At 84, Art Garfunkel returns to touring and reconnects with Paul Simon
Singer Art Garfunkel, 84, has resumed touring after years away from the stage and will perform in the UK this autumn. He also revealed he met former duo partner Paul Simon last year after a long silence between them.
Art Garfunkel, one half of the best-selling pop duo in history alongside Paul Simon, has returned to touring at the age of 84, with UK dates set for October. He had barely performed since 2019, but a year ago, while reflecting on the meaning of his life, he realised that singing brought him more joy than almost anything else. A friend suggested he try performing for a small audience at an art gallery near New York, and after just a few nights he decided to get back on stage.
Garfunkel is now singing more than he has in two decades. Two years ago he recorded the album Father and Son with his son, Art Jr. His latest release is a track called Authorship, part of a compilation from technology company Eleven Labs, which pairs an AI-generated piano backing with a spoken excerpt from his 2017 memoir.
Career milestones
In the interview, Garfunkel recalled his childhood friendship with Simon in Queens, New York, their early success as Tom & Jerry, and the surprise rise of The Sound of Silence up the charts in the 1960s. He also spoke about socialising with the Beatles, his acting roles in Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, and a brief stint as a maths teacher after the duo split.
He touched on painful chapters too, including the death of his partner Laurie Bird in 1979, and described how he worked through difficult periods in the 1980s by walking across entire countries, including the US, Ireland and Wales.
A tentative reconciliation
After their last tour together in 2010, Garfunkel and Simon stopped speaking for years. In 2025, Garfunkel revealed they had dinner together, embraced, and agreed to meet again, though he said they hadn't seen each other in the past year. He declined to discuss the possibility of another joint tour.
Garfunkel also expressed concern about climate change and the political direction of the United States, saying he was considering leaving the country. Two months before his 85th birthday, he still hopes to travel the world — though not into space.
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