Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s September 19, 1981 free concert in New York’s Central Park drew an estimated 500,000 people to Manhattan to hear a fabulous greatest hits set from the duo, later immortalised as the 1982 live album The Concert in Central Park.
Filmed for TV and subsequently released on video, the gig was one of the most iconic and most-watched concerts of the decade, so when producers of late night US TV talk show The Late Late Show promised to share “newly uncovered long-lost concert footage” from the gig on the January 19m edition of the programme, music fans might have been wondered exactly how this footage could have remained unseen for over four decades.
The truth, obviously, is that the footage is a spoof, a chance for the show’s English host James Corden and his guest, American actor Bryan Cranston, best known for portraying Walter White in crystal meth-manufacturing drama Breaking Bad, to play the roles of Simon and Garfunkel, respectively.
The blurb underneath the YouTube post of the clip references the fact that this is “an iconic, if slightly odd, performance” and those who choose to watch won’t require Sherlock Holmes-esque levels of perception to see exactly why…
Watch the clip below:
In 2021, Paul Simon sold his song catalogue to Sony Music Publishing for an undisclosed figure, rumoured to be around sold for $250 million, making it one of the largest music publishing deals of the decade. Simon and Garfunkel have over 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
