Bridge Over Troubled Water (song) - Writing and Recording

Writing and Recording

Simon wrote the song in the summer of 1969 while Garfunkel was filming Catch-22 in Europe.

The song originally had two verses and different lyrics. Simon specifically wrote it for Garfunkel and knew it would be a piano song. The chorus lyrics were partly inspired by Claude Jeter's line "I'll be your bridge over deep water if you trust in me," which Jeter sang with his group, the Swan Silvertones, in the 1958 song "Mary Don't You Weep."

Garfunkel reportedly liked Simon's falsetto on the demo and suggested that Simon sing. He and producer Roy Halee also thought the song needed three verses and a 'bigger' sound towards the end. Simon agreed and penned the final verse, though he felt it was less than fully cohesive with the earlier verses. The final verse was written about Simon's then-wife Peggy Harper, who had noticed her first gray hairs ("Sail on, silvergirl"). The musicians were Wrecking Crew members Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborn and Gary L. Coleman. Knechtel won a Grammy for his piano arrangement.

Garfunkel's first two attempts to record the vocal failed. The first two verses were finally recorded in New York with the final verse recorded first, in Los Angeles. The majority of the song was recorded in Columbia Records in Hollywood, Ca. Part of the song was first heard by a national audience on November 30, 1969, when it was included in the soundtrack of a one-hour TV special by the duo aired by CBS called Songs of America. The music appeared in the background of a clip with John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Larry Knechtel spent four days working on the piano arrangement. Garfunkel came up with the intermediate piano chords between the verses while working with Knechtel.