If ever a career in music was
pre-ordained it is that of Paul Simon, the ambitious, gifted and ever-so-scrupulous
first son of a professional double-bass player and the champion of this book, a
biography as diligently researched and carefully considered as any of the songs in Simon’s extensive
repertoire. Though clearly an admirer of his music, Peter Ames Carlin
nevertheless feels duty bound to cast a less than approving eye on a man whose
self-belief – some might call it arrogance – results in him repeatedly turning
a deaf ear to well-meant advice, often with unfortunate results, as well as a distressing
reluctance to share credits with collaborators. He's also on the depressive side, unfulfilled despite it all, and consequently resorts to psychoanalysis, usually successfully. The result is that Homeward Bound portrays Paul Simon as largely uncongenial, certainly not
someone with whom you’d want to relax over a couple of beers, let alone share a
catchy riff you’d discovered on your own guitar.
On the plus side,
Simon is no fan of the cult of celebrity, generous towards charities and always
pays his musicians well, sometimes when they don’t even know it, as was the
case with British folkie Martin Carthy who introduced him to, and taught him
how to play, ‘Scarborough Fair’, the traditional ballad that opens Parsley Sage Rosemary And Thyme, the third album Simon recorded with
singer Art Garfunkel. Simon credited himself as the writer but dutifully sent a
proportion of the royalties to Carthy’s music publisher who shamefully failed
to pass them on, with the result that in his ignorance Carthy held a grudge against
Simon for years until the issue was finally resolved after they shared a stage
together in 2000.
This is but one of
many interesting instances that Carlin brings to light where Simon appears
guilty of minor larceny. Plagiarism is too strong a word, but Simon has a
tendency to hear something, or be alerted to something, which after a good deal
of chopping and changing, remixing and re-arranging and almost always adding
his own lyric, he makes his own. Often this is tangential, as in the case of
the musician Heidi Berg who in early 1984 drew Simon’s attention to music from
South African townships by famously loaning him a cassette tape she had found
entitled Gumboots: Accordion Jive Hits No
2. Simon liked what he heard and two and half years later released Graceland, heavily influenced by that cassette and which arguably rescued his
career, or at least gave him a new one, but Heidi Berg, without whom, is
mentioned only in the very small print and referred to not by name but as ‘a friend’
in Simon’s own sleeve note. She didn't even get the cassette back.
At the heart of this
book is the volatile relationship between Simon and Garfunkel, a running theme of
friendship and hostility that Carlin returns to time and again, often with
eye-opening revelations about their endless rivalry and petty squabbles. This
began in the Tom & Jerry era, that rather odd pre-S&G phase wherein
they launched themselves as a precocious doo-wop duo, all smiles, crew cuts and
sweaters, a time of innocence you might think but you’d be wrong. To his credit
Carlin has researched this period, about which little has been written before,
with extraordinary diligence, so much so that I found it one of the strongest
parts of his book (vying with the political fallout from Graceland and the slow-burn build up to the Capeman debacle). Accordingly, we learn
that Jerry (Paul) went behind Tom’s back, making recordings of his own under
various pseudonyms, and that when Art found out he went ballistic. Even now,
over 55 years and heaven knows how many millions of records sold later, this
subterfuge still rankles. Its nadir was probably reached when they refused to
be photographed together for a 1981 hits compilation, thus requiring their
record company to hire lookalikes photographed in shaded soft focus as they
stroll by gentle waves along a seashore.
Simon & Garfunkel, or is it?
All of this keeps us
on tenterhooks as we progress through the sixties, the S&G years. They keep
up the pretence well, the best of friends as their renown escalates, amiable quips shared on stage, but the
tense undercurrent is always there, exacerbated by Simon’s need for control,
Garfunkel keeping him waiting, their physical differences and the overlying sense that
their personalities simply don’t gel. Well, John and Paul Beatle didn’t always
see eye to eye either and neither do Mick and Keith Rolling Stone, let alone the Everly,
Davies and Gallagher brothers, so perhaps we have disparity to thank for some
of the finest pop music of the second half of the 20th Century, and
I include in that the three greatest S&G albums, Parsley…, Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled
Water.
Long before the
break-up of S&G it is clear that Simon wants to make it on his own, and it
is also clear that he has always had eclectic tastes, that never ending need to
broaden his musical palette. He was researching ‘world’ music long before Graceland; witness ‘El Condor Pasa’ on
the Bridge album, ‘Mother And Child Reunion’ on his first solo
record and the gospel and Dixieland excursions on his second, … Rhymin’ Simon. He is an avid reader of good books, a confidant of A-list actors, TV directors and film makers, and he repeatedly
reaches out to teachers who can offer knowledge of technique, musical theory
and literary skills. As a result, the career lows – notably the One Trick Pony movie and Capeman musical – tend to be redeemed by
the quality of the songs within, both lyric and melody, which Carlin
analyses and critiques with a clear eye for style, detail and procedure. It is to Simon’s
credit that when things do go awry for him he has an uncanny ability to back
off, lick his wounds and bounce back, even if that does mean a call to his old
friend and rival who lives in equal splendour to himself on the other side of New
York’s Central Park.
The book is
refreshingly direct, focusing almost exclusively on Simon and only very
occasionally veering off into matters concerning his rivals, usually Bob Dylan,
or politics, and only then when it is pertinent to career choices that the
generally apolitical Simon makes. Too many rock biographies resort to this kind
of thing as padding but this one doesn’t, and to this end Simon’s personal life
is not ignored. We learn of his marriages, and how the first two – to Peggy
Harper (the ex-wife of S&G’s manager) and to actor/writer Carrie Fisher –
broke up, and his immediate family, a troubled only son from his first marriage, and three later children, two boys and a girl, with third wife Edie Brickell.
We learn too about the earlier generations of the Simon lineage, the tailor
from Galicia, another Paul, who emigrated to America in 1903, and Louis the bass
player, who found it difficult to come to terms with his son’s fame and enormous fortune. He desperately wanted his elder son to become a teacher and it wasn't
until this very famous son reached the age of 50 that Louis could finally find the words to tell the multi-millionaire rock star, his boy who drew 750,000 to a concert in Central Park, how proud he was of his
achievements.
Finally, I warmed to
his book because here and there Carlin drops lyrics from the Simon canon into
his text, usually to stress a point yet never tritely or as a cliché. Search
and ye shall find. It’s a lovely touch, a sure sign that not only does Peter
Ames Carlin know his subject inside out but that he cares about his readership.
Those fans that might be deterred by the unflinchingly objective light that Homeward Bound shines on Paul Simon will nonetheless be charmed by the
warmth bestowed in this pleasing, slightly whimsical, attention to detail.
Highly recommended.
