November 5, 2003
Artie and Paul

    “Are you going to Scarborough Fair       Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme." 

     Last Thursday night Scarborough Fair came to Denver’s Pepsi Center as Simon & Garfunkel’s “Old Friends” tour took the stage in front of over seventeen thousand devoted fans.

    First the bad news.  Paul Simon has a comb-over and Artie a bit of a gut.  Well, you say, they’re entitled to an over fifty physique since both will turn sixty-two during this tour.  But somehow when attending a concert reuniting American musical icons one expects more in the spotlight than what appears in blue jeans and t-shirts, two guys resembling your friends the cpa and the insurance peddler dressed for volunteer workday at Camp Kiwanis.

     Aah but when Paul Simon picked up his guitar and Art Garfunkel slid up a stool thirty four thousand ears bore witness to those unique harmonies that stand alone in the history of popular music as the duo blended

      “Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike
        They’ve all gone to look for America”

 From the opening song to the third encore an absolute magic enveloped the Pepsi Center.

     First a confession.  Somehow I always missed the boat picking musical icons.  Rock n’ Roll in the 60’s found most of our country worshipping at the musical altar of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones but yours truly was busy buying every 45 rpm single of the Dave Clark Five.

     When it came to folk era once again you know who was listening in the wrong direction. For me Bob Dylan was a superb songwriter but as a vocalist, please.  No, to my ears Dylan just couldn’t measure up to the sounds on my stereo from Buffy St. Marie or Ian and Sylvia.

     Even when it comes to country music today I miss the boat as Reba and Faith are heralded as the Nashville female frontrunners while my ears are drawn to Emmylou Harris and Allison Krauss.

     When it came to picking musical icons the only time I ever got it right was Simon and Garfunkel.

     Artie and Paul have known one another since grade school.   And the truth be known they don’t get along so good.  

     ”Like a poem poorly written
      We are verses out of rhythm
      Couplets out of rhyme”

For over twenty years one has not appeared on stage with the other. So why now are they making nice?  Why return to    

         “On a tour of one night stands
          My suitcase and guitar in hand”

Money might be one reason.  Simon and Garfunkel took a guesstimated million bucks out of Denver Thursday.  That’s for one night’s work.  And they have another 32 cities to go.

    But in a darkened Pepsi Center an audible gasp was heard from the packed house when the hauntingly familiar piano solo seamlessly segued into the eerily familiar tenor of Art Garfunkel, hands jammed into his jeans pockets, face bathed in the spotlight, as he absolutely nailed

           “Sail on silver bird, Sail on by

            Your time has come to shine

             Like a bridge over troubled water

             I will ease your mind

And it was moments such as those Thursday night when one forgot about the lucre and was lost in the evening.

     Simon and Garfunkel are a living example of the whole being far greater than the sum of the parts.  Mid-way through the concert the two harmonized on hits Paul recorded solo.  And the singular Simon hits, great as they were, sounded far better when Art Garfunkel shared the vocal, a fact to which   Simon testified.

         Almost forty years ago Paul Simon wrote,

 “Can you imagine us years from today sharing a park bench                                    How terribly strange to be seventy

  Old friends, memory brushes the same years silently”

   For most in attendance the lyrics from “Old Friends” hit much closer to home than when first heard.   For a majority of that Denver audience, as with Artie and Paul, age seventy lies just ahead rather than being the speck on a far distant horizon it was when “Old Friends was recorded over forty years ago.

     And as I sat in the Pepsi Center mesmerized by the talent of these musical legends it suddenly occurred I didn’t give a damn whether or not they get along.  The talent of Simon and Garfunkel is so overwhelming personal differences shouldn’t be allowed to keep us from their talent.

     “Time, Time, Time see what’s become of me

      While I look around at my possibilities

       I was so hard to please.”