Roy Halee

The Concert in Central Park is a live album by Simon & Garfunkel. On September 19, 1981 the folk-rock duo reunited for a free concert on the Great Lawn of New York's Central Park attended by more than 500,000 people. They released a live album from the concert the following March (Warner Brothers LP 2BSK 3654; CD 3654). It was arranged by Paul Simon and Dave Grusin, and produced by Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Phil Ramone and Roy Halee. The concert was also shot on videotape, televised by HBO in 1982, and subsequently released on various home video formats. The VHS and DVD contain two songs that were omitted from the live album: "The Late Great Johnny Ace" and "Late in the Evening (Reprise)". "Johnny Ace" was disrupted by a fan rushing the stage who came very close to attacking Paul. This incident was both frightening and coincidental, as the song is an elegy upon the murder of John Lennon just one year earlier.

“Songs of America” shows the two on stage, in the studio and on a concert tour across a turbulent country. Their ambitious Bridge Over Troubled Water album had yet to be released and the glorious title song was heard here by the general public for the very first time. The program showed news clips of labor leader/activist Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, the Poor People’s Campaign’s march on Washington, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, JFK and Robert Kennedy and other events that were emblematic of the era. “Songs of America” was originally sponsored by the Bell Telephone Company, but the execs there got cold feet when they saw what they’d paid for—legend has it that they looked at the footage of JFK, RFK and MLK during the (powerful!) “Bridge Over Troubled Water” segment (approx 12 minutes in) and asked for more Republicans! (Not assassinated Republicans, just more Republicans...you know, for balance!) The special was eventually picked up by CBS.