Simon & Garfunkel Perth concert
07/03/2009 08:45 ДП | ArticlesA CAPACITY crowd yelled for more from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel but the singing legends had eyes for only one member of the audience last night.
It was the last concert of their hugely successful Australian tour and everyone knew there was something special going down.
Eight-year-old Jadzia Hunter sat enthralled in her $359 front row seat as the duo blew kisses and waved at her throughout their emotion-charged performance giving her a night she will probably remember forever.
Obviously the youngster - quite possibly their youngest fan - caught the attention of the veteran singers.
But nobody else in the auditorium would have begrudged the personal attention that Jadzia received.
They all thought each and every song was sung just for them anyway - judging by the tears rolling down the cheeks of many of the older punters in the crowd.
They’d been waiting a long time for this act - 26 years in fact, which was when Simon and Garfunkel last toured Australia together.
Many of the crowd would have been Jadzia’s age when they first heard the duo’s early hits like Homeward Bound, Sounds of Silence, I Am a Rock, Scarborough Fair and Cecilia.
And as the two familiar voices - with no backup singers - once again joined in unjaded choirboy harmony - one with a halo of curly hair - the audience was transported back four decades.
Images of moon landings and Richard Nixon and Mrs Robinson flashed up on the screen to add to the nostalgia.
The ups and downs of the pair’s notoriously acrimonious relationship were forgotten during the repeated references to them now being the best of friends.
And that’s just how the night started - with the first strains of Friends and a spotlight being shone on two unassuming guys wearing casual blue shirts and jeans, so relaxed with each other they seemed like an old married couple.
From then until the final encore - the upbeat Cecilia - the audience was mesmerized and at times, it seemed, in collective disbelief that they were hearing the songs that are so well known they have been turned into muzak.
The men told well-scripted but funny stories about their first meeting at Grade school in a production of Alice in Wonderland with Simon showing a dry self deprecating side and Garfunkel constantly paying respect to his partner’s talent.
There was poignancy, masses of it, in songs like Kathy’s Song - which Garfunkel described as the first love song of his generation - Scarborough Fair and Still Crazy After All These Years.
There was urgency and pathos in I Am A Rock and upbeat vibrancy in Paul Simon’s solo interlude of Graceland tracks - when he transformed from choirboy to cool hat-wearing dude with fluid relaxed movements.
Garfunkel’s solos included Bright Eyes, which would have turned a few thoughts in the house to the still raw loss of another musical legend with the lyrics: “How could a light that burnt so brightly suddenly turn so pale?”
But the night belonged purely to Simon and Garfunkel, the impossibly normal guys who gave the world those enduring songs, who proved that crotch hugging and moonwalking, however cool, is not a patch on two blokes singing with an acoustic guitar.
And for much of the two-hour concert at Burswood Dome that’s what they did - supported by a very able 10-piece back-up band - managing to sing the lyrics like they were being sung for the first time.
By the time they got to Bridge Over Troubled Water there was a feeling in the house that everybody was part of a monumental experience.
As it built to a crescendo, showing the full gamut of their immense vocal talent, the whole auditorium became a sea of waving arms as every single person jumped to their feet.
By now, the exhausted men were spent but they came back again and again for four encores and introduced their talented musos who were occasionally allowed to shine.
They got the crowd on their feet once again with Cecilia, thanked Perth for being so special and lingered on stage like they never wanted to leave.
They waved to Jadzia once again and were gone.
After the concert Jadzia — who was not even known to the pair — was beaming.
And so was her brother, Callum, 11. Their mother, Meredith Hunter, a big fan since she was a child, explained she had bought five tickets at $359 for her family members and they were thrilled to be sitting in the front row.
“We used to sing all the songs to them when they were babies,” she said. “And I grew up singing Simon and Garfunkel songs so it is a night none of us will ever forget.
“I think they just focused on the youngest people in the audience. It was worth every cent. And the music will live on for another generation.”