The Sound of Silence became a hit after a producer secretly added electric guitars
Simon & Garfunkel's first album flopped, and Paul Simon went off to play folk clubs in England. Back home, radio listeners kept requesting one track, so producer Tom Wilson overdubbed drums and electric guitar without telling the duo. Simon was horrified when he heard it. The single went to number one and brought him home.
Simon was born in Newark, New Jersey, on October 13, 1941, to Hungarian-Jewish parents; his father was a professor of education who led a dance band under a stage name. The family moved to Queens, where Simon met Art Garfunkel at 11 during a school production of Alice in Wonderland. His first song, The Girl for Me, written at 12 or 13, became the first officially copyrighted Simon and Garfunkel number, and the sheet in his father's handwriting now sits in the Library of Congress. In 1957 the pair scraped the charts as Tom & Jerry.
Through the early 1960s Simon released more than 30 songs under names such as Jerry Landis and True Taylor. Columbia signed the duo in 1964 and insisted on their surnames, something Simon believed pop had never done before. In London he learned finger-picking from Martin Carthy, a path that led to Scarborough Fair, and wrote Homeward Bound. Director Mike Nichols vetoed an alternative title for a song in The Graduate, telling them it had to be Mrs. Robinson.
The pair split in 1970, the year their final album, Bridge over Troubled Water, became the bestselling record to that date. Simon's solo career explored gospel, reggae and soul, and he acted in Annie Hall. In 1986 Graceland, built on South African influences, became his most acclaimed album, and a free concert in Central Park in 1991 drew about 500,000 people. His Broadway musical The Capeman in 1998 was poorly received.
Simon has won 16 Grammys, three of them for album of the year, and has been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He received the Gershwin Prize in 2007 and co-founded the Children's Health Fund. His album Seven Psalms came out in 2023.
Source: Paul Simon
