How the late Bobby Gregg saved Simon and Garfunkel

The American drummer Bobby Gregg has recently died. One of his claims to fame is that he had a hand in saving the career of Simon and Garfunkel.

In 1965 Tom Wilson, who had produced Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home and “Like a Rolling Stone” decided to experiment with electrifying the Simon & Garfunkel song “The Sound of Silence”. An acoustic version of the song had been released on the Simon & Garfunkel album Wednesday Morning, 3 AM. Inspired by the Byrds hugely popular electric versions of Bob Dylan songs, WIlson not only recorded an electronic version of Dylan’s version of “The House of the Rising Sun” but he employed Dylan's backing band to record an electric backing track for "The Sound of Silence", without Paul Simon’s or Art Garfunkel’s knowledge. Bobby Gregg was once again the drummer Wilson employed in the band creating this backing track. The version of “The Sound of Silence” incorporating the electric band backing track became a #1 hit and was released on the Simon & Garfunkel album Sounds of Silence. It was later listed by Rolling Stone Magazine as the #156 song of all time.

One of the interesting things about this is that Simon & Garfunkel had split up just before this, Simon moving to Europe. It was having the #1 that forced them to think about a reunion, which eventually happened.