As Art Garfunkel is keen to point out, “I am a singer – there, use that as the title of your article” – but he was never just a singer. I am a writer,” he continues. I’ve read the dictionary.
I’ve read two books a month for 60 years: Darwin, Herodotus, Balzac, Proust, Tolstoy. I have two great kids and I’m a grandfather, but it always does seem to come back to the singing.” Which is understandable, given that in Simon and Garfunkel (with songwriter Paul Simon) he sold more albums than any other pop duo in history. Garfunkel’s oft-called “angelic” tones powered classic chart-toppers including The Sound of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Water, and he became a successful solo artist.
However, until a year ago, he was hardly singing at all and hadn’t toured since 2019. What am I supposed to do with myself?” He realised that the two things that had made him happiest were meeting his wife, Kathryn, in 1985, and singing, especially the point during a show when “it becomes effortless, and you reach this high point of pure joy”. So a friend who worked at an art gallery north of New York suggested he might try singing and telling stories to an audience of 60 people, and see how it felt.
He made the album Father and Son with his son Art Jr two years ago, and even sang Bridge Over Troubled Water shortly before speaking to me. Authorship features a spoken excerpt from Garfunkel’s 2017 memoir What Is It All But Luminous over an AI-generated piano backing. Not that he seems to have had too much involvement with the technology.
I had goosebumps because my voice was pretty. I was having more fun than I’d ever known and I realised: I’m a singer.” Garfunkel gave his first public performance in a talent show in fourth grade. Simon, who was in his year at the same school, was watching.
The pair soon became “really tight, laughing all the time”, recording their harmonies in the Garfunkels’ basement in Queens, New York, on a wire recorder. We were very young, but learning to produce.” Aged 16, in 1957, they had their first hit as Tom & Jerry with Hey, Schoolgirl and performed on American Bandstand. I remember going to the urinal before going on.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
