Moving Right Along

Hmmm. This is post number three in the series, and we’ve barely gotten into the documentary. Time to get moving. By the way, if you haven’t watched it, go get the link from one of the previous posts in this series. It’s something else.

So, after the documentary opened with a sample of clips of the USA backed with snippets of America, the scene shifted to Simon and Garfunkel sitting in the back seat of a car. They appear a bit sour, Garfunkel singing notes and saying something about the harmony game, Simon explaining to Garfunkel about Beethoven breaking a rule about composing parallel fifths that supposedly ruined harmony, and losing by saying that the 200th birthday of Beethoven is in a year. And then Garfunkel brings up that America is headed toward its 200th birthday.

Seven years away, in 1969 people were already thinking about the Bicentennial. Simon asks “Do you think we’re going to make it?” and Garfunkel responds with silence, staring off into the distance.

We did make it, of course, but it’s interesting how less than three years from America’s 250th birthday, nobody is even thinking about it.

If had to guess, though, the whole scene is a set up. Charles Grodin was famous for his improvised fake antagonistic encounters with Johnny Carson and David Letterman, and this feels to me like Grodin went to Simon and Garfunkel and said “Hey, why don’t you riff on a couple of points, and see if you can’t make it interesting.”

To The Studio

The scene switches to the studio, and now what we’re seeing on the screen looks authentic. First we see the round face and big eyes of producer Roy Hallee, and then Paul Simon pounding away on his guitar. Art Garfunkel offers some input, which Simon swats away saying he needs to figure his own thing out first. There are glimpses of Simon trying to hack out the harmonies and instrumentation, and a lot of puzzled and uncertain looks.

If the song, Cuba Si, Nixon No, sounds unfamiliar, that’s because as far as I know the only version to ever surface is an obscure live recording.

It’s a weird song, about a hijacker with dysentary who forces a plane to fly to Havana. The album Bridge Over Troubled Water was planned to have 12 tracks. Simon wanted this song, Garfunkel wanted a Bach Chorale. The two couldn’t agree, with Garfunkel refusing to record vocals for Cuba Si, Nixon No, and they finally decided to go with just 11 tracks.

And then without a real transition, the scene in the studio switches. Garfunkel is deeply engaged with keyboardist Jimmie Haskell, as they work out the harmonies and arrangement for So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright. And compared to the earlier confusion, you can see everything is going right.

Grodin first shows the backing strings at work with Haskell conducting, then zooms in on Roy Hallee in the production booth as his eyes light up and he says “Love it. Love it love it love it,” and then Garfunkel gets on the phone to someone to say with an acknowledging nod and a hint of a smile “That’s it. We got it.”

It’s a great moment to witness all of these years later — you can see one of those times when everything comes together, and there’s nothing else to do but smile.

Flash Gordon, Howdy Doody, Mickey Mantle

Soon the finished song plays, and Grodin shows a series of clips – The Lone Ranger, Flash Gordon, Howdy Doody, Mickey Mantle hitting a home run, Lenny Bruce smirking, then Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson. Grodin put together a nostalgic tour through the past which we see as Garfunkel trails off singing over and over “So long, so long. So long, so long.” (The song actually contains a dim interjection at the end from Roy Hallee yelling “So long already, Artie!”)

It would have been the first time a mass audience would have heard the song, and it’s quite lovely – the instrumentation both stands out but stays in the background without overwhelming the harmonies, and Simon did a great job playing with elements of Bossa Nova sounds which had emerged from Brazil in just the previous decade.

Simon kept secret for many years that he wrote the song as a farewell to Garfunkel, who was an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, and had studied architecture at Columbia. The duo was headed toward a breakup, but most people weren’t clued in that both were getting tired of being together.

The nostalgia that Grodin was capturing was a lead up to an even bigger contrast that he wanted to make, which was introduced in the next song. And the way he delivered it was something that set AT&T’s corporate brain on fire. I’ll leave it until next time, though.