The leg­end of Simon & Gar­funkel is big­ger than either per­former, though only one of them remained a major star after their breakup, while the oth­er became… too often the butt of unkind jokes. At the pin­na­cle of their fame in 1970, Art Gar­funkel, the tall angel­ic singer with the gold­en halo of curls, walked away from the duo as their rela­tion­ship soured. Gar­funkel moved to Con­necti­cut and became a math teacher for a spell. “I would talk them through a math prob­lem,” he remem­bered in 2015, “and ask if any­one had any ques­tions and they would say: ‘What were the Bea­t­les like?’”

Paul Simon, Gar­funkel recalled of the acri­mo­nious split, “was get­ting on my nerves. The jokes had run dry.” Per­haps it’s for the best they quit when they were ahead since their friend­ship nev­er recov­ered. After their famous Cen­tral Park reunion con­cert in 1981, a planned tour fell apart when they stopped speak­ing to each oth­er. At their 1990 induc­tion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the duo played three songs and report­ed­ly left with­out a word exchanged between them. “Arthur and I agree about almost noth­ing,” Simon remarked. Their split has all the qual­i­ties of a ter­ri­ble divorce.

Luck­i­ly for their fans, the two have infre­quent­ly giv­en their part­ner­ship anoth­er shot, stag­ing tours in 1993 and 2004. And in 2009, Gar­funkel showed up for three songs dur­ing a Simon con­cert at New York’s Bea­con the­ater. This led to a tour of Asia and Aus­tralia and, as you can see up top, an appear­ance togeth­er at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th Anniver­sary Con­cert at Madi­son Square Gar­den, where they played one of their biggest hits—and arguably one of Simon’s great­est songs—“The Sound of Silence” (1964). If you didn’t already know that they can’t stand each other’s com­pa­ny, you’d hard­ly guess it from the video.

After Simon’s gen­tly plucked gui­tar intro, they exchange brief but gen­uine smiles, then launch into har­mo­ny, their voic­es blend­ing with all the haunt­ing beau­ty of their hey­day. In fact, it’s pos­si­ble that—despite the bit­ter­ness and wear of sev­er­al decades—they sound bet­ter than they ever did. Com­pare this per­for­mance to that below, a live Cana­di­an TV appear­ance from 1966. (Simon earnest­ly, and iron­i­cal­ly in hind­sight, intro­duces the song as a com­ment on strained com­mu­ni­ca­tion.) The ear­ly per­for­mance seems rushed and man­nered com­pared to their impas­sioned reunion in 2009.

It’s a tru­ly haunt­ing expe­ri­ence fit­ting a tru­ly haunt­ing song, and made all the more poignant by the fact that they may nev­er per­form togeth­er again. In 2010, what is like­ly their last reunion end­ed when Garfunkel’s voice failed him. Diag­nosed with a con­di­tion called “vocal pare­sis,” he’s spent the past few years regain­ing his singing abil­i­ties. But, while Simon has ruled out anoth­er reunion, Gar­funkel, for all his ran­cor and regret, holds out hope. “When we get togeth­er,” he told The Tele­graph in 2015, “it’s a delight to both of our ears. A lit­tle bub­ble comes over us and it seems effort­less. We blend. So as far as this half is con­cerned, I would say, ‘Why not, while we’re still alive?’” They may have made a very unhap­py cou­ple, but the mag­ic that brought them togeth­er clear­ly has­n’t suf­fered for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Paul Simon Feelin’-Very-Groovy Moment

Paul Simon, Then and Now: Cel­e­brat­ing His 70th Birth­day

Art Gar­funkel Lists 1195 Books He Read Over 45 Years, Plus His 157 Favorites (Many Free)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Ask accom­plished blues and south­ern rock gui­tarists who they lis­ten to and you’ll hear a num­ber of names come up: Duane All­man, Albert King, Bud­dy Guy… the list of gui­tarists’ gui­tarists could go on and on. One name you’ll hear from near­ly every­one: Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an, the king of Texas blues, before whom even the very best play­ers stand in awe, a gui­tarist whose leg­end has only grown in stature since the music world lost him in a trag­ic, fatal heli­copter crash in 1990.

The most icon­ic gui­tarists get asso­ci­at­ed with their instru­ments of choice, and Vaugh­an is no excep­tion. The Fly­ing V defines the look and sound of Albert King; the cus­tom black Gib­son 335 (“Lucille”) that of B.B. King. And when we think of Vaugh­an, we may imme­di­ate­ly think of “Num­ber One,” the beat up Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er he loved so much he called it the “first wife.” One of a num­ber of Strats Vaugh­an played through­out his too-brief career, “Num­ber One” has become “a cen­ter­piece” at the Texas State His­to­ry Muse­um, and for very good rea­son.

Almost no gui­tarist before or since has ripped such raw emo­tion and sear­ing pow­er from an instru­ment, with the excep­tion per­haps of Vaughan’s hero, Jimi Hen­drix. Like Hen­drix, Vaugh­an is known entire­ly as an elec­tric gui­tarist, his tone so leg­endary it has inspired a cult fol­low­ing all its own. But give SRV, as his fans call him, an acoustic gui­tar and you’ll see right away why the most the dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of that myth­ic tone is how sparkling clean it is.

Vaugh­an need­ed no effects to pro­duce his mas­sive sound, though he used a few on occa­sion (most notably a clas­sic Vox wah ped­al that once belonged to Jimi). The tone, as old­er gui­tarists will for­ev­er tell aspir­ing new­bies, was in his fingers—in the dynam­ics of his pick­ing, his bends and slides, his inti­mate, force­ful engage­ment with the fret­board. In the rare acoustic ses­sions here, see just why Vaugh­an is so revered. Above watch him launch into a six-string 12-bar acoustic blues.

And just above, see Vaugh­an tear it up on a 12-string acoustic gui­tar in his MTV Unplugged appear­ance in 1990, the year of his death. Gui­tarists and seri­ous fans of the blues and coun­try gui­tar will often namecheck Dan­ny Gat­ton—the Wash­ing­ton, DC wun­derkind so incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed that he earned the nick­name “The Humbler”—as the great­est gui­tarist they’ve ever seen. It’s hard to argue with that assess­ment. But Vaugh­an wasn’t just an amaz­ing play­er, he was also a beau­ti­ful­ly under­stat­ed per­former. Here we have the unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to see his show­man­ship and skill stripped to their essence.

via Soci­ety of Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s Ver­sion of “Lit­tle Wing” Played on Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment, the Gayageum

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Many fans of the Cure first encoun­tered them with 1987’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, a dou­ble album filled with boun­cy pop con­fec­tions like “Why Can’t I Be You?” and “Just Like Heav­en,” or with Dis­in­te­gra­tion, 1989’s swirling atmos­pher­ic mas­ter­piece that nails the sound of severe depres­sive episodes. On these albums, Robert Smith & company’s cov­er­age of each “point on a bipo­lar scale” wasn’t an affectation—it was a lifestyle. Or so it seemed to the aver­age lis­ten­er giv­en the band’s pecu­liar look: pan­cake make­up and weep­ing wil­low hair that gave them the air of stage clowns in a Restora­tion mad­house.

So asso­ci­at­ed are they with an art­house look and new wave pop-to-tor­tured goth sound that many peo­ple find it jar­ring to dis­cov­er just how punk they once were. Though able from the start to rip out pop gems like “Boys Don’t Cry,” the band inhab­it­ed a hard­er-edged ter­ri­to­ry in their first few years. In the late 70s, along with The Damned, Joy Divi­sion, and Siouxsie and the Ban­shees, they carved out the space of British post-punk and new wave before there was any such thing as “goth.”

As you can see from their first TV appear­ance, at the top, the spare, spiky hooks and atmos­pher­ics that form the basis of their sound pre­dat­ed the dis­tinc­tive look, one so eas­i­ly pack­aged, copied, and par­o­died lat­er on—and turned to excel­lent cin­e­mat­ic account by John­ny Depp in Edward Scis­sorhands and Sean Penn in This Must Be the Place.

The tele­vised per­for­mance took place at The­atre de l’Empire in Paris on Decem­ber 3rd of 1979, by which time the band had been already been togeth­er for sev­er­al years, though they were still very young (Smith only 21), and had only just released their first stu­dio album, Three Imag­i­nary Boys. In the full per­for­mance, above, see them play the title track and their con­tro­ver­sial, Camus-inspired, first sin­gle “Killing an Arab.” They open, in the first clip, with a new song that would appear on the next record, Sev­en­teen Sec­onds. It’s one that presages the supreme­ly moody ambiance of Dis­in­te­gra­tion, but with­out that album’s lyri­cal focus. Here, what would become “A For­est” is played as “At Night,” with entire­ly dif­fer­ent lyrics.

In these ear­ly per­for­mances, we see how for­mi­da­ble The Cure was as a min­i­mal­ist punk band, and how effec­tive is Robert Smith’s angu­lar gui­tar work, which earned him a spot in the tour­ing ver­sion of Siouxsie and the Ban­shees that year as well.  (See him play “Love in a Void” with them above in a ’79 tele­vi­sion per­for­mance.) Like that band’s ear­li­est work, The Cure drew direct­ly on the raw ener­gy of punk in both their musi­cal and sar­to­r­i­al choic­es. Only lat­er did they devel­op into the glo­ri­ous­ly mopey goths fans know and love, as the 80s made more flam­boy­ant demands on music fash­ion, appar­ent­ly, and Smith became a more eccen­tric ver­sion of him­self, turn­ing his extreme intro­ver­sion into a series of the­atri­cal, tragi­com­ic per­sonas.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness