Travolti dall'improvviso e inaspettato successo di "The Sounds of Silence", Paul Simon e Art Garfunkel si erano precipitosamente riuniti nel 1965 per registrare un album che portava lo stesso titolo di quella canzone, ottenendo il medesimo trionfo di critica e pubblico. Grazie al songwriting di Simon, affermatosi rapidamente come uno dei più talentuosi compositori del momento, all'algida voce di Garfunkel e al tocco elettrico -molto Byrds di Mr. Tambourine Man, molto Dylan di Highway 61, ma d'altra parte l'anno che corre è quello, il 1965- donato sapientemente dal produttore Bob Johnston, il duo era diventato una stella di prima grandezza nel neonato firmamento folk rock americano.
Peraltro ai due la stessa etichetta folk rock stava un pò stretta, in particolare a Simon, che se folksinger è stato, lo è stato di una variante decisamente peculiare e poetica, ed è così che all'inizio del 1966 dovendo dare inizio alla lavorazione di un nuovo album, si trovano davanti ad un bivio, se continuare cioè sulla strada dell'album precedente, dai pezzi folk elettrificati, o cambiare, almeno in parte, scelte, musicali e non...
Ecco allora che la poetica di Paul consacra come figura centrale delle proprie liriche un uomo, in cui senz'altro si riconosce; un uomo giovane, cresciuto in città, ancora senza una direzione, un senso della vita ben preciso, alla ricerca costante di punti di riferimento. Un giovane che si autoanalizza scoprendo la frammentarietà interiore come condizione umana, che rifugge da chi ha sempre una verità in tasca, dagli intellettualoidi che discutono del nulla, dal falso mito del progresso e dalla massificazione mediatica. Li rifugge, ma non solo, li irride, li graffia con il sarcasmo e l'ironia, le uniche armi che possiede. Ma dietro a queste armi, si nasconde una persona insicura, incerta, sognatrice, l'unica donna che riesce ad amare è ideale e idealizzata, come quella di un trovatore medioevale, non la conosce ma sa che prima o poi la scoprirà. Cerca piaceri semplici ma veri, sinceri, l'affetto e il calore di un focolare domestico, piuttosto che quello misero e precario della celebrità. Per sorridere ad un presente spesso grigio si rifugia nell'amicizia, quella pura ed autentica, quella dell'infanzia (che è poi quella con Garfunkel, per l'appunto), si aggrappa ai felici ricordi di un'età già lontana. Un uomo che come quello contemporaneo fatica a farsi capire da chi gli stà attorno, e se per interagire con gli altri scrive sui muri della metropolitana, che c'è che non va, si chiede Simon. Sarà un alienato, diranno gli altri, ma forse, ci vuol dire Paul, ad essere alienata è tutta la società.
Ma "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" non è solo poesia, è anche musica.
In "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" e "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" si riscopre l'antica tradizione folk inglese, appresa da Simon l'anno precedente durante un soggiorno in Inghilterra in cui ebbe modo di conoscere e suonare con musicisti illustri come Davy Graham (e durante il quale furono scritte parecchie delle canzoni di questo album e di "Sounds of Silence"). Ma si guarda anche a casa propria, all'orticello newyorkese, come dimostrano quei deliziosi quadretti alla Broadway di "Cloudy" e "The 59th Street Bridge Song". O si esplorano sonorità western quasi morriconiane, come in "Patterns". Ma non mancano pezzi più elettrici, che però sono anche forse i meno ispirati e i più forzati, con l'eccezione della tenera "Homeward Bound", uno dei gioielli dell'album.
Se "Sounds of Silence" fu l'album del successo mondiale, "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" fu quello della consacrazione, che diede a Simon and Garfunkel quell'aurea di rispettabilità artistica tale da permettergli, in tempi in cui si doveva sfornare due album all'anno, di farne uscire uno ogni due. Furono la colonna sonora di una generazione, nella vita e al cinema. Per noi, sono gemme di un'epoca passata, che raccontano pensieri, sensazioni, storie di due amici newyorkesi degli anni Sessanta in fin dei conti non troppo diverse dalle nostre.
Elenco tracce testi samples e video
01 Scarborough Fair / Canticle (03:11)
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
Remember me to one who lives there -
She once was a true love of mine.
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt:
(On the side of a hill in the deep forest green,)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
(Tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground,)
Without no seams nor needlework,
(Blankets and bedclothes, a child of the mountains)
Then she'll be a true love of mine.
(Sleeps unaware of the clarion call)
Tell her to find me an acre of land:
(On the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves.)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
(Washed is the ground with so many tears,)
Between the salt water and the sea strand,
(A soldier cleans and polishes a gun.)
Then she'll be a true love of mine.
Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather:
(War bellows blazing in scarlet battalions,)
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
(Generals order their soldiers to kill)
And gather it all in a bunch of heather,
(And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten.)
Then she'll be a true love of mine.
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
Remember me to one who lives there -
She once was a true love of mine.
02 Patterns (02:45)
The night sets softly
With the hush of falling leaves,
Casting shivering shadows
On the houses through the trees,
And the light from a street lamp
Paints a pattern on my wall,
Like the pieces of a puzzle
Or a child's uneven scrawl.
Up a narrow flight of stairs
In a narrow little room,
As I lie upon my bed
In the early evening gloom.
Impaled on my wall
My eyes can dimly see
The pattern of my life
And the puzzle that is me.
From the moment of my birth
To the instant of my death,
There are patterns I must follow
Just as I must breathe each breath.
Like a rat in a maze
The path before me lies,
And the pattern never alters
Until the rat dies.
And the pattern still remains
On the wall where darkness fell,
And it's fitting that it should,
For in darkness I must dwell.
Like the color of my skin,
Or the day that I grow old,
My life is made of patterns
That can scarcely be controlled.
03 Cloudy (02:15)
cloudy
the sky is grey and white and cloudy
sometimes i think its hanging down on me
and its a hitchhike a hundred miles
im a ragamuffin child
pointed finger, painted smile
i left my shadow waiting down the road for me a while
cloudy
my thoughts are scattered and theyre cloudy
they have no borders, no boundaries
they echo and they swell
from tolstoy to tinkerbell
down from berkeley to carmel
got some pictures in my pocket and a lot of time to kill
hey sunshine
i havent seen you in a long time
why dont you show your face and bend my mind
these clouds stick to the sky
like a floating question why
they linger there to die
they dont know where theyre going
and my friend, neither do i
cloudy [repeat 6 times]
04 Homeward Bound (02:30)
I'm sittin' in the railway station
Got a ticket for my destination
On a tour of one night stands
My suitcase and guitar in hand
And every stop is neatly planned
For a poet and a one man band
Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
Everyday's an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me
The movies and the factories
And every stranger's face I see
Reminds me that I long to be
Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
Tonight I'll sing my songs again
I'll play the game and pretend
But all my words come back to me
In shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me
Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
Silently for me
Silently for me
07 The Dangling Conversation (02:40)
It's a still life watercolor
Of a now late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtain lace
And shadows wash the room
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives
And you read your Emily Dickenson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are persons out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time
And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives
Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
Can analysis be worthwhile
Is the theatre really dead
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow
I cannot feel your hand
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives
08 Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall (02:14)
Through the corridors of sleep
Past shadows dark and deep
my mind dances and leaps in confusion
I don't know what is real
I can't touch what I feel
And I hide behind the shield of my illusion
Chorus:
So I'll continue to continue to pretend
my life will never end
and flowers never bend
with the rainfall
The mirror on my wall
cast an image dark and small
but I'm not sure at all it's my reflection
I'm blinded by the light
of God, and truth and right
and I wander in the night without direction
Chorus
(It's) no matter if you're born
to play the king or pawn
for the line is thinly drawn 'tween joy and sorrow
so my fantasy
becomes reality
and I must be, what I must be, and face tomorrow
Chorus
09 A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission) (02:12)
I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored.
I been John O'Hara'd, McNamara'd.
I been Rolling Stoned and Beatled till I'm blind.
I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed.
That's the hand I use, well, never mind!
I been Phil Spectored, resurrected.
I been Lou Adlered, Barry Sadlered.
Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay.
And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,
And all my wealth won't buy me health,
So I smoke a pint of tea a day.
I knew a man, his brain was so small,
He couldn't think of nothing at all.
He's not the same as you and me.
He doesn't dig poetry. He's so unhip that
When you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man ain't got no culture,
But it's alright, ma,
Everybody must get stoned.
I been Mick Jaggered, silver daggered.
Andy Warhol, won't you please come home?
I been mothered, fathered, aunt and uncled,
Been Roy Haleed and Art Garfunkeled.
I just discovered somebody's tapped my phone.
10 For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (02:04)
What I dream I had:
Pressed in organdy;
Clothed in crinoline of smoky Burgundy;
Softer than the rain.
I wandered empty streets
Down past the shop displays.
I heard cathedral bells
Tripping down the alley ways,
As I walked on.
And when you ran to me
Your cheeks flushed with the night.
We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight,
I held your hand.
And when I awoke and felt you warm and near,
I kissed your honey hair with my grateful tears.
Oh I love you, girl.
Oh, I love you.
11 A Poem on the Underground Wall (01:56)
The last train is nearly due
The Underground is closing soon
And in the dark deserted station
Restless in anticipation
A man waits in the shadows
His restless eyes leap and scratch
At all that they can touch or catch
Hidden deep within his pocket
Safe within his silent socket
He holds a coloured crayon
Now from the tunnel's stony womb
The carriage rides to meet the groom
And opens wide in welcome doors
But he hesitates, and withdraws
Deeper in the shadows
And the train is gone suddenly
On wheels clicking silently
Like a gently tapping litany
And he holds his crayon rosary
Tighter in his hand
Now from his pocket quickly flashes
The crayon, on the wall he slashes
Deep upon the advertising
A single-worded poem comprised of
Four letters
And his heart is laughin', screamin', poundin'
The poem across the tracks reboundin'
Shadowed by the exit light
His legs take their ascending flight
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night
12 7 O'Clock News / Silent Night (01:59)
This is the early evening edition of the news.
The recent fight in the House of Representatives was over the open housing
section of the Civil Rights Bill.
Brought traditional enemies together but it left the defenders of the
measure without the votes of their strongest supporters.
President Johnson originally proposed an outright ban covering discrimination
by everyone for every type of housing but it had no chance from the start
and everyone in Congress knew it.
A compromise was painfully worked out in the House Judiciary Committee.
In Los Angeles today comedian Lenny Bruce died of what was believed to be an
overdoes of narcotics.
Bruce was 42 years old.
Dr. Martin Luther King says he does not intend to cancel plans for an open
housing march Sunday into the Chicago suburb of Cicero.
Cook County Sheriff Richard Ogleby asked King to call off the march and the
police in Cicero said they would ask the National Guard to be called out
if it is held.
King, now in Atlanta, Georgia, plans to return to Chicago Tuesday.
In Chicago Richard Speck, accused murderer of nine student nurses, was brought
before a grand jury today for indictment.
The nurses were found stabbed an strangled in their Chicago apartment.
In Washington the atmosphere was tense today as a special subcommittee of the
House Committee on Un-American activities continued its probe into anti-
Viet nam war protests.
Demonstrators were forcibly evicted from the hearings when they began chanting
anti-war slogans.
Former Vice-President Richard Nixon says that unless there is a substantial
increase in the present war effort in Viet nam, the U.S. should look forward
to five more years of war.
In a speech before the Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in New York,
Nixon also said opposition to the war in this country is the greatest single
weapon working against the U.S.
That's the 7 o'clock edition of the news,
Goodnight.
Silent night
Holy night
All is calm
All is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.
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