It’s a weakness on the album, and one of those ideas that may have seemed good on paper.
We are invited to wonder – are the same couple the subject of Overs, in which one half of a couple who have been together for some time wonders if their relationship has run its course? This fades into Voices of Old People, which is a hiatus from music to hear snatches of conversation from elderly people that Art Garfunkel had recorded. What America is, and who it’s for is alway topical, but more so than ever before at present, giving this song added poignancy. The track America is even more strongly rooted in place, as a young couple journey on a Greyhound bus and playfully discuss their place in the country. The song has a social heart, relating the consequences of drug use and highlighting ahead of time a growing distance between youth and respect for the law. After the quiet acoustic opening, Save the Life of My Child is immediately arresting, with a well-produced percussive opening and use of synthesiser to draw a distinction with what has gone before it. The Bookends theme and song ‘bookend’ side one, leaving side two to go its own direction. The enjoyable thing about listening to Bookends on vinyl is that it makes more obvious the bifurcation between the two sides. Bookends emerged in 1968, and contains some songs that were originally composed for The Graduate, but which didn’t make the final cut, as well as an overarching theme that lends the album its ‘journey of life’ concept. If you believe that any review contained on our site infringes upon your copyright, please email us.By the time of Bookends, Simon & Garfunkel were well and truly on the map, internationally as well as in their native US, thanks to the increasing popularity of their albums, and to their iconic soundtrack and theme to the film The Graduate.
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