Hi there, I´m a bit confused about ´American Tune´. I always thought this was a PS song and not a S&G song. They played it in the concert so it must be. Paul explained about ´Slip Sliding Away´ which is another song that is not on a S&G album. I know that there songs out now that were previously unreleased and appear on the 5 albums now. And there are some songs that are on the ´Old Friends´ collection , like the great song ´Red Rubber Ball´. But who can tell me more about ´American Tune´? Is it PS or S&G and why? And are there more songs like that? I know about ´My Little Town´.
American Tune is a PS song, it´s on the album TGRS from 1973.
Paul and Art sang it together on Central Park 1981.
This is what Paul said about this song in a interview.
AMERICAN TUNE
?It is a song about disillusion. It was written after Nixon was elected. It bothers me whenever I think that the definition of American doesn´t include everybody, doesn´t include the minorities, equally. And whenever I feel that we´re in a time where that´s the case, it´s reactionary to me and it makes me uncomfortable, and I think that´s the case today?.
Thanks Ans. But why do you think they played it? I thought this tour was ´strictly S&G´. Not that I mind though.
BTW If this has been discussed on the forum before, sorry to break it open again.
If I remember clearly Paul said at the beginning of the Old Friends tour 2003 that they want to stay close to their partnership of the sixties and that they only added 2 songs to the show which where written after they broke up. Paul felt that these 2 songs (slip slidin and American Tune) were more S&G songs then solo songs.
You´re right, it was discussed before but that doesn´t mind.
I don´t think that every one agrees with this point of view of Paul.
Paul said once that a lot of songs that he wrote in the years after the breakup shoud have made good S&G-songs. As an intro on American Tune Garfunkel said in the concert in Washington (december 14th 2003): ,,I sure wish I had got into this next song before the two of us split years ago. I adore it. It is American history. And it is this important question: where is our great country going? This is American Tune.??
And in Amsterdam Garfunkel said as an introduction that this song could have been written yesterday. I think he was talking about the lines. At the other hand: the music, from Johan Sebastian Bach (another great songwriter), is timeless too.
Sorry to ask something that I should know really.....but from which piece of Bach does the melody for Am Tune come from? I´d like to hear "the original".
Amazing what you can find if you look around enough!
I have found the piece myself...apparently called "Oh Haupt voll Blut und Wunden", which I think translates as "Oh head full of blood and wounds" but that´s just my literal translation. Anyway, if you click on the following likn, you will find a midi file of the classical version. Interestring. Am Tune is really very similar, I must confess.
Good work, David. It?s from the Matthäus Passion (Matthew Passion), one of the best pieces in the world history of music. (Well, I have to say, when you are a small child and you have to sit and wait till the end of it, almost three hours (!), you don?t regard it a masterpiece, I can tell you that?)
The part ?Oh Haupt voll Blut und Wunden? is used for a hymn that is in use in a lot of churches. So, when you listen to ?American Tune? and you get the feeling that it?s a kind of hymn, you?re right!I think Paul did a great job, using the original music.
I always wondered why the credits of the song where not more clear about the contribution of Bach. (At the other hand, that?s in more cases a problem, think about ?Scarborough Fair? ? most of the times you can not read that it was a traditional song.)
