50 years after Simon & Garfunkel's 1970 swan song, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Art Garfunkel chatted with Mojo about the album and more. Although both he and Paul Simon kept busty throughout the 1970's, with the pair releasing a total of eight solo studio sets between them, fans have always wondered what the pair would've sounded like had they never split.
Garfunkel was asked what he thinks the 1970's would have brought had Simon & Garfunkel remained a unified force. Garfunkel said, “More color — and more foreign sounds. I was into the Chieftains, I loved their Irish instruments. I’m getting older and I’m forgetting all their names. . . the uilleann pipes: Paddy Moloney played with this wonderful edgy sound. I loved these foreign sounds. Wherever I heard any sound that was not in traditional rock n' roll, wherever I heard a sound that would delight people, the record producer in me says, 'How can I get that in? Roy (Halee, engineer and co-producer), listen to this! We need to record this and bring it in as an overdub on one of our records. It gives more color to the production.' I was very oriented to that in the ’70s. So was Paul.”
Out now is famed writer Robert Hilburn's definitive take on Paul Simon's life and times, titled, Paul Simon – The Life. Unlike Simon, who sat for over 100 hours of interview for the biography, Hilburn told us Art Garfunkel chose to pass on contributing to the book: “My connection with Garfunkel was early on we talked on the phone and he made it clear that he said, 'I would talk to you all day if it was a book about Simon and Garfunkel, but I'm not going to talk to you if it's a book about only Paul Simon.' And I said, 'Look, I'll treat you with as much respect as I treat him. I think it's an important part of your life, you ought to be part of this.' And then every six months I would go back and finally, near the end when I was writing the book, I got a letter from him saying, 'I'm not going to be in the book. Please don't contact me again.'”
