With the band now officially broken up – for the time, at least – Simon and Garfunkel parted ways. Garfunkel quit music and worked as a math professor. During the period he also married architect Linda Marie Grossman, though the marriage only lasted three years.
Garfunkel often called this phase a strange one in his life. He recalled his students raising their hands in class and ask what the Beatles were like. It’s possible he was happy to talk about his past but just as likely he would have rather focused on the math.
Garfunkel's Words
Simon has shared the details of the difficult photo session. It's hard to tell which one, since pretty much any session fits the bill. At one time, Garfunkel was in a mood and told Simon outright: “No matter what happens, I'll always be taller than you.” This apparently hurt Simon enough for him to remember it decades later.
Sometimes people can say things without realizing how hurtful they can be, and Garfunkel seems like the kind of guy who talks without thinking about his friend. Especially if he knew how much Simon thought about his height compared to Garfunkel.
An Uneven Balance
While it seems impossible to separate the two when it comes to their music, in fact, their musical work was quite unbalanced. Simon wrote all the music, played guitar for almost all the songs, and sang backup, while Garfunkel just sang lead.
For the most part, this is because Garfunkel was the better singer, but he also did a lot of the work building the vocal arrangements and harmonies. However, it's true that a bulk of the work came from Simon, and it's easy to look back now that Paul Simon became a successful solo artist, and Garfunkel...didn't.
Eleven Years Later
When Garfunkel divorced Linda Marie Grossman he started dating Laurie Bird — actress and photographer. Their relationship had a tragic end in 1979 when she took her own life. After the event, Simon approached Garfunkel and offered a reunion.
Almost a decade after "Bridge Over Troubled Water", the pair reunited to host a free concert in Central Park, New York. It had an incredible turnout – more than half a million people attended the concert, and we really can't blame them – if they reunited today they would probably draw that many.
The Concert Recording
There are few concerts more well known than the 1979 reunion. It had one of the largest attendances in concert history. When Warner Bros. Records released a live album of the show, it went double platinum. A ninety-minute recording of the concert was sold to HBO to the tune of one million dollars.
The concert created a renewed interest in Simon and Garfunkel. After talks to smooth out some problems, a world tour began in 1982, but as in the past, the relationship grew contentious. For the majority of the tour, they didn't even speak to each other.