Art Garfunkel: Simon and Garfunkel and On HIs Own

As kids growing up in the same neighborhood in Queens, New York, Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon shared a friendship and a passion for music that would one day become pure magic.

“Paul and I were sixth-graders together [listening to] this new subversive music [on] new-wave radio when we were 12. We tuned in, in junior high school, Paul and I, and the fact that we held rehearsals in my basement at such a young age means that the musical bond is deep,” Garfunkel, the son of a salesman and a homemaker, shared with Forbes.

“We held intense rehearsals to get our sound so tight.… We had our details finely tuned, if you know what I mean. And we became world-famous with that blend .… James [Taylor] paid me a great compliment [once], saying, ‘I’ve never worked with anyone who got it so well as you did.’ But even that wasn’t quite the bond I had with Paul.”

In their teens, Simon and Garfunkel went on to score a hit — 1957’s “Hey, Schoolgirl” — under their stage name of Tom & Jerry. Garfunkel then headed off a few years later to study architecture, followed by art history, at Columbia University, occasionally releasing songs under the name Artie Garr before re-teaming with Simon in 1962.

Their debut 1964 album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM included an acoustic version of “The Sounds of Silence,” which was remixed in 1966 with electric instruments. That updated version went to No. 1 and catapulted the duo to the top ranks of the burgeoning folk scene.

Dynamic duo

Throughout the course of their next four albums (1966’s Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; 1968’s Bookends and 1970’s iconic Bridge Over Troubled Water — two of which were named Grammy Albums of the Year), the duo showcased an “alternately bright and haunting sound [that’s] permanently etched in our consciousness.

Their literate, intuitive lyrics articulated the feeling of [their] time better than anyone,” according to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, into which they were inducted in 1990.

Their harmonies on hits such as “Homeward Bound,” “At the Zoo,” “America,” “The Boxer,” “Cecilia,” and “Mrs. Robinson,” from the 1967 film The Graduate, the Hall of Fame notes, were nothing short of “celestial.”

That’s why their ironically inharmonious breakup in 1971, much to Simon’s doing at the peak of their fame, shocked and disappointed their fans — and Garfunkel. “It was very strange. Nothing I would have done,” the group’s countertenor told The Telegraph.

“I don’t want to say any anti-Paul Simon things, but it seems very perverse to not enjoy the glory and walk away from it instead. Crazy. What I would have done is take a rest from Paul, because he was getting on my nerves. The jokes had run dry,” he stated.

Simon has spoken about growing equally as fed up with Garfunkel, whom he felt was too distracted by his role in the 1970 film Catch-22 and a potential acting career, which left the bulk of the work during the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water to Simon.

Finding his own voice

Both musicians went on to have solo careers, though Simon’s proved to be more commercially successful. Garfunkel did continue to act (he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his supporting role in 1971’s Carnal Knowledge), and he even taught for a while, having earned a master’s degree in mathematics education in 1967. “I’d just got married and moved to Connecticut, and there was a nearby preparatory school and so I taught math there,” he told The Telegraph. “It was a weird stage of my life, to leave Simon and Garfunkel at the height of our success and become a math teacher. I would talk them through a math problem and ask if anyone had any questions and they would say: “What were The Beatles like?”

The artist did return to the music world, collaborating with other artists and singing backup for James Tayler and J. D. Souther, for example, while also releasing his own albums, including 1973’s Angel Clare (which contained his No. 1 Adult Contemporary hit “All I Know”), 1975’s Breakaway, 1977’s Watermark, 1979’s Fate for Breakfast, 1981’s Scissors Cut (named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone), 1988’s Lefty, 2002’s Everything Waits to Be Noticed (on which the artist made his songwriting debut), and 2007’s Some Enchanted Evening, among others.

MUST-READ: Head back to the 1960s and our coverage of The Beatles!

Old friends

He and Simon even found their way back to each other. In addition to their historic 1981 reunion concert in Central Park and subsequent world tour, Simon and Garfunkel collaborated and played together several other times throughout their careers. This included in 2003 when they received their Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and once again headed back out on the road. They also re-teamed for a 2005 Hurricane Katrina benefit concert and at 2010’s New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

“When we get together, with his guitar, it’s a delight to both of our ears. A little bubble comes over us and it seems effortless,” Garfunkel told The Telegraph of the magic he and Simon create together. And as Paul Newman, who introduced them at that 2005 benefit concert as “two men who really have used the power of music wisely,” put it, “Music…has a healing power. It moves us forward, like a bridge over troubled water.”

Still, any future collaborations between Garfunkel and his onetime musical partner seem unlikely due to growing animosity in their statements about each other through the years. “We are indescribable. You’ll never capture it. It’s an ingrown, deep friendship. Yes, there is deep love in there. But there’s also sh—,” Garfunkel told Rolling Stone of the volatility of their complicated partnership, and Simon has even labelled his former childhood pal as “a person that I hope I never see again” in his 2024 MGM+ documentary, In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon.

Overcoming other troubled waters

Outside of his struggles with Simon, Garfunkel has been open about battling depression, which started after the 1979 suicide of his partner Laurie Bird, whom he began dating after his 1975 divorce from his first wife, Linda Grossman. Taking long walks (he’s crossed both Japan and the United States on foot) and reading proved to be extremely beneficial to his mental health both then and now, he told CBS Morning News. “I go from book to book,” he said. “I do about two books a month.”

His brief romance in the 80s with Penny Marshall helped him heal as well. “[She was] so light and funny that she helped bring me out of myself. We had a million laughs, the sex was good and it got me out of my introversion,” the singer told the Daily Mail. He even guest-starred as a comically out-there beatnik poet on her hit show Laverne & Shirley in 1980.

Not long after their split, Garfunkel went on to meet his true, long-lasting love in 1985, model Kim Cermack. The couple wed three years later and have two sons together, Art Garfunkel Jr., 33, a singer who’s based in Germanyl as well as Beau, 18. “Lucky chemistry is part of it,” Garfunkel told Forbes of the secret to his and Cermack’s success, adding, “When she walks into a room, I light up.”

In addition to finding love again, Garfunkel was forced to rediscover his own voice after the artist suffered vocal paralysis following a 2010 gig with Simon. “Yeah, I finished touring with Paul, I came home, and a month later I lost my voice,” he told CBS Morning News. “My speech was very erratic. My singing was just not there.” It took four years for that valuable voice to return. “When I do shows now, I thank God in the middle of the first song,” he’s told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Sound of Success

Heading into 2019’s COVID pandemic, Garfunkel was reasserting himself as a solo artist on the world stage, touring all over the globe to hundreds of thousands of fans. In 2017, he released his book What Is It All But Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man, a memoir containing poetry, lists, travel memories, and musings about love. (He’d previously released 1989’s Still Water, a collection of all poetry.)

“I suppose, if I examine my inner mind, I would say, ‘Time to come out of the shadow of Paul Simon and establish yourself as a thinking artist who can sing,’” he told CBS Morning News about his inspiration to write his 2017 memoir.

“I know myself to be a creative guy, and I think my profile out in show business [was] ‘the guy over Paul Simon’s right shoulder.’ But many years ago I started a solo career as a singer and I’ve made a whole bunch of albums. And, you know, we want to make a mark to show that while we were here on Earth, we were here. Capital H! And that’s the motivation. I thought I was playing it too deferential to Paul.”

Though all his career’s trials and tribulations, Garfunkel, now 82, remains humbled by his success. “I feel somewhat different from many people in the extraordinary amount of good fortune that fell into my lap and made up my life,” he’s said.

“I rehearsed a lot in my teenage years and really sought after what this country holds, good fortune for those who go after it with hard work. But I do feel as I pass through the country, it’s a charmed life. I grew up with a lot of love in my family, so I have the five senses with which to glean the richness of this land as I pass through it.”