Simon & Garfunkel / The Everly Brothers
London, Hyde Park
15th July 2004
SETLIST:
SIMON & GARFUNKEL
Old Friends / Bookends
Hazy Shade of Winter
I Am A Rock
America
At The Zoo
Baby Driver
Kathy’s Song
Hey, Schoolgirl
THE EVERLY BROTHERS
Don & Phil Everly
Wake Up Little Susie
Let It Be Me
All I Have To Do Is Dream
Bye Bye Love (with Simon & Garfunkel)
SIMON & GARFUNKEL
Scarborough Fair
Homeward Bound
The Sound of Silence
Mrs Robinson
Slip Slidin’ Away
El Condor Pasa
Keep The Customer Satisfied
Only Living Boy In New York
American Tune
My Little Town
Bridge Over Troubled Water
encores
Cecilia
The Boxer
The Leaves That Are Green
Feelin’ Groovy
BAND:
Mark Stewart- Guitars, Cello, Saxophone, selfmade instruments
Jamey Hddad- Percussion
Rob Schwimmer – Keyboards, Theramin
Jim Keltner- Drums
Larry Saltzman- Guitar
Warren Bernhardt – Piano
Freddie Washington – Bass
Art Garfunkel & Phil Everly
We had to stay over in London during a three day spoken voice recording session, and we couldn’t make plans as we didn’t know when we’d be finished.
We knew that Simon & Garfunkel were playing London, so we wandered over to Hyde Park on the off-chance hoping that scalpers would have tickets for Simon & Garfunkel’s open-air concert.
As ever, they did, at only a £5 premium per ticket for standing tickets. What a magic night! Two hours of Simon & Garfunkel with the Everly Brothers as dusk fell gently over the park with a spectacular sunset. I didn’t know the audience size which was as far as the eye could see anyway. I heard afterwards it was 50,000? It was on hell of a lot anyway.
It was our third time for Paul, but the first time for Art and we were transfixed by that voice. There’s still no one to touch him.The best part was hearing thousands of people singing along to every word, even in Keep The Customer Satisfied, Cathy’s Song and The Only Living Boy in New York, let alone the singles.
The La-La-Lie chorus in The Boxer was done by a cast of thousands. Hearing Art taking verses on American Tune and Slip Sliding Away as the sun slipped down was worth the price of admission alone. We were hearing stuff written in London forty years ago. They’ve known each other fifty years, as Garfunkel pointed out (and as Paul said, they have been arguing for forty-eight). I loved the intro to their early hit as Tom & Jerry, ‘Hey Schoolgirl,’ where Paul commented that they wouldn’t be putting up plaques in railway stations to commemorate that one (there is a plaque to commemorate Homeward Bound on the station where he wrote it).
They had a superb band of course, with Jim Keltner on drums. The sound was a bit quiet, but I guess it was the biggest concert of the tour and given the huge area it was sufficient. They weren’t as sinuous or supple as Paul Simon’s solo touring band, but who is in that open air situation?
Don & Phil Everly were great in the middle of the evening – twenty years after the 1984 Reunion tour (where we seemed to be the youngest people in the audience), and they only did three numbers with their trademark Gibson Everly guitars: Bye Bye Love, All I Have To Do Is Dream and Let It Be Me. They should have done Cathy’s Clown in England though, not Let It Be Me. They were joined by Simon & Garfunkel on Bye Bye Love. After all they covered it on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, and like Paul McCartney, Paul Simon has always acknowledged the enormous influence of The Everly Brothers on popular music.
Everly Brothers picture at LIFE magazine.
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