At first, Paul Simon wanted a heavy-gospel version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Art Garfunkel wanted shimmering harmonies. Garfunkel won, but the hit-making duo lost.
“I knew that Paul didn’t like the way Art was singing the song. It’s that song that was . . . the main thing in the breakup,” recalls Joe Osborn, the studio hotshot who played bass on the Simon & Garfunkel classic. “[Simon] wanted that song to be funkier, but Art doesn’t sing funky — he sings pretty.”
Osborn, 73, retired and living in Greenwood, La., pops up frequently throughout the new CD-and-DVD reissue marking the 40th anniversary of Simon & Garfunkel’s 1970 classic “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” their final studio album.
The package includes the remastered album, the 1969 CBS documentary “Songs of America” and a new film, “The Harmony Game,” containing interviews with Simon, Garfunkel, producer Roy Halee, Osborn and drummer Hal Blaine.
Among the revelations in it: Garfunkel, inspired by Bach’s classical melodies, wrote the otherworldly trumpet-and-pedal-steel melody that pops up during “The Boxer”; pianist Larry Knechtel, not Simon, provided the gospel piano for the title track; and Blaine — recording a snare drum in an elevator shaft for the impressive reverb — freaked out an unsuspecting janitor.
The genteel folk album was a salve after a decade of Vietnam, civil-rights battles and assassinations. The duo, friends since grammar school in Forest Hills, Queens, had spent the ’60s turning folk music into pop hits, from “The Sound of Silence” to “Mrs. Robinson.” Going into the “Bridge” sessions, they had the clout to experiment freely.
“After ‘The Graduate’ and ‘Mrs. Robinson,’ our confidence level was very high,” Simon recalls in the documentary. “There’s a certain freedom that you get when you’re sitting on top of the world.”
The master of ceremonies was Halee, a sound wizard who had worked on Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” as well as the earlier hit “Mrs. Robinson.” He spent hours wandering the studios, clapping, searching for the perfect acoustical spots for drums and microphones.
The 40th-anniversary package largely avoids the personal tensions between Simon and Garfunkel during the making of “Bridge.” “I don’t want to play my friendship with Paul on camera — it’s very deep, very private and it’s full of love,” Garfunkel declares on camera.
He elaborates further to the Post, “When Joe says we fought over ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ . . . we had two different images, about not an Aretha Franklin gospel but a beautiful hymn. I tugged for this bigger record — not a prettier record, a larger scale in the production. Two guys ending up being together too much, with strong opinions about how they want to knock the kids out as recordmakers — that to me is a non-story. There is no grand conflict. It’s a very deep, entwined friendship.”
Adds the documentary director, 38-year-old Greenwich Village filmmaker Jennifer Lebeau: “They knew how each others’s minds work — that’s what’s really cognizant in the material, and in their stories, finishing each other’s sentences.”
While it’s nearly impossible to detect from the album — or even “The Harmony Game,” which focuses on the bond between Simon and Garfunkel — “Bridge” ended the duo’s creative streak. Garfunkel had been working on Mike Nichols’ film “Catch-22,” and his absence irked Simon and delayed recording even as it inspired “The Only Living Boy in New York.”
The documentary recounts an argument over the final track on “Bridge.” Garfunkel wanted a Bach chorale. Simon preferred his tune “Cuba Si, Nixon No.” They compromised and eliminated both tracks.
The album spawned four Top 20 hits, won six Grammys — including album, record and song of the year — and sold 25 million copies, making it one of the 40 best-selling records of all time.
But by the end of 1970, the duo had split and fans had to wait another decade for their next triumph, 1981’s concert in Central Park.