Since the duo's infamous break-up, how many teenagers have closed themselves up in their rooms poring over the lyrics to even Simon & Garfunkel's most overwrought songs (like the high school poetry of "The Dangling Conversation") before graduating to Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, or Fred Neil? Dispensing studious allusions to Dylan Thomas, Robert McNamara, and Frank Lloyd Wright, they were and remain primarily unthreatening and accessible, which forty years later makes them an ideal gateway act to the weirder, harsher, more complex folkies of the 60s counterculture. Even as they drew inspiration from the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 60s, they were never quite part of it, and never quite so stringent as some of their peers- simultaneously too straight-laced and too ambitious. The duo- who had been together since their teenage years, when they were known as Tom and Jerry- were unfailingly polite, earnest, and very, very serious, singing gorgeous harmonies and guided by their belief in popular music as big-statement art. “This is a song that comes from a new album of mine, which is almost the only song in the show that is not a Paul Simon tune,” Garfunkel quipped.By the late 1960s, Simon & Garfunkel had become the folk establishment.
Select proceeds from the Queens-bred duo’s benefit concert generated funds to bolster the restoration and ongoing upkeep of Manhattan’s iconic green space, which had suffered financially during the preceding years.Īdmittedly, lingering tension between the pair was still palpable, as best evidenced by Garfunkel’s snarky segue as he introduced his solo single “A Heart in New York” midway through the set. Much to the delight of the 500,000-strong throng of fans that packed Central Park’s Great Lawn that night, the notoriously combative twosome placed their respective egos sufficiently aside for a few hours to deliver a veritable greatest hits performance. When these two “Old Friends” joined each other on stage the evening of September 19, 1981, more than ten years had passed since they parted ways professionally, not too long after the smash success of their fifth and final studio LP Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970).
SIMON & GARFUNKEL | The Concert in Central Park Click “Next Album” below to explore each album or view the full album index here. Editor’s Note: The Albumism staff has selected what we believe to be the 50 Greatest Live Albums of All Time, representing a varied cross-section of genres, styles and time periods.
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