The Concert in Central Park, released in February 1982 on Warner Bros. Records, is the first live album by American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. It was recorded in September 1981 at a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in New York City, where the pair performed in front of more than 500,000 people. Proceeds went toward the redevelopment and maintenance of the park, which had deteriorated due to lack of municipal funding. The album peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 album charts and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
About The Concert in Central Park in brief
The Concert in Central Park, released in February 1982 on Warner Bros. Records, is the first live album by American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. It was recorded in September 1981 at a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in New York City, where the pair performed in front of more than 500,000 people. Proceeds went toward the redevelopment and maintenance of the park, which had deteriorated due to lack of municipal funding. The show consisted of 21 songs, though two were not used in the live album. The album peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 album charts and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Ongoing personal tensions between the duo led them to decide against a permanent reunion, despite the success of the concert and a subsequent world tour. A single was released of the live performance of The Everly Brothers’s song ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, which reached No. 27 in 1982, and is the duo’s last Top 40 hit. In the following eleven years, both continued musical careers as solo artists, and worked together only sporadically on single projects. The concert and album marked the start of a three-year reunion of Paul Simon and Art Gar Funkel. The duo had broken up at the height of their popularity and shortly after the release of their fifth studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, which is deemed to be their artistic peak and which topped the 1970 Billboard charts for ten weeks.
The city lacked the financial resources to spend an estimated US$3,000,000 to restore or even to maintain the park. The nonprofit Central Park Conservancy was founded in 1980, and began a successful campaign to raise renovation funds. The video recordings were initially broadcast on HBO, and were subsequently made available on Laserdisc, CED, VHS and DVD. The group had grown apart artistically and did not get along well with each other. Paul Simon questioned whether it could be financially successful, especially given the poor audience attendance of his last autobiographical movie One-Trick Pony, but he had sought treatment for depression. He contacted Garfunke, who was vacationing in Switzerland, and immediately returned to the US. The pair had grown up and gone to school in Forest Hills, Queens, unlike other artists who had left the city in pursuit of local lifestyles. They decided to return to New York and play a concert in the summer of 1981. The event concluded with a reprise of Simon’s song “Late in the Evening’”. It was the first time the duo had played together since the break-up of the group in the late 60s. The band had been one of the most successful folk rock groups through theLate 60s and early 70s, and had had a number of hits in the U.S., including ‘The Sound of Silence’ and ‘Mrs. Robinson’. The song was performed by the duo on the album.
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