Paul Simon has opened up about the final straw in the breakdown of his ‘uneven partnership’ – and friendship – with Art Garfunkel.
In the first part of his documentary, which premiered March 17, Simon, 82, revealed a rift with his Simon & Garfunkel partner began around their fifth and final album after Garfunkel began working in film.
“We were really best friends up until Bridge over Troubled Water,” Simon said in In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, after which their friendship “was broken.”
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In less than a decade since their debut in 1964, the duo had enormous success in the charts with hits like The Sound of Silence, before their final record came out in 1970.
Before the breakdown of their partnership while recording their final album, Simon – who was the main songwriter – claimed they already had an ”uneven balance of power”.
The end of the beginning, however, was when Garfunkel missed half of their fifth record when he signed on to film the blockbuster adaption, Catch-22.
This changed their partnership – and started the duo’s downfall.
“Artie said, ‘Yeah, the way it’s going to be is that I will do movies for six months, then I’ll come back, you’ll have written the songs, and we will do the album,’ and I thought, ‘Yeah? Actually, no. That’s not gonna happen. I am not gonna do that,'” Simon recalled of the conversation.
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While Garfunkel had only meant to be filming for six weeks prior to recording Bridge over Troubled Water, this was extended, which created a greater rift between the pair.
“It was like – everything got disrupted,” Simon explained.
“It was a recipe for the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel.”
The final nail in the coffin, according to Simon, was during a performance of Bridge over Troubled Water where Garfunkel was applauded by the crowd for a song Simon wrote.
”This is my oldest friend, and we experienced anonymity, and then great fame and success, and those things have their own pressure,” the songwriter said in the episode.
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Simon and Garfunkel first met as schoolboys in Queens, New York before getting a record deal together in the ’60s following solo ventures.
The duo called it quits just months after Bridge over Troubled Water was released.
The former bandmates have since reunited over the years, including in 2009 for the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert. h
However a 2015 interview made it clear Garfunkel still harboured resentment for their split decades later.
“How can you walk away from this lucky place on top of the world, Paul? What’s going on with you, you idiot? How could you let that go, jerk?” he told The Telegraph.
In the first part of his series, Simon also revealed he has been dealing with hearing loss, which has left him struggling to hear his voice while performing.
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