Art Garfunkel on His Emotional Reunion With Paul Simon: ‘My Soul Is Connected With Him’
Ten years ago, in a move he quickly grew to regret, Art Garfunkel had an imaginary conversation with Paul Simon while speaking to a reporter for U.K. newspaper The Telegraph. They hadn’t played together in five years at this point, and his frustrations were boiling over. “How can you walk away from this lucky place on top of the world, Paul?” Garfunkel asked. “What’s going on with you, you idiot? How could you let that go, jerk?”
The reporter asked if Simon had a Napoleonic complex, and was jealous of his former singing partner’s height. “I think you’re on to something. I would say so, yes,” Garfunkel said, adding he initially befriended Simon as a child because he felt sorry for him because of his height. “And that compensation gesture has created a monster,” Garfunkel said. “End of interview.”
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It wasn’t just the end of that interview. It was almost the end of Simon & Garfunkel, who put aside their differences in 2003 for a series of lucrative concerts that ran until 2010 when vocal problems briefly sidelined Garfunkel. When asked about a possible future reunion by NPR in 2016, a year after Garfunkel called him a “monster” in The Telegraph, Simon ruled it out completely.
“There’s nothing really much to say,” Simon said. “The music essentially stopped in 1970. And quite honestly, we don’t get along. So it’s not like it’s fun. If it was fun, I’d say, ‘OK, sometimes we’ll go out and sing old songs in harmony. That’s cool.’ But when it’s not fun, you know, and you’re going to be in a tense situation, well, then I have a lot of musical areas that I like to play in. So that’ll never happen again. That’s that.”
But as Garfunkel recently told the press, he and Simon managed to patch things up earlier this year. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Garfunkel explains that the reconciliation started with a chance encounter with Simon’s eldest son, Harper Simon, in the hallways of New York’s Pierre hotel.
“Paul’s ex-wife [Peggy Harper] moved into the same hotel,” Garfunkel says. “I knew this was going to happen at some point. And Harper set up a lunch at the Pierre’s restaurant. After years of estrangement, Paul and I got on great. You can’t go through life and stay angry at anybody. You must uncover. You must resolve difficulties so you can die easy.”
Garfunkel seized the opportunity to apologize for his 2015 comments, and even took Simon over to his apartment after they ate. “I hurt him when I spoke to the English press,” he says. “It brought tears to remember that I had hurt him. It led to a very warm hug … It moved me more than I realize myself. My deep soul connection is so bound with Paul. We had a lot of laughs. We were musicians, but we were jokers. We were lovers of Lenny Bruce right from the beginning.”
Simon and Garfunkel haven’t done a full show together since they headlined the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April 2010. And they haven’t performed in any capacity since June of that year when they played “Mrs. Robinson” at an AFI tribute to director Mike Nichols. Might their reconciliation lead to a Simon & Garfunkel reunion of some sort?
“We’ll see,” says Garfunkel. “You never know. It was always the case where when we would hang out, and he would say, ‘Let me show you what I’ve been working on lately.’ And he’d take out the guitar and he would play something. And I would fall for it because he is a genius. And my encouragement and the sincerity of my response relaxed him and made him feel like it’s great to work with Artie. And that would slide back into working together with that spirit.”
One opportunity for a reunion is the upcoming 50th anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live, which will air Feb. 16, 2025, on NBC. The duo has a long history on the show, going all the way back to their reunion on the second episode in 1975. Another Simon & Garfunkel reunion after all these years of estrangement would be a milestone moment for the special. “You hear this, Lorne [Michaels]?” Garfunkel says when we bring this up. Art Garfunkel Jr. supports it too. “Good idea,” he says. “It’s a good idea!”
“I remember seeing Lorne in 1975 at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles,” adds Art Sr. “He was just inventing the formula for Saturday Night Live and rounding up talent and ready to come to New York with it. Paul says he’s not missed one show after 50 years. What a devotion.”
A single song for SNL would be an amazing moment, but what about a full reunion tour? “It’s a big question,” says Garfunkel Sr. “I would give it a try and see where it leads. If the blend is still there, it will be irresistible.” (In the meantime, Art Sr. and Jr. have a new collaborative album, Father and Son, and are playing the Carlyle this week. Click here for much more on that.)
Art Jr. loves the idea of a Simon & Garfunkel reunion. “I would love to witness it again,” he says. “I remember 2004 when they played the Roman Coliseum. There were 670,000 people experiencing that wave of humanity. I’d love to experience this again. And I’d like to be the opening act.”
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