Art Garfunkel Has New Album Duet Partner: His Son, Art Jr.
by Best Classic Bands Staff
Art Garfunkel and his son, Art Garfunkel Jr., have released their first collaborative studio album. Father and Son, arrived on November 8, 2024, via BMG, is a covers album that features a selection of personal favorites from the last century. The album, named for the Cat Stevens song, is available in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.
“It felt like a dream. It was simply quite wonderful. I love working with him,” adds Art Garfunkel, who turned 83 the week the album arrived. “I like to say my son is a better singer than I am. I mean, I’m pretty good…but he is better.”
It’s impossible to write about Garfunkel without bringing up his longtime musical partner, Paul Simon. The pair, who had been estranged for years, got together for dinner recently in Garfunkel’s New York studio. Garfunkel told Grammy.com, “We hadn’t seen each other in years — and suddenly, something about this meeting felt like a possibility. This has always been the case with Paul.”
Of their past work as a duo, Garfunkel said, “Paul’s style was always, ‘let me show you what I’ve been working on lately.’ He would show me the new songs, and I’d go crazy over how good it was, because Paul Simon is a man of great talent. And my authentic response to his beautiful music made him very excited. That sincere appreciation led us to start working together. It’s our style of being sociable.”
He said of the recent meeting, “[Paul’s] ex-wife [presumably Peggy Harper] is moving into the place where I stay. I knew I was going to run into him sooner than later. We had dinner — there were hugs and tears. It’s great when a man cries. But I felt that I really did hurt him in the past.”
The Garfunkels cover Simon’s “Old Friends” on the new album.
Related: Our Album Rewind of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water
For the album, producer Felix Gauder (Pet Shop Boys, Jimmy Somerville) was joined by Italian string arranger Davide Rossi (Coldplay, Alicia Keys) and U.K. songwriter-producer Ash Howes (Kylie Minogue, Ellie Goulding). As they were finishing off the album, Garfunkel and Garfunkel booked another studio for a video shoot, which turned out to be the very studio where Cyndi Lauper recorded the original version of “Time After Time.”
Art Garfunkel (r.) and son Art Garfunkel Jr. (Photo by Stefan Falke, used with permission)
“‘Time After Time’ is one of my all-time favorites from the ’80s,” says Garfunkel Jr. about the new, orchestrated rendition of the hit, first released by Cyndi Lauper four decades ago. “It’s a song that fits perfectly on this album—because it also deals with our relationship, this unique bond between my father and me. From one generation to the next, it’s about time passing, about passing on the baton, but here we are working together in the studio…and thus begins the next cycle, as my father takes this exciting next step with me.”
“This one is truly a father-son project, it’s all about this unique connection,” Art Jr. adds in the announcement. “We recorded a dozen of our most cherished songs. I brought more of the ’80s influences into the project, and my father brought more of the Great American Songbook, wonderful songs from the 1940s and so on. These two influences came together in a pretty exciting way. Overall, it’s definitely an expression of our bond.”
Further album highlights include songs by the Beatles, Cat Stevens and Eurythmics. The full track listing is below.
Art Garfunkel Jr. was born in Manhattan in 1990, the first child of Kathryn and Art Garfunkel. Spending most of his childhood and youth in the United States, he often accompanied his father on tour even as a child. After moving to Berlin as a teenager, he toured extensively with his father in 2018 and 2019, followed by the release of his first two solo albums, Wie Du and Evergreen, which hit the top 10 and the top 15, respectively, in Germany.
Art Garfunkel launched his career in 1957 as one half of famed U.S. folk-rock duo Simon and Garfunkel (originally known as Tom and Jerry), founded with songwriter-singer Paul Simon. After the duo split up in 1970, Garfunkel not only landed solo hits (“Bright Eyes”), but also acted in various Hollywood films. Having shared stages with Paul Simon occasionally over the last decades (their 1981 Central Park performance in front of a 500,000-plus audience comes to mind), he’s recently been performing with his son, Art Garfunkel Jr.
Watch the official trailer for the album
Father and Son Track Listing
Blue Moon
Vincent
Blackbird
Old Friends
Time After Time
Once In a While
I Won’t Let You Down
Let It Be Me
Nature Boy
You Belong to Me
Here Comes the Rain Again
Father and Son
Watch Art Garfunkel and Art Jr. sing “Let It Be Me” in 2019
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6 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationVery nice. But a horrible album cover!
Have to agree with the album cover comment. A picture of the guys in the kitchen? And not a centered-in-the-kitchen shot. Maybe if the album had a food-related theme, and was named something like “Refrigerate After Opening”. Which would, yeah, still be REALLY odd.
The album cover is a re-print of Art’s fourth solo album from 1979 “Fate for Breakfast”. When we saw this album cover, we recognized it right away. A touching tribute to one of Art’s earlier albums.
They suddenly realized that they were in the same studio that Cyndi Lauper recorded the original version of “Time After Time”? Wow. What are the chances they didn’t know that ahead of time? ZERO. They must really believe most people are idiots.
Being a huge Art Garfunkel fan, I couldn’t help notice that the cover of the new album with his son looked familiar. 45 years ago, Art’s backdrop to his album cover (the album was Fate for Breakfast) is the SAME!!
Beautiful harmonies. Very talented Father & Son.