The Concert in Central Park

The audience waits on Central Park's Great Lawn for the concert's beginning.

The concert took place on Saturday, September 19, 1981, on the Great Lawn, the central open space of Central Park. The first spectators, many carrying chairs or picnic blankets, arrived at daybreak to secure a good spot.[22] The Parks Department originally expected about 300,000 attendees.[19] Although rain fell throughout the day and continued until the start of the concert,[23] an estimated 500,000 audience members[17] made this the seventh-largest concert attendance in United States history.[24]

The stage backdrop depicted an urban rooftop with water tank and air outlet, symbolic of New York's skyline. At twilight, the backing band went onstage, followed by New York's mayor, Ed Koch, who announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, Simon and Garfunkel!"[22] The duo entered through a side stage door, took center stage amid audience applause, shook hands, and began the concert with their 1968 hit "Mrs. Robinson".[17]

After the second song, "Homeward Bound", Simon delivered a short speech which began, "Well, it's great to do a neighborhood concert." He then thanked the police, the fire department, the park administration and finally Ed Koch. Some of the audience booed at the mention of Koch but applauded as Simon continued by tongue-in-cheek thanking "the guys who are selling loose joints [for] giving the city half of their income tonight."[25]

Simon & Garfunkel played twenty-one songs in total: ten originally recorded by the duo, eight from Simon's solo career, one recorded by Garfunkel, a cover of The Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little Susie", and the medley version of "Maybellene". Each performer sang three songs alone, including one new song apiece. Garfunkel sang the Simon & Garfunkel songs "Bridge over Troubled Water" and "April Come She Will", as well as "A Heart in New York", a song written by Gallagher and Lyle that appeared on his album Scissors Cut, which had been released the previous month. Simon's solo performances were the title song of his 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years, the number-one single "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover", and the unreleased "The Late Great Johnny Ace", which would appear on his 1983 album Hearts and Bones.

"The Late Great Johnny Ace" was interrupted when an audience member ran to the stage and shouted at Simon: "I need to talk to you!" The man was carried away by security, and Simon finished the song. The incident provoked associations to the song's lyrics, in which Simon speaks of the deaths of Johnny Ace, John F. Kennedy, and John Lennon. Lennon's murder by an obsessed fan had taken place less than a year previously, not far from the concert site.[26][27] Despite this association, Simon said that he was not afraid of any on-stage incidents. In May 1982 as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman, he explained that while it is not unusual for fans to jump onto the stage with flowers, this action was new to him, but also felt that the man simply appeared intoxicated. His greater concern was that the song's premiere was ruined.[28]

Lyrics referring to the New York area produced audience applause, such as Garfunkel's ode to his home city, "A Heart in New York", which describes from a New Yorker's point of view the first glimpse of the city when returning there by air:[29]

New York, lookin' down on Central Park, where they say you should not wander after dark[30]

Applause broke out during "The Sound of Silence", when the narrative voice refers to a large crowd of people in the dark:[31]

And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people maybe more[32]

After the 17th song, "The Boxer", which contained an additional stanza not included in the album version, Simon & Garfunkel thanked the audience and left the stage, but returned to deliver an encore of three songs – "Old Friends / Bookends Theme", "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)", and "The Sound of Silence". Simon then said that their planned use of pyrotechnics had been disallowed, and told the crowd, "Let's have our own fireworks!" Many spectators sparked lighters. The duo then introduced the members of the backing band and gave a final encore, a reprise of "Late in the Evening".[28]

A recording of the concert was released five months later, on February 16, 1982. The audio tracks were processed in postproduction, but Rolling Stone magazine wrote that they were not completely polished, and preserved the roar and the fuzziness of live rock music heard through a loudspeaker.[14] Two songs were not included on the album: the interrupted "Late Great Johnny Ace", and the encore reprise of "Late in the Evening". The album was an international success.[33] It peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 chart, and was certified 2×Multi-Platinum with sales of over 2 million copies in US.[34][35]

The album sold more than 1,270,000 copies in France, where it was certified Diamond. It was also successful in seven other countries, including New Zealand. The album was released as a double LP and as a single Compact Cassette. In 1988 it was issued as a single CD; various reissues in different formats have occurred, including a 2-CD release containing the two missing songs from the original album.[34][36] The Concert was recorded by Roy Halee on the Record Plant NY Black Truck with David Hewitt Director, assisted by Phil Gitomer, Steve Barash and John Mathias.

The concert was filmed for television broadcast and the home video market. It was produced by James Signorelli, and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, a specialist in music documentaries who had worked on The Beatles' film Let It Be, and executive produced by Lorne Michaels, who had recently departed the NBC-TV comedy/variety series Saturday Night Live. Simon himself financed the US$750,000 cost of the staging and the video recording.[22] It is unknown how much HBO paid for the television and video rights of the recording - $1 million according to some sources,[17][27] over $3 million according to others.[37] The film includes the two songs that had not appeared on the album, and at 87 minutes, runs 12 minutes longer.[38]

HBO televised the film, Simon and Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park, on February 21, 1982, five days after the album was released. The film was later released for sale in VHS, CED Videodisc, LaserDisc,[39] and DVD formats.[40] It sold more than 50,000 copies in the US, where it earned Gold certification for a music longform video.[41] It was broadcast on PBS on August 22, 1988,[42] and again on August 8, 2015.[43]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[44]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[45]
Rolling Stone	[46]
The Village Voice	C+[47]

The concert and recordings were positively received by music critics. Stephen Holden praised the performance in The New York Times the day after the concert;[48] he subsequently praised the live album in Rolling Stone magazine.[14] He wrote that Simon and Garfunkel were successful in reviving their sound, that the backing band was "one of the finest groups of musicians ever to play together at a New York rock concert",[48] and the rearrangements of Simon's solo material were improvements over the originals.[14] Despite the risks in performing so many acoustic ballads in an open-air concert on a cool night, the songs "were beautifully articulated, in near-perfect harmony."[48]

An October 1981 review in Rolling Stone called the concert "one of the finest performances of [1981]", one that "vividly recaptured another time, an era when well-crafted, melodic pop bore meanings that stretched beyond the musical sphere and into the realms of culture and politics."[49] This reviewer noted that Garfunkel's voice was noticeably restrained in high passages, though still harmonious, and that the evening's only weak spot was the "Kodachrome"/"Maybellene" medley, because neither singer could raise the right level of emotion for the rock songs.[49]

A Billboard reviewer wrote in March 1982, "This 19 song, two record set gloriously recaptures the past with sterling renditions of most of the duo's classics as well as a few of Simon's solo compositions filled out by Garfunkel's harmony."[50] However, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice dismissed the album as "a corporate boondoggle—a classy way for Warner Bros. artist Simon to rerecord, rerelease, and resell the catalogue CBS is sitting on." He felt Simon had been better off without Garfunkel since 1971 and, regarding the duo's interpretations of solo material and the band-format's reinterpretation of old material, "live doubles are live doubles, nostalgia is nostalgia, wimps are wimps, and who needs any of 'em?"[47]

The duo was disappointed with their performance, particularly Garfunkel, who felt that he sang poorly. Simon said that he did not immediately realize the magnitude of the event: "I didn't get what had happened – how big it was – until I went home, turned on the television and saw it on all the news ... and later that night on the front pages of all the newspapers. Then I got it."[13]

In May 1982, Simon & Garfunkel went on a world tour with legs in Japan, Europe, Oceania, and North America.[51] The European leg of their tour began on May 28, 1982, at the Stadion am Bieberer Berg in Offenbach am Main. This was their first performance in Germany, and had an attendance of around 40,000 spectators.[52]

When they were not on the road, the duo went into the studio to work on what was to be a reunion Simon & Garfunkel album, tentatively entitled Think Too Much, with Garfunkel adding harmony vocals to new songs for which Simon had already laid down some backing tracks. They set a release date of spring 1983 to coincide with their planned North American tour, but after increasingly acrimonious delays and disagreements, Simon told Warner Brothers he could no longer work with Garfunkel and that the project as a collaborative album was cancelled. Garfunkel dropped out of the project, which then became Simon's November 1983 solo album Hearts and Bones.[53]

Several years would pass before Simon & Garfunkel worked together again. Their next joint public appearance was in 1990, when they performed for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When Simon gave another free concert in Central Park on August 15, 1991, he rejected Garfunkel's offer to participate.[23] However, they agreed to perform together in 1993 for 21 sold-out concerts in New York, with half of the show being Paul Simon solo with a band and the other half Simon & Garfunkel, opening the door to future reunion tours.

Simon & Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park raised around $51,000 for Central Park.[37] Benefit concerts by other musicians followed, and helped to raise awareness of the park's state. With donations from the general public and with the help of wealthy benefactors, the park was restored during the 1980s and gained recognition as a major tourist attraction.[54][6] As of 2011, donations still make up the majority of the park's budget.[55] Today concerts and other benefits are regularly held on the Great Lawn.[56]