The artist John Lennon consulted about reuniting The Beatles: “Paul wants to work with me”
After the 1975 Grammy Awards, there was plenty of talk about getting back with songwriters called Paul. With punk on the horizon, it was positively all the rage as the old guard figured out their place in the new approaching zeitgeist. Even the mighty John Lennon was a little puzzled.
His uncertainty is certainly notable. After all, few acts in history have changed the face of culture while capturing the hearts of the masses in an inspired style. Among the dozen or so acts who can boast that feat are The Beatles, obviously, and the folk duo Simon and Garfunkel. It would also seem that the fortunes of the two acts were inexorably linked, woven into place by the fickle fingers of fate and a chance night in 1975.
The story goes that Lennon had been on stage alongside Simon and Garfunkel at the aforementioned awards ceremony. Afterwards, the bespectacled Beatle invited Art Garfunkel and the decidedly less reserved David Bowie back to his Dakota Building apartment in what surely represents one of the kookiest smorgasbords of counterculture talent ever assembled in a single abode.
During an interview for the Beatles Stories documentary, the sweet-voiced Garfunkel regaled a tale of an after-party for the ages and one of music’s great what-ifs. “I have my great memory of John Lennon when I met him that one night with Yoko Ono and David Bowie,” he humbly explains. “It was the mid-70s, and we were coming back from some show we mutually did. So, we go back to the Dakota [John’s apartment], Bowie was with us. And John pulls me to the bedroom,” the curly-haired singer continues.
Presumably, this call for privacy between the two former Paul co-opters left a coked-up Thin White Duke in the living room, fervently discussing fascism with a spun-out Yoko gazing at the stars. All while the straight-laced Art was mind-numbingly confounded by wonderment at finding himself coaxed into the intimate setting of his hero’s boudoir. How could anyone ever reconcile such a scene? “[John] Lennon’s bedroom! And we’d never met each other before!”
The folk singer was about to be even more confounded by what followed. “Incredibly disarmingly, he said to me, ‘Arty, you worked with your Paul [Simon] recently, I’m getting calls from New Orleans [which was where Paul McCartney recorded part of his Venus And Mars record at Sea-Saint studios] that my Paul wants to work with me and I’m thinking about it and I don’t know. How did it go when you worked with Paul [Simon]?’”
As if Garfunkel wasn’t flummoxed enough, he now had to contend with advising upon what would have been the biggest reunion in history since the continental plate of India collided with Asia and spawned the Himalayas. That’s a lot of responsibility to bear at what was supposed to be a few quiet drinks after the Grammys. “He [was] measuring his situation, the great John Lennon with Paul McCartney,” Garfunkel modestly jokes, “With Paul and Arty, as if to make sure that my ego is fully established as a colleague of his!”
It’s a tender account that reveals – if nothing else – a more personable and doubting side to Lennon than we are usually privy to, but could it also have possibly led to something further?
Under the burgeoning pressure of the situation, no doubt feeling the weight of a large nation’s worth of Beatles fans bearing down on his subconscious, Garfunkel had to advise astutely. He wisely told him, “Remember that there was a music blend that was a great kick if you can return to the fun of that sound and the musical happenings with your old buddy and ignore the strands of the complications and history. What I found with my Paul was the harmony and the sounds happening on a full agenda, they’ll keep you busy, and you’ll have fun.”
So, what of the great what-if moments that remain? Was it just some dreamy fantasy for the world to enjoy in a post-party haze, only to be forgotten the morning after? When asked about whether he thought Lennon was seriously considering it, Garfunkel replied, “I thought he [wanted to get back] the subject seemed very straightforward and uncomplicated. It really was a musical question and not a heavy personal question.”
In truth, as Garfunkel suggests, their difference had been reconciled by this time—that is, if their differences had been anything other than the trying times of maturity in the first place. The strains of The Beatles were now behind them, and they were adults on the same page. Lennon was thinking fervently about whether they’d get back on the same page musically, too.
As May Pang told USA Today, “Paul and Linda were saying, ‘We’re going to go down to New Orleans and do a new album .’ A couple of days later, he’s tinkling on the guitar, and he goes, ‘What do you think if I wrote with Paul again?’ You talk about shock; the reference is like The Exorcist, the head flips back. And I said, ‘I think it would be great’”. The only question was whether they could recapture their spark.
It would seem that Garfunkel was pretty much one of the only people in the entire universe who Lennon could have asked about the situation, having also crafted an act of seismic influence, broken up, and then made the first remedial step. So, he clearly took his opportunity to do so. As we now obviously know, the cards of fate didn’t seem to fall the way that they appeared to be stacking up that night in the Dakota Building.
Still, Art Garfunkel’s fabled recollection represents a shimmering example of how culture is at the confluence where art meets with circumstance. How many masterpieces have been lost to the sober common sense of morning? Perhaps just as many as have been made by chance encounters like the moment McCartney and Lennon met in the first place.
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