Lyric of the Day #7

Are we ready to go back in time? How about to June 1, 1968 which, to the horror of my parents, was 41 years ago. 1968, a year before one of the most memorable years in United States history, and while a noticeably pressing time a fantastic time for films and music. This is where we travel today. The #1 song on this date 41 years ago. “Mrs. Robinson,” written by the great Paul Simon and performed by his duo “Simon and Garfunkel,” from Forest Hills in Queens, New York.

The song is most recognizable not as the single or the full version on the album “Bookends,” which was released in 1968, but as the title track in the AFI ninth greatest film of all time “The Graduate,” where Mrs. Robinson has an affair with a young Dustin Hoffman. Mike Nichols, the director of the film, fell in such obsessive love with Simon and Garfunkel’s music that he practically begged for Paul Simon to write three songs for him. He only got one but it sure was a good one. The most famous lyrics of the song are most definitely the timeless, year-bending, American words:

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo, woo, woo)
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away
(Hey, hey, hey…hey, hey, hey)”

                         – Simon and Garfunkel, “Mrs. Robinson,” off of their studio album “Bookends”

In 1999 soon after DiMaggio’s death, Paul Simon wrote an op-ed article in the times. In it he stated that the line was meant as a tribute to DiMaggio’s heroic stature in a time where popular culture distorts how we see our heroes. “In these days of Presidential transgressions and apologies and prime-time interviews about private sexual matters, we grieve for Joe DiMaggio and mourn the loss of his grace and dignity, his fierce sense of privacy, his fidelity to the memory of his wife and the power of his silence.”

Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away and he has brought with him a sense of dignity not only of society but, especially for the sport of baseball, that truly has been riddled by money and cheating. Unfortunate concepts and entities that ruin the natural past time and hurt the foundation of why people watch the sport and cheer for its players with such insane fervor.