#ThrowbackThursday: “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkelby Sean Smith
The heavy metal rock band Disturbed made an appearance earlier this week on Conan’s late night show on TBS. The band performed the third single to be released off of their latest album Immortalized, “The Sound of Silence”. The song is of course a cover of the classic 1960’s folk song by the iconic duo of Simon & Garfunkel.
The Disturbed rendition of “The Sound of Silence” is quite moving. If you didn’t catch the band’s performance on Conan you can check it out here. They have also released a video for the cover which is also pretty well done, which you can check out below.
Disturbed
“Sound Of Silence”
From: Immortalized
Reprise/Warner Bros Records
So with Disturbed making waves with their cover of “The Sound of Silence” on Conan earlier this week, this week we take a moment to look back at the folk standard originally made famous by Simon & Garfunkel.
Written by Paul Simon, “The Sound of Silence” first appeared on Simon & Garfunkel’s 1964 debut album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.. The track was included on the record as an acoustic version, and initially the song and album as a whole failed to gain commercial or critical success. Following the poor reception and sales of the record, the duo broke up. Simon went off and worked on solo material while Garfunkel went back to college. However, their label Columbia thought that if they could add some electric guitar to the song that it may be more appealing to the general radio audience. Without notifying Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel, the label dubbed over the original recording and released the new version as a single. The reworking of the track proved successful as it would become the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart by January 1, 1965.
In an interview with MusicRadar, Art Garfunkel talked about the first time Paul Simon played him what would become their breakthrough hit single.
“It was the sixth song Paul ever wrote. He would come to my apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, where the roaches were in the kitchen, and he’d play me his songs. When he got to this one, I said, ‘Best one yet! If that’s not a commercial hit record, I don’t know what is.’”
So without further ado, this week we remember the 1964 Simon and Garfunkel folk classic, “The Sound of Silence”. Enjoy.
Simon & Garfunkel
“Sound Of Silence”
From: Wednesday Morning, # A.M.
Columbia Records
Simon & Garfunkel
“Sound Of Silence” (original acoustic version)
From: Wednesday Morning, # A.M.
Columbia Records
