Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon reunion lunch ends in tears: ‘I was a fool!’

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Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are ready to bury the hatchet.

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After not speaking for many years, Garfunkel says in a new interview with The Sunday Times that he and Simon had an emotional reunion over lunch recently. 

“I looked at Paul and said, ‘What happened? Why haven’t we seen each other?’” Garfunkel told the U.K. outlet. “Paul mentioned an old interview where I said some stuff. I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him. Looking back, I guess I wanted to shake up the nice guy image of Simon & Garfunkel. Y’know what? I was a fool!”

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Together, Simon and Garfunkel penned some of the biggest music hits of the ’60s and early ’70s, including Mrs. Robinson, The Only Living Boy in New York, Cecilia and Bridge Over Troubled Water, among others. After a decade apart, the duo’s landmark 1981 Central Park concert was a triumph as it played host to more than 500,000 fans.

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In a documentary that screened last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, Garfunkel said they split up because an “an uneven partnership” developed between the two because Simon wrote all the songs.

“I was writing all of the songs and basically running the sessions,” Simon said in the doc. “It was an uneven balance of power.”

Simon said Garfunkel’s pursuit of an acting career also created the “recipe for the breakup.”

“The breakup that happened after (Garfunkel’s 1970 film) Catch-22 was never repaired,” he said in the film.

In the years afterwards, the pair continued to tour occasionally, but they hadn’t performed live together in more than a decade, and Garfunkel didn’t participate in the documentary.

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In a 2015 interview with the Daily Telegraph, Garfunkel called Simon an “idiot” and “jerk” and said he “created a monster.” The following year, Simon told NPR that the two would never reunite again, saying: “We don’t get along. So it’s not like it’s fun.” 

That same year, Simon told Rolling Stone a reunion was “out of the question.”

“We don’t even talk,” he added.

But Garfunkel now says that the twosome, who are both 83, have plans to meet up again.

“Will Paul bring his guitar? Who knows,” he said. “For me, it was about wanting to make amends before it’s too late. It felt like we were back in a wonderful place. As I think about it now, tears are rolling down my cheeks. I can still feel his hug.”

Garfunkel’s son, Art Jr., who is working with his dad on a new record, told the Times that “there is a possibility of them getting together musically.”

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“I’m speaking hypothetically here, but maybe a big TV/charity event. And with a bit of encouragement from their peers in the music industry, that could lead to some new material, a new generation discovering the beautiful music they make together,” he said.

In a separate chat with Rolling Stone, Garfunkel recently entertained the possibility the two could take the stage during Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary season with a full-blown reunion tour also a distant chance.

“You never know. It was always the case where when we would hang out, and he would say, ‘Let me show you what I’ve been working on lately.’ And he’d take out the guitar and he would play something. And I would fall for it because he is a genius. And my encouragement and the sincerity of my response relaxed him and made him feel like it’s great to work with Artie. And that would slide back into working together with that spirit,” Garfunkel told the magazine.

“It brought tears to remember that I had hurt him … My deep soul connection is so bound with Paul.”

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