washingtonpost.com
Harmony of Discord
Simon & Garfunkel, After All These Years
By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 16, 2003; Page C01
It should come as no surprise that the most famous and fractious duo in folk-rock celebrate their anniversary on different dates. Art Garfunkel starts the clock 50 years ago, the day he met Paul Simon in a sixth-grade production of "Alice in Wonderland." Garfunkel played the Cheshire Cat, Simon the White Rabbit. It was the beginning of a friendship, Garfunkel told a reverent crowd at MCI Center Sunday night, "that I deeply cherish."
When it was Simon's turn to reminisce, the cherishing was over. He wryly noted that Garfunkel's role in that version of "Alice" was a supporting one. ("An important supporting role, but . . . ") And though the two met at the age of 11, they started arguing at the age of 14, and, to Simon, that's the moment that matters.
"This makes it the 47th anniversary of our first argument," he deadpanned.
On their first tour in two decades, Simon and Garfunkel aren't merely reminding fans that together, in a collaboration that recorded for a mere six years, they produced dozens of transcendently beautiful songs, a canon of lyrical wit and sensuous melody that stands with the greats of the last half-century. For more than two jubilant and wistful hours on Sunday night, the duo also re-created a psychodrama. There was Garfunkel, heaving great bales of gratitude on Simon, deflecting whatever glory fell on his bushy head to the stoical man to his left. And there was Simon, impassive to the point of mummification, all but indifferent to the valentines of his former partner.
We love Simon and Garfunkel, and we want them to love each other. We can't help it. We know that "The Boxer" isn't any more or less magnificent if the guy who wrote the words and the music dislikes the guy on high harmony, nor does it matter to "Bridge Over Troubled Water" that its creators didn't speak to each other for years. But we want them to get along anyway. What made this stop on the "Old Friends" tour such a triumph, of course, was the music -- a retrospective, sometimes acoustic, often with a band, that was sweet, unadulterated nostalgia. But it was riveting, also, to wait for and spot signs of warmth emanating from Simon. There weren't many.
The show opened with a video montage that interspersed images of Simon and Garfunkel through the years with shots of then-current events, starting in the '50s and ending with the turn of the century and after. When the reel was finished, the lights went up and there they were, in the flesh, alone onstage, starting the night on a morose note, with "Old Friends."
"Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly," they sang. "How terribly strange to be 70."
Now that Simon and Garfunkel are both 62, the song is aging into a prophecy, which is why it seems far heavier and sadder now than it did when it was first released in 1968, on "Bookends." Time, it must be said, has been kinder to Simon and Garfunkel's music than to Simon and Garfunkel themselves, but it is hard to compete against something that doesn't seem to age. Even lines that are full of a mighty wind -- "Fools, said I, you do not know, silence like a cancer grows," for instance, from "The Sound of Silence" -- have lived past the folk-era boom of the '60s without embarrassment.
Garfunkel's choirboy voice has lost some sheen and it now sounds slightly worn; he didn't attempt some of the highest notes, most notably on "Bridge Over Troubled Water." It took the two a while to settle into their harmonies, but by the fourth song, "America" they were nearing their heyday form.
They make a strikingly odd couple. Garfunkel emotes through every note, living every chorus, his head tilted up, his hands sweeping around, enacting the drama of the music. When the pair sang "Like emptiness and harmony, I need someone to comfort me," during "Homeward Bound," he actually hugged himself.
Simon, meanwhile, is utterly expressionless, a poker champ with a full house. Even when he struck a rock-star pose, while plucking the riff from "Mrs. Robinson," there was a Botoxed blankness to his stare. At first, it seemed like he was either nervous or unhappy, but eventually it began to seem like his style. One guy is a walking sunbeam, the other guy is an ice cube. Watching these two, you begin to wonder not what took them so long to reunite, but how they managed to stay together for as long as they did.
Simon brightened a bit when it came time to introduce some guests: the Everly Brothers, who strode on to co-strum a few of their oldies, including "All I Have to Do Is Dream," "Wake Up, Little Susie" and "Let It Be Me." This was recompense of sorts: Simon and Garfunkel's first song, "Hey, Schoolgirl," recorded (under the name Tom and Jerry) when they were 16, was an imitation of the Everlys. The brothers, also famous for their feuds, looked perplexingly youthful, though the years have drained some of the power of their voices. The two were joined by Simon and Garfunkel for "Bye Bye Love," and then waved their way offstage.
On and off through the night, Simon and Garfunkel were joined by a band that helped the pair bulk up their classics. A theremin solo was added to "The Boxer"; later in the night the multi-instrumentalist Mark Stewart blew into a what looked like cardboard mail tubes to add some bass notes to "The 59th Street Bridge Song"; a bongo solo was thrown into "My Little Town." In all, it was a tasteful touch-up that didn't overreach for hipness.
A couple of Simon's solo songs were Garfunkeled, most effectively "American Tune," a song Garfunkel said is one of the many he wished the two had recorded before their split. But most of the night was given over to a carefully collected list of the songs that made Simon and Garfunkel famous in the '60s and early '70s, like "Cecilia," "Scarborough Fair," "America" and "At the Zoo."
Garfunkel did a bit more talking than Simon, introducing "Kathy's Song" by identifying the song's inspiration, a young lady who collected change for the duo in a sailor's hat when they were busking in Europe. But Simon's introduction to "The Only Living Boy in New York" was the most touching moment of the show.
The song was written, he explained, in 1969, when Garfunkel left for Mexico to begin filming "Catch-22." Left alone, Simon wrote a song about trying to cope with life after a buddy catches a plane to Mexico. To realize that this song was about Garfunkel was to appreciate that Simon, at some moment, actually liked the man who now bestows upon him so much worshipful affection.
Things were chummiest near the end of the evening, when the two took a series of arm-in-arm bows during three encores. Even then, Simon seemed a little standoffish, and there was a pre-staged feel about the way they ended up with their hands held aloft at the end of the concert. It looked a bit like a pair of diplomats celebrating a cease-fire. But, and this will more than suffice, the rest of the evening sounded like the work of old friends.
