Hello

Two men, one guitar, half a million New Yorkers. At their free reunion concert in Central Park in September 1981, Simon & Garfunkel eventually arrive at the song that started everything — the one whose first two words, “hello darkness”, the entire field can sing back at them.

It had failed the first time. Paul Simon wrote it as a hushed acoustic piece, and the 1964 recording — two voices and a guitar on Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. — sold so poorly that the duo quietly split, Simon decamping to England. Then producer Tom Wilson, noticing the track picking up airplay, brought in session players and overdubbed electric guitar, bass and drums without telling either of them. By January 1966 “The Sound of Silence” was the number-one song in America, and two strangers had a career to resume.

Seventeen years and one more breakup later, here they are in the park, singing it the way it was written: softly.