A Reflective Record at a Time of Turmoil

Simon & Garfunkel’s 1968 album, “Bookends”

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors on Pixabay.com. Album cover credit: Columbia Records

As a college student in the late 1960s, I was caught up in the turbulence of social unrest and national upheaval in the United States. The year 1968 was especially ugly: The war in Vietnam was more unpopular than ever, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, and the disastrous Democratic National Convention showcased violent protests on television.

Amidst this turmoil, the folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel released their fourth studio album, Bookends. It came out on April 3 — one day before King was killed.

Concept albums were on the rise; Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had been released less than a year earlier. Side One of Bookends was widely regarded as a “concept” side, with slice-of-life songs literally bookended by an opening and closing theme. The second side of the album had admittedly less concept-related material, but some memorable songs nonetheless.

I was already a Simon & Garfunkel fan, in part because they both had grown up in my area of New York City and attended my alma mater, Forest Hills High School. I had just seen The Graduate, a film whose timing couldn’t have been more appropriate since I would be graduating in 1970. Its soundtrack featured songs by the duo. The wildly…