“The Boxer,” a song from “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, and is ranked by “Rolling Stone” as song number 106 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song is famous for its refrain, which just has Simon singing “lie la lie” and similar sounds over and over.
Many people take the refrain to mean the titular character is lying about his experiences, but Simon has gone on record saying he just couldn’t think of any words.
Those Meddling Executives
Recording executives – or all kinds of arts executives – can be a handful, and the pair had their run-ins with them. We've already mentioned the time when they threw in a bunch of extra instruments to "Sounds of Silence", though that ended up being a big boon to music lovers and Simon and Garfunkel.
The added instruments were played by Bob Dylan's recording musicians since Dylan had pioneered the more rocky folk music. The backing band goes out of sync with the original track at one point, since they were all recording after the fact.
An Accidental Lawsuit
The song “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)” from "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is Simon's lyrics sung over the Los Incas version of the Peruvian folk song “El Cóndor Pasa” by Daniel Alomía Robles (pictured). Problem is, the band never credited Robles, though it was only because Simon was misled to believe it was a traditional folk song.
Robles's son sued the pair for a writing credit, though it was really just a formality, and he's stated he bears Simon no ill will. Neither did Los Incas. They even became friends with Simon and had him produce their first English-language album.
The Marathon Recording Session
How long do you need to record a song? For highly-produced or technical songs with lots of band members, the hours can get into the double digits, but they have nothing on “The Boxer.” Apparently, this song took an incredible one hundred hours to record.
It was recorded in multiple studios, and the chorus vocals were recorded at St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University in New York. With so much material to work with, the standard 8-track didn't have enough space. The album's producer, Roy Halee, championed for a sparkling new 16-track recorder, which helped the song get into its finished state.
Jumping Around on His Own
While working on his solo act, Paul Simon spent plenty of time going from one label to the next. He began with Columbia Records as one of their core artists. When he began to feel the label was cheating him he clashed with president Walter Yetnikoff, and bought out his own contract, moving to Warner Bros. Records, staying there for three decades.
When he released "So Beautiful or So What", he switched to Concord Music Group. "In the Blue Light" (2018) came out under Columbia's current parent company, Sony.