Folk icon Paul Simon gave his most heartbreaking performance when he sang his Simon & Garfunkel classic “The Sound of Silence” at Ground Zero to pay tribute to the victims of 9/11. Paul is a New Yorker, so it’s personal for him; you can see it from the emotion on his face. The beautiful ballad has never sounded more haunting than this, and the enigmatic lyrics seem to take on another layer of meaning in this context.
Paul’s performance struck a chord with the crowd, with audience members crying and embracing as he sang. It’s also a testament to Paul’s talent that he can take a song that is based largely around a dual vocal approach and make it sound so gorgeous with a solo performance. The Music Man readers may note that Paul performs the song with a different feeling and inflection than usual, making it a completely unique performance.
Paul performed “The Sound of Silence” at Ground Zero on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. His delivery made quite the impact on viewers, with people adding comments such as “I remember watching this with my mother live. We started sobbing from the first chord. Such a beautiful tribute to those souls lost on that horrible day” and “Paul is a native New Yorker and you can see the deep emotion in his face, but he is so much more. He’s an American treasure.”
Simon & Garfunkel delivered one of the greatest performances of “The Sound of Silence” on September 19, 1981. The pair’s unique dual vocal approach is shown in all its glory throughout. It was a notable appearance for the duo, as they had not performed together for four years at that point. Simon & Garfunkel performed in front of 500,000 people at the event, which was held as a benefit to raise funds to restore Central Park. The show would subsequently be released as their The Concert in Central Park live album.
The Music Man readers might be interested to learn that Paul wrote “The Sound of Silence” at age 21, creating the song in his bathroom with the lights off in order to better concentrate. It subsequently took him three months to perfect the lyrics, which he eventually completed in February 1964. Paul has not made the precise inspiration for the lyrics of “The Sound of Silence” clear. However, at a performance in the Netherlands in June 1966, Art Garfunkel said the song was about “the inability of people to communicate with each other.”