Bridge Over Troubled Water

Simon & Garfunkel | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Columbia
• ASIN: B0000024UX
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MiniDisc  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (137 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,928 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

No one can say Simon & Garfunkel went out with a whimper. The popular duo's 1970 swan song produced four hit singles and won six Grammy awards, including Record, Album, and Song of the Year. An involving mix of sweeping epics ("The Boxer," the title track) and breezy throwaways (a live cover of the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love," the rock & roll trifle "Baby Driver"), Bridge was one of the most popular albums of its era. What's particularly striking about this collection is how brightly lesser-acclaimed songs like "So Long Frank Lloyd Wright" and the gorgeous "The Only Living Boy in New York" shine. --Steven Stolder

Product Description

Bridge Over Troubled Water is the most enduring album in the beloved duo's catalog, boasting some of their finest vocal performances as well as some of Simon's most accomplished songwriting. It spawned no less than four hit singles: "The Boxer," "Cecilia," "El Condor Pasa" and the iconic title track, which became an instant standard and which remains one of the most-covered songs in pop history. The album also features such beloved Simon and Garfunkel classics as "Keep the Customer Satisfied," "Baby Driver," "The Only Living Boy in New York" and "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright."

Capturing the contemplative mood of the end of a tumultuous decade, Bridge Over Troubled Water quickly became one of the most popular albums of its time, appealing to counterculture audiences as well as mainstream listeners. The album spent two-and-a-half months at the top of the charts, selling more than five million copies at the time of its original release; it has since sold over 25 million copies worldwide. It also won six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year, and in 2003 was ranked at #51 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Now, four decades after its original release, Bridge Over Troubled Water is once again available in its original LP format utilizing Sundazed's exacting quality standards. Mastered from the original analog tapes, the album is pressed on high-quality, high-definition vinyl, with meticulously reproduced complete original cover art. It's the perfect way to re-experience this timeless classic. --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant video additions to Simon & Garfunkel's studio swan song, March 8, 2011

By 

hyperbolium (Earth, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bridge Over Troubled Water (40th Anniversary Edition) (1 CD/1 DVD) (Audio CD)

Simon and Garfunkel's fifth and final studio album marked their commercial peak. Though many fans find the previous album, Bookends, to be the apex of the duo's artistic creativity, it's hard to think of another pop act that exited with a success comparable to this album and its title track. Despite Garfunkel's initial reservation, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" made good on Simon's feeling that it was the best song he'd ever written, topping the Hot 100 for six weeks and winning Grammy awards for song and record of the year. Though the recording is deeply tied to Garfunkel's brilliant vocal performance, the composition spawned dozens of successful covers, including Aretha Franklin's Grammy-winning R&B chart-topper and Buck Owens' Top 10 single. In the 1970s it became a staple in Elvis Presley's stage show, and cover versions continue to be recorded to this day, with a live version from the 2010 Grammys having charted, and the television show Glee having featured the song the same year.

But the title song is far from the album's only jewel. With Garfunkel away for the better part of 1969 filming Catch 22, Simon was left to work alone, and apparently consider a post-Garfunkel career. "The Only Living Boy in New York City" and "Why Don't You Write Me" are easily heard to be contemplations of Simon's isolation, while "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" includes the telling lyric "so long Frank Lloyd Wright, all of the nights we harmonized `til dawn," an allusion seemingly tied to Garfunkel's study of architecture at Columbia. The seeds of Simon's multicultural solo career can be heard in the Peruvian flute of "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)," broad rhythm instrumentation of "Cecilia," and reggae styling of "Why Don't You Write Me." The album topped the chart, won Grammys for engineering, arranging and Album of Year, and spun off four hit singles.

This CD/DVD set marks the 40th anniversary of the album's January 1970 release, and combines the original eleven tracks with two hours of video material. The DVD includes the duo's rare 1969 CBS television special, Songs of America, and a new documentary, The Harmony Game: The Making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The special, aired only once on November 30, 1969, has been bootlegged many times, but never before officially reissued. At the time of its airing its social and political viewpoints - particularly its explicit anti-Vietnam war messages - caused sponsor Bell Atlantic to pull out. But with backing from CBS (the same network that had fired the Smothers Brothers earlier in the year), the program found a new sponsor (Alberto Culver, the makers of Alberto VO5) and was aired uncut.

Both video features are extraordinary documents. The 1969 special, originally shot on film and pieced together from two different sources, is a post-Woodstock look at America in which Simon and Garfunkel seem to be trying to explain the younger generation to adult viewers. They surface the questions and doubts on the minds of many young people in 1969, starting with the incalculable loss of the decade's heroes - JFK, MLK and RFK - and reflections on the brutality of poverty and the activism of the farm workers, UAW and Poor People's March. First-time director (and future famous actor) Charles Grodin skillfully mixed compelling newsreel imagery with voiceovers and interviews, and interwove performance footage and behind-the-scenes shots of the duo at work. Simon and Garfunkel are spied working out arrangements of new songs, rehearsing their stage band and recording in the studio.

The making-of documentary repeats some moments from the '69 special, but adds context with discussions of the program's creation and controversies. There's additional concert footage and contemporary interviews with Simon, Garfunkel, their manager, Mort Lewis, their engineer/producer, Roy Halee, and two of the studio players (drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Joe Osborn) featured on the album.. The conversation with Halee is particularly illuminating, as he describes how the duo's studio sound was produced, and provides specifics of the album's tracks. The song-by-song discussion reveals numerous details on personnel (Fred Carter Jr., for example, played guitar on "The Boxer," Joe Osborn played an 8-string bass on "Only Living Boy in New York City," and Larry Knechtel developed the gospel piano on "Bridge Over Troubled Water"), recording locations, production techniques, and brightly highlights the creativity everyone concerned poured into the album.

Missing from the CD are the bonus tracks ("Feuilles-O" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water (Demo Take 6)") available on earlier releases, as well as the oft-bootlegged session track "Cuba Si, Nixon No," but the video disc is priceless and a fantastic bonus to celebrate this album's anniversary. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 21st Century Bridge, March 12, 2011

By 

Michael Neiss (Princeton, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bridge Over Troubled Water (40th Anniversary Edition) (1 CD/1 DVD) (Audio CD)

Normally, I am not a fan of landmark "anniversary" reissues since most suffer badly from the desperation of artists and record companies seeking one last profit squeeze from their old catalog. The formula is simple - remaster the music but lard up the offering with decrepit video and audio outtakes that should have remained untaken and out.

While that motivation may be in play here, the reissue of BOTW is done with extreme care - the re-mastering is superb and the companion DVD feels less like a cobble of random video and more like a well thought out expansion of artistic vision.

The video is terrific but when you get right down to it - these releases are always about the music. "Bridge" remains an extraordinary recording, providing S&G's generations of fans a compelling reason to rediscover its many virtues. It should come as no shock that with vastly improved production clarity, the stature of the title track - IMHO the single best vocal performance(s) in popular recording history - is only enhanced, however, to my ear the shimmering soundscape of The Only Living Boy In New York remains the emotional centerpiece of the album.

A vital addition to any collection.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A time of confidences, March 23, 2011

By 

A. W. Carter "Hollywoodaholic" (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bridge Over Troubled Water (40th Anniversary Edition) (1 CD/1 DVD) (Audio CD)

If you were alive and aware in 1969, you know it was anything but a time of confidences. I remember being 15 and getting tear-gassed at the Washington Monument in the middle of an angry war protest on the Fourth of July among 250,000 people ... and I was just there to see Bob Hope and the Beach Boys. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated the year before. Cities burned down during the riots afterward. The daily news was a parade of body count numbers from Vietnam. The country was torn between Nixon supporters, anti-war protestors, hippies, Black Panther radicals, John Birch conservatives, poverty, racism, and migrant and other abused workers struggling for decent working conditions through collective bargaining (oops, bye bye). But in total counterpoint to the chaos came a sound as pure and serene and ... confident as humanly possible. Two friends who had been singing together since they were 11 year-old pups were just now hitting their peak with "Bridge Over Troubled Water;" an album that captured lyrical, vocal and engineering mastery beyond measure.

There is no fill on the album. Nothing mediocre. It launches you into the stratosphere on the opening title cut and never lets up. It's one sustained mood of mixed emotions brilliantly recorded after another. No mere "Greatest Hits" album by the same duo could ever match the level of sustained inspiration woven here. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel knew it. They split up after this. How could it ever by topped? Well, there are still some surprises left for us in the seen-and-heard-it-all 2011, and this 40th anniversary edition comes not only with a remastered version of the album, but a Simon and Garfunkel CBS television special that originally aired in 1969, PLUS a new documentary interviewing the key players on the making the of the album. And every moment is revelation.

Simon and Garfunkel had four of the top five chart positions at the time and were so popular that a one-hour network special on CBS gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. So they did a wandering meditative tone poem of moving images on America featuring John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy's funeral train while "Bridge Over Troubled Water" played over. That featured young couples in love contrasted with violent and fiery war images from Vietnam while "Scarborough Faire" played. That featured widow Coretta King talking about poverty over disturbing images of diseased and starving children. And they ended (big sigh of relief from the network), with a brief on stage concert. Naturally, millions of shocked viewers choked on their nightcap cocktails and tumbled out of their easy chairs to switch the channel over to the Peggy Fleming Ice Skating special on ABC. When director Charles Grodin (yes, THAT Charles Grodin), screened the Coretta King voiceover poverty section to the network brass, they asked him if he could adjust the audio on it. "How do you want it?" he asked. "Inaudible," they replied.

The original sponsor dropped out, but Alberto VO5 stepped in (hey, there was a lot of hair on young viewers in 1969), and the show aired as produced. Try watching it in the context of 1969, or even prime time network television TODAY, and you will gasp at what they got away with. And if you can watch Robert Kennedy's funeral train pass through the countryside by waving mourners as "Bridge Over Troubled Water" reaches its crescendo, and without crying, you need to check the dose level of your anti-depressants. You just might be catatonic.

Take a deep breath after the television special, thinking you've struck unearthed gold never seen since 1969, but here comes a fantastic new documentary about the making of the album (and the special), and nirvana kicks in. If you care about music at all, or how it is created or inspired, or recorded, you will be entranced. Paul Simon reveals the gospel music he was listening to when the inspiration struck for "Bridge," which he readily acknowledges is beyond any rational explanation. Art Garfunkel convinces him to add the third verse taking it even higher. Their genius engineer, Roy Halee, master of finding the perfect echo, records the "li li li" chorus of "The Boxer" in a stone church chapel to get the right haunting tones. He records the drum crescendos for "Bridge" outside the elevators at CBS to the shock and awe of departing passengers. Garfunkel and Simon playfully slap their hands on their denim-covered knees in a hotel room, roll the Sony recorder, create a one-minute loop, and inadvertently come up with the entire rhythm backing for "Cecilia." And on and on.

I don't know about you, but I always get thrills from hearing artists describe their moments of inspiration. That's my crack addiction. The joy of invention, of innovation, of seeking that perfect sound infuses everything they did or discuss here. And you share that joy of discovery with them. Unless of course, your lithium dosage won't let you.

Troubled outer times call for a stillness of inner peace. Simon and Garfunkel somehow sensed that delicate balance in 1969 and distilled a sound for the ages with this masterpiece. Witness the creation of that same masterpiece 40 years later to understand how the silences within these sounds are needed more than ever.