Simon & Garfunkel Australian Tour 2009

by Tony d’Ambra

“Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all gone to look for America

I was among the capacity crowd of over 20,000 for Simon & Garfunkel’s third and final Sydney concert Tuesday night. The duo started with Old Friends and finished with three encores. They performed all their big numbers, and were best when the musical backing was subdued. The are both hitting 70, but they never flagged over 2 hours with no intermission. Simon looks his age, while Garfunkel belies his years. Paradoxically, Simon’s voice still has a youthful clarity and range, while Garfunkel’s voice is straining but he gets there. Simon’s acoustic guitar accompaniment was languid and elegant. The highlight for me was the Gracelands set with Simon on his own at the microphone with additional backing from two musicians from the original Gracelands album and tour.

Tonight I’ll sing my songs again
I’ll play the game and pretend
But all my words come back to me
In shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me

I entered the arena with a sense of unease. Forty years since it all ended and now we were all of us visibly old and greying. There were some young people in the crowd, but we were most of us baby-boomers, clinging to a past gone forever, yet remaining important in our lives. We still wear blue jeans and think we’re cool, but the reality is confronting. You can fool yourself, but faced with thousands of others of your generation going to seed, the illusion collapses, and hard. My dear late mother in her twilight years used to say that she didn’t want to be with old people. I understand her now.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

Once I was seated though and I took in the empty stage lit in a calming blue light, the anticipation turned to excitement and awe. Finally, I would hear those songs of youthful melancholy sung for real for the first and probably the last time. The excitement was at fever pitch and when Simon & Garfunkel walked out to the front of the stage, the years fell away, and we yelled and whistled like teenagers.

But old father time had not finished with us yet. I was close to the stage but up high, and those guys on the stage could still have been 20 for all I could see. So I had to rely on the giant screen for the close-ups. The screen flickered into a montage with shots of the painfully young duo when they started their partnership morphing into the year leading up to their first break-up in 1969. Then they flashed for real onto the screen – looking as old and tired as the rest of us. They embraced that stark reality and quietly sang Old Friends from the Bookends album with only Paul Simon’s guitar as backing:

Old friends, old friends sat on their parkbench like bookends
A newspaper blowin’ through the grass
Falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends

Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a parkbench quietly
How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends, memory brushes the same years, silently sharing the same fears

So it was up-front and in the open now, they and we the audience were celebrating the past and myriad paths that had lead each of us to be here tonight together. This was not nostalgia or regret for the passing of the years, but a joyous reliving of our youth, our ravaged ideals, our lost innocence, our pain, the tragedies, and the fun.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
Beneath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed
By the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

From this point for a too brief two hours we all became young again and shared songs of simple elegance shaped by poetic lyrics and haunting melody sung in graceful harmony.

In the clearing stands a boxer,
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev’ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
“I am leaving, I am leaving.”
But the fighter still remains

Supporting line-up:

Warren Bernhardt – Piano
Charley Drayton – Drums
Jamey Haddad – Percusson
Bakithi Kumalo -  Bass
Larry Saltzman  – Guitar
Rob Schwimmer – Keyboards
Mark Stewart – Guitar

With Paul Simon:

Tony Cedras -  Accordian & Keyboards
Vincent Nguini  – Guitar
Andy Snitzer -  Saxophone

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