“Think Too
Much”: The Simon & Garfunkel Album That Wasn't.
August 22, 1983. A packed concert at
the newly constructed BC Place stadium in Vancouver,
British Columbia. Paul Simon and
Art Garfunkel are halfway through a set on the last leg of their North American
tour, billed as “A Summer Night with Simon and Garfunkel.”
The summer
tour is the latest phase of a successful reunion that began with the 1981
Concert in Central Park. The next step is a
new album, titled “Think Too Much”, Simon and Garfunkel’s first full-length
studio collaboration since 1970’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.
The first
half of the Vancouver concert has gone smoothly, packed with hits from
“Cecilia” to “El Condor Pasa,” with a couple of new tunes and respective solo
offerings thrown in; but things hit a slight bump in the road as the duo launch
into the title track from the Think Too Much album: both miss their entrance
and neglect to sing the first line of the song. Then one tries to sing the
first line as the other attempts to catch up by singing the second. They are
back together in time for the voices to blend on “The fact is you don’t think
as much as you could,” which Simon follows with a spoken “huh…yeah.”
Twenty-six
years ago, that simple “huh…yeah,” sounded like nothing more than a jokey
acknowledgement of an onstage screw-up. Today, listening back to a bootleg
recording of the Vancouver
concert, the aside sounds loaded, perhaps rueful. Maybe that’s just a
hindsight-tainted temptation to read too much into it, but the fact is that, on
that summer night, Paul Simon had a lot on his mind. One thing weighing on him
was the fate of the new Simon and Garfunkel album. Publicly, the “Think Too
Much” LP was expected out following the tour; privately, it was dead in the
water, and Simon and Garfunkel’s partnership, which had been on-again and off-again
for almost three decades, was about to enter another “off-again” phase.
As 1982
turned into 1983, the reunion sparked by the Central Park
show had looked less and less like a one-off thing and more like an ongoing
partnership. The surest sign of this direction was the revelation that there
was a new album in the works: “Think Too Much”, a studio collection of new
material, Simon-penned songs to feature the classic Simon/Garfunkel vocal
blend.
In some
respects, the project was doomed from the start. The songs intended for the “Think
Too Much” album hadn’t been written with Simon and Garfunkel in mind they were
written for Simon’s next solo LP, a follow-up to the unjustly overlooked “One-Trick
Pony”. Immediately after the Central Park
concert, Simon had started recording his new solo album.
With Lenny
Waronker co-producing, Simon recorded several of his news songs, including “The
Late Great Johnny Ace,” “Song About the Moon” and “Allergies.” Waronker left the project in 1982 after
becoming president of Warner Bros.
In the
meantime, the success of the Central Park concert brought demand for further
reunion shows, and Simon and Garfunkel obliged, touring Japan and Europe
in 1982. The success of the reunion, combined with pressure from Warner Bros,
caused Simon to consider the idea of a new Simon and Garfunkel studio album. In
interviews in the spring of 1982 Simon and Garfunkel were suggesting that a
reunion album was a possibility. Simon was by this point roughly halfway
through recording his solo album, so the logical route was to simply bring
Garfunkel in and turn it into a Simon and Garfunkel album.
The reunion
album project was fraught with tension from the beginning. One source of unease
for Simon was the fact that this particular set of songs was very personal to
him.
“These new
songs are too much about my life - about Carrie [Fisher] - to have anybody else
sing them,” he told Playboy in 1984. Garfunkel countered that he understood the
emotions behind the songs and that, as a singer, he could interpret them. Simon
agreed to give it a try, on the condition that he would produce the album
alone. On the duo’s earlier efforts, Simon shared production duties with
Garfunkel and Roy Halee. Halee did reunite with Simon and Garfunkel to work on
the new album, eventually credited as the album’s co-producer and chief
engineer.
Simon’s
demand for production autonomy frustrated Garfunkel, but he reluctantly agreed
and then began the task of devising his own vocal parts for Simon’s new songs. This
included some solo vocal parts such as the bridges of “Cars Are Cars” and “Song
About the Moon” as well as the trademark harmonies. However, Simon’s new
melodies didn’t lend themselves as readily to Garfunkel’s harmonies as their
‘60s counterparts had done.
“[The
songs] weren’t written for us both to sing,” Simon pointed out in a Spokane
Chronicle interview conducted just before the 1983 tour kicked off. “We have to
solve the problem of singing these songs with two voices that weren’t written
with that in mind... They’re not as harmonically uncomplicated as they were in
the ‘60s. Simply two-part doesn’t apply as much as it did then.”
Garfunkel
took his time writing his vocal parts, to the point where Simon had already
finished recording his own vocals and Garfunkel wasn’t ready, still wanting
more time to work out his parts. To make
matters worse, Garfunkel countered Simon’s solo-production decree by requesting
to record his vocal parts without Simon present in the studio.
Eric Korte
was one of a dozen or so engineers who worked on the Think Too Much/Hearts and
Bones sessions, a second engineer, assisting Roy Halee.
”Art wanted
more creative input, rather than just being a background singer on Paul’s
songs,” says Korte, and to that end, Garfunkel “had booked some sessions to
come up with his own vocal parts.” Korte recalls that at a playback session to
review Garfunkel’s efforts, Simon didn’t seem thrilled.
“Paul was a
super-perfectionist about what he wanted,” Korte says, “and he was in the mood
to take his time on the project and try a lot of different stuff.” As far as working with Garfunkel, “Paul was
willing to give it a try, but he was in a different headspace.”
Korte
recalls that the best moments came when Simon and Garfunkel got on the mic and
sang together “That was very special,” Korte recalls. “When they went on mic
together and Paul was in charge; but Art wanted to go beyond that and Paul just
wasn’t digging it.”
Work
dragged on over the course of a year or so. The goal was to get “Think Too Much”
into record stores in advance of the summer 1983 North American tour. As the
shows drew closer, it became increasingly apparent that Simon and Garfunkel
wouldn’t have the album ready in time. With hindsight, that missed deadline was
more than a missed chance to move a few more units off the back of the live
shows; it was the last chance to get the album out before the old acrimony
resurfaced over the summer.
Without a
new album to promote, Simon and Garfunkel hit the road in July 1983, starting
in Akron, Ohio,
at the Rubber Bowl Stadium. The Akron show featured a
quartet of songs from the still unfinished album “Song About the Moon,”
“Allergies,” “Think Too Much” and “Johnny Ace” mixed in with S&G hits, respective solo
offerings and a new cover version of “One Summer Night.” The set list varied
somewhat throughout the tour, with “Song About the Moon” and “Allergies”
dropped partway through and replaced with “Cars Are Cars.”
As the tour
stopped in Pittsburgh,
the local paper’s review of the concert speculated about the upcoming reunion
LP: “Whether Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel can be a valid musical entity in the
future... will be decided with the next album, their first recording of
original music since 1970. The disc is tentatively titled “Think Too Much” and
targeted for a fall release.”
In
interviews during July, the duo sounded increasingly confident about the album,
and spoke of it as though it was almost finished. Media reports at that time
suggested ”Think Too Much” was on track for release at the end of August.
However, a
profile by Robert Hilburn that ran in the Sarasota Herald Tribune made it clear
that it had not been an easy process. “Things did not go all that smoothly when
they got into the studio this year,” Hillburn noted. “They even ended up
working in separate studios.”
In the Hilburn piece, Simon confessed to
feeling pressure about the album. “People kept asking, ‘Are you going to make
an album together?’ or ‘God, it would be great if you made an album together’. And
I felt Artie wanted to be involved in it very much. I also realized that by
including him on it I would probably improve the overall quality, certainly
would improve the sales and would satisfy a lot of people. I also knew we’d end
up in some terrific fights over points I really didn’t want to fight about. And
that’s exactly what happened.”
“The truth
is,” Simon explained, “I had a very hard time emotionally turning it over to
make it a Simon and Garfunkel album.”
“I didn’t
write for Artie’s voice,” Simon told Hilburn in mid-July. Depsite the fact that
album was still supposedly going ahead, Simon’s comments to Hilburn suggested
he was already well on his way to talking himself out of the reunion album
idea. “I was writing a group of songs
that seemed very special to me. I think, in a certain way, he improves my
records. He makes the sound of them more agreeable to many, many people. But I
don’t care. It’s an odd situation. I essentially see myself as a writer, and I
don’t want to obscure the writing. I think my voice is a good vehicle for my
writing, even with its flaws.
Garfunkel
was more positive about the project, enthusing in a Spokane Chronicle article,
“I’m so keyed up. This morning, I think I found the harmony that is just what I
want for ‘Cars Are Cars All over the World.’ I’m on the tips of my toes with
the sense of readiness to see if I can slip it into the tape the way I want.”
“I think
people are going to be knocked out by Paul’s new tunes, which are very
autobiographical and very accessible,” he told the Milwaukee Sentinel.
In a July
interview with the Modesto Bee, Garfunkel said “We’ve almost finished the new
album, which is very exciting to me. It’s a valid Simon and Garfunkel album,
with all-new Paul Simon songs that are better than ever.” Garfunkel
acknowledged there had been “difficulties” with the project, but said “I
believe again that it’s coming along nicely.”
Simon had a
somewhat different view of the project: In August, as the North American tour
neared its conclusion, he called Garfunkel to inform him of two things. Garfunkel
recalled the phone call in a 1990 interview with Time: “He does things that I
could never understand. He called me up one day and said, 'Artie, I'm dropping
your vocals on “Hearts and Bones.” It's not turning into the kind of album I
want it to. And by the way, I'm marrying Carrie on Tuesday, and I want you to
come.' "
Once the
project reverted to a solo album, all of Garfunkel’s vocals were meticulously
wiped from the multi-track tapes. “We
had to make sure all Art’s vocal parts were erased from the master tapes,”
recalls engineer Eric Korte.
In late
September, following the North American dates, Simon and Garfunkel wound up
their tour with two shows at the Ramat Gan Stadium outside Tel Aviv, Israel. According
to a newspaper story at the time, the Tel Aviv shows were “billed as their
last,” and that the visit coincided with Simon visiting Israel with
Carrie Fisher on their honeymoon.
Arlen Roth,
one of the two guitarists in S&G’s ’83 band recalls encountering a
dejected-looking Garfunkel prior to one of the Tel Aviv shows. “I asked him
what was wrong and he said, ‘Well, how would you feel if you just found out
you'd been erased from an entire album?”
After Tel Aviv, the duo went their separate
ways, and would not work together again for many years. Garfunkel has admitted
that his removal from the album was a very sore point.
Fans
looking out for the new Simon and Garfunkel LP were no doubt confused by the
November 1983 release of the new Paul Simon album, titled “Hearts and Bones”. A
quick scan of the track listing revealed that the album included all the tracks
touted for inclusion on the Simon and Garfunkel album. The planned S&G
title track, “Think Too Much,” appeared in two incarnations. Even in those
long-ago pre-Internet days, when updates about your favourite rock musicians
were few and far between, the message was clear: the Simon and Garfunkel album
had been scrapped and replaced by Hearts and Bones.
Russ
Titelman commented in an article in the Palm Beach Post in October 1983, “Paul
never really decided if he wanted the album to be his own or Simon and
Garfunkel’s”
What is the
point of this story? What information pertains? The fact is, in an age when
every inch of notable tape from every rock legend has somehow leaked out, Simon
and Garfunkel’s Think Too Much album remains locked in a vault somewhere.
But what is
on the tape? Certainly not a finished, mixed and mastered album. There’s
definitely a rough mix of the album with Garfunkel on it, although whether or
not he appears on the whole album is unclear, as is the question of whether or
not his vocals were actually finished.
The only
firm evidence is a bootleg of studio rough mixes, on which Garfunkel’s voice is
clearly discernable on two tracks his
harmonies on “Train in the Distance” and a gorgeous vocal solo (the “laughing
boy” section) on “Song About the Moon.” There are also a handful of live
recordings from the 1983 tour, on which Garfunkel joins Simon to sing “Cars Are
Cars,” “Think Too Much” (the fast version), and “Allergies.
The "Think
Too Much" album would almost certainly have featured the same 10 tracks that
appeared on Simon’s Hearts and Bones album.
Another contender for the album, “Citizen of the Planet,” a folky tune
that recalled the duo’s early ‘60s sound, was considered but had certainly been
dropped from the album by the summer of 1983. (“Citizen” finally appeared, a
decade later, as a Simon and Garfunkel reunion track on the Old Friends concert
album.)
The
prospect of hearing the "Think Too Much" album is a tantalizing (if unlikely)
prospect. Dan Nash, one of the dozen or so engineers who worked on the album,
says, “The entire thing was finished with Artie on it, without a doubt. I have
a copy. When Paul made the decision [to make it a solo album], he had Roy Halee
make rough mixes of the whole thing.”
According
to Nash, all that was missing was some backing vocals, but the lead vocals by
Simon and Garfunkel were complete. “If you heard the rough mixes you’d know all
it needs is to be mastered.”
However,
Nash isn’t sure whether the duo had agreed on whether the lead vocals were
supposed to be final or just “scratch” vocals.
Nash feels
that the Simon solo version suffered from an attempt to over-compensate for
Garfunkel absence. “[Paul] had a clear sense of the structure of the record. But
to make the songs sing, he had to come up with musical accoutrements to make it
fly. So there were a lot of extra musical parts added things that were clever, but that weren’t
organic.”
In Nash’s
opinion, the Simon and Garfunkel version, even in rough-mix form, is “100 times
better than the album that came out.”
“I recall,
and still have somewhere, the rough mixes of the album with Artie on it,” says
Arlen Roth. “He was on almost every song, as I recall, and we were all so
excited about this being a true S&G "reunion" album, as well as
reunion tour! Live, we performed 'Cars are Cars", "Allergies"
and "Hearts and Bones".”
Mark Linett
worked briefly on the album in its early stages, at Warner Bros Recording
Studios in Los Angeles.
At that point, Linett understood the sessions were for a Paul Simon solo album.
Garfunkel was at the sessions but in the role of backing vocalist. Another
engineer who worked on the album, Jimmy Santis, remembers it as a Simon solo
album and doesn’t recall Garfunkel’s involvement being mentioned.
Korte
remembers that during his time on the album, only a few songs appeared to have
been finished with Garfunkel.
17 years
later, the “Think Too Much” album surely deserves to be dusted off and
unleashed in some form, whether it’s finished or not. It seems unlikely that
Paul Simon would have much of an appetite for it, and maybe Garfunkel wouldn’t
either; but Simon and Garfunkel fans surely deserve the chance to hear it for
themselves - especially for all those who caught the duo on their 1983 tour,
heard the new songs and were disappointed when he album didn’t come out.
Track listing
01. Think Too Much - 3:17
02. A Heart in New York
(sung by Art Garfunkel) - 3:21
03. Hearts And Bones - 6:09
04. Train In The Distance - 5:58
05. Slip Slidin´ Away
(sung by Simon and Garfunkel) - 4:18
06. Bright Eyes
(sung by Art Garfunkel) - 4:13
07. Song About The Moon
(sung by Simon and Garfunkel) - 4:19
08. The Late Great Johnny Ace - 4:30
09. Allergies - 4:35
10. American Tune
(sung by Simon and Garfunkel) - 4:33
11. Cars Are Cars - 3:29
12. One Summer Night
(sung by Art Garfunkel) - 2:52
13. Citizen of the Planet
(sung by Simon and Garfunkel) - 3:28
© 1983
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