Video of the Day: Art Garfunkel, ‘All I Know’ Live—on the Sublime Singer’s 76th Birthday

CBS Sunday Morning featured a segment on Art Garfunkel today. The timing could hardly seem better: not only in support of his new memoir, What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man, but also right on his 76^th birthday. (He was born in Forest Hills, Queens, for those who don't know.)

As I listened to CBS’ Rita Braver interview the pop legend, I felt a vague sense of familiar unease when Garfunkel explained the motivation for his retrospective: “I suppose, if I examine my inner mind, I would say, 'Time to come out of the shadow of Paul Simon and establish yourself as a thinking artist who can sing.' I know myself to be a creative guy, and I think my profile out in show business is 'the guy over Paul Simon's right shoulder.'... I thought I was playing it too deferential to Paul."

My disquiet turned into an old sinking feeling as I heard Garfunkel acknowledge, late in the interview, that he and his onetime partner were at "one of their low points." (There goes any joint concert appearance for a while!)

As sensitive about the value of his solo career as he is articulate about his influences (“When in the temple, it's got a high ceiling, it's got wood walls—these are great for a singer, 'cause I thrive on the reverb”), Garfunkel craves affirmation of his work apart from What’s-His-Name. I, for one, don’t mind in the least providing that.

In mulling over which of his solo performances to highlight, I thought of a heart-rending mid-Seventies work, “Second Avenue.” I also carefully considered a comparative rarity, his theme sung over the opening credits to Gary David Goldberg’s gone-way-too-song comic valentine to his Fifties childhood, “Brooklyn Bridge.” (Oh, heck: just click on this YouTube link and see if you don’t get a lump in your throat as you listen to him warble the nostalgic lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman about “that place just over the Brooklyn Bridge/It’ll always be home to me.”)

But ultimately, I selected the biggest hit from his first post-Simon release, Angel Clare (1972), a cover of Jimmy Webb’s “All I Know.” Recorded live in 1996, this performance on YouTube is not only one of the best renditions of a seminal tune by one of my favorite pop singer-songwriters, but also gains vibrancy from its setting: Ellis Island, as special to Garfunkel as to those of us who grew up loving his angelic voice, a sacred place not unlike the temple where he first became aware of his God-given vocal gifts.