'The Sound of Silence' by Simon & Garfunkel: The making of the groundbreaking folk rock classic

16 July 2025, 09:42 | Updated: 16 July 2025, 09:44

Simon & Garfunkel released a lot of classic tunes, but 'The Sound of Silence' was the band's most important.

From 'Graceland' to 'Bright Eyes', Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel released plenty of fine music apart from one another.

But we'll always have a special place in our hearts for the five stunning albums they recorded together as Simon & Garfunkel in the 1960s.

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There are so many classic Simon & Garfunkel songs it's hard to choose a favourite, but picking out the most important is a much easier task.

With 'The Sound of Silence', S&G (and one very special third party) didn't just craft an absolutely perfect song, they also played a key role in the invention of what would become known as folk rock.

Read on to find out all the fast facts about the song that helped spark a musical paradigm shift.

Who wrote 'The Sound of Silence'?

Simon & Garfunkel's five albums were packed with a mix of folk standards, the occasional cover, but mainly self-penned songs.

And the "self" in self-penned there is Paul Simon: The only S&G "song" written by Art Garfunkel was the experimental audio collage 'Voices of Old People' from Bookends.

'The Sound of Silence' was one of Paul Simon's many classics he wrote for the pair. It was one of their earliest songs, being performed when they were still billing themselves under one of their pseudonyms Kane & Garr.

Simon was just 21 years old when he started writing 'The Sound of Silence' in his bathroom, with the lights off. It apparently took him around three months to perfect the lyrics.

"The main thing about playing the guitar, though, was that I was able to sit by myself and play and dream," Paul told Playboy in 1984. "And I was always happy doing that. I used to go off in the bathroom, because the bathroom had tiles, so it was a slight echo chamber.

"I'd turn on the faucet so that water would run (I like that sound, it's very soothing to me) and I'd play. In the dark. 'Hello darkness, my old friend / I've come to talk with you again.'"

What is 'The Sound of Silence' actually about?

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence (from The Concert in Central Park)

Some people have speculated that 'The Sound of Silence' is about the Kennedy assassination, as it was recorded not long after the murder, but it was actually performed live before JFK was shot.

With that said, without a bootleg or first-hand report, it's not impossible that the lyrics were later tweaked after the assassination.

"Whatever came out, I didn’t sit down to write a song about alienation in America," Simon was quoted as saying in 2018's Paul Simon: The Life

"I'm not saying the song isn't about that, but it wasn't my intention, and that’s still true of my writing today.

"I don't ever set out to write a song about something, though after a while it becomes apparent in the construction of a song that I’m writing about something. Then I have a choice. Do I want to stay with that subject or shut it down?"

While he didn't write it, Garfunkel had his own thoughts on the song. saying it was about "the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other".

Why are there two versions of 'The Sound of Silence' and who is Tom Wilson?

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence (Audio)

Then known as 'The Sounds of Silence' (spot that extra "s"), the song was first recorded on March 10, 1964 and released on Simon & Garfunkel's folky Wednesday Morning, 3AM.

As well as Simon (guitar and some vocals) and Garfunkel (lead vocals), in its original version it also featured additional guitar from Barry Kornfeld and double bass from Bill Lee.

Despite its obvious quality, both song and the album were a flop, selling just 3,000 copies, and in the immediate aftermath of its release Simon & Garfunkel even went separate ways.

While Art Garfunkel returned to Columbia University in New York City, Paul Simon hopped over to England, home of The Beatles who had done their bit to totally upset the pop applecart on both sides of the Atlantic.

Paul Simon - The Sound of Silence (Official Audio)

It was over here that he released his debut solo album, The Paul Simon Songbook.

That underheard album featured not just re-recorded versions of Wednesday Morning, 3AM tracks 'The Sound of Silence' and 'He Was My Brother', but early versions of a number of songs that would later be re-recorded with Simon & Garfunkel.

'I Am a Rock', 'Leaves That Are Green', 'April Come She Will', 'A Most Peculiar Man', 'Kathy's Song' (and 'The Sound of Silence', again) would end up on Sounds of Silence.

'A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)', 'Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall' and 'Patterns' would end up on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

Bob Dylan - Mr. Tambourine Man (Official Audio)

But at that point Simon & Garfunkel were very much apart. It was the sleeper success of original version of 'The Sounds of Silence' an a canny decision by its producer Tom Wilson that changed the lives not just of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, but also the history of music in the 1960s.

In turned out that after a Boston DJ had spun 'The Sounds of Silence' late at night, students had discovered it and it became a college favourite a year after its release.

Wilson caught wind of the success of the song, and decided he could build on it.

This was around the time Tom Wilson was recording Bringing It All Back Home with Bob Dylan, mashing up Dylan's early folk sound with electric rock instruments to make something shocking and new.

The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man (Audio)

Meanwhile, Terry Melcher was doing something similar with some Dylan-written material when he produced The Byrds' 'Mr Tambourine Man' – a song originally produced by Wilson for Dylan – for release in April 1965.

With Simon & Garfunkel no longer a going concern despite their Columbia Records contract still being in effect, Wilson didn't even bother getting in touch with the duo when he started work on a remix.

In June 1965, Wilson collared guitarist Al Gorgoni and drummer Bobby Gregg from his work with Dylan, plus additional guitarist Vinnie Bell and either Bob Bushnell or Joe Macho on bass, depending on who you speak to, to record some new sounds to help him remix 'The Sound of Silence'.

Engineer Roy Halee slathered on the echo.

The Sound of Silence (Electric Version)

"Paul was horrified when he first heard it," said friend and fellow folkie Al Stewart, with Simon especially irked by the new rhythm section having to speed up and slow down to work with the original vocal recordings.

For his part, Garfunkel apparently told Wilson that it was worth a shot. "It's interesting," he's reported to have told the producer. "I suppose it might do something, It might sell."

It's worth a quick note on Wilson, who was so much more than the commercially minded 10%-er he might be dismissed as from this story.

Before Dylan, Wilson produced groundbreaking jazz albums by the likes of Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Donald Byrd and others.

After Dylan, he produced Freak Out! for Frank Zappa's The Mothers of Invention, the first two albums by The Velvet Underground, Nico, The Animals, Soft Machine and, Country Joe & The Fish, among others. Wilson died in 1978 aged just 47.

When was 'The Sound of Silence' released and where did it get in the charts?

On Wednesday Morning 3AM, the original version 'The Sounds of Silence' was released on October 19, 1964 and didn't chart at all on its release, only clambering into the top 40 on both sides of the Atlantic after the band reunited following the success of the revamped version.

Buoyed by the electric overdubs and now called 'The Sound of Silence', the new version was released as a single on September 12, 1965, backed by 'We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin''.

The track wasn't just more successful than the original, but by the start of January 1966, it went all the way to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin'

Incredibly, Simon, who was in Denmark at the time, only found out about the release when he saw the song scaling the charts in the Billboard and Cashbox magazines he'd picked up.

Despite his reservations about the remix, in the aftermath of the success of the song Simon reunited with Garfunkel and they rush-recorded the bulk of Sounds of Silence album in December 1965 with Bob Johnston at CBS Studios in New York City.

The album was released on January 17, less than three weeks after 'The Sound of Silence' single topped the charts. It went to number 13 in the UK and number 21 in the UK and re-ignited the on-off Simon & Garfunkel relationship.

Who has covered 'The Sound of Silence'?

The Sound Of Silence (On Film)

Leaving aside both Simon & Garfunkel versions and solo takes by both Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, 'The Sound of Silence' has lent itself to all sorts of radical and ridiculous reworkings.

Favourites include the spaced out, Lynchian vibes of Chromatics' version and the heavy metal of Disturbed's take on the song.

Then there was the 1970 version by The Wicker Man and Callan actor Edward Woodward

Edward Woodward - The Sound Of Silence [1970]

There are hundreds and hundreds of others, too, and we couldn't begin to list them all.

But we have to mention The Bachelors hit version from 1966, as well as takes by Marti Shannon, Lana Cantrell, Smashing Pumpkins, Bananarama, Sharleen Spiteri, Brandi Carlile, Anna Kendrick, Rhydian and Pentatonix.