Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” was a story in itself. With a record of over five minutes, it slowly but steadily builds to a tremendous climax before falling back into a long, silent finish that lands as smooth as a feather.
The innovation required to record the song was extraordinary, requiring 100 hours to record. Take the lush voices of the interludes, for example. Sung in a recording studio? No. Try St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University, where the acoustics were provided by the tiled dome of the church. And an 8-track recorder (the next-gen standard at the time) just wasn’t enough. Then two Synchronized 8-track recorders were required to record all the necessary vocal tracks. It was the first 16-track recording ever made, although Simon later said that it was a “p …” to make the two recorders work together.
Then there was that thunderous drum part underneath those vocals. Hal Blaine, the incomparable veteran session drummer, was responsible for those. Did you play in a recording studio? No, part II. But they didn’t use a church for the drums. They used an office, specifically in front of an elevator at the Columbia Record offices. Blaine hit and producer Roy Halee added the reverb. And it worked. The part that didn’t work out was when an elevator arrived and an elderly security guard came out and had the surprise of a lifetime.
But probably the biggest innovation came from the lyrics. The song began with images that Simon had learned while reading the Bible in hotel rooms (“worker’s wages” and “search for the poorest” are derived from New Testament verses). Simon had composed a flowing five-line story of poverty and resilience, where the singer (like a boxer) is beaten but clings tenaciously for further punishment even as he expresses his desire to surrender and leave. One could easily imagine that Simon had someone specific in mind (similar to the way he used Joe DiMaggio’s name in “Mrs. Robinson”). Well, I had someone in mind, but it wasn’t someone from the boxing world.
It was himself.
From the beginning of their commercial success in 1966, the duo received praise from both critics and fans. But it did not last. Critics of popular music began to accuse them of not being true popular artists. The beating continued, although Simon felt the criticisms weren’t fair. As he recalled in an interview with Playboy magazine in 1984, “I think the song was about me: everyone is hitting me, and now I’m telling them I’ll go if they don’t stop.”