Home · Songs · Simon & Garfunkel · I Am a Rock
Chords in progress
We have not analyzed this song audio yet. Once it is ready, you will see the chord player synced with the video.
From album
Sounds of Silence
Simon & Garfunkel · 1966 · Track 11
Details
If you like this, try
The story behind
The song I Am a Rock was born as a reflection of what Paul Simon carried within him in 1964, when he had not yet found his place in American folk music. He wrote it between January and May of that year, but it wasn't until the summer of 1965, while performing solo in Denmark, that he recorded it for the first time for his album The Paul Simon Songbook, a record that was only released in the United Kingdom. The song speaks of isolation, of building emotional walls to avoid suffering. It is not a song seeking comfort; it rejects it: "I am a rock, I am an island," it repeats, as if indifference were its only refuge. What is curious is that, in its original version, it sounds rawer, more intimate, without the arrangements that would later give it its definitive form.
When Tom Wilson, producer of his first album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., heard the sudden success of The Sound of Silence on American radios, he decided to give an electric twist to other songs from the Songbook, including this one. Simon, who was on tour in Europe, learned of the change upon his return to the United States. In December 1965, alongside Art Garfunkel, he recorded a new version at the Columbia Recording Studios in New York, this time with guitars, bass, and drums. The session was quick, almost improvised, to emulate the sound Wilson had created. The result was included in the album Sounds of Silence, released in January 1966, where I Am a Rock closed the second side. The song, which in its acoustic version lasted 2:42, was extended here to 2:51, but retained that essence of loneliness that makes it instantly recognizable. It wasn't until 1981 that the original 1965 recording became available in North America, something Simon later justified in the album notes: "I don't believe in what I wrote then as I believe in what I write today."