It's been decades since Art Garfunkel harmonized on stage with Paul Simon, but some bitterness still creeps into his voice when he speaks of his former partner and schoolmate, a new interview reveals.
Garfunkel, in an lengthy interview with
The Telegraph in London, says he often felt sorry for Simon while they were in school together because of Simon's dimunitive height, and offered him love and friendship, "and that compensation gesture has created a monster."
Garfunkel, at 73, will be on tour in the United Kingdom in September, visiting seven cities. The tour almost didn't happen, reports The Telegraph, after he suffered a "paresis" of his vocal chords in 2010.
"Since I lost my voice – and I have now almost fully recovered it – the loud, high notes haven't quite come back, so I need a mic for volume," Garfunkel said.
But while fans say his voice is "angelic" and "haunting," he chooses to describe himself as a "misanthrope."
In addition to being a world-famous singer, Garfunkel is a mathematician who took a job as a teacher in the 1970s. His students would ask him not about math, but about the Beatles.
Garfunkel told The Telegraph, just like The Beatles' George Harrison, he also had his own Paul to deal with.
"George came up to me at a party once and said 'my Paul is to me what your Paul is to you,'" said Garfunkel, continueing that "he meant that psychologically they had the same effect on us. The Pauls sidelined us. I think George felt suppressed by Paul and I think that's what he saw with me and my Paul."
But, Garfunkel said, "McCartney was a helluva music man who gave the band its energy, but he also ran away with a lot of the glory."
Before the split, Simon & Garfunkel released one of the biggest-selling albums in history, "Bridge Over Troubled Water."
"It was very strange," said Garfunkel of the split. "Nothing I would have done. I want to open up about this. 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."
But Simon once said it upset him that audiences thought Garfunkel had written "Bridge Over Troubled Water" since he sang it as a solo.
"I saw that quote, too," Garfunkel said. "But how many songs did I sing upfront and have a real tour de force of vocal? Does he resent that I had that one? I find that ungenerous."
But Garfunkel hasn't ruled out another reunion performance with Simon, with whom he paired for the famed 1981 concert in Central Park.
"That's quite do-able," he said. "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. We blend. So, as far as this half is concerned, I would say, why not, while we're still alive?"
Still, Garfunkel said, that's the same place he's been in since 1971, and after all these years, he wants to know how Simon could walk away from "this lucky place on top of the world."
"What's going on with you, you idiot?" Garfunkel said. "How could you let that go, jerk?"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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