Not Featured on Songs of America
Taking a break from the blow by blow of the 1969 documentary Songs of America, here’s a little Christmas interlude on their version of Silent Night.
It’s from their 1966 album Parsley Sage Rosemaary and Thyme and it feels awfully dated — instead of directly describing anything or making any real statement, it settles for a pretty ham handed insertion of irony by overlaying their simple harmonizing of Silent Night with a fake broadcast of the 7 O’Clock News.
But looking back through time, you start to get it. This background piece from American Songwriter helpfully notes that the news announcer, Charlie O’Donnell, was actually a DJ who later became an announcer for Wheel of Fortune. When he intoned about Nixon predicting five more years of war in Vietnam over the smooth harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel, more pointed, emotionally honest protest of the war was really hard to find on the airwaves.
For example, the 1966 Buffalo Springfield song For What It’s Worth was actually about young people clashing with police over local curfew laws. As Wikipedia notes “Local residents and businesses had become annoyed by how crowds of young people going to clubs and music venues along the Strip had caused late-night traffic congestion.”
Hollywood didn’t produce a movie critical of the war in a direct way until 1972 when Elia Kazan directed The Visitors, and until then relied on indirect references like the 1970 movie Catch 22, which included Art Garfunkel in the cast. Otherwise, big movies were pro-war, such as John Wayne’s idiotic The Green Berets, which doesn’t even work on a kitsch level.
So it’s not the piece it could have been, but many decades ago, that’s probably as far as Columbia records would go.
And for anyone wondering what it might have sounded like without the news, here you go. The version with the news inserted actually sounds better.
So go ahead and enjoy the original for what it was – a smal step in the right direction by a couple of Jewish guys from Long Island 57 years ago.
M*A*S*H was among the indirect analogies which was ironic as the author was a big Nixon fan and why he hated the movie and the TV series.
As someone who is a consumer of war movies, I found The Green Berets to be so fucking stupid and quite unwatchable. The plot was more out of Korea (similar to the The Steel Helmet but with helos and Tiger camo). Hard to imagine early 60 year old middle aged spread John Wayne as an actual Green Beret romping and stomping in the jungle. Pictures of actual Green Berets showed very skinny but athletic mostly young men doing the dangerous work.
Sort of like my reaction to Green Beret Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. I didn’t get that vibe from 62 year old Tom Cruise in Mavericking 2.0 as a still active naval aviator (but he hasn’t aged or gotten middle aged spread… Damn Xenu.)
Anyway, you’re right that Columbia Records knew it was a dangerous time to go against the orthodoxy in 1966 because the US believed Vietnam could be “won.”
There was still two more years to go before Tet blew up all the delusions of the Johnson Admin and US Amercia was about to go thru Nixon’s peace with honor phase.
…a recent episode of the infinite monkey cage had test pilots & astronauts talking about how accurate certain films were & I loved the lady who answered about top gun 2.0 the top gun-ening…well, probably the most unrealistic thing would be the idea they’d let a man his age in one of those planes…compared to the that even the “not how any of this works” stuff was positively plausible?
[…mind you brian cox talking about danny boyle not wanting to hear anything he had to say about how much of a mess sunshine was might have pipped her at the post]
I read MASH thinking it would be like the movie and show and didn’t realize how much ugliness from the book they cut.
There’s a scene where the author manufactures a Black character who gives a speech about how much he respected Southern racists and the ones who were a real problem were the people who were backing civil rights because of something or other about hypocrisy.
It was like hearing from an edgelord today about how neonazis aren’t the problem, the real issue is some liberal who likes Elvis Presley despite his not being a perfect person….
And yes, Green Berets is just terrible. It’s too painfully bad to watch from an unintential humor point of view.
Even when their lyrics are a little ham-handed, those two-part harmonies always raise goosebumps. And it appears they continue to raise goosebumps for newer generations. I hear Simon & Garfunkel in so many duos. You can draw a straight line through them from the Everly Brothers to modern duos. I love all harmony singing, but good two-part is special.
There’s always the Righteous Brothers
And then the various 80s famous duets.
Both with the amazing voice of Jennifer Warnes.
S&G’s love for the Everlys really comes through in their cover of Bye Bye Love. They knew how to do right by that song.
On the duets theme;
And *my* favorite cover of a Simon & Garfunkel song;