Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” “You know,” Dylan said, “I haven’t always been accused of writing my own songs. But
that’s
one I did write.”
15
Still, Dylan liked Donovan’s “Catch the Wind,” and the two became friends. Dylan introduced Donovan to the Beatles, with whom he became tight. Donovan also became friendly with Joan Baez, whose romance with Dylan was reaching its painful end. Dylan had passive-aggressively invited her to accompany him during his spring tour of England, but then pointedly declined to invite her onstage to perform with him. Dylan still kept his blossoming affair with Sara Lownds hidden from Baez, but grew increasingly cold to her. Baez took some solace in Donovan’s arms and he accompanied her to Vietnam War protests.
16

The Kinks didn’t cover Dylan, but on September 17 they released a folky four-song collection called
Kwyet Kinks,
with Ray Davies’s first stab at social commentary, “A Well Respected Man,” inspired by his stay at a resort where he felt the rich guests acted snobby toward him. He painted a picture of an always-punctual stockbroker, healthy in body and mind; even his sweat smells better than everyone else’s. But despite his smug, conservative image, behind the scenes he can’t wait to inherit his dad’s money, and his dad fools around with the maid. His mom dissuades him from marrying the girl next door because he just lusts for her; meanwhile she herself gives the eye to young men. The song’s success encouraged Ray to continue down the path of finely observed satires of British culture.

It was also the year Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman broke Canadian Gordon Lightfoot internationally. Lightfoot had a Dylanesque way with bittersweet melodicism, and fellow Grossman act Peter, Paul and Mary covered both the piercing “Early Morning Rain” and cynical “For Lovin’ Me.” The Grateful Dead also recorded the former in a November demo, while Nico proved herself the equal to any of the folk divas with “I’m Not Sayin’.” On June 19, Marty Robbins topped the country charts with Lightfoot’s “Ribbon of Darkness.”

Judy Collins’s
Fifth Album
has “Early Morning Rain” alongside three Dylan tracks and Phil Ochs’s song about the Watts riots, “In the Heat of the Summer.” The same month, her rival Joan Baez went electric with the help of Bruce “Mr. Tambourine Man” Langhorne on
Farewell, Angelina
, which includes four Dylan covers, a Donovan tune, and her U.K. No. 8 rendition of Phil Ochs’s “There but for Fortune.”

For Marianne Faithfull’s three albums of the year, she stayed away from those writers but did cover another up-and-coming singer-songwriter named Tom Paxton with “The Last Thing on My Mind.” Her singles were an enchanting mix of folk and pop: “Come and Stay with Me,” “This Little Bird,” “Summer Nights,” and “Go Away from My World.” Manager Andrew Oldham tried to recreate the success he had with Faithfull by pairing Vashti Bunyan with Jagger/Richards’s “Some Things Just Stick in Your Minds,” in which they tried to combine “As Tears Go By” with “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Both Jagger and Dylan yearned for Faithfull, and they both also considered Françoise Hardy the ideal woman. She recorded
Françoise Hardy in English
and performed its songs in an English special,
The Piccadilly Show
. The winsome beauty of “Ce Petit Coeur” and the epic orchestration of “Non, Ce n’est Pas un Rêve” are stirring even if you can’t understand French. In November she had a part in French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard’s
Masculin Féminin
, which concerns the relationship between a tempestuous radical and a pop singer. Godard had the actors improvise based on notes he wrote each night before the shoot, in order to capture his vision of “The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola.”

And in a bumper crop year for folk chanteuses, one of the most bewitching had just made her way to Los Angeles.

*   *   *

In the early 1960s,
John Phillips was in a folk band called the Journeymen with his good friend Scott McKenzie. On the road, Phillips met sixteen-year-old model Michelle Gilliam (born 1944) and, in December 1962, left his wife and two kids to marry her. Their nine-year age gap was just two years short of Sonny and Cher’s.

On tour, Phillips also met folkie Denny Doherty, and after the Journeymen split, Phillips tried to form the New Journeymen in spring 1965 with Michelle and Doherty. Doherty pushed for Cass Elliot to be in the group. One night, when the others were on acid, Doherty had her come by and introduce herself. Phillips thought Elliot’s voice was too low and that she wasn’t attractive enough.

That summer, Phillips, Michelle, Doherty, and Phillips’s five-year-old daughter Mackenzie went to the Virgin Islands on American Express cards. They lived in tents, and the adults took acid every day and hung out at a bar called Creeque Alley, owned by Hugh Duffy, later mythologized in the Mamas and Papas song “Creeque Alley.”
17
Cass followed them down, pestering Phillips to be allowed to join, and he finally relented.