Art Garfunkel

I sometimes maintain that Art Garfunkel was my second favourite member of Simon and Garfunkel. This is now no longer true. It's a technicality, but until Paul Simon plays me a live show, I don't think I can make a comparison. And Art is a good lad.

His show consisted of about 50% Paul Simon tunes (from the time of their collaboration and afterwards). There were songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Randy Newman and a couple of others. And even one dong that Art co-wrote, as he's discovering himself as a lyricist now. But everyone was there to hear that voice singing those songs.

It was a lot like seeing Paul McCartney, or the Wailers. It's an astounding show, but it's so difficult to treat it as an isolated thing. You can't help but think how it would be if there was one other person there. John Lennon was missing in 2004 at Glastonbury. Bob Marley was missing in 2006 at the Rise Festival. And there was a space in the harmonies, that, whether for this reason or another, Art's capable backing band didn't fill, where Paul Simon should have been singing, for a number of songs.

He's older now, and his voice fails sometimes on the high notes. It's uncertain, it shakes. Falsetto, I would say, is a young man's game. But when he sang Bridge Over Troubled Waters, every ounce of the man in his twenties who recorded the song was there, on stage, and it was the one point in the evening where I really didn't mind that the man who wrote the song wasn't around.

All said, he has a back catalogue it's difficult not to be envious of. And he has an odd, but assured, stage manner that is as engagin as it is confusing. Poetry readings, and little stories expose a man with a childlike fascination with the world, which is odd when one reaches 66. But as he said, he has had a lucky life, and has a lot to be happy about.

Hearing that voice sing those songs is a privilege. Hearing it sing other songs was a pleasure. I would recommend Art Garfunkel's solo show to any avid S&G fan, but don't go expecting the tight harmonies from the records (in fact don't even expect that from any reunion tour that emerges in the future) and don' go expecting a young man's voice. But you will hear all the qualities that made him famous, and that supported Paul Simon's excellent songwriting to make them both the phenomenon that they were, long ago.

This is as close as I'll get to seeing the two of them perform together. In a year or two, when he returns to London, I'll go and see his old partner, and then I'll know. And I'll try, but probably fail, to consider him on his own, and not as one half of my favourite sixties act. but until he proves otherwise, to me, directly, Art is my favourite half. So I'd like a Paul Simon tour soon please.