(Please) Forgive Me

[Note: A reader informed me, in 2019, that this song was not, in fact, written by Simon, or even performed by him. It was written by one Jeff Raphael, and performed by Garfunkel, as Artie Garr.
However, I am leaving the post up for merely selfish reasons-- I wrote it, and don't want to delete it.]

This is an extremely sad number. It's from the point of view of a desperate, depressed person, and his reasons for his woe are revealed somewhat... but never made perfectly clear.

The song starts with the same chord progression as "Earth Angel" and dozens of other songs from its era. The other thing we hear is a young, Pat Boone-rich, Johnny Mathis-creamy voice that I am very sad to say is not identified.

The lyrics open enigmatically: "Sitting here thinking what life's all about/... till I'm ready to shout./  I've lived a big lie and now I'm going to die."

Which is dramatic... but so far unspecific. The second verse has the speaker approached by someone he knows: "that man," about whom we only learn that he has a "smiling face."

This man has a task, namely escorting our speaker "to that place/ Where life's at an end and where there's not a friend to love."

At this point in the riddle, we are ready to guess an answer. The speaker is a convict. He has lied about something, and is now to be executed. The man's-- jailer's-- smile now seems much less benign, and much more sinister.

This seems extreme-- capital punishment is usually reserved for crimes of violence and murder. Most of the severest lies involve only, perhaps, embezzlement or fraud. But even the most big-time thieves only get life imprisonment. In this case, living a double life is costing his actual one. Were drugs involved? Murder by proxy? Treason?

We don't know. Perhaps the death penalty is being used here metaphorically; life imprisonment can seem like death, and a place "without a friend" might imply solitary confinement. Or perhaps the songwriter is ignorant of the legal code, or simply decided that jail wasn't dramatic enough for his poetic purposes.

In the bridge, we see that "die" might, in fact, have been an exaggeration all along: "I'm on my way to stay/ And when I'm gone I'll have pity and fear/ For those like me who never will be free." Oh, so it is life imprisonment?

Maybe... the line then is then completed: "...who never will be free/ Of a worthless life filled with sadness and strife." So, he will not be "free of [his] life." He will have to live with his misery...but not literally die.

It begins to dawn on the listener that the substance of the punishment is immaterial. The speaker is going to be punished for his lie of a life, either by dying for it or by a "living death" of lifetime incarceration.

The song ends twice. Once, with an Aesop-like device: "The moral of my song is easy to see/ Don't live a life like mine-- be happy and carefree/ Love and be loved, then life will be but a dream." This seems unnecessary. In a 30-second public service announcement, we might need to be told outright that only we can prevent forest fires. But here, this spelling-out of the theme is a bit egregious.

Then, this, tacked on to the very end: "O Lord, please forgive me." Well, now we have the title. But it's unclear as to whether he is asking the Lord for forgiveness, or if it's more of an "Oh Lord," an expression like "Oh dear," "Oh woe," or "Oh man."

Simon returned to this character, the repentant criminal, in "Wednesday Morning, 3AM" (and its remix, "Somewhere They Can't Find Me") but in a more specific, less bathetic and preachy way... making the song more effective. He gives the criminal a definite crime, full of detail. And he gives him a lady love to leave as he flies justice.

What hasn't changed is what the criminal most regrets. Not, say, having disappointed someone or having hurt someone or even having sinned. No, he regrets what might have been, had he not committed his crime.


Next Song: Wow Cha-Cha-Cha

Just a Boy

The idea of an inter-generational romance is not new. Sometimes accepted as "May-December romance," sometimes derided as "cradle robbing," it is a fraught subject. Terms like "MILF" and "twink" are just the latest in a long line of attempts to deal with this, shall we say, phenomenon... going back through the movies The Graduate and Harold and Maude, the song "Maggie Mae," the novel Lolita, and even, in a way, all the way to the tale of Oedipus.

This time, we get a touch of foreshadowing in the title itself. The first verse is still circumspect: "I am just a boy/ Not a... man/ But your love gives me strength/ To do the best I can." This speaks to the age of the male speaker, not his subject.

But no doubt can be had after the second verse. Here, he more pointedly contrasts the two of them. He is "unwise and full of fears." But she counters that with "the wisdom of many years."

Yes, we have just unquestionably entered-- as the TV show title would have it-- Cougar Town.

While there are many rites of passage in every culture that delineate the passage to adulthood, one can be deemed universal-- the one in the chorus: "Though I'm young/ I still can understand/ Your love, someday/ Will turn this boy into a man."

The "someday" gives us hope. Perhaps this is a crush on a teacher or a friend's older sister or (we hope) single mother. But it is clear that this, um, "relationship"-- and the older person in question might not even be aware of it-- has not yet been consummated. So no investigations or lawsuits are pending. Yet.

The last verse seems to throw a wrench into our theory: "Though I'm just a boy/ On this, you can rely/ You are just the girl/ I will love till I die." Still, it is doubtful that his calling her a "girl" means that we are wrong and that she in fact is one; he has already said he has "may years." Rather, it is probably a compliment: "I don't see you as 'old'! In my eyes, you are youthful like me, and so a totally appropriate choice for me (even if you are not, technically, 'young')."

The situation is common, and so the sentiments are. The idea that "I am in high school, but everyone else my age might as well be in grade school, as I am so much more mature" is often followed by "and therefore, I can only love someone as mature as I... someone already past high-school age." Finding such a target of one's aspirational affections is not hard, and such songs are the next logical step.

Let us hope that this is a schoolboy crush on a teacher or something, and that (despite his protests of love unending) he will soon find someone more appropriate before restraining orders are brought to bear. If he does confess his feelings, she is, we hope, able to use her "many-yeared wisdom" to break his heart gently.

Next Song: Forgive Me

I'd Like to Be

This slight cha-cha is a song of the sort I call simply a "list song." The songwriter comes up with an idea, and then just extends it for the length of a song, listing as many permutations as he can rhyme.

Examples abound. Take the song this one presages, "The Way You Do The Things You Do." In that Temptations classic, the speaker compares his lover to a list of various objects that are known for performing certain functions very well. Her smile is so she's so smart, she "could have been a schoolbook"; and she's so pretty, she "could have been a flower." The whole song is a list of such things she "could have" been.

Here, the speaker lists the things he would like to be. And all of them are in contact with the body of his beloved.

These include her clothes ("high-heeled shoes," "coat around your shoulder")... her accessories and jewelry ("ribbon in your hair," "belt around your tiny waist," "your bracelet and your glove").... even her cosmetics.

In fact, the first such items he mentions that he'd "like to be" are: "The lipstick on [her] your lovely lips... the polish on [her] fingertips."

The most intimate object he'd like to be is... well, no, this was still the 1950s! It's not a clothing item at all, but "the chocolate candy that [she] tastes."

And, in case you were in total suspense about what he rhymes with "glove," the last line is the payoff: "But most of all/ I'd like to be the one you love."

This implies she has not returned his affections yet. It remains to be seen if she is interested in returning the affections of one so very, very interested in touching her-- nay, enveloping her.

While most of these things encircle and embrace her, the way "tender" or "loving"-- to borrow terms from other such songs-- arms might, the "chocolate candy that you taste" is an unmistakeable metaphor.

One way of looking at this is that he wants things to be equal. He wants to envelope her, but is equally willing to be enveloped by her. But that, in today's lingo, is almost definitive co-dependency.

Now, there is nothing necessarily wrong with erotic images expressed by one who is already intimate with his listener. But there are two "red flags" here. One, the images are erotic too soon, before intimacy or even familiarity. The other is the smothering nature of the images.

While we can argue that the Temptations song has its faults-- it literally objectifies the woman by comparing her to objects, for one-- at least there is only one image of "holding you so tight." Here, almost every object the speaker conjures is one of surrounding her or buffering her from the outside world. Surely, irrational jealousy cannot be far behind.

Also, the Temptations song is upbeat and airy. Our song is smoky and  sultry. The emotion meant to be conveyed is seduction, but he knows she doesn't even love him yet.

So while, structurally, the song presages "The Way You Do the Things You Do," on an emotional level, it foreshadows a more shadowy one: The Police's "I'll Be Watching You."


Next Song: Just a Boy

Aeroplane of Silver Steel

There is nothing wrong with experimentation, with trying something new. Edison is said to have told a reporter that, no, he did not fail more than 5,000 times when trying to find the best light-bulb filament. In fact, he did not fail even once! Rather, he said, he successfully proved that those 5,000 filaments did not work.

This song, "Aeroplane of Silver Steel," does not work. If it were an "aeroplane," it would not fly. It is at once too childish and too over-reaching in its attempts to be mature, like a toddler shuffling about in his father's loafers. Even the spelling "aeroplane" hints at the European, archaic ambitions-- no mere "airplane," this!

The structure is pop-operatic, like "Memory" from Cats. The guitar work is hyper-dramatic and Latinate, a flamenco or tango. So the whole effect is that this was a song left out of Man of La Mancha.

"Aeroplane of silver steel high in the night/ Someday, I shall soar with you in your flight," the speaker begins. "Never has another flown as high as you and I." This is high-flown poetry, indeed.

"I shall fly my own plane high above." Now, what will that rhyme with? "The earth which holds me while I'm dreaming of/ Roaring through the clouds, and speeding fast, to my love."

Now, the song makes a sudden break from its soaring rhetoric and strummings, and finds a cha-cha rhythm. All of that... stuff was introduction. Now we are onto the subject itself. Which is-- what happens when the plane lands? Well, our dashing Red Baron is not coming empty handed!

"To bring her chocolates/ To bring her candies." Well, that's thoughtfully, if predictably, romantic. Anything else in the cargo bay? "To bring her herbs and tasty spices that she can cook." Ah. Well, all the early explorers sought the Spice Islands. But... cook for whom, exactly? Some hungry pilot, hmm?

"To bring her ribbons/ To bring her laces." Our Flying Ace have been to both the Spice Islands and the Silk Road, it seems. This is one domestic little lady he has. I mean, I'm not seeing any diamonds or furs on the manifest. "To bring her tingling silver to fill her pocketbook." Close. But why "tingling?" Did he mean "jingling?" Or is this money that is begging to be spent?

This list is repeated. Then, not leaving the faster rhythm, the first verse about the aeroplane is repeated. And the song ends.

In general, three kinds of people fly their own planes. One flies for business, whether spraying crops with chemicals or entertaining festival crowds with stunts. One is the rich playboy who flies for both business and vacations; the plane is fun, but mostly just a convenient, luxurious method of getting where the fun really is.

The third is the weekend pilot for whom his plane fills the same function as another man's speedboat, motorcycle, or off-roader-- simple thrills.

Then there is the speaker. His airplane-- excuse me, "aeroplane"-- is just a long-range shopping cart. He seems to enjoy the sensation of soaring, but mostly the vehicle is his method for procuring expensive items with wish to lavish his (rather domestic) lady love. No, the internet has not been invented when this song was written. But mail-order catalogs had been.

Perhaps he wishes to travel, like George Bailey of It's a Wonderful Life. And he wishes his wife had more adventurous tastes in goods and travel, but is too much of a homebody to actually spirit off to Gay Paree or The Mysterious Orient or the sultry bazaars of The Levant.

So this is his compromise. He will fly to Far-Off Lands... and bring their bounty back to her! But nothing too exotic. He hasn't brought back any furs, but also no tiger-skin rugs. No diamonds, but no anklets or nose-rings, either. No artifacts or handicrafts. Just "chocolates" and "spices." (It could also be that the speaker was not a reader or movie-goer, and had no real knowledge of the huge variety of exotic items Far-Off Lands offered, even to 1950s tourist.)

In any case, even if she still isn't inspired to follow him, at least he isn't tied down to Levittown.

So why doesn't this aeroplane reach the clouds? Our speaker has an imagination big enough to imagine limitless possibilities of travel... but not enough imagination to know what to do with so much opportunity. He's a would-be swashbuckler, but as a New Yorker cartoon of a middle-aged pirate had it, he's "too much buckle and not enough swash."

And so the song's lofty ambitions are also unfulfilled. With a soaring melody and a fantastical metaphor, all it can come up with is... dinner and dessert. And a sewing project for the weekend.

Next Song: I'd Like to Be

Forever and After

This tender break-up song represents a leap forward in Simon's writing capability. It presages the folk-guitar songwriting that defines, for many, the Simon and Garfunkel sound.

The opening verse is in the traditional a-b-a-b rhyme scheme. It also contains what is called a "concrete" image. Rather than some vague musing about missing a sweetheart and some poetry about dove or rainbow, it gives the listener a real-life, daily-life "metal picture" to symbolize the passage of lonely time: "How long am I going to miss you?/ How many cigarettes will I have to burn?"

(Think of later concrete images of Simon's: "She crept to my tent with her flashlight" from "Duncan,"  "Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike," from "America" " and "Laying out my winter clothes" from "The Boxer.")

The first half of this song, in fact, is a series of questions, a technique used in every song from "Close to You" by The Carpenters to Dylan's signature "Blowin' in the Wind." The speaker here continues, "When can I make my lonely heart realize/ That you will never return?"

Then we have a couplet that seems to imply that it will be the refrain: "How long will I hear your warm laughter?/ I'm afraid-- forever and after." This is a nice gloss on the overused "forever and ever" or "forever and a day."

Since the title of the song is "Forever and After," we presume that we will next have another quatrain, again followed by this couplet.

We're wrong. We have another two lines; still, we think these might be the second half of the chorus, especially since they continue the question motif:  "How many times do I hurry home to you/ To find you gone, to find you gone?"

This repetition of a phrase is very reminiscent of the folk songwriting style. Think of "We Shall Overcome," "Kumbaya" or "This Little Light of Mine" ("Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine").

Then, we have two more verses, but each has six lines, with the third and sixth rhyming. The first of these is "Each time I held you near me/ I hear you say you love me/ More than the day before/ You'd smile when you would see me/ Take your kisses to me / And go on wanting more." [The emphasis on the rhyme is mine.]

In this verse, we hear the speaker rehashing the relationship, as in many break-up songs, missing both his sweetheart and the feeling of being in love. We hear him think on the good times, as we expect.

Next, we assume he will wonder "what went wrong." Did he make a mistake? Did she? Was there someone else? Did they simply outgrow each other... or get pulled apart by fate?

But all we get is: "Though things sometimes went wrong/ It never, never lasted for long/ It wasn't worth the care." In this case, that expression means means "it wasn't worth the bother, the trouble." When there were fights, they were brief and unimportant. So as far as he is concerned, the reason for the break-up remains elusive.

There seems to be a grammatical disagreement between the plural "things" and the singular "it." But consider the "correct" alternative: "Though things sometimes went wrong/ They never lasted for long." That's just not how people talk. "It," we know, refers to the particular disagreement, whatever it was about, not the "things" that went wrong.

The song ends with the reason the fights were short: "For then we had each other's love/ We had so much, so much to share, so much to share." There's that internal repetition again.

There is only sadness here. No anger, no finger-pointing or name-calling. Just a wonderful, tender love that... ended. Perhaps if the speaker knew why she left, he could get what we today call "closure," and find a lesson to carry forward into his next relationship: "Well, I won't do that again" or "I won't fall for someone who does that again."

But we all know that, sometimes, there is no answer, no closure. And when that happens, we can find ourselves wondering, "If it was so great, why did it have to end?" We reminisce, question, smoke another cigarette, and wonder... forever and after.

By altering his verses' shape in mid-song, and presenting a potential chorus and then not actually repeating it, Simon does two things. One is to symbolize the song's theme-- expectations going unmet-- in its very structure.

The other is to begin to delineate his signature style. He begins, here, to explore the idea of altering a song's structure midstream, of fusing two songs into one. He also sings solo, to an acoustic guitar-- not a "pop music" move.

This is a Tom and Jerry song, to be sure. But it's one of the few that, had it appeared on a Simon and Garfunkel album, would have been completely at home there. Yes, it has elements of The Everly Brothers wistfulness, and the melodic folk tradition, and the new grittier folk style.

But it fuses these elements, then adds a confident intelligence and a willingness to not find answers to the questions it raises. With "Forever and After," we really stop hearing the pop star-wannabe that was Jerry Landis... and we start recognizing the mature Paul Simon we know today.

When this song was written, he could have been no more than 18. As if we weren't impressed enough already. No, Simon was not finished trying to be Elvis or Dion... or an Ink Spot, an Everly Brother or Brill Building teen idol, as we shall see (and it's possible that, in his 70s, he's still trying!).

But he was starting to come into his own, find his voice, and define himself as a songwriter. It's still the 1950s when this song is recorded. But "Forever and After," in style and substance, is a 1960s song. More importantly, it's a Paul Simon song.

Next Song: Aeroplane of Silver Steel

A Charmed Life

This is an interesting song, because it seems as it it may go one way, but in fact goes the opposite.

The chorus is just two lines: "Some people, some people never have no storm or strife/ Some people, some people, they lead a charmed life."

This implies that it's other people who do, not the speaker. So we settle in for a rehash of Hank Williams' "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive," another shrugging litany of "I've had a lot of luck, and it's all been bad."

This expectation is nurtured by the music, which is as sad as a sigh in a fog.

The first verse is about these "some people," using the third person, again fostering the notion that, as Rod Stewart sang, "Some guys have all the luck,"... and it's not us: "When Trouble knocks upon their door, they always show such cheerfulness/[Trouble] scratches his head and away he goes, saying, "Guess I have the wrong address."

The rest of the song is about how, in fact, it is the speaker and people like himself who do in fact lead a charmed life. For instance: "A wealthy fisherman can hold all the equipment in the book/ Then people like us, we just come along-- catch 'em with a pole, a string, a hook." The next example is of a farmer who "nearly kills himself with toil," but when "people like us" start to scratch the same dirt, "What do they discover? Oil!"

The next verse is unclear. The story it tells seems like bad luck. "A man like me, he picks out a girl and she buys her wedding gown/ Their wedding day comes but his luck holds out-- just as he arrives, the church burns down." The implication is that he is lucky that the wedding could not take place. It seems he didn't want the wedding to happen, perhaps because she was rushing the relationship so much.

[Later, in the song "A Church is Burning," Simon would treat the subject of a burned-down church with an entirely different attitude.]

Then a female singer comes in and says that it's "kids like us" who are saved from the final exam-- the one they didn't study for-- by the arrest of the teacher by the police.

The last verse summarizes, in politically incorrect fashion: "A raggle-taggle gypsy band who never stays where they are put/ That's us-- and we're glad that we're us, because we're as lucky as a rabbit's foot."

It's hard to know what to make of this song. The happy, even comical, scenarios it relates are at odds with the doleful melody and harmonies. It is clever, but it would have been better served by a more upbeat presentation, like The Everly Brothers' "Wake Up, Little Suzie." Someone as charmed as the speaker claims to be should be more, well, charming.

Also, why talk about "some people" having a charmed life, implying others do... when it's the speaker and his own band of merry gypsies who are in fact charmed?

This track shows a humorous side of Simon that one wishes was packaged more humorously.

Next Song: Forever and After

Up and Down the Stairs

There is no metaphor here. (Also, no chorus or bridge.) The whole song is a kvetch about schelpping "up and down the stairs at school."

There is no romance-- he doesn't pass someone on the stairs all day long and flirt with and/or get ignored by her while never getting the chance to actually converse because he is always rushing to class.

There is no bullying by being pushed down the stairs as he's climbing up, or class warfare (as in the British TV show Upstairs Downstairs)... or anything else.

Just a student weary of all the stair-climbing he is doing every school day. The repeated line is: "Up and down the stairs is driving me crazy!"

"Who thought education could be cruel?" he moans. "In the morning you'll find out that you'll/
Start out on the highest floor/ Then it's French in 104," presumably all the way down on the first floor.

"I would like to know who made the rule," he further bewails, "That each classroom, [from] door to door/ Is ten miles from the one before."

Like in the song "Wonderful World" (the Sam Cooke one, not the Louis Armstrong one), we also learn about the speaker's classes. Aside from French, he says, "I don't mind geometry/ English or biology" (one of Simon's weaker rhymes) and "I can wade through history/ Though it's just a mystery." So that's five classes' worth of stairs, plus lunch... and most likely, gym class.

As if he hasn't exercised enough for one day, poor dear.

That's really all there is to this cute little novelty number, with its nursery-rhyme score. You might expect it in the soundtrack of some movie set in a 1950's high school, like Grease. Although on-screen, there might be more happening-- on the staircases between classes-- than there is here.

Next Song: Charmed Life