Comments from Simon Nicol (September Questions)

Hello Simon ! How do you remember touring with Art Garfunkel ? And who else was on stage then ? What were your favourite songs ?

     It was about ten or a dozen gigs around the UK in 1988. The rest of the band was his usual European sidemen: Nicky Hopkins on Piano, Woody Woodmansay on Drums, Mickey Peat on Bass and I was replacing a guy called Mitch, a much more versatile and gifted musician than I. He and Art had had a disagreement and a dep was required at short notice.
My pal Paul Samwell-Smith (Yardbirds bassist and hugely successful record producer) had put my name
forward so there was a lot of intense rehearsal, where I was legitimately at a disadvantage, as the others all knew the repertoire backwards. Nicky was particularly helpful to me, and was as wonderful a bandleader as his reputation and CV would suggest. His death ten years or so later was the end of an era for Rock'n'Roll piano.

     Sound levels on stage were 'polite' to say the least. This was before the days of in-ear monitoring, and Art's voice, though clear and bell-like, is not a big-bore weapon and he needs a lot of space around his singing to keep those qualities. Consequently Woody was playing mainly with brushes and was in a perspex box (with an open top) and I had to replace the woven beaded guitar strap I used in those days with a fabric one because it was "too noisy" when I put down the acoustic to pick up the strat.

     I enjoyed the (to me) unfamiliar songs he was into: the elaborate stuff by Jimmy Webb and Antonio Carlos Joabim but the highlight was the 2nd encore (after Trouble Over Bridgewater, natch) which we did as a duo: April Come She Will. Almost like Simon and Garfunkel in fact......