Bridge Over Troubled Water - Recording

Recording

The filming of Catch-22 began on January 1969 and lasted about 8 months. Simon had not completed a song yet, and the duo planned to collaborate when the filming would finish. Roy Halee produced this album, and as was the case with their most recent studio album, Bookends, they created a similar experimental sound, moving away from the typical folk rock and instead exploring new genres. As author Pete Fornatale once noted, Bookends was similar as The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band, but the first was for him "black and white and gray" while the latter "psychedelic and colorful".

The recordings for "The Boxer", which was already partly written by Simon in 1968 and released in April 1969, became one of the longest and toughest in the duo's career. The session lasted over 100 hours and took place at several locations. The second, main part was recorded in Nashville, the third, final part and the horns inside a chapel at Columbia University and the strings and main song in the Columbia Studios. The song features Simon and Fred Carter, Jr. playing Martin guitars. The loud drums were played by "Wrecking Crew" member Hal Blaine in a corridor. Other instruments including tuba, harmonica, pedal steel guitar and a piccolo flute. Simon & Garfunkel became the first musicians to use 16-track recording, but as only two 8-tracks recorders were available, both had to be manually synchronized carefully to produce a clear sound. Several critics criticized the bad quality of the singing in the original version. According to Simon in a 1970 interview with Loraine Alterman, the reason for this was because a word passed over into the next word and that the end of a sound was also the beginning of the next one. The original version had the long repeated "lie-la-lie" refrain, similar to The Beatles' "Hey Jude", but the track was later rearranged by the duo and producer Halee. The song was later covered by Bob Dylan on Self Portrait, despite the alleged satirical portrayal of Dylan as a "boxer".

In the summer of 1969, Simon, his wife Peggy and Garfunkel rented a house on Blue Jay Way in Los Angeles, as Garfunkel did not want to withdraw from Catch-22. Beatles guitarist George Harrison had previously written his song "Blue Jay Way" there. In this session, the duo experimented with numerous objects to create unusual sounds, such as a falling bundle of drum sticks. Garfunkel had a cassette recorder with a reverberation effect, so that each sound received an echo. When finished, Simon gave the tape to Halee, who then worked on the song, condensing sounds and copying them. The song features Simon as percussionist on the xylophone, an instrument he had never played before, and as acoustic guitarist. He began with a random line: "You're breaking my heart. I'm down on my knees" and when finished it was what later became "Cecilia". The drummer was again Blaine.

As Simon and Garfunkel were working busily on their next songs, they had to decline invitations to shows, among them the Woodstock Festival. During this time Simon wrote "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Simon wanted a gospel piano, and so he hired session musician Larry Knechtel. The song was initially two verses long, but Garfunkel felt the song was too short, and asked Knechtel to play a third verse, to which Simon would write more lyrics. Joe Osborn played the two bass guitars, one high and the other low. A horn section rounded off the song. The drums were played in an echo chamber to achieve a hall effect. Due to a series of factors, the duo had to work on a new tape; an arranger falsely labeled the song as "Like a Pitcher of Water", wrote Garfunkel's name incorrectly and the string part was unsatisfactory. Simon and Garfunkel then went to New York to record the vocals. The vocal style in "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was inspired by Phil Spector's technique in "Old Man River" by The Righteous Brothers, Garfunkel beginning with a slow melody and ending with a powerful finale. Garfunkel worked frantically on the singing as the production team recorded small segments for a better control in mixing. After two months the song was finalized. Critics saw similarities between this song and The Beatles' "Let it Be", and Simon himself admitted that it sounded like "Let it Be", stating in an Rolling Stone interview: "They are very similar songs, certainly in instrumentation..." Curiously, Paul McCartney asked soul singer Aretha Franklin to cover "Let It Be", as he originally wrote it for her, while Simon intended to do the same with his song. The song was covered by many artists since then, including Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. About $7 million were generated from royalties for cover versions alone.

Following the end of filming of Catch-22 in October, the first performance of what was, for a time, their last tour, took place in Ames, Iowa. The concert included The Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love", with the rhythmical hand clapping of over 80,000 people. Simon & Garfunkel were fascinated with its sound, so they repeated it twice for a tape recording; while the first try failed, they liked the second attempt and included the latter on Bridge Over Trouble Water. The US leg of the tour ended in the sold-out Carnegie Hall on November 27. Three days later, their show Songs of America was broadcast on CBS, only one time on November 30, 1969, then it was banned. After numerous fan letters to the duo, with suggestions to not intervene in politics, but rather continue doing music, the duo did not release any similar TV specials.

"The Only Living Boy in New York", "with its mix of strumming acoustic guitars, start-and-stop drums, and a far-off wall of harmonies", has, according to Bill Janovitz of Allmusic, similarities with some of Elton John's songs, especially "Rocket Man". In an interview with Song Talk, Simon guessed that 12 to 15 voices were used to record the "aaah"s, while Garfunkel said that he proposed those lines, stating "It's us around eight times screaming, and we mixed it down very softly...I started getting into open-mouth harmony, in a very loud, strident way. We were screaming at the top of our lungs and inside an echo chamber. I remember that day that Dylan dropped by to visit. We came out of the booth after all this screaming, and there he was. Anyway, we got a very foreign sound."

"El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" is a cover version of a Peruvian song by Daniel Alomía Robles based on traditional Andean music. Simon first heard Los Incas' version in 1965 in Paris. He later used the original studio track of Los Incas and added his and Garfunkel voices over it.