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Art Garfunkel was recently quoted in a Huffington Post interview that he and Paul Simon are no longer close. Seemingly ego problems. In describing his relationship with his onetime partner and close friend, Garfunkel said, “I may have created a monster.”
It is not unusual in the history of showbiz partnerships for them to end acrimoniously. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis split and no longer spoke for years until they finally mended fences before Dean died. Ditto Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.
Certainly, Simon has had a marvelous career as a solo performer and great songwriter. Garfunkel somewhat less so, but his voice still soars into the range only angels inhabit, even today after a period when he lost his voice. According to Garfunkel, one of the things that really peeved Simon was Art’s solo performance of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Simon believed that because Garfunkel was out front singing that song solo, fans mistakenly thought Art wrote the song instead of Paul.
I was entranced by Simon & Garfunkel from the first time I heard them sing “The Sound of Silence” on their initial recording in 1966. Oddly, the duo subsequently modified the song title to “Sounds Of Silence,” also the title of their second album. Simon & Garfunkel’s music famously was on the soundtrack of the great Dustin Hoffman-Anne Bancroft film, “The Graduate.” Both the film and the music of Simon & Garfunkel spoke eloquently about the hopes and fears of the Vietnam War generation that marked the late ’60s and early ’70s.
The first time my wife Fran and I saw them both perform was at the Palestra in a benefit concert for the then-Democratic Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy in 1968. It was a time when in our idealism we thought we could end the concept of war through music. We would see Simon & Garfunkel perform many times after that, but the ’68 concert symbolized how much they meant personally to us, and how they spoke to our times. One time, we saw them perform at the old Convention Hall, a night made memorable to me when Simon had to ask a particularly loud usher in our section to lower his voice.
I used to think of Artie and Paul as inseparable, two kids shooting baskets in the schoolyard, I guess with Julio. Two kids with sneakers and jeans. New York City kids. Friends forever united in more than just song. Paul, the little guy with the short hair, whose songs were really the poetry of our time. Artie, the tall guy with the dirty blonde hair — the hair an amazing tangle of curls piled high upon his head — hair that songwriter Leonard Cohen would’ve described as “a sleepy golden storm.” Artie made Paul’s poems come to life, his voice could send chills down your spine when he hit the high notes in “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” his voice almost like a religious experience.
It was during those early days of Simon & Garfunkel that by chance I met Valeria. My friend Barry and I were eating lunch in a dingy workplace cafeteria in South Philadelphia when Valeria casually walked over and sat down at our table. Barry worked with her. Thereafter she was a regular lunchtime visitor. You’ve heard the expression that some people can light up a room when they enter? That was Valeria. Describing her is as difficult as trying to describe a form of energy. Even now, years later, I remember her less for her physical appearance than her vivacious presence. She was 10 years younger than both of us in chronological years and light years ahead of us in being a descriptive force of the new generation.
Valeria could read a cookbook out loud and you would believe that she was flirting with you. Both Barry and I were already happily married, and though that didn’t make us immune to Valeria’s charms, we knew Valeria was not serious anyway. Valeria’s real love interest was Garfunkel. If you want to describe a magnificent obsession, it was Valeria’s interest in Art. It was more than a musical interest. Garfunkel was her passion. Not that she had ever met Art, but meeting him was the goal in her life. I think she would have been satisfied just to run her fingers through his curly locks and hear him sing to her or maybe not. And then one day, Valeria announced that somehow she had gotten hold of the New York address of Garfunkel’s apartment.
One of Simon and Garfunkel’s most touching songs is “Old Friends.” The meaning of the song has changed for me now that I have passed the age of the people about whom they were singing. I am especially touched when Simon sings, “How terribly strange to be 70.” It is especially ironic now that Artie and Paul have passed the age of 70, they are no longer “old friends.” And I guess, I find that especially strange for two performers whose names have been synonymous for so many years.
As for Valeria, I never did find out whether she ever got to meet Artie. Was the address real or just a fiction of some fan magazine? If she found him, lucky Artie.
Sometimes I think of Valeria. I hope she didn’t flame out like so many other beautiful people of that era. ■
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