page_title: Bookends (album)
section_title: Lyrics
hierarchical_section_title: Bookends (album) / Composition / Lyrics
caption_attribution_description: Simon &amp; Garfunkel arrive at Schiphol Airport, The Netherlands in 1966.
context_page_description: Bookends is the fourth studio album by American music duo Simon & Garfunkel. Produced by Paul Simon, Roy Halee and Art Garfunkel, the album was released on April 3, 1968, in the United States by Columbia Records. The duo had risen to fame two years prior with the albums Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and the soundtrack album for the 1967 film The Graduate.
  Bookends is a concept album that explores a life journey from childhood to old age. Side one of the album marks successive stages in life, the theme serving as bookends to the life cycle. Side two largely consists of unused material for The Graduate soundtrack. Simon's lyrics concern youth, disillusionment, relationships, old age, and mortality. Much of the material was crafted alongside producer John Simon, who joined the recording when Paul Simon suffered from writer's block. The album was recorded gradually over the period of a year, with production speeding up around the later months of 1967.
  Initial sales for Bookends were substantial in the US, and the album produced the number-one single "Mrs. Robinson". The album sold well in the US and in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at number one.
context_section_description: According to disc jockey and author Pete Fornatale, the album perhaps shares thematic qualities with another concept album, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released ten months prior. He equates "At the Zoo" and "Old Friends" to "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" and "When I'm Sixty-Four", respectively. Fornatale notes, however, that while Sgt. Pepper was notable for sonically colorful, psychedelic shapes, Bookends is starkly contrasted by moody, "black-and-white and gray" sounds. While concept albums were fairly common among rock groups at this time—such as The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request, The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo and Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida—Bookends enjoyed massive success with the format not unlike the Beatles nearly one year before. Garfunkel confirmed the influence of Sgt. Pepper's in a 2015 interview, commenting, "We were terribly impressed, and that shone a light on the path that led to Bookends." Simon often smoked hashish when writing, and he was convinced he must be high to write. He felt the drug had a negative effect and caused him to "retreat more into myself." He often found himself alone while on tour, and his thoughts grew dark during these times. He attributed "the pain that comes out in some of the songs is due to the exaggeration of being high."
  Bookends contains many of Paul Simon's major themes, including "youth, alienation, life, love, disillusionment, relationships, old age, and mortality". Simon's work on Bookends is loosely autobiographical, designed to function as both a personal and artistic statement. Simon, "feeling especially auteurist in the Dylan style of the day", had planned out the album's concept before he began writing, telling Garfunkel "I'm going to start writing a whole side of an album—a cycle of songs. I want the early ones to be about youth and the last song to be about old age, and I want the feel of each song to fit." Bookends, originally released primarily as a vinyl LP, opens and closes side one of the disc with the "Bookends Theme", a brief acoustic piece (once compared to the work of English rock band the Moody Blues) that evokes "a time of innocence". "Save the Life of My Child" is a dramatic story involving drugs, violence and a mother-and-child relationship. According to James Bennighof, the song "deals with individual crises in crowded urban settings, along with references to larger societal forces and at least a hint of some transcendent perspective". The song crossfades into "America", which follows two young lovers—"an apparently impromptu romantic traveling alliance"—as they board a Greyhound bus "to look for America". It is a protest song that "creates a cinematic vista that tells of the singer's search for a literal and physical America that seems to have disappeared, along with the country's beauty and ideals". "Overs" includes themes regarding the disintegration of love and marriage. "Old Friends" paints a portrait of two old men reminiscing on the years of their youth. The two men "sit on a park bench like bookends", and ponder how strange it feels to be nearing their lifetime. The song is joined with the "Bookends Theme", this time with vocal accompaniment from the duo. The piece closes the entire suite with the "resigned admonition" to "Preserve your memories / They're all that's left you".
  "Fakin' It" opens side two and finds the protagonist mulling over his insecurities and shortcomings. It has been suggested that "Fakin' It" may be an allegory for Simon's relationship with Art Garfunkel. "Punky's Dilemma" employs breakfast-food images to lampoon Hollywood and the film industry. It improbably takes an "abrupt left turn" in its third verse, when the singer begins to fantasize himself an admired soldier. "Mrs. Robinson" collects wide-ranging images to address social milieu, with a constant reassurance that Jesus loves the eponymous character, God will bless her, and heaven will welcome her. The song includes a famous reference to athlete Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees, one of Simon's favori
caption: Paul Simon, the album's primary lyricist, seen here in 1966.
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