On June 15, 1965, immediately after the recording session of Bob Dylan‘s „Like a Rolling Stone,” Wilson took the original acoustically instrumented track of Simon & Garfunkel‘s 1964 version, and overdubbed the recording with electric guitar (played by Al Gorgoni), electric bass (Bob Bushnell), and drums (Bobby Gregg), and released it as a single without consulting Simon or Garfunkel. The lack of consultation with Simon and Garfunkel on Wilson’s re-mix was because, although still contracted to Columbia Records at the time, the musical duo at that time was no longer a „working entity”.Roy Halee was the recording engineer, who in spirit with the success of The Byrds and their success formula in folk rock, introduced an echo chamber effect into the song. Al Gorgoni later would reflect that this echo effect worked well on the finished recording, but would dislike the electric guitar work they technically superimposed on the original acoustic piece.
For the B-Side, Wilson used an unreleased track he cut with the duo a few months earlier on which they had tried out a more „contemporary” sound. The record single „Sounds of Silence”/”We’ve Got a Groovey Thing Going” entered the U.S. pop charts in September 1965 and slowly began its ascent. In the first issue of Crawdaddy! magazine, January 30, 1966, Paul Williams, in reviewing the later album, wrote that he liked this B-side song which he found pure „rock and roll”, „catchy”, with a „fascinating beat and melody” and great harmony.
Simon learned that it had entered the charts minutes before he went on stage to perform at a club in Copenhagen, and in the later fall of 1965 he returned to the U.S. By the end of 1965 and the first few weeks of 1966, the song reached number one on the U.S. charts. Simon and Garfunkel then reunited as a musical act, and included the song as the title track of their next album, Sounds of Silence, hastily recorded in December 1965 and released in January 1966 to capitalize on their success. The song propelled them to stardom and, together with two other top-five (in the U.S.) hits in the summer of 1966, „I Am a Rock” and „Homeward Bound,” ensured the duo’s fame. In 1999, BMI named „The Sound of Silence” as the 18th-most performed song of the 20th century. In 2004, it was ranked #156 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, one of the duo’s three songs on the list.
On the duo’s 1968 album Bookends, the track „Save the Life of My Child” features a distorted sample of Art Garfunkel’s „Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you” line from the original recording of „The Sound of Silence”).
The Sound Of Silence Lyrics
Artist(Band):Simon and Garfunkel
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
„Fools” said I, „You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence.
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisper’d in the sounds of silence.”
Radu Zlati 
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