“Interviewer: When did your interest in music begin?
Art Garfunkel: Music came to me because it was around the house. My parents sang; we had a wire recorder in the Forties; so I just sang because I had a voice, and realized it at age four, and because I had the example of harmony from my parents. I would sing to myselfas I was walking to school, and I would sing as if I were preparing to be a singer. I remember singing a song and doing it again in a higher key, walking to school in first grade. I must have been working on getting my range higher. I would sing songs by the Crew Cuts, or the inspirational ones like “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” I guess I was waiting for rock ‘n’ roll to happen, which hit the radio when I was thirteen. I had just become friends with Paul Simon, my neighbor; we were in school together, so we both jumped on singing and listening to rock ‘n’ roll.I: How old were you when you first performed:
AG: I first performed in talent shows when I was a fourth grader; I must have been nine. As I formed a friendship with Paul in junior high school we would sing in school, and we started doing the songs we wrote. Then we would go into the city and make demonstration records of our songs.
I: Did you ever envision that you would be well known?
AG: When I was around eight, the idea of being famous seemed like a big kick. And I knew I had a voice, and that it was a good voice. When I was in my early teens and heard records on the radio that Alan Freed was playing, I thought, I can do that; I can compete with that level of tightness … And I practiced constantly with Paul with a competitive instinct. By the teens I knew I had a shot at the charts. So, in my early years I must have wished to transcend the neighborhood; to justify my “weirdness” in the neighborhood.
I: You mentioned finding the perfect place for a good echo.
AG: This is a complex notion. Singers love the reverb, or the bounce-off-the-wall echo effect; it puts sustain on your notes. The modern era of the recording industry, since “Vaya con Dios,” is largely about playing with echo and reverb. So I’ve worked with echo as if it has been my singing partner as early as I can remember; I’d sing in a stairwell, or any bathroom with tiles.
Recently I was singing in Central Park under one of those viaducts, and as I centered myself along the axis of the tunnel I realized there was a remarkable echo if one was lines up right in the meddle. Then I started to think that possibly the shape of the sounding chamber in the throat and mouth was repeated in the roof of the tunnel, so you were producing a sound from vocal cords to mouth chamber to tunnel chamber, and the shape was a repeat on a larger scale. I thought possibly that was the reason why the tunnel gave such a good echo.
I: You mentioned that in your trip to Japan, the best part of the day was being able to sing as loudly as you wanted, with no one around to hear. Is it a relief not to have to perform when you sing?
AG: I sing because it gives me pleasure to hear it when it’s right. I always bring a kind of shyness to the experience when I sing in front of people, because I’m more comfortable as a singer producing a sound that my own ears enjoy. If others want to listen to it, they may, but I’m not altering my posture toward them. This is why a recording studio is ideal for me: you perform in front of a mike with no one around, against your own standards. That to me is a more comfortable thing than stage work. Privacy goes with singing.I: You say that you bring shyness to your music. How difficult was it to decide to publish your poems, and was there anything that made you start thinking along that direction?
AG: At some point I was bitten by the inspiration to write. You keep doing it; it takes hold of you. There is no ulterior motive other than that an idea wants to get expressed. So the initial impulse has taken care of itself. But at a certain point, you say, “Who am I writing this to?” Since I had the initial inspiration and finished it, who was that for? Was it the therapy of getting something out that needed to be said? Or is it simply, I am seeing who I am, or what’s going on in me, crystallized on paper? You realize you’re writing to someone, even if it’s to a soulmate you’re hoping to find. Then you realize: Okay, I’m wiring to others. But you think, Which others? How many others? So you think: Okay, I’ll send them to friends of mine, so they can know a little better what I’m about. Then you think, I’ll send them out in general. In childhood, the music was born out of the fact that I can sing. With writing, I just had to write these things. With encouragement of various people, I have dared to put them out. Write the poem out loud.Authorize the heart. Burn the Bridge and Be the work of art! New York City January 1984”
