Bridge Over Troubled Water

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Bridge Over Troubled Water
Written by Paul Simon, 1969

Paul Simon wrote this one alone, in the summer of 1969, and he said later that he had no idea where it came from — it arrived almost fully formed, and he knew right away it was better than anything he’d written before.

He’d been listening to the gospel group the Swan Silvertones, whose 1958 recording of “Mary Don’t You Weep” includes a line, ad-libbed by lead singer Claude Jeter, about being a bridge over deep water. That phrase lodged itself in Simon’s mind, and the gospel chord changes came along with it. Simon never hid the debt — on The Dick Cavett Show in April 1970, he said simply, “I guess I stole it.”

Then came the part he came to regret. Simon thought the song needed a pure, high, hymn-like voice, so he handed it to Art Garfunkel to sing alone. Garfunkel didn’t want it — he thought Simon should sing his own song, and he liked the way Simon had done it on the demo. Simon insisted. For years afterward he watched audiences rise to their feet for Garfunkel, thinking to himself that he was the one who’d written it. It was one of several tensions that ended the partnership; the album turned out to be their last.

Simon had only written two verses. Garfunkel and producer Roy Halee wanted a bigger finish, so Simon wrote a third one right there in the studio. The nickname “silver girl” in that verse belongs to his girlfriend and later wife, Peggy Harper, who had just found her first gray hairs and was not taking it well — he was teasing her. For decades a rumor circulated that the line referred to a needle and that the song was secretly about heroin. It isn’t, and Simon has said so plainly.

The piano that carries the whole thing was played by Larry Knechtel, a Los Angeles session player with a gospel background who later joined the band Bread. It took him roughly two days to work out the part. Behind him were Hal Blaine on drums and Joe Osborn on bass — the Wrecking Crew, the unnamed musicians on a remarkable number of the records we all grew up with.

It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 28, 1970, and stayed there six weeks, finishing as the No. 1 song of the entire year. It went to No. 1 in the U.K., Canada, France, and New Zealand as well, and has sold more than six million copies. At the 1971 Grammys it took Record of the Year and Song of the Year, with five Grammys in all for the song and Album of the Year for the record. Aretha Franklin sang it at that ceremony while Simon and Garfunkel watched from the audience. Her own version followed that spring, went to No. 1 on the R&B chart, and won her a Grammy too. Elvis Presley, Peggy Lee, and Earl Scruggs recorded it as well, and Johnny Cash came back to it near the end of his life, in a 2002 duet with Fiona Apple.

One last footnote: the song that finally knocked it out of the No. 1 spot was the Beatles’ “Let It Be” — another hymn-shaped ballad.