Simon & Garfunkel Bookends CD

+ 2 Bonus Tracks

Personnel includes: Paul Simon (vocals, acoustic guitar); Art Garfunkel (vocals); Jimmy Haskell (arranger).
Producers include: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Roy Halee.
Reissue producer: Bob Irwin.
Recorded between September 7, 1966 and October 16, 1968.
Originally released on Columbia Records (9529).
Includes liner notes by Bud Scoppa.
Ultradiscs are mastered from the original master tapes using Mobile Fidelity's proprietary mastering technique, then plated with 24 karat gold and housed in a stress-resistant lift-lock jewel box.
Personnel includes: Paul Simon (vocals, guitar); Art Garfunkel (vocals).
Producers: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Roy Halee.
Audio Mixers: Jen Wyler; Vic Anesini.
Liner Note Author: Bud Scoppa.
Photographers: Don Hunstein; Sandy Speiser.
Arranger: Jimmie Haskell.
Simon & Garfunkel's first consistently excellent album, 1968's BOOKENDS is a brief (12 songs in less than 30 minutes) but beautiful song cycle that sums up all of Paul Simon's '60s themes of alienation and identity in a newly orchestrated and elegant style far removed from the skeletal folk-rock of their earlier albums. The entire first half, bracketed by the lovely "Bookends Theme," has a suite-like feel even though it encompasses songs as varied as the chaotic "Save the Life of My Child" and the subtle acoustic reverie "Overs," not to mention the anthemic "America" and Art Garfunkel's audio-verite "Voices of Old People."
The second half is the closest Simon & Garfunkel ever came to rock & roll, featuring not only the classics "Mrs. Robinson" and "Hazy Shade of Winter," but the lesser-known, quirky gems "Fakin' It" and "Punky's Dilemma," two of Simon's weirdest and most playful songs. An eclectic and multi-dimensional album, BOOKENDS is probably Simon & Garfunkel's masterpiece.
Simon & Garfunkel's first consistently excellent album, 1968's BOOKENDS is a brief (12 songs in less than 30 minutes) but beautiful song cycle that sums up all of Paul Simon's '60s themes of alienation and identity in a newly orchestrated and elegant style far removed from the skeletal folk-rock of their earlier albums. The entire first half, bracketed by the lovely "Bookends Theme," has a suite-like feel even though it encompasses songs as varied as the chaotic "Save the Life of My Child" and the subtle acoustic reverie "Overs," not to mention the anthemic "America" and Art Garfunkel's audio-verite "Voices of Old People."
The second half is the closest Simon & Garfunkel ever came to rock & roll, featuring not only the classics "Mrs. Robinson" and "Hazy Shade of Winter," but the lesser-known, near-psychedelic oddities "Fakin' It" and "Punky's Dilemma," two of Simon's weirdest and most playful songs. An eclectic and multi-dimensional album, BOOKENDS is probably Simon & Garfunkel's masterpiece.
In March of 1968, Robert Kennedy was still alive and offering a vision for a way out to the America that had deeply entrenched itself in the Vietnam War. The inner-city rebellions in 1967 had shaken the youth culture's image of their own summer of love in that year. The beginning of America's crippling identity crisis had begun to shudder through the culture that would erupt with the death of Kennedy later that spring and the tragedy of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later that summer. Before it was all over, Martin Luther King, Jr. had also lost his life. In pop culture, rock was exploding everywhere in Western culture. The impact of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds -- both made in 1966 -- and the appearance of Jimi Hendrix on the pop scene in 1967 had ushered in a new way of making records, a way that not only referred to and portrayed everyday life but was part of its acceptance for what it was before attempting to transcend it. Earlier that spring, Simon and Garfunkel had slipped their fourth album into the bins with a whisper, the confoundingly literarQ (Summer/01, p.126) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Unfathomably moving..."
Uncut (8/01, p.92) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...Their masterpiece...brilliant....no aspiring songwriter should be without a thoroughly-played copy..."