Art Garfunkel Biography

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Art Garfunkel Quotes

 

•We'd go to the fraternity house. It was a good place to practice. But we really wanted the kids to overhear us. And whoever heard us would go nuts over it.

• When Paul and I were first friends, starting in the sixth grade and seventh grade, we would sing a little together and we would make up radio shows and become disc jockeys on our home wire recorder. And then came rock and roll.

• We human beings are tuned such that we crave great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody writes a great song, it's timeless that we as humans are going to feel something for that and there's going to be a real appreciation.

• When I went to Mexico, the feeling was that we weren't having a good time. We weren't enjoying ourselves. We were tired of working together. We wanted a break from each other. We were not getting along particularly well and there were a lot of conflicts that were unpleasant conflicts.

• Records became much cruder in the last 20 years. Let's put it that way.

• Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to have a hit, I just wanted to be like those people on the radio. It was all of a case of the present tense with no projecting into the future, particularly.

• Records have images. There are wet records and dry records. And big records.

• So it's mix and match. Hold your line when you really feel something you're saying is wonderful and you really want to get this point across and prove it to your partner by just throwing it into the tape and letting it speak for itself.

• I'm the kind of person who can hear that stuff. If you sing along to the radio and you're not going to sing unison with the melody, but find the harmony, I find that pretty easy to do.

• Paul is a very creative artist but I'm more that thorough, meticulous, disciplined nut.

• Paul has more, I think, of a feel for the stage. Whereas I have it more for the notes themselves. I love record making and mixing, arranging, producing. That I love. I love to make beautiful things, but I don't like to perform.

• Paul's the writer. Yeah, I wrote a little of that stuff, but that's just technically true. In spirit, and in essence of the truth, it doesn't matter. So I don't know, maybe I'm being foolish for not being technical. Yeah, I wrote a certain portion of the things.

• I like working solo and it was a lot of fun joking around with the audience, saying things. I'm only just learning how to do certain things.

• I was a student at Columbia College, actually, in the Architecture school. Paul would drive in from Queens, showing me these new songs. I can't remember us working it out.

• I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging.

• Because when you put on the earphones and go to work, I guess your commitment to art is greater than your lack of commitment to each other. So you always get responsible and serious toward doing your best work from the heart with all the beauty you have within you when it's tape time.

• I did have a lucky thing going on there in my throat.

• After all these years, I'm finally into soccer. The World Cup is on, and my band is an international group - they're all around me, cheering in the hotel bars.

• To the extreme. Dylan was the coolest thing in the country. If you were a young person at that age, maybe you don't go for Dylan's gravelly style voice, but who he was and how different and bold his lyrics were, and his look, that was the closest thing the record business had to James Dean.”

• After all these years, I'm finally into soccer. The World Cup is on, and my band is an international group - they're all around me, cheering in the hotel bars.

• I hated performing. I love to sing but I don't love to sing in front of people. I don't have much of a feel for performing. When I think of performing, I think of being so nervous you want to throw up. That's what performing means to me. Singing in the recording studio when there's no one else around, that's a whole different thing

• We'd knock on the doors, we knew the different companies we liked because we were listening to Alan Freed and we knew the different labels and they were all located there. We'd go up and we'd often sing live for the people. Which was very nervous-making, you know? They're busy, so if they don't like you, they cut you off right away.”

• Paul is like John Lennon. They're feisty. There's a rebellious attitude. You know, that's very acceptable. It's standard rebellious attitude stuff. The public tends to like that stuff. It shows that they're feisty, that they're not busy patronizing the proper-sounding, wholesome phrases of the culture.

• Then I would sing a little in the synagogue. See, if you're a singer, you love to turn your own ears on. You look for those rooms where the reverb is great. I remember the synagogue had a lot of wood and it was a great room. And it was a captive audience and you could sing these minor key songs and make them cry, and that was a thrill.

• To me, Bouguereau is like finding the Beatles before they happened.

• Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to have a hit, I just wanted to be like those people on the radio. It was all of a case of the present tense with no projecting into the future, particularly.

• I used to chart the records. I used to listen Hit Parade. I was in love with the Hit Parade for its own sake. I loved the rise and fall of the records with their numbers. Records that went from 11 to four. It killed me because of the numbers. And I had my graph chart of all these things. And I was very mathematical.”

• I teach well. I used to really like teaching a lot. I enjoyed it a lot and I was good at it.

• Art on 'Scarborough Fair' - This is a song that comes from the period of time about four years ago when we were doing just about all our singing in folk clubs in England throughout the countryside. It's a song that we learned from a friend of ours, an old English folk ballad caled 'Scarborough Fair'.

• Art on 'The Sound of Silence' - The Sound of Silence is a major work. We were looking for a song on a larger scale, but this is more that either of us expected.

 

 

 

 

Art Garfunkel Albums

 

1973 - Angel Clare
1975 - Breakaway
1977 - Watermark
1979 - Fate for Breakfast
1981 - Scissors Cut
1984 - The Art Garfunkel Album
1986 - The Animals Christmas Album
1988 - Lefty
1989 - Garfunkel
1993 - Up 'til Now
1997 - Across America
1997 - Songs from a Parent to a Child
2002 - Everything Waits to be Noticed
2007 - Some Enchanted Evening

Art Garfunkel Singles

 

1973 - All I Know
1973 - I Shall Sing
1974 - Second Avenue
1975 - Breakaway
1975 - Only Have Eyes For You
1977 - Crying in my Sleep
1977 - Wonderful World
1979 - Since I Don't Have You
1979 - Bright Eyes
1981 - A Heart in New York


 

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