Recently I caught a rerun on PBS of Simon and Garfunkle’s Concert in Central Park, which was originally performed in September, 1981. It was a free concert that the folk duo gave before five hundred thousand people to help raise donations for the revitalization of the famous park in mid-town Manhattan.
I loved S and G then; and I love them thirty some-odd years later. But watching the concert this time, I felt sad. Whether the two did their famous songs together or whether one of them sang solo, each of them seemed oblivious of the other on stage.
So I did what everybody else does these days: Googled®. It made me sadder.
The two knew each other from childhood in the 1940s. Fast forwarding to the sixties, they created one of the most popular sounds of that era, but by 1970 their personal differences overrode their fame. They went their separate ways.
The Concert in Central Park was one of several attempts to reunite, but it didn’t succeed even though it was followed by a tour and an album. Simon and Garfunkle eventually went their own ways again. Looking at the rerun now it was obvious all along.
That is the saddest thing of all.
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