Fire and Rain (24 page)

“As soon as I figure out I have nothing more to tell you, I'll stop,” Simon bluntly informed his students the first night of class. As spring wound down, he accorded them one more inside peek at his business: choosing what he thought was the best student song and taking the entire class to an uptown studio, where it was recorded with some of the city's bestknown studio musicians. With that, the class ended, and Simon returned to his other obligation. Four months after the release of
Bridge Over Troubled Water
, the time had finally arrived to promote it with a full-on Simon and Garfunkel tour.

The album had been doing fine without much promotion beyond the
solo interview Simon had given to
Rolling Stone
while Garfunkel was abroad. On April 2,
Bridge Over Troubled Water
surpassed the two million sales mark. For ten straight weeks it was the biggest-selling album in the country, fending off challengers like
Déjà vu
and
Hey Jude
. “Cecilia,” the follow-up single to the title song, began its own ascent, its rhythms a cathartic left turn from the near-religious solemnity of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Simon was in no major rush to head back to the road. Although he generally appeared affable and easygoing onstage, flashing a whimsical smile between songs, part of him dreaded the thought of live performance. In cabs or limos on the way to venues, he'd inevitably start to get anxious, knots forming in his stomach. He was already visiting a therapist—actor Elliott Gould's—twice a week. (He'd met Gould the year before at a Knicks game in New York, by way of their mutual friend Dustin Hoffman.) Although he was only twenty-eight, Simon told Lewis and others he was tired of touring and the dreary regimen of hotels, airports, and inadequate food. “Keep the Customer Satisfied,” on
Bridge Over Troubled Water
, jovially spoke of his relief to be home—horns never blasted louder on a Simon and Garfunkel record than they did on that song—but offstage, Simon was more far disgruntled.

The thought of spending time with Garfunkel didn't particularly appeal to him either. After fifteen years of friendship, little things about his partner had begun to irk him. Simon wasn't short on eccentricities himself. To write songs, he would wait for his nails to grow a particular length so he could fingerpick the strings just right. In the studio, he could be quietly competitive: If Larry Knechtel, a skilled bass and guitar player as well as keyboardist, picked up a guitar and began playing a riff more complicated than Simon could pull off, Simon would shoot a disapproving look.

To make the situation as palatable as possible for both men, the Simon and Garfunkel spring and summer tour would barely qualify as a tour at
all. Launching April 25, it would amount to a mere five European shows—one each in London, Copenhagen, Paris, and Amsterdam before one more in London—over less than two weeks. After two months off, they would then play two concerts in America, both at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in July. This time, there would be no band, just the two of them, with Grossman and Harper along for company. (In Amsterdam, Garfunkel requested they stay at the same Amsterdam Hilton Hotel where John Lennon had had his Bed-In with Yoko Ono the year before.) Of their 1969 touring band, they only retained Knechtel, who, at their expense, would be flown with his family to every show so he could emerge from the wings and play piano on “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

In late April, Simon and Harper left Manhattan for Europe, where they met up, finally, with Garfunkel. Onstage nothing appeared remotely amiss. With only Simon's crystalline guitar for accompaniment, their voices wove around each other effortlessly and naturally. They never sang off-key, rarely missed a note. They proved they didn't need elaborate studio production to pull off “Fakin' It,” the intricately arranged song from
Bookends
. After two hours and multiple encores, the Royal Albert Hall crowd was so frenetic that a British bobby had to escort both men out the back door to avoid the overeager clutches of fans.

As always, Garfunkel preferred to gaze into the crowd as if focusing on someone in the balcony, hands pushed into his jeans pockets. He frequently introduced the songs by name as if giving a lecture. (“This is an English folk song that comes out of the soundtrack of the movie that we made, called
The Graduate
,” Garfunkel explained of “Scarborough Fair” in Amsterdam.) In conversation and onstage, Garfunkel exhibited a droll sense of humor and careful diction; the rare hint of his Queens upbringing came when the word “off” would emerge as “awf.” Simon was looser, letting out an impish grin or rolling his shoulders and guitar as if rowing a boat.

In between the in-jokes and stagecraft, minor digs would emerge. In
Amsterdam, Garfunkel introduced “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” by saying, “I suggested to Paul that he write a song about” the famous architect. “I didn't know anything
about
Frank Lloyd Wright, however,” Simon retorted to the crowd. “I proceeded to write the song anyway.” Whenever Knechtel would begin the “Bridge” chords, Simon would walk off to cede the stage and spotlight to his partner. When Garfunkel hit the triumphant high note at the song's conclusion, the audiences would inevitably erupt as if watching an Olympic figure skater who'd just completed a perfect axel jump. Watching offstage, Simon would quietly simmer. Did the crowds realize he wrote the song? Did they know Garfunkel was merely the singer? To aggravate matters further, Garfunkel rarely cited Simon as the writer, only telling the crowd they'd be accompanied by “our piano player friend from Hollywood.” Part of Simon knew his own thoughts were petty, but he couldn't help himself.

Arriving at each venue just before “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was set to start, Knechtel would walk onstage, take a seat at the piano, accompany Garfunkel, then return to his hotel room. Backstage conversation or quality time with his bosses wasn't encouraged. Knechtel didn't take it personally. By then, he'd known Simon and Garfunkel several years and was accustomed to their aloofness. Yet Knechtel still found it odd that they were so remote even from each other.

CHAPTER 8

The first stop on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tour—Tuesday, May 12, at the Coliseum in Denver, Colorado—began as if nothing was awry on any fronts. Keeping with their particular tradition, the original trio walked onstage first, without Young, tuning up and eventually launching into one of their signature songs, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” In concert, the song was both a warm-up and a high-wire act: Would their harmonies be in tune? Would someone forget a lyric? Tonight, the singing was a little sharp and Stills rushed the tempo in the first verses, but they made it through.

Before Young joined them, Stills finally made the reference everyone knew was coming. “If the Army guys show up, just get outta the way,” Stills said, using the same half-serious, half-supercilious tone he'd used to inform the Woodstock masses that the band was “scared shitless.” Nash quickly interjected, “Right!” When the applause died down, Stills added, “Just move out so fast that they wouldn't even believe that you were ever
here
.” Neither Stills nor his bandmates specified what they were talking about, but they didn't have to. Everyone knew what had taken place five states east and a mere eight days before, on the campus of Kent State University.

Twenty-one-year-old senior Jerry Casale was in his drawing course when he heard classes would be cut short. He wasn't surprised. All weekend,
tensions had been building on Kent State's campus and in the neighborhood nearby. Now, on the late morning of Monday, May 4, rumor was that the Army or National Guard were on their way, and a noontime rally at the Commons seemed an appropriate way for students like him to vent their displeasure.

By his own admission, Casale was an “art hippie” who'd grown up in Kent and was now double-majoring in contemporary English literature and art. When he'd started as a freshman in the fall of 1966, his hair was short, his wardrobe leaning toward herringbone jackets and ties. By now, his hair fell past his earlobes, reflecting his admiration for Brian Jones, and he took his fashion tips from Dylan photographs. Like many of his fellow undergrads at Kent State, Casale was a radical in theory more than in practice. The images of Vietnam on TV every night freaked him out, but he didn't know what to do about any of it. After hearing Mark Rudd of the Students for a Democratic Society speak on campus, Casale had joined SDS in the winter of 1967. He was starting to question the war and the American culture that promoted it, but his main contribution was making fliers and posters for SDS meetings, then listening to students debate at each one.

On April 30, everyone, including the kids at Kent State, learned about a surprise American bombing campaign. “U.S. Aids Saigon Push in Cambodia with Planes, Artillery and Advisers,” blared a jarring
New York Times
headline. Unexpectedly, America was invading yet another country, supposedly to help thwart the North Vietnamese troops who'd taken refuge in Cambodia. As the University of California at Santa Barbara had shown months before, campuses were already exposed nerves, but the all-new military offensive pinched those nerves doubly hard. Schools shut down, and heads of colleges warned the Nixon administration to expect a wave of protests by at least some portion of the millions enrolled in American colleges.

Kent State remained open but hardly calm. On Friday, May 1, a rally
protesting the Cambodian invasion took place, and at night, the Water Street bar area became home to a handful of bonfires, hurled bottles, and police tear gas, all thanks to a motley gathering of students, bikers, and rowdy jocks. From his apartment on Water Street, Casale witnessed some of the disruptions on Friday night and heard about soldiers on campus. The next day, as news broke that the United States' bombings of North Vietnam were also increasing, an ROTC building on campus—the most obvious symbol of the Army's Kent presence—was set afire. The National Guard arrived soon after, and a second student rally was scheduled for Monday.

When Casale arrived for class on Monday, the sun-drenched conditions announced spring had finally arrived after a prolonged winter. Casale heard the ring of a bell—the rally had begun—and headed toward it. A loudspeaker or bullhorn barked out some sort of command, but the crackly words were impossible to understand. By then, almost three thousand had congregated in the Commons.

In the crowd, Casale saw a familiar face: Jeffrey Miller, a new transfer from Michigan State University. As part of his work-study scholarship, Casale had been awarded a summer campus job, helping out incoming students with paperwork and class signups. There, Casale had met Miller along with Allison Krause, a friendly, dark-haired nineteen-year-old freshman from Maryland.

For Casale and others around him, the next twenty-five minutes were a blur one moment, a slow-motion nightmare the next. First came the soldiers and the Jeeps, then the tear gas and the sight of bayonets on rifles. Then yelling, followed by tear-gas canisters being lobbed back at soldiers by a few students. Then the Guard, who, after pushing forward, appeared to head back toward the Commons. Then the seventy gas-masked soldiers in the G Troop of the 107th Calvary stopping, turning around, squatting, and pointing their bayoneted rifles.

At that point, Casale began running up the hill and to the right of
Prentice Hall, on the apex of a hill; since the Guard had sealed off the front of the campus, it seemed the only way out. Then he and everyone around him headed back down the hill toward the student parking lot. At one point, Casale looked back in the direction of the Guard, now on a ridge. From where he stood near the parking lot, the formation was a frightening sight—and doubly so when it looked to be preparing to lock and load. He couldn't imagine the guns were loaded; he assumed, if anything, they'd use their bayonets.