Famed songwriter Paul Simon made a rare appearance on Saturday morning to promote his documentary “In Restless Dreams” at the Hamptons Film Festival.
Simon sat for over an hour on stage in front of an adoring and sold out crowd at the East Hampton Middle School auditorium. Rolling Stone film editor David Fear reviewed Simon’s career with him before audience members — including yours truly — got to ask some questions.
At around 5:30 in the video below I ask Simon about Aretha Franklin making her own kind of hit of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” I said Paul had once told me he started performing “Bridge” in concert a la Aretha — and he had. He modified that answer yesterday and added that he never liked singing it himself because it was Art Garfunkel’s song, and then Aretha brought the church to it.
In the not-video’d part of the interview, Simon was very open and talked about how John Phillips had sent him and Garfunkel as “emissaries” to San Francisco to convince the Grateful Dead to perform at Monterey Pop. He called his long time producer Roy Halee his and Garfunkel’s George Martin. He also said the split with Garfunkel really was because Artie wanted to do films and wasn’t sticking full time to their duo.
Simon said yesterday and also says in the film that he didn’t learn Garfunkel was going to make Mike Nichols’ film, “Carnal Knowledge,” until he heard it from their mutual friend, Charles Grodin. When he asked Garfunkel why he didn’t tell him, Simon says his partner responded “Because I thought you’d stop making Bridge Over Troubled Water.” He added: “He wanted to be a movie star, which was understandable.”
