Simon & Garfunkel: "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Paul Simon told his manager at the time, “I’ve written what I think is my greatest song.”  He played the two verses of it, and his manager agreed.  “Maybe once a decade, you’ll hear a song that is so striking, so powerful, so unusual.”

“At the time,” Paul said, “I remember thinking, ‘This is better than I usually write.’”

Though he did have a reservation about the lyrics.  He thought they might be a little plain, a little too simple.

“When you’re weary.  Feeling small.

When tears are in your eyes,

I will dry them all.”

When Art Garfunkel put his voice on the melody, those who were there to hear it said they got goose bumps.

Art felt it was a great song already with just the two verses Paul had written.  But he sensed those two verses could work well as a set up to a final verse.  He called them the “runway” material to a final “take off.”

Paul recalled both Art and their producer Roy Halee telling him he had to write a third verse.  “The song,” they told him, “wants to be bigger.”

“No, no.  It’s just a little hymn,” he replied.

But they insisted.  So right there in the studio, Paul came up with a handful of lines.  And together the three of them crafted one of the most exquisite songs of all time.