Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound Of Silence” is one of the best songs of all time and was inspired by Sanford “Sandy” Greenberg, Art Garfunkel roomate and best friend who lost his vision. Sanford released a moving new memoir named “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life”.
Having inspired the lyrics “Hello Darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again,” he said that Garfunkel helped him to recover his will to live again after the blindness. “He lifted me out of the grave.” The 79 year-old man says that they met each other during their first week studying at the Columbia University in New York. “A young man wearing an Argyle sweater and corduroy pants and blond hair with a crew cut came over and said, ‘Hi, I’m Arthur Garfunkel’.”
“Every night Arthur and I would sing. He would play his guitar and I would be the DJ. The air was always filled with music. Still teenagers, they made a pact to always be there for each other in times of trouble. If one was in extremis, the other would come to his rescue,” he said.