An ‘organic’ reunion

Ask Art Garfunkel how he and Paul Simon came back together last year to tour as Simon & Garfunkel for the first time in 20 years, and Garfunkel points to the announcement that the duo in February 2003 would receive a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.

That seems like an all-too-simple explanation for how one of the longest-awaited reunions of recent pop history occurred — especially considering the complex and often thorny relationship Simon & Garfunkel have had ever since they first came together more than 40 years ago.

But Garfunkel insisted this was not, like many reunions, one that was brokered through long negotiations between lawyers and managers. It really was as simple as the right occasion coming along.

“We needed a third element, a piece of business, an offer, a person, a bridge [to reunite],” he said. “We needed a piece of business that we could mutually engage in. So that Grammy thing was so easy to say, ‘Yes, I’ll show up and say thank you. And I bet Paul will, too. Maybe we should sing.’ So all of that just fell out organically.”

The duo performed “The Sounds Of Silence” at the Grammy ceremony. They enjoyed the experience, and soon the wheels went in motion to arrange last fall’s highly successful reunion tour.

Now Simon & Garfunkel, both 62, are returning for a summer tour, and recapturing once more a musical magic that began when they met at school in Queens, N.Y., when they were 11.

They began singing under the stage name of Tom & Jerry in their mid-teens. Before they were out of high school, Tom & Jerry scored a hit with the 1957 single “Hey Schoolgirl,” a tune modeled after two of their musical heroes, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers.

Instead of continuing the partnership, the duo chose to go their separate ways and enroll in college. They stayed in touch, however, and in the early 1960s decided to resume their partnership, this time under the Simon & Garfunkel name.

They went on to record six albums (if one includes the soundtrack to the movie The Graduate) before breaking up after the landmark 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water. By then Simon & Garfunkel had become one of the most recognizable and influential acts in rock history, with the duo’s silky harmonies wrapping themselves around a collection of richly melodic, emotionally evocative songs (“The Sounds Of Silence,” “The Boxer” and “Homeward Bound,” to name a few) that bridged the gap between folk and pop.

Since then, Simon and Garfunkel had attempted a few reunions, beginning with a historic 1981 concert at New York’s Central Park, and a 1983 tour that eventually fell apart amid a good deal of tension. Later, there had been a performance in 1990 when the duo was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a string of shows in New York City in 1993.

In the intervening years, Simon has enjoyed several periods of great success as a solo artist, including his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, the 1986 CD Graceland and the 1990 release Rhythm Of The Saints, the latter two of which explored fusions of Western pop and African music.

Garfunkel, meanwhile, released seven solo albums of varying quality, but bounced back nicely in 2002, collaborating on a strong CD with singer/songwriters Buddy Mondlock and Maia Sharp called Everything Waits To Be Noticed.

Despite their time apart, Garfunkel said he and Simon didn’t have much trouble rediscovering their vocal chemistry once they began rehearsing for last fall’s tour.

“We fell back into step as if we learned our moves way back in junior high school together, and the old cliché, once you know how to ride the bicycle, it doesn’t exactly leave you,” Garfunkel said.

But what was more notable, Garfunkel said, was rediscovering the personal chemistry the duo had enjoyed, especially early in their career.

“It was a delight to me to fall back into that,” Garfunkel said. “Recently, I was talking to somebody about the power of humor. Humor is like the power of religion. It’s heavy, it’s transcendent. When there’s a conflict and a nitty gritty rubbing of the machinery between people in life, humor is the thing that lifts you up and beyond it. When humor is really ironic and goes to the point that is paradoxical and very funny and quizzical, you’re thrown beyond the deadlock. You’re in a transcendent place.

“Me and Paul are very clowny, have always been that way from junior high school,” Garfunkel said. “This is the secret of Simon & Garfunkel. Mr. Simon is an extremely witty fellow. He’s very inside, and he’s so damn funny, with faces to match. He’s a character. The world doesn’t know this, but I’ve always known this. He gets me going as a foil and I’m funny myself. And the essence of this friendship is screwing around verbally. We’re old Lenny Bruce fans, the two of us. We love [Mike] Nichols and [Elaine] May, we love Mel Brooks. We love a good laugh ... When I’m with Paul, this is my favorite funny person, whose sense of humor really gets my spine to crack.”

If reviews of last fall’s concerts were any indication, though, that camaraderie didn’t always appear to translate to the concerts themselves. Many critics noted that Simon and Garfunkel did not interact much on stage and did not reveal the warmth and happiness that fans undoubtedly hoped to see.

Garfunkel said that impression was mistaken and largely a product of the nature of a Simon & Garfunkel live performance.

“I can tell you that performers when they’re making music are very engaged with what their ears hear,” he said. “To perform is to go from moment to moment to moment trying to satisfy your intention, and your guide is your ears. We are very, very hard at work, we performers. So when you see us, you’re looking at very heavy concentration on the mix, the working of the microphone, the listening to the guitar, the wondering if the drummer is a little bit ahead of the beat. The ears are keenly, keenly at work. There’s no real time to think about presenting a pleasant face. That’s a much more distant reality for a performer, presenting a pleasant face. We couldn’t be bothered with it. There’s too much happening in the ears.

“We’re too hard at work. We’re busy,” Garfunkel said. “We’ll have the laughs when the show is over. Or, if you can catch us backstage, you’ll get the candor that you’re looking for. This is the cult of personality, where the person is, when we go on stage to sing, it’s not about who we are. It’s about what music we’re making. If we can thrill you with the music, God, then that is what we hope to do for two hours.”

What the good vibes of the fall tour — and presumably the summer shows — will mean to the future of Simon & Garfunkel is, of course, a question of great interest to the duo’s fans.

Could those projects extend to writing and recording new music together? That is a question Garfunkel, who prides himself on not planning career activities too far in advance, said he is curious himself to see answered. He said he would like to see what would happen if he and Simon attempted to create new music, but was making no predictions that it would happen.

“These are the questions I ask myself,” Garfunkel said. “I, in 2004 and ’05, perhaps may have these very concerns. It’s way too early for me to report on things.”