#FAMOUS SIMON AND GARFUNKEL SONGS FREE#

The stage at the Liverpool Philharmonic before the show To attempt to emulate S&G’s iconic harmonies is a difficult feat, but the two actor/singers do a remarkable job of faithfully recreating their vocal harmonies – with Sterling particularly impressive at nailing Art Garfunkel’s ethereal, choir boy vocals. Rather than acting out scenes from the duo’s past, the presentation format allowed the songs to become the main focus of the show.įrom the opener, ‘The Sound Of Silence’, it was clear that the evening would not be an embarrassment. The pair are played by Gregory Clarke as Paul Simon and Joe Sterling as Art Garfunkel, two musical theatre performers with a strong background in acting. It’s a sort of hybrid of a musical and tribute show, combining their music with a big screen projection of carefully-edited images and video clips that evoke the era and the trajectory of the duo’s own story. The Simon and Garfunkel Story narrates the duo’s rise to fame through the 1960’s, their eventual breakup at the height of their success in 1970, before culminating with their triumphant reunion concert in New York’s Central Park in 1981. The S&G album which is most clearly, in the words of rock journalist Bud Scoppa, ‘a meditation on the passage of life and the psychological impact of life’s irreversible, ever-accumulating losses’ is Bookends, which as a concept album concerned with age and the passing of time, in retrospect seems remarkable for having been released in that year of youth and rebellion, 1968: Yet, quite apart from the fact that so many of the songs written by Paul Simon during the S&G years were so bloody good, the fact is that nostalgia was built into a great many of these songs – a sort of ‘forward-nostalgia’ that imagines a future time when the singer will look back and recall present moments. It’s pertinent to note this fact when discussing a show that many would see – quite rightly, in certain respects – as an exercise in pure nostalgia.

I’m twenty-two now, but I won’t be for longĪnd the leaves that are green turn to brown I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song Think of this, from S&G’s first album, Wednesday Morning, 3AM, in 1964: Both Simon & Garfunkel have had their differences with each other, with rifts opening up between them at the drop of a hat, and despite Garfunkel claiming that the duo would possibly tour again in 2014, Simon announced his own retirement from live performance in 2018 which put an end to that.If he ever got back to the twentieth century, Paul Simon wrote in a recent song, he would ‘open the book of his vanishing memory.’ Listening to a succession of glorious songs from his catalogue in The Simon and Garfunkel Story at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall on Sunday night, made evident how many of Paul Simon’s songs right from the early days were concerned with the passing of time and the frailty of memories.

#FAMOUS SIMON AND GARFUNKEL SONGS FREE#

Simon & Garfunkel essentially ceased to exist in 1971 after winning six Grammy Awards including Album of the Year, and did occasionally reform to no avail throughout the decade, but reunited more successfully in 1981 for a free concert in New York which was released as an album The Concert in Central Park in early 1982. Simon & Garfunkel scored the first of two UK Official Album Chart Number 1s with Bookends in 1968, the other being 1970’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, which went on to sell over 25 million copies and become the biggest-selling album of the 1970s, the title track of which also became a UK Official Singles Chart Number 1 that year. Simon & Garfunkel started to gain interest when their song The Sound of Silence became a radio hit, and so they reformed again in 1966. did nothing, and so both went on solo careers. Simon & Garfunkel properly came into being in 1963 when they signed a deal with Columbia Records but split after their debut album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Simon and Garfunkel first met at school in Queens, New York in 1953, and by 1957 they’d formed a duo called Tom & Jerry. Simon & Garfunkel were an American folk-rock duo consisting of singer, songwriter and musician Paul Simon (born Octoin Newark, New Jersey) and singer Art Garfunkel (born Novemin New York City).

Famous simon and garfunkel songs