To mark the 40th-anniversary reissue of Simon and Garfunkel’s classic album “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Art Garfunkel agreed to a phone interview from his home in the city. Earlier in the week, The Post had interviewed the album’s studio bassist, Joe Osborn, who suggested the duo’s artistic differences while making “Bridge” (the song) led to their breakup after the 1970 album came out. Garfunkel, 69, who had to postpone last year’s tour with Paul Simon due to issues with his voice, took issue with that characterization.
Q. How’s your voice?
A. It’s good. I’m going into the studio on Monday, with my guitar-player friend, and I’m going to work out — something I’ve been very nervous to do for a year. I’m going to do some Simon and Garfunkel stuff, stuff I do on my solo tour. I’ll work the baritone and the tenor and see if it’s as encouraging on the microphone as when I walk and sing. I put my earphones on and sing wherever privacy permits me to sing. I go to the park and sing under the tunnels, and it’s good.
Q. What did you think of “The Harmony Game,” the new documentary included with the 40th-anniversary reissue of “Bridge Over Troubled Water”?
A. It’s [director] Jennifer Lebeau’s good, hard work, and I liked it a lot. To me [original album producer] Roy Halee was the star of the documentary. I love that he finally, finally gets his just desserts as central to our work. He’s very attractive. He’s such a wonderful artiste.
Q. What, if anything, recurred to you about making “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the album, as you were being interviewed?
A. What came alive in a new way, or what reverberated? Well, the spirit of that question gives me the spirit of an answer — nothing! My first real feeling, if I give you my gut reaction, was, ‘That was it, that was the album.’
Q. I believe your role as a producer on the record has been historically under-recognized. Do you agree, and how important has it been over the years for to you to correct this?
A. Well, you’re playing into my vanity a little bit. I’d love to say, ‘I’m the secret gem, the forgotten hero’ — that’s too cheap of an answer. Here’s the truth: I’m a record producer who sends out two wonderful vocalists, Paul and Artie, to do work within the tracks that were made. Ninety percent of the time it was the instrumental track that [made] the record swing .¤.¤. So I am the record-maker, along with Paul and Roy. Maybe you’re saying others don’t get that until now. But I wore that hat as the primary producer for all the Simon and Garfunkel stuff.
Q. It seems like the process for “Bridge” was open, creative and encouraging of new and unusual ideas — not just for you and Simon, but for the session musicians and producers. How unique was that in a recording situation?
A. You know, what occurs to me now? The ’60s have not been properly represented. It’s very hard to get the glory of how exciting the ’60s were. It’s always misrepresented and caricatured with flower power and all that nonsense. What you’re talking about is the great fertile ground that Brian Wilson [of the Beach Boys] was doing, what John [Lennon] and Paul [McCartney] were doing. There’s no limitation — record companies were exploding with the joy in the filing of [a new record] and selling it, with the commercial joy of it. That creates great fertility.
Q. Joe Osborn, the bass player on the album, who is retired in Louisiana, told me he felt you and Simon disagreed over the tone of the song “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Simon wanted something funkier and more gospel, and you wanted something prettier. And you won out. He felt you were correct. Do you remember this disagreement the same way?
A. Yeah, I’d love to address that. I find that fascinating. Everybody who knows a marriage knows patches of light and shade. But the Simon and Garfunkel relationship — I’ve touched on how deep it is. When you listen to the tones of the two voices and how they married together so nicely, there’s something entwining about these two natures, Paul and Artie, that are deeply harmonious, right through to the nature of the friendship, the laughs we’ve had inside. .¤.¤. Well, when you’re making the record, if you’re one of the two, you have a point of view that’s not wishy-washy. It’s not tentative. It’s your point of view! So you clash with another strong person — in this case, your closest friend. It’s just like life. .¤.¤. You start wanting to hear the record go your way, know what I mean? Selfishness sets in, in terms of the thrilling ‘making the record you hear,’ not the one your buddy hears, to serve it up for the kids for maximum delight. So you get selfish in wanting to be the server-upper. And you clash. It has nothing to do with personality or friendship — it’s outside of the love you have in the friendship. You clash with the vision of the record.
Q. So how did that play into making the record?
A. When you’re up to the fifth year [of working together], you essentially want to rest from your dear friend before you spoil it, for a good half a year, if not a year. My friend Paul Simon is not the same kind of rester! Three weeks does it for him. Then his creative juices are going for another project. So his tolerance for rest is much less than mine — one of the reasons we kept working without enough break time. So there’s Simon and Garfunkel in the studio, getting a little nitty-gritty about how they want the vision of the record, and the juices are flowing because of not enough rest time. It’s so predictable, except in our case we were forced together a lot of the time.
Q. So any disagreements you had were in the context of two tired guys in the studio, with different artistic visions, as opposed to any sort of grander conflict?
A. Well, you’re using imagery that’s not what I really just said. What ‘grander conflict’? If you see the spirit of what I just said, you end up with a no-story story. Two guys ending up being together too much with strong opinions about how they want to knock the kids out as record-makers. That to me is a non-story. There is no grand conflict. You’re inflating a story that doesn’t exist and giving it color. I don’t know about such a grand conflict.
Q. It was more about differences in artistic vision.
A. You get out of personality, into the notes. When the music is fabulous, you pursue, then, notes and chords and melody and the changes. .¤.¤. As much as I was tired of Paul, and he tired of me, having worked so close together, you get lost in the music. When it’s hot stuff, you get lost in it. Please don’t leave out the word love. I loved this guy Paul Simon, and I loved him when I was 13 when I met him. This love permeates the recording session. .¤.¤. I’m half of Simon and Garfunkel. You’re counting on these funny stories that love conflict, over the years, as if I’m going to fit into them. It’s very funny about how I know the truth.
Q. Do you think Osborn had a point about the differences of opinion for the song?
A. When Joe says we fought over ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water,’ here’s what I remember: We had two different images about not an Aretha Franklin gospel, but a beautiful hymn. If you saw the documentary, there’s a beautiful image when Paul is writing it — [sings beautifully] “when you’re weary, feeling small” — you remember that it’s a beautiful image and it’s very tender and beautiful. It’s a hymn — it’s not like Aretha did it at all. I just wanted to use the amazing production style that Phil Spector used when he made ‘Old Man River’ [by the Righteous Brothers] and save all the big stuff for not the second verse or the second half of the record, but the last 5 percent of the record — bring in all the production after having saved it for [the first] 95 percent. That seemed to me a killer idea of the record, and here 1/3 of the rec starts growing. .¤.¤. [Simon] had a resistance to it that I don’t remember being nasty, or any of that stuff you journalists like to bring up. It was artistic tugging. That’s a sweet thing. That’s because you have a very respectful set of musicians. That’s what I remember. .¤.¤. So I tugged for this bigger record. Not a prettier record — you used the word ‘prettier.’ I call it ‘bigger,’ a larger scale in the production. That’s a more fair quote. I didn’t want to make it prettier, and Paul didn’t want to make it like Aretha Franklin. I wanted to open it up and make it bigger and once he saw that he was going to lose this battle, that Roy had the same vision as I did — ‘let’s write a bigger version that brings it home in a happy ending, in a bigger pop way.’ And my voice was equipped to sell that.
Q. As you grow older and your voice changes, does it get harder to sing “Bridge”?
A. You do get a little more self-conscious from the teenage years to the 20s. It gets a little harder as confidence gets more refined. You have to lose some stuff to relax and unbutton the mind. But does it get harder? No. I did a tour with Paul, the Old Friends tour, in Australia, Japan and New Zealand. I got out of my own way more successfully than I ever have in all my years of doing this.
Q. Why?
A. So much repetition. So much experience facing the vulnerability of it all leads to such relaxation.
Q. But changes in people’s voices are so often physical. Can you completely control it using spiritual methods?
A. I come from a spiritual place. The physical apparatus will follow where the spirit leads.
Q. Art, I’m out of questions. It’s a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for your time.
A. You got the love in from Paul and Artie? You got that in? It’s a very deep, entwined friendship. It bewitches me. That’s a key point. It doesn’t sell well, though. It’s not negative, it’s not dirty and you’re not going to sell many papers. It doesn’t take the low road.