I have a veritable cornucopia of crazy and wacky stories of things that have happened on and off-stage, and some of it is really beyond belief. One of the most hysterical is the time I was playing with Art Garfunkel, and after about 38 straight cities of playing everything the same, he took me into his dressing room, and said “Arlen, my voice is a bit scratchy tonight, can we play 'Scarborough Fair' in Ebm, instead of the usual Em?” Of course, I said, it was no problem, and that I would tell all the other musicians about the change, which meant that two of them actually bothered to re-write their charts!
My big problem came when I forgot to mention this to my guitar roadie, Kevin, who went ahead and just as he did night after night before, slapped that capo on the 7th fret of my acoustic guitar, getting it ready good old Em in the Am position!
Another big problem was that the way we played the song was with Art and myself starting it off for almost 2 verses alone, BEFORE all the other instruments were about to enter. Well, there I am, playing it happily in E minor, while I notice out of the corner of my eye, John Jarvis, the piano player, who did not play on this song, jumping wildly, yelling “it’s still in E, it’s still in E!”…at this point I realize there’s no way I could ever shift the capo down one fret in the middle of the song, and I’m starting to literally laugh so hard there are tears rolling down my cheeks. Also, to add insult to injury, Art turns to me, and says “much better, this is much better”, thinking it was now Eb!! Well, all laughing and tears aside, when the band entered, which started with “Hammerin’ Harold Alexander” playing 4 notes on the glockenspiel, it was one of the all-time “train wrecks” perhaps ever played live in front of an audience!! Eventually, the band re-adjusted, but the funniest footnote was that after the show, Artie started scolding all of them, saying “but Arlen sounded perfect!!” Well, then Arlen proceeded to explain to Art what went wrong, and that it was Arlen who played the world’s longest “clam”! Everyone was let off the hook, and no one really ended up getting blamed for anything….but what a wild occurance!!! Just shows, you never know what’s in store for you when you’re asked to change keys!!