By Rose Rushe
“HELLO, darkness, my old friend”…
50 years after its release, the music of those who gave soul and sound to silence will come to the concert hall on Wednesday 5.
‘The Simon and Garfunkel Story’ is more than a tribute show to the 1957-1970 partnership between schoolboy friends, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.
Consider their legacy in the light of their final album, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ being the biggest selling of 1970, ’71 and ’72 and the biggest all-time seller for quite some time.
Meet Dean Elliott, producer, co-writer and joint lead as Paul Simon in this Story. It’s complete with a five piece band and newcomer Johnny Smart “straight out of drama school, with the most incredible voice” cast as Art. “It’s not only their story but that of the 1960s and all around, a time of political change”.
100 nights on tour, ‘The Simon and Garfunkel Story’ is already booked next year for Leicester Square Theatre and will travel on to Dubai, Zimbabwe, Spain and elsewhere.
Elliott knows a thing or two about shouldering a production, having led ‘Buddy – The Musical’ with his guitar skills for two brilliant years in West End.
“I am coming from a place of love and respect in this, my first major theatre piece,” this friendly bloke convinces, down the line from London. He then spots ex-Zeppelin Robert Plant getting into an Audi and is so taken, we have a good laugh (I was Plant’s chambermaid in a London hotel – RR).
“Instead of acting it out as in ‘Buddy’, we call it more like a biopic, using video projection, clips and various types of storytelling because this is what Simon and Garfunkel were, storytellers”.
We can look forward to ‘Mrs Robinson’, ‘Scarborough Fair’, ‘Homeward Bound’ and so many more, every note sung by Elliott and Smart.
We chew the fat about whether S&G’s breakup was acrimonious.
“That’s one of the great unanswered questions of rock’nroll,” Dean Elliott ruminates, pinning the split ultimately to Simon’s quest for freedom in songwriting away from their harmonies.
“He felt trapped. Listen to his music today, he riffs a lot”. In their subsequent paths, Garfunkel went to learn the lute in Milan, ever a quixotic creature, and act.
Paul Simon has gone from Cape Horn to joint effort with Sting, evolving in style always.
No such traipsing is required of Limerick fans to follow their star(s): tap into www.uch.ie for Wednesday November 5 tickets, 8pm.
