John Lennon asked Art Garfunkel for advice on his relationship with Paul McCartney.
Paul Simon and George Harrison also spoke about a reunion.
When The Beatles broke up, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were not on good terms. Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon had a similarly fraught relationship, and Lennon turned to the former for advice on a reunion with his bandmate.
Toward the end of the 1960s, relations between all members of The Beatles started to deteriorate. They fought over creative control, finances, and personal relationships.
Similarly, Simon and Garfunkel’s relationship was often rocky. They broke up after their final studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and rarely spoke due to the tensions between them. Though they reunited several times over the years, Simon is confident that will never happen again.
“You know, the music essentially stopped in 1970,” he told NPR in 2016. “And, you know, I mean, quite honestly, we don’t get along. So it’s not like it’s fun. If it was fun, I’d say, OK, sometimes we’ll go out and sing old songs in harmony. That’s cool. But when it’s not fun, you know, and you’re going to be in a tense situation, well, then I have a lot of musical areas that I like to play in. So that’ll never happen again. That’s that.”
“I have my great memory of John Lennon when I met him that one night with Yoko Ono and David Bowie,” Garfunkel said. “It was the mid-70s, and we were coming back from some show we mutually did. So, we go back to the Dakota [John’s apartment], Bowie was with us. And John pulls me to the bedroom.”
“Arty, you worked with your Paul [Simon] recently, I’m getting calls from New Orleans that my Paul [McCartney] wants to work with me,” Lennon said. “I’m thinking about it and I don’t know. How did it go when you worked with Paul [Simon]?”
Garfunkel was shocked that he was asking him for advice, but he offered what he could.
“Remember that there was a music blend that was a great kick,” he said. “If you can, return to the fun of that sound and the musical happenings with your old buddy and ignore the strands of the complications and history. What I found with my Paul was the harmony and the sounds happening on a full agenda. They’ll keep you busy, and you’ll have fun.”
Years later, Simon got reunion advice from a different Beatle. While speaking with Harrison, he realized it wasn’t worth it to hold a grudge against his former collaborator. Harrison spoke about reconnecting with McCartney after years of tension. Simon found this inspiring.
“The way I looked at it was, how long are we going to live? Am I going to die without making up with this guy who I’ve known since I was eleven?” Simon said, per the book Paul Simon: The Life by Robert Hilburn. “I finally called Artie and said, ‘Let’s fix it.’”
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