I Am a Rock

Paul Simon wrote "I Am a Rock" and first recorded it as a solo-acoustic track, likely beginning the song before the end of January 1964 and completing it by May 1965. It opened his album The Paul Simon Songbook, which he recorded and released in August 1965 in the United Kingdom only. The song dealt with isolation and emotional detachment, and it had not appeared on the acoustic debut album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. that Simon had made with Art Garfunkel the year before. Some sources place a performance of it by Simon on a BBC promo show on January 27, 1965.

Simon was dissatisfied with the Songbook album. In the liner notes he wrote that some of the songs were ones he would no longer write, and that it was discomforting, almost painful, to look back over something someone else created and realize that someone else was himself. Because of his feelings about the record, the original recording stayed unavailable in North America until 1981, when it appeared in the boxed set Paul Simon: Collected Works. The album did not reach CD until March 23, 2004, with Columbia adding two bonus tracks, among them an alternate take of "I Am a Rock" on which Simon's foot-stamping beat can plainly be heard. In 1965 the solo version had also come out as a rare UK single A-side, backed with "Leaves That are Green".