How to Play Simon and Garfunkel’s Bossa Nova–Inspired Ballad “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright”

Simon and Garfunkel, 1966. Photo: Joost Evers/ANEFOOne of the great deep cuts from Simon and Garfunkel’s 1970 masterpiece, Bridge Over Troubled Water, “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” taps into the sultry rhythms and jazz harmonies of bossa nova, with a lovely nylon-string guitar part by Paul Simon. When I interviewed Simon for this magazine in 1993, he noted that he must have started listening to Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim around the time he wrote the song.

As for the lyrics, the suggestion that Simon write a song about Frank Lloyd Wright came from Art Garfunkel, who had studied architecture at Columbia. But the lyrics seem to have as much to do with Garfunkel himself—or the duo as they’d “harmonize till dawn”—as with the famed architect.

The guitar part, transcribed here by Adam Perlmutter, is challenging yet satisfying to learn, full of unusual changes and rich voicings.

Like “El Condor Pasa” and “The Boxer,” Simon recorded “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” in standard tuning lowered a half step. He starts with E fingerings (which sound in the key of Eb), but then partway through, the song modulates up a half step for the flute solo, last verse, and outro. On the album track, Simon made that key change by adding a capo at the first fret. In concert, however, as on the Simon and Garfunkel release Live at Carnegie Hall 1969, Simon played the whole song uncapoed (and not in a lowered tuning either, so it’s a half step higher than the album track), navigating from the key of E into F using closed-position fingerings. To make the song more accessible and performable, this transcription shows how to play it without the mid-song capo change, so it’s a hybrid of the studio and live versions.

Along with the jazzy chord shapes, one of the keys to this guitar part is to play fingerstyle and pick the strings simultaneously with different fingers for the three- and four-note chords, rather than strumming. This kind of pianistic approach, which gives great clarity to all the individual notes and voices, is a hallmark of bossa nova. 

For additional inspiration as you work on the song, check out Madison Cunningham’s gorgeous solo rendition on the EP For the Sake of the Rhyme.

Due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to post notation or tablature for this musical work. If you have a digital or physical copy of the July-August 2025 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine, you will find the music on page 51.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.

Jeffrey Pepper RodgersJeffrey Pepper Rodgers, founding editor of Acoustic Guitar, is a grand prize winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and author of The Complete Singer-Songwriter, Beyond Strumming, and other books and videos for musicians. In addition to his ongoing work with AG, he offers live workshops for guitarists and songwriters, plus video lessons, song charts, and tab, on Patreon.