Case file Nº 020 1957–1970 (and reunions, each regretted)

Simon & Garfunkel

Simon & Garfunkel are this archive's proof that a duo is the least stable of all band configurations: there is no majority, only the other guy. Childhood friends from Queens, they carried a grievance ledger opened in 1958 — when 15-year-old Paul Simon cut a secret solo deal behind Tom & Jerry-era Artie's back, a wound Garfunkel has cited for sixty years — through the biggest album of 1970, a breakup announced by nobody, a Central Park reunion for half a million people that collapsed the tour after it, and late-life interviews of open, articulate coldness.

Formed: 1957 (as Tom & Jerry)
Origin: Queens, New York, USA
Genre: Folk rock
Status: Disbanded; the grievance remains in print
Documented lineup changes: Two members, one lifelong dispute

The file

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met in a sixth-grade production of Alice in Wonderland in Queens (Simon was the White Rabbit, Garfunkel the Cheshire Cat — casting that both men have noted aged into allegory) and scored a minor hit at sixteen as Tom & Jerry. The founding wound followed immediately: Simon quietly signed a solo single deal as 'True Taylor,' and Garfunkel, who found out from others, has described it in interviews across six decades as the moment he learned who his partner was. Simon, for his part, has expressed exasperation that a teenage 45 remained on the docket into their eighties.

The famous years compressed the pattern: Sounds of Silence to Bridge Over Troubled Water in five years, the latter the best-selling album in the world in 1970 — recorded as the partnership disintegrated. Garfunkel's months in Mexico filming Catch-22 (a role Simon had also been cast for until his part was cut) left Simon writing alone and stewing; Simon gave 'Bridge Over Troubled Water,' his greatest song, to Garfunkel's voice and then spent years telling interviewers he regretted watching from the wings while audiences credited Artie. They split without announcement in 1970, at No. 1.

What followed is the file's real substance: a half-century of reunions, each initiated in warmth and concluded in grievance — the 1975 'My Little Town' détente, the 1981 Central Park concert (500,000 attendees, after which the planned reunion album became a Simon solo album when he removed Garfunkel's vocals), the tours of 1983, 1993, 2003 and 2009, several ending early amid friction or Garfunkel's vocal problems, and the parallel war of memoirs and interviews, in which Garfunkel described creating 'monster' grievances and compared their bond to a family argument that cannot end because it started before either man's memory.

The thread

Timeline of unravelling

1957–58

Tom & Jerry, and the True Taylor betrayal

The teenage duo's 'Hey Schoolgirl' reaches the charts; weeks later Simon records solo as True Taylor without telling Garfunkel, who learns secondhand. Garfunkel will cite this, on the record, in 1970, 1983, 1993, 2015 and beyond — the longest-lived single grievance in this archive.

1965–66

The electric resurrection

With the duo effectively disbanded and Simon in England, producer Tom Wilson overdubs electric backing onto 'The Sound of Silence' without their knowledge; it goes to No. 1, reuniting a partnership that had already quietly ended once — a resurrection by remix.

1967–68

The Graduate and 'Mrs. Robinson'

The Mike Nichols soundtrack makes them the sound of a generation's ambivalence, and Bookends tops the charts. Nichols then casts both in Catch-22 — before cutting Simon's role entirely, leaving Garfunkel to months of filming in Mexico and Simon to an empty studio with a growing list.

1969–70

Bridge Over Troubled Water: masterpiece as exit interview

Recorded around Garfunkel's film schedule and mutual exhaustion, the album sells 25M+ and sweeps the Grammys. Simon assigns the title song to Garfunkel's voice, then publicly rues it for years ('He got the credit,' in substance, across many interviews); the duo declines to continue, telling no one formally — the biggest act in the world simply stops.

1972–75

Separate ways, one-night truces

Simon's solo ascent begins; the pair reunite for a McGovern benefit (1972) and the 'My Little Town' single (1975) plus a Saturday Night Live appearance — establishing the format: brief harmony, prompt retreat, interviews after.

19 Sep 1981

Central Park: 500,000 people, one working relationship

The free reunion concert draws half a million and a beloved live album. The planned studio reunion, Think Too Much, then collapses in the studio: Simon removes Garfunkel's completed vocals and releases it as his solo Hearts and Bones (1983). Garfunkel learns the partnership is over again largely the traditional way — after the fact.

1983

The world tour of gritted teeth

The pair tours stadiums worldwide off the Central Park glow while the album dies behind the curtain; by the tour's end the working relationship follows. A decade of separate careers and pointed interviews ensues.

1990

Hall of Fame: inducted, armed

At their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, Garfunkel thanks the person who most enriched his life; Simon's speech notes that reconciliation seems possible in some cases and then, memorably, qualifies it — a ceremony reviewers scored as a draw with casualties.

2003–04

Old Friends: the professional peace

Prompted by a Grammys lifetime-achievement appearance, the Old Friends tour plays to enormous, weeping houses. It works precisely because it is bounded: a setlist, a stage, and separate hotels — the duo's stable isotope finally identified.

2010

The last tour ends early

A reunion tour is curtailed when Garfunkel's vocal cord paresis makes performance impossible; the cancellation's handling adds a final layer of mutual grievance, aired — per tradition — in subsequent interviews, including Garfunkel's remarkable 2015 sessions describing the friendship's founding 'monster.'

2023–25

The late thaw

In their eighties, the two meet privately; Garfunkel's 2024–25 interviews describe tears, apologies and a wish to sing together once more, while Simon's late work tours mortality with characteristic control. The argument, sixty-seven years old, appears — cautiously, conditionally — to be resting.

Personnel ledger

Who held the thread

Paul SimonGuitar, songs · 1957–70 (and truces)Wrote every word and note of the catalogue, gave the best song away, and managed the partnership's endings with a unilateralism even he has audited in late interviews.

Art GarfunkelVoice · 1957–70 (and truces)One of the great instruments of the century, attached to the archive's most durable memory; kept the 1958 file open for six decades and could cite it by heart.

Tom WilsonProducer · 1964–66Resurrected the duo with an overdub they didn't know about — the only party ever to reunite them without a negotiation.

Mike NicholsDirector, inadvertent accelerantThe Graduate made them immortal; Catch-22's casting made them, for a crucial year, a solo act with a partner abroad.

Where the thread lies now

There is no Simon & Garfunkel organization to disband: only two men in their eighties, a catalogue in permanent rotation, and — per the most recent interviews — a private reconciliation more complete than any public reunion. Garfunkel has said he wept and apologized; Simon has continued performing 'The Sound of Silence' nightly as a kind of open line. Whether they sing together again matters less than that, for the first time since Eisenhower, neither is litigating 1958.

The file's value to the archive is definitional: it shows that a band's minimum viable feud requires only two people and one memory. Everything else in this museum — the lawsuits, the fired drummers, the thrown fruit — is elaboration on the Simon & Garfunkel theorem: the harmony and the argument are produced by the same two voices, and you cannot book one without the other.

Exhibits