Simon & Garfunkel - BBC Sessions (1965)

The vast majority of artists who performed BBC in the 1960s and 1970s were British, since BBC stands for "British Broadcasting Corporation," after all. But occasionally, artists from the US or other countries would be in Britain enough for some BBC sessions of their own. Simon and Garfunkel have enough material here for a BBC album, though just barely. 

In truth, only half of this features both Simon and Garfunkel, and that's from a single session that took place in July 1965. The first half features a session with only Paul Simon. Although American, he had been living in England for most of the previous two years, figuring he had a better chance of making it as a folk musician there than in his home country. He developed enough connections to have a single BBC session in January 1965. 

It was an odd one though. It was actually recorded for a religious radio show, even though the connections between his songs and religion was tenuous at best. I believe the six songs he recorded in a single session were then played on that show for one song per show slowly over spring 1965. It helped him gain popularity and more concert bookings, since he didn't have any albums in print in Britain at the time. (Simon and Garfunkel's first album "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." was released in late 1964, but only in the U.S.)

At the time, the partnership of Simon and Garfunkel was also tenuous, because Garfunkel lived in New York City while Simon lived in England. But every now and then, Simon would briefly visit the U.S. or Garfunkel would visit England, and they might play some concerts as a duo or do some recording in the studio. The BBC session in July 1965 was one such time when Garfunkel briefly came to England. At that time, they were still relative unknowns. They would only hit the big time in September 1965, when "The Sound of Silence" would be released as a single with a folk-rock arrangement and shoot to number one in the U.S. by the end of the year. At that point, Simon would move back to the U.S., and they would stick together as a duo to exploit their success. 

Unfortunately, it seems they didn't do any more BBC sessions aside from the one in July 1965. Perhaps by the next time they were both in Britain, they had become so famous that they felt they didn't need that exposure. 

Surprisingly, none of the performances here have been officially released. I'm particularly surprised that "I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound" has never been released, since it's a nice cover of a Tom Paxton song that it seems was never recorded by them in a studio. 

The sound quality in generally is very good, though there were a few problems. "A Most Peculiar Man" came to a sudden halt in the middle of the song. It seems Simon wasn't happy about something, and asked the recording engineer to play back the recording. If he went on to do a finished take, that hasn't been available to bootleggers. I patched in the second half of the song from the version he did on his obscure 1965 solo album "The Paul Simon Songbook." I also removed the few seconds of him talking to the engineer, since it didn't fit anymore.

"I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound" has "[Edit]" in the title because it suffered the usual BBC problem of DJs talking over some of the music. The version of "Anji" here is only a fragment that's less than a minute long. I'm guessing that it faded out as the radio program ended, and that's the only recording that survived. Even though much had some talking over it. I fixed both songs the usual way, by using the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe the talking.

Also, for some reason, to my ears, the sound quality of "A Church Is Burning" doesn't sound as good as the rest. But it's still pretty decent, just a bit more muffled.

This album is only 34 minutes long. Simon and Garfunkel did go on to play on other radio and TV shows. But those generally fell into two categories. One, they had short appearances where they tended to play the same famous songs that are probably overplayed enough already. The other are some longer appearances, with more song variety and banter between songs. I plan on posting a couple of the best such shows in full later on.

As an aside, while putting this album together, I also found a few other rare songs that I'd previously missed. So I've added those to the two "Rarities" albums I previously made. I also upgraded the volume balance between songs and mp3 tags for those.

01 I Am a Rock (Paul Simon)
02 Bleecker Street (Paul Simon)
03 talk (Paul Simon)
04 Kathy's Song (Paul Simon)
05 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)
06 talk (Paul Simon)
07 A Most Peculiar Man [Edit] (Paul Simon)
08 April Come She Will (Paul Simon)
09 I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound [Edit] (Simon & Garfunkel)
10 Sparrow (Simon & Garfunkel)
11 The Side of a Hill (Simon & Garfunkel)
12 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
13 I Am a Rock (Simon & Garfunkel)
14 A Church Is Burning (Simon & Garfunkel)
15 Anji [Instrumental] [Edit] (Simon & Garfunkel)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700628/SIMNNGRFNKL1965_BBSessons_atse.zip.html

Given how famous Simon and Garfunkel are, I'm surprised that I haven't been able to find many good photos of them from 1965, especially in color. So instead I found a black and white publicity photo and colorized it. This could have come from 1964 or even earlier; it's hard to tell, but they definitely were on the young side with this one.