US: Hello money, my old friend the top ticket prices to see a reformed Simon and Garfunkel play live will be $250. The duo were the most successful folk-rock act of the 1960s.
They split up in 1970 but have performed together occasionally since. Now they are putting aside artistic and personal differences.
Beginning on Saturday in Michigan, they will tour 30 US cities over the next few months before coming to Europe next year with ticket prices that would make even Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones blush.
The pair, both 63, decided to reform after playing together at this year's Grammy awards.
"I'd never actually thought that we'd lost our ability to sing together and have a blend," said Art Garfunkel at a press conference earlier this month to announce details of the tour. "What we had was a friendship that was estranged and the Grammys was an opportunity to put that behind us."
Childhood friends from Queens in New York, the duo used to rehearse face-to-face, watching each other's lip movements to perfect their trademark vocal harmony sound. Originally a pale Everly Brothers imitation, their career soared when Bob Dylan's producer starting working with them. Songs such as Homeward Bound, Mrs Robinson and the karaoke-friendly The Boxer were polished folk-rock classics. There was a vague hippyness about their music, which chimed with the late 1960s times, and even if some of their material reeked of a folk Mass, their songs - all written by Paul Simon - were world-class compositions.
As major success arrived, so did jealousy and egos. Simon once talked about how Garfunkel, with his pitch-perfect high tenor voice, would get all the plaudits for singing Bridge Over Troubled Water while Simon fumed off-stage, knowing he alone had written the song.
Both rather neurotic in that Woody Allen New York way, they grew to dislike each other intensely and split up in 1970. Simon went on to have a very successful solo career but his somewhat reedy voice never did justice to his compositions. Garfunkel went on to release some atrocious solo albums and tried to remould himself, with little success, as a moody method actor.
There have been reunions before, most notably a 1981 concert in New York's Central Park, but this latest tour, they say, will be their last. "We tend to get back together every 10-12 years," says Simon. "I think this is probably going to be the last time that we're going to do this."
A new greatest hits album will be released to coincide with the tour, and European tour dates for next year, which will include an Irish show, should be announced soon.
