But, just overall, Paul Simon was always way more on the pop side of the spectrum. Bob Dylan was more of a rocker. But make no mistakes, Paul Simon wanted to be taken as seriously as Bob Dylan.

Just looking at Simon and Garfunkel's first album (Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. from 1964), they do a Dylan composition ('The Times They Are A-Changin'). In addition, on the original tunes, there's a very New York City-centric, post-Dylan awareness in tunes like 'Bleecker Street' (Paul's guitar playing on this tune is very Dylan-inspired as well), 'He Was My Brother' (speaking on civil rights) and especially on the original version of 'The Sounds of Silence' (a narrative of the modern day world as a strange, alien place — though Bob did this sort of thing in a more jokey way).

The second album (Sounds of Silence) fully integrates electric instruments, after Bob's cue. But the third album (Parsley, Sage Rosemary and Thyme) really goes full on Dylan-aping, with 'Homeward Bound' (the autobiographic life of a folk singer) and 'A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamera'd Into Submission)' (a total rip off of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues').

After that, the blatant-ness of it dies out, as Paul went the full-on pop route and Bob got in a motorcycle accident and had a borderline nervous breakdown. Though it is telling that, in the middle of Bob's issues, he covered 'The Boxer' and put it on Self Portrait (1970), in a move where we can only guess at all the different kinds of implications: Bob perhaps taking the piss (he covered Gordon Lightfoot, another Dylan-aping soft rocker, on Self Portrait, as well); it has long been speculated that Self Portrait was an aware "self-sabotage," Bob padding it out with tunes he knew his audience would actively dislike; Bob just playing to the charts, trying to score a hit with a cover of a tune that was recently on the charts, in an admittedly cynical move after so many other people had had chart success with his songs.

Later in the 70's, I do find it kind of curious that as soon as Bob goes in and makes a slicker-sounding, post-breakup album (Blood on the Tracks), Paul does the same thing later in the year (Still Crazy After All These Years). Old habits die hard, I guess.



"I wasn't sure if I was lost or running away again. . ."

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