You know how they often say “let the music do the talking”? Well, at the moment there's been a song in my head for about three days and, though I like it a lot, I feel it's trying to tell me something. So maybe I should write about it. Good idea. But where, in all the many many sections I cover music in my journal, should I put it? Under which heading? Or should I make a new one up? No: we had “The Daily Earworm” years ago, and I got fed up with that. Not going there again. So, an existing section then. But which one? Well, it's a slow, sentimental ballad, so where better than
A song that probably a lot of people will know, this one had its beginnings all the way back in the 1930s, when Harry Warren and Al Dubin got together to write it for a movie, and since then it's been covered by people such as Peggy Lee, The Flamingos, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Jolson, Mel C (what?), Better Midler and Cliff Richard, and about a hundred others. Right up to last year there was a cover version of it, and there'll be probably more as the years go on, because it's one of those timeless lovesongs that never grows old or goes out of fashion. It was also, perhaps most famously, covered by this guy.
“I only have eyes for you”
Art Garfunkel
1975
from the album “Breakaway”
After one of the most successful singer/songwriter partnerships ever in the history of music split up in 1970 following the release of their final album,
Bridge over troubled water, each treated their new solo career in different ways. Paul Simon begun a deeper exploration of the African and World Music that had always intrigued him, hooking up later with Peter Gabriel and becoming one of the biggest ambassadors for World Music, bringing the likes of Yossou N'Dour and Ladysmith Black Mazamba to the attention of the world, while Art Garfunkel kept in more or less the same musical vein he had shared with Simon, also diversifying into the world of film with such efforts as
Bad timing,
Catch-22 and
Carnal knowledge, but music was and is his first love and that was where he concentrated his energies.
His first solo album did well but had no hits. It was not until the release of his second that this cover version of the classic lovesong took him right to number one both in the UK and the USA. I have not heard the other versions but have always loved this one (originally thinking that it was he who wrote it: thank you Wiki for destroying yet another long-held misconception!) due to its overall gentleness and the slow, almost lazy pace of it. It opens with a slowly strummed and seeming phased guitar as Art sings the intro, which isn't really a verse or a chorus, but a sort of precursor to the song proper. The measured drumbeat kicks in about thirty seconds later and some organ joins the guitar and the verse gets going. Garfunkel sings it with the sort of swaying abandon of a man who is truly in love: when he sings
”The moon may be high/ But I can't see a thing in the sky” you can really get the idea of him just looking in his lover's eyes and everything else just fading away. And we've all been there, haven't we? Well, not me, of course, but you know what he's talking about.
When we get into the main --- what is it, bridge? It's not a verse really and it's not the chorus --- the song really gets going, with swelling orchestra and backing vocals filling out the sound and giving it a real sense of passion and emotion as he sings
”I don't know if we're in a garden/ Or on a crowded avenue” and after the chorus there's a lovely guitar passage to take the song out to its fade. It's a short one --- has to be, to be a single I guess --- but every second is used to its utmost and the song is a great ballad with power and smouldering passion, as well as almost literally blind love. No wonder they loved it on both sides of the pond.
”My love must be some kind of blind love:
I can't see nobody but you...
Are the stars out tonight?
I don't know if it's cloudy or bright:
I only have eyes for you, dear.
The moon may be high
But I can't see a thing in the sky:
I only have eyes for you.
I don't know if we're in a garden
Or on a crowded avenue.
You are here, so am I,
Maybe millions of people go by
But they all disappear from view.
And I'll only have eyes for you.”