Call it an early Valentine’s present to their New York fans. Last night Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel reunited on stage at the reopening of the legendary Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side.
It was quite an occasion, too. In the audience were Paul McCartney (and Nancy Shevell), Jon Bon Jovi with wife Dorothea, Harvey Weinstein and Georgina Chapman, Rosie O’Donnell and Kelli Carpenter, Whoopi Goldberg, James Gandolfini, musician Robert Randolph, and Jimmy Fallon with wife Nancy Juvnonen, not to mention Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
And those were just the celebs we spotted in the front section. There may have been more in the sold-out, three-tiered auditorium, renovated to its former glory by Cablevision’s Dolan family.
The night was billed just as a Paul Simon show, and that would have been enough. Simon played for over two hours with a 20-minute intermission and covered all parts of his solo career, from “You Can Call Me Al,” “Graceland,” and “Boy in the Bubble” to earlier hits, like ”Me and Julio,” “Loves Me Like A Rock,” “Late in the Evening,” and “Slip Slidin’ Away.” For very old Simon fanatics, he threw in “Duncan” from his first solo album.
Simon also brought members of the cast of his late lamented Broadway show, “The Capeman,” who did some of those numbers. And he threw in some obscure but beautiful gems like “Fathers and Daughters,” “Train in the Distance,” and “You’re the One.”
But there was a buzz in the air, probably because yours truly spotted Garfunkel’s singer wife Kim in the audience. At least a couple of us knew what was going to happen: Garfunkel, flown up on a private plane from the middle of a Florida tour, took the stage to a thunderous ovation. I mean, people were screaming — even Paul McCartney.
The pair then did gorgeous versions of “The Sound of Silence,” “The Boxer,” and “Old Friends/Bookends” as if it were 1965 or even 1981 on Central Park’s Great Lawn. Garfunkel made one crack about Simon’s missing toupee, and Simon “zetzed” him back. But mostly what was striking was how the duo fell into their old positions, side by side. Simon is so fluid when performing with his own band, but he takes a rigid stance next to Garfunkel probably out of sense memory. Garfunkel swoops and sways next to him in time, and the two of them proceed to do something no one else in the world can do. It’s magic.
What was the show all about? I have no idea, and the tickets were expensive! But it was well worth it, and should be again tonight when Simon — sans Garfunkel but with plenty of surprises — completes the Beacon’s welcome into the Madison Square Garden/Radio City ownership.
