PAUL SIMON – A QUIET CELEBRATION, London Palladium, May 18, 2026

If a top of the range, precision engineered Rolex wristband could sing, play guitar, compose songs, had a sense rhythm and a spoonful of soul, its name would be Paul Simon. He and his band were as precise as a Swiss timepiece at the London Palladium last night, yet there was nothing sterile about the concert. Perhaps acknowledging that at 84 he is on his last lap, Simon brought an element of simple humanity into his performance, a warmth communicated by his hand gestures and introductions to songs, his stature acknowledged by a respectful audience that only once broke out into song themselves, the “lie-la-lie” chorus from ‘The Boxer’, the penultimate song of the evening, and as this well-known, nearly universal melody echoed harmoniously around me, I knew with absolute certainty that there was nowhere else in the world I would rather be last night than seat O42 in the stalls of this 116-year-old theatre. 

The concert was divided into two unequal halves. For the first 33 minutes Simon, soberly dressed in a dark suit, and his band performed Seven Psalms, his 2023 album, in its entirely, seven separate movements uninterrupted with a recurring theme in which Simon defines his view of ‘The Lord’, uncertain at times, elliptical elsewhere, though describing his ‘Lord’ as a “welcome to a stranger” seems to me like a mild rebuke of the anti-immigration policies of the current White House. Although a repeated guitar chord change sounds a bit like the intro to ‘Feeling Groovy’, with the possible exception of ‘My Professional Opinion’, these songs, or psalms, don’t swing, but there’s an intimacy to them that reviewers have rightly compared to David Bowie’s Blackstar, his final statement. In Simon’s case the circumstances are underlined by the knowledge that he is now partially deaf in one ear and in 2019 caught Covid: “Broke me like a twig in a winter gale”, he sings. He, and we, are lucky he’s still here. 

The 11-piece band, of which more later, are rehearsed to fine detail, each note played or percussion tool hit arriving at the precise moment, almost like clockwork, and, as on the record, Simon is joined for two of the pieces by his wife Edie Brickell. When it is over – “It’s time to come home” is the final line – everyone rises and bows. That wouldn’t have been out of place at the Proms, I thought as the house lights came up to announce a 20-minute interval.  

In 2018, in what was billed at his farewell tour, Paul Simon filled London’s Hyde Park, tens of thousands cheering a set that included all the songs, all the hits, that all the people wanted to hear. This time, maybe the last time, he has restricted himself in London to four much smaller shows, two at the Royal Albert Hall and two at the Palladium, and the far more intimate setting enables him to select songs from his vast catalogue with greater care. There are some he can’t leave out (though there was no ‘America’, ‘Mrs Robinson’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘Mother And Child Reunion’ or ‘You Can Call Me Al’) but others performed during the lengthier second set saw a deep dive into his repertoire, a reflection perhaps of the songs he wanted to play as opposed to songs he feels an obligation to play.

Having changed into more casual attire, Simon opened the 17-song second set with ‘Graceland’, followed by ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’, ‘Train In The Distance’ and ‘Homeward Bound’, every one acknowledged after the opening bars. I noted subtle variations in his phrasing, and here and there his band of superb instrumentalists offered fills above and beyond the recorded versions. Simon, mostly seated, played acoustic guitar for almost all the songs, the two guitarists in his band, Mark Stewart and Gyan Riley, deferring to him when necessary, but the reality was that he didn’t need to play at all. When he did, however, it was clear that age has in no way diminished his skills as an instrumentalist. The others in the band – Mick Rossi on piano and percussion, Jamey Haddad on percussion, Matt Chamberlin on drums, Bakithi Kumalo on bass guitar, Andy Snitzer on reeds, Jamey Haddad on percussion, Matt Chamberlin on drums, Nancy Stagnitta on flute, Caleb Burhans on viola and Eugene Friesen on cello – interjected deftly, soloing with brilliance occasionally, though none were introduced by name aside from Kumalo, whom Simon noted was the last surviving member of the group that performed and toured with him during the Graceland era. 

I was charmed by two songs from the often unfairly overlooked Hearts And Bones album: ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’, on which images of Johnny Ace, JFK and John Lennon were projected onto a screen at the rear, and ‘Renee And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War’, inspired by the caption to a photograph of the French painter and his wife that, as he explained, Paul saw in a book and thought was a good title for a song. I don’t believe this dreamy, slightly surreal song, long a favourite of mine, has been performed live before.

Two selections from Rhythm Of The Saints, ‘Spirit Voices’ and ‘Cool Cool River’, offered plenty of opportunity for the vast array of percussion on stage to be utilised, and Edie Brickell joined Simon for ‘Under African Skies’ from Graceland. ‘Me And Julio’, on which Simon seemed to me to drop an octave here and there, inspired some clapping from the audience that soon petered out, and the first set of encores opened with ‘Darling Lorraine’, another stage first, that traces the arc of a love affair in occasionally graphic detail. The audience sat spellbound until the mood was broken with ‘Something So Right’ and ‘Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover’. 

After that emotionally draining reading of ‘The Boxer’ everyone left the stage apart from Simon who picked up his acoustic guitar to welcome back his old friend the darkness, his first hit, recorded with Art Garfunkel just over 62 years ago. ‘Sound Of Silence’ conveys the simple message that better communication amongst mankind might create a better world, that human relationships are deteriorating in the era of mass communication, of television and telephones. Written long before the advent of computers and mobile phones, let alone AI, that message seems even more pertinent today. Slow down, Simon seems to be saying, slow down and communicate with one another, and then, only then, will we be saved from unwelcome by-products of the 20th – and now 21st – Century. This whole concert, I felt as I left the theatre, was a triumph of communication. 

(The photograph at the top of this post was lifted from Paul Simon's own website; the bottom one by Lisa Pettibone.) 

HOMEWARD BOUND: THE LIFE OF PAUL SIMON by Peter Ames Carlin

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 20^th 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.

PAUL SIMON – Stranger To Stranger

On his recently released album Stranger To Stranger Paul Simon addresses the problem of inequality in a wonderful new song called ‘Wristband’. Set to a brisk tempo, with prominent springy bass, busy percussion and a hint of South America, the song opens as a lament from a performer who has slipped out from the back of a venue for a smoke, only for the stage door to click shut behind him. Realising to his dismay that he isn’t wearing his back stage pass, his wristband, he must gain entry elsewhere, no easy challenge when faced with a 6’ 8’ doorman who doesn’t believe that he’s the leader of the band.

So far so good, but this interesting, potentially comical, scenario is turned on its head in the final verse wherein the wristband of the title becomes an allegory for the disparity of opportunity that plagues life in the USA and, for that matter, the UK as the recent Brexit vote surely indicates. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that instead of concluding the story – whether or not the performer regains entry to the venue – Simon lowers his tone, drops the irony of the earlier verses and cooly shifts his focus to the riots, the homeless and the ‘towns that never get a wristband, kids who can’t afford the cool brand, whose anger is a shorthand for you can’t have a wristband’ and who as a result ‘can’t get through the door’.

Simon rightly thinks highly of this new song for it is included twice on the record, the second time live, slightly sparser, the elastic bass even more prominent. His audience laughs at his predicament, only to be brought down to earth by the third verse and the realisation that there is much more to this song than the droll dilemma of an artist being locked out of his own gig.

‘Wristband’ is unquestionably the highlight of a characteristically thoughtful, well-crafted album by a master of his art who rarely, if ever, disappoints and who, now midway into his seventies, shows no sign whatsoever of flagging or resting of his laurels. He’s still pushing out new sounds and ideas. The first track ‘The Werewolf’ opens with what sounds like a spring being twanged and has a touch of rap about it, and ‘The Clock’, at 1.03 perhaps the shortest tune in Simon’s canon, is a strange, ethereal instrumental set to the ticking of a timepiece.

Elsewhere the album is a judicious blend of the second and third phases of Simon’s career, the first being his period with Art Garfunkel. ‘Street Angel’ and ‘In A Parade’ are both percussive led, ‘Cool Papa Bell’ has the rhythmic pulse of Simon’s South African expedition for Graceland, the title track ‘Stranger To Stranger’ sounds like it could have been recorded for Still Crazy After All These Years, and both ‘Insomniac’s Lullaby’ and ‘Horace And Pete’ see Simon return to his more traditional melodic acoustic style, the notes from his guitar ringing out sharp and clear as spring water. There’s also a couple of brief but lovely guitar instrumentals, ‘In The Garden Of Edie’ and ‘Guitar Piece 3’, and the edition of the album I bought on iTunes also includes a live version of ‘Duncan’, he who in one of Simon’s best ever lines ‘like a dog was befriended’.

I’ve been listening to this record for about three weeks now. Quite simply, it’s another top quality piece of work from a master craftsman.

ART GARFUNKEL, November, 1975 - Part 2

In my introduction to the first part of this 1975 interview yesterday I mentioned that Art Garfunkel gave a press conference at the Savoy Hotel. I was there, as was my old pal Charles Shaar Murray from NME. A long-time Ramones fan, Charlie asked Art whether he thought his music might benefit from a Ramones' influence. Everyone laughed, embarrassed. Art was lost for words.

         Here’s part two of my interview, which contains no Ramones' references whatsoever.

Among the musicians who have worked with Art Garfunkel on his new album Breakaway are Andrew Gould, who plays “everything”, Larry Knechtel, Jim Keltner, Klaus Voorman and Graham Nash and David Crosby who sing back-up vocals. Beach Boy Bruce Johnson is also featured singing in the background.

         But it was Perry’s idea to cut ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’. “Oh, what a song,” murmured Garfunkel in some awe when the subject was raised. “Richard has been wanting to do it for years, in fact, almost half the cuts on the album were specifically brought to my attention by him.

         “There was a big difference, night and day, in fact, between working with Perry and Halee. Richard is a bolder, more adventurous producer. He’s like a cowboy – he takes more chances and he’ll set things up and cut them straight away. Roy Halee would spend far more time miking the foot pedal or whatever and trying all the variations.

         “In one sense you could say that spending all the extra time makes him a more careful artist, but Richard makes terrific records in a faster, shoot from the hip, style. Roy comes out of the masterworks department of Columbia Records so he’s an engineer and particularly a sound man. He’s very conservative. It would be unheard of for him to accept a tape with ticks or pops or anything like that.”

         While Paul Simon has appeared live in concert both in America and Europe since their split, Garfunkel has yet to make an appearance before the public on stage. Live work, he said, is not his first priority. “I’ve had my mind on other things. Firstly, I have a rich and active personal life and secondly, musically, I’ve chosen to spend my time in the recording studio. If I was going to do any touring, I would have had to take something away from that.

         “I have a rough idea of what kind of show I’d do, but I haven’t worked on it yet. But there’s a chance of it happening next year. Probably a tour of small places.”

         Bridge Over Troubled Water, the album, has to date sold more than nine million copies. Currently it’s vying for the biggest seller ever slot with Sound Of Music which, of course, was released some years before. Had Garfunkel ever wondered why this particular album should register such freak sales figures.

         “I didn’t think it was that much better than our other albums. I thought Bookends was a good album too. I don’t think Bridge was so different from the others to justify the extra sales. I have to say that diversity of appeal might have accounted for it. I know that some of the people who bought it are mums and dads types and some others are 12 year olds. It was cognisant of a lot of different kinds of tastes and it had a wide appeal. ‘Celia’ was an up-tempo song, ‘Bridge’ itself was an anthem-like ballad, ‘Frank Lloyd Wright’ was a kind of bossa nova and there was brass on some tracks. It just appealed to all kinds of different people.”

         Had Art, the original ‘Bridge’ vocalist any opinions on Paul’s live version which has been recorded? “I know if I say anything at all and it’s not tactful you’ll lift it out of context and it’ll be the headline,” he said with a grin. “You want me to say something that is in the least possible taste... well, I like our version of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ better than Paul’s solo version.”

         How come Paul has been more active since the break-up. “First of all Paul’s heart-beat is a lot faster than mine. He is more neurotic than I am and he needs to achieve new things more than I do. I can sit back and eat a peach and I don’t have the urge to work that he does.

         “I miss him not writing songs for me to sing, although I never felt he was writing for me specifically in the past. When I make an album now, I miss the quality of his lyrics and his chord changes and melodies. I still have a great regard for his writing.”

         Which brought us back to THAT question. “Well, I definitely would not rule out the possibility of us appearing together again, but at the present I don’t have any specific plans to do a tour with Paul so it’s one of those things where there’s no reason why not but there’s just no plans to do it.

         “I feel confident on my own. I did not feel that I was missing anything when I started working on my own three years ago on the first recordings on Angel Claire. I would have enjoyed Paul’s musical attributes and it would have been a much better record if I could have used the resources he would have brought, but I didn’t feel the lack of Paul.”

         Why did you break up in the first place? A long pause... “Well, something to do with the movie Catch 22 and Mike Nichols, something to do with two different schedules, something to do with a little bit of excitement being off the album-making process... it was a little less fresh than it used to be... something to do with us thinking ‘why not split up?’... everybody out there thinks it’s a crazy thing to do, but why not, it seems like an interesting thing to do separate things for a while.

         “We never set out to accomplish anything as Simon & Garfunkel. We had no conscious goal except to make records and hope that they were popular. We worked very hard and some of the things that amazed me were how one gets so popular and how the popularity process works. I must also say that it amazed me that some of our records sold as much as they did, that they were that popular. It seemed sort of freakish, but it didn’t amaze me that we caught on and became a popular act, because I simply thought we were good.”

         Immediately after the split Garfunkel played leading roles in two films, Catch 22 and Carnal Knowledge. Did he intend to carry on his film career? “In a broad way, yes, but I have no specific plans. I wasn’t all that satisfied with my performances in the films and, in fact, I preferred Two Lane Black Top of them all.

         “I’m still offered scripts, but I used to be offered more than I am now because I’ve kept turning everything down. It’s just another form of expression that I am really happy to avail myself of. To express yourself in the creative arts by going and making a film is a terrific change from making records and I’d love to do it again.

         “I do prefer singing, though.”

ART GARFUNFKEL, Breaking Away, November 1975

Most of my Melody Maker interviews were done in record company offices or hotel rooms. Some were done in recording studios and backstage at concerts and a few at private residences (including Daltrey, Entwistle & Moon) or at temporary residences (Lennon, Sly Stone). This one, oddly, was done in the back of a Daimler limousine whose driver took us from the BBC Centre in Shepherds Bush to Holland Park where we were driven round and round while I chatted with Art whose then girlfriend, the actress Laurie Bird, came along for the ride. Art wasn’t that friendly as I recall, and I got the impression he’d have preferred some ‘alone’ time with Laurie than spend an hour with me.

         Art played a short series of UK concerts this September, performing songs from the Simon & Garfunkel and his own catalogues, and chatting with the audiences about his long career, the style of show adopted by many of his peers these days. I read a complimentary review which said his once golden voice was creaking slightly but his genial, self-effacing stage manner made up for this in spades. And when he sang ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ at the end of the show he brought the house down.

         This interview is divided into two parts, second bit tomorrow.

Art Garfunkel cut an odd dash at the Top Of The Pops rehearsals last week. Slotted between Pan’s People and Mud and closely followed by Jonathan King, he seemed a proverbial fish out of water, not only because he is American, but because his gentle approach to music and the care that he obviously takes when recording is not always apparent on this particular gem from the BBC.

         But Artie stood up and sang his hit single, ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, looking calm and composed and apparently satisfied with the backing he received from the TOTP Orchestra. And one of Pan’s People was overheard to say, somewhat indiscreetly, that Artie was her kind of guy.

         Garfunkel is indeed a curious product of the music industry, an educated and rather conservative young man with a golden voice who has yet to write a note or lyric and put it on record. The less-admiring might well conclude that he is a very fortunate man whose association with a composer of Paul Simon’s talents was directly responsible for earning him a vast fortune. Others rightly consider that his pure, tenor voice was an essential element to the formula that turned Simon & Garfunkel into the most successful duo to have emerged in the history of recorded music.

         The blonde, slightly balding Garfunkel is a contrary fellow who has taken a fair share of knocks through being, quite literally, on the flip side of that partnership.

         Last week he spent three days in England. On the first he taped his slot for Top Of The Pops, on the second he gave a press conference at the Savoy Hotel and the third was spent “privately”. He obliged photographers by posing with pigeons for a photo-call and refused to be drawn by national press reporters into condemning the Bay City Rollers.

         Like a clean-cut Harvard graduate in law, Garfunkel dealt diplomatically with a number of questions that were designed to irritate. He wouldn’t say whether he was earning less money than Paul Simon, although anyone with the slightest knowledge of the music industry would realise that Simon’s publishing royalties as the writer of their material would obviously put Simon in a different income bracket.

         He chose to do one other interview – with the MM, which, he decided, would take place in his car, a Daimler limousine, while being driven around London in search of open spaces where the sunset could be viewed to the best advantage. In the car with him was his American girlfriend, actress Laurie Bird, who snuggled up close for the entire ride. Their mutual affection was obvious.

         Next week sees the release of Garfunkel’s second solo album, Breakaway, which hits the shops at exactly the same time as the fourth Paul Simon solo album, if one includes his ‘live’ record with the Jesse Dixon Singers and Urubamba. Garfunkel’s latest is produced by Richard Perry, of Ringo Starr fame, and it is the first break he has had from the legendary S&G producer Roy Halee. And the choice of material is interesting too: included are versions of Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Believe (When I Fall In Love, It’ll Be Forever)’ and Bruce Johnson’s beautiful ‘Disney Girls’ from the Beach Boys’ Surf’s Up set.

         There’s a Paul Simon song on the record, too, titled ‘My Little Town’ on which the pair duet together for the first time since Bridge Over Troubled Water. Curiously, the same track is also on the new Simon album.

         But two years seems a long time to record an album and it was here that we started our conversation, Garfunkel denying that this time span was overlong. “I don’t think it’s a long time to make an album. I’ve spent the last two years doing a lot of things. I bought a house in Virginia and I’ve spent eight months making a second solo album which has taken most of this year so far.”

         We’ll try a different tack. How come Richard Perry became involved? “I called him,” said Artie, giving little away. “I began to feel that I wanted to make an album without Roy Halee for the sake of it... just as a learning experience, and I called Richard because he was one of the people that I have a good opinion of as a record producer.

         “I recorded with other people and I did some stuff on my own and I did a tune in London with Paul Samwell-Smith, but when I started working with Richard I began to look upon the recording as an album.”

         How do you pick the material? “It was anything I could get off on. That’s a question that doesn’t really have an answer unless there was some concept that defined how I pick material. I just pick whatever I feel like singing.”

         Pushing a little now, I suggested that the inclusion of a Paul Simon song would seem to indicate a possible reunion. “Yes, it would seem to indicate that,” Art responded. “I’m going as far as your statement and it’s perfectly logical.

There is a chance that we might get together to record an album, but I really can’t say any more because there is no more answer. It was good to work with him again because I like him and I think he’s talented.

         “He had this song that he was working on and it looked like he wasn’t going to use it on his album and he knew that I liked the song because I knew it in an earlier form. I told him I’d take it because I was making an album with all forms of music and, certainly, a Paul Simon song would be of interest to me. I started working on the song knowing all the while that Paul Simon, not being too prolific a writer, was probably going to need the song himself. Sure enough he figured later that it would be nice on his album too, so we started working on a harmony version because I thought that the middle part was ideally suited to the old S&G blend and I felt like harmonising with Paul because I hadn’t done that in years.

         “We both got off on it and now we’ve put it on both his album and my own which are both coming out on the same day. Our schedules were so similar that, with a little bit of planning, we could take advantage of the coincidence of it all.”

PAUL SIMON - Graceland

Here’s what I wrote about Paul Simon’s Graceland, the album that arguably rescued his career, in my guide to his music that was published in 1997. I received some help from my friend Chris Allen who knew more than me about African music.

        

In the summer of 1984, as he faced the problem of furthering a critically successful but commercially waning career, Paul Simon received a gift from his friend Heidi Berg which set him on the road towards what many critics believe to be his masterpiece. The gift was a bootleg tape from the townships of South Africa called Gumboots: Accordion Jive Hits No. 2, and it changed his musical direction radically.

         Simon spent the rest of the year seeking out similar black African music and, thoroughly inspired by his researches, went to South Africa in February 1985 to spend 17 days recording with local musicians in Johannesburg’s Ovation Studio.

         Graceland, however, was not recorded solely in South Africa, nor did it consist only of South African music, nor was its subject matter African-oriented. The album was recorded in New York, Los Angeles, London and Louisiana as well as Johannesburg, and included tracks with Cajun and Hispanic backing musicians.

While South African mbaqanga and mbube rhythms dominate the music, adding a unique flavour which up to this point was largely unknown in America and Europe, the songs actually fuse South African elements with American pop, thus rendering the unknown more palatable to ears already tuned to Paul Simon. The majority of the tracks were backed by musicians from the townships, and the experience of writing for and in such a different musical tradition was obviously a liberating experience. While the concerns about which Simon chose to write are those of an American writer – and he is too honest a writer to wish or be able to renounce his cultural heritage – his open response to other cultures loosened the bounds of his songwriting and seems to have enabled him to find a new language, both musically and lyrically.

         The release of Graceland was met with as much political criticism as artistic acclaim. In 1986, South Africa was still ruled by the minority National Party regime, and the essentially peaceful “velvet revolution” (to borrow a description more usually applied to Eastern Europe) which followed from the release of Nelson Mandela, and Prime Minister De Klerk’s recognition that Apartheid was no longer sustainable, was some years away. Sanctions still applied, and a major focus of the anti-Apartheid movement was on high profile sporting and cultural events. Although the principal purpose of the boycott as it affected musicians was to prevent middle-of-the-road or pension-seeking rock dinosaurs cashing in at the notorious white playground of Sun City, Simon had clearly broken the letter of the sanctions regulations. Graceland thus attracted more controversy than Paul Simon, eternally quiet, diligent and uncontroversial, had attracted in his entire career.

         In vain did Simon plead that, far from offering succour to the oppressor, he had been popularising (and rewarding handsomely) some of the very “victims” the sanctions were intended to benefit. He had wandered into a political minefield. To those who argued that any breach of sanctions was unacceptable – and this position is understandable both in theory and as a propaganda weapon – any counter-argument based on artistic grounds was irrelevant. In the final analysis, however, the artistic merits of Graceland figure more substantially in the history books than the fierce contemporary denunciations that were, in the event, soon overtaken by the accelerating march of progress.

         The album was a massive commercial success, especially in the UK where, after reaching number one, it lingered in the charts for almost two years. In America, where radio stations are traditionally less attuned to styles of music that don’t comply with their rigid formatting process, Graceland reached number three, though it stayed in the Top 200 for 97 weeks, eventually selling four million copies.

  

The Boy In The Bubble

The growl of accordion with which the album begins states immediately that this is a different Simon product. With a nod to the Gumboots bootleg which had sparked his first interest in South African music, Simon lets his musical co-writer, the accordionist Forere Motloheloa, signpost the direction the album would take.  It is a direction which, in its dense, churning rhythms, owes little or nothing to the blues, to Chuck Berry, or to the American folk and Tin Pan Alley traditions in which Simon had made his reputation.

         The subject matter – the horrors and insubstantiality which underpins the “days of miracle and wonder” – is less of a radical departure from Simon’s previous work, but he brings a vividness to the lyrics (the juxtaposition of “the bomb in the baby carriage”, for example), as well as a “serious playfulness” (witness the alliteration of “the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart”), which clearly shows the extent to which this new music had irrigated Simon’s imagination. His lyrics add an ironic counterpoint to the upbeat, cheerful swing of the music, but it is not his purpose merely to moan about the awfulness of life on “a distant constellation that’s dying in a corner of the sky”. He is more knowledgeable, more compassionate and more of a poet than that, and if you doubt the poetic qualities of the song, try achieving in other words the same concise effect as Simon does in the final lines - “these are the days of miracle and wonder, and don’t cry, baby, don’t cry”.

         ‘The Boy In The Bubble’ was released as a single in the UK, where it reached number 26 with the help of a stunning video which, in 3D, placed Simon in the jungle, surrounded one minute by wild animals and the next by state-of-the-art technology.

  

Graceland

Joy and sorrow; history and today; America and Africa – in the album’s title track Simon brews a medley of contrasting ingredients into a song as fine as any he has written. The bubbling, insistent, sinuous playing of Baghiti Khumalo on fretless bass and Ray Phiri on guitar provides a perfect counterpoint to the American music which the song celebrates – the Mississippi Delta, home of the blues, memorably defined as “shining like a National guitar”; Elvis Presley, whose Graceland home is the object of the singer’s pilgrimage; and The Everly Brothers, early influences who repay the compliment with their backing vocals on the fade out.

         But the song is no mere trip down nostalgia lane. Simon’s concerns, and those of the “poorboys and pilgrims with families” who share his journey, are contemporary. The singer is not only divorced (“the child of my first marriage” accompanies him) but also a recent loser in the game of love (the bittersweet phrase “she comes back to tell me she’s gone” tells of a fresh, unhealed wound). Nor is his sympathy reserved for his own misfortunes. His “travelling companions are ghost and empty sockets”; he empathises with the “girl in New York City who calls herself the human trampoline”.

         The jaunty music, with its traces of rockabilly, might seem callous and insensitive set against the lyrics, with their clear-eyed view of the emotional detritus of modern life, and such a contrast is just the sort of thing Simon excelled at earlier in his career. Simon’s purpose, however, is not to express pity – either for himself or for the other casualties “bouncing into Graceland”. The happy accident of Presley’s choice of name for his famous and magnificent abode allows Simon to play with the religious notion of redemptive grace. Though not previously, nor here, a religious writer, Simon presents music itself as offering a form of salvation. “Maybe I’ve a reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland,” he concludes.

I Know What I Know

This collaboration with General M.D. Shirinda and The Gaza Singers is a lighter piece, contrasting the Shangaan voices of South Africa with febrile chatter of the New York party scene. The song itself stands as a tribute to Simon’s self-confidence in his new work. He can afford to quote the party girl’s putdowns (“She thought I was alright ... in a sort of a limited way for an off-night” and “There’s something about you that really reminds me of money”) as well as his own feeble chat-up line (“Aren’t you the woman who was recently given a Fulbright?”). The repeated line, “Don’t I know you from the cinematographer’s party?”, brilliant in its scansion and rhythm, neatly encapsulates the empty socialising of the New York arts crowd.

         Simon, while clearly not averse to attending such parties, is not the prisoner of that scene, and has no illusions about the permanence of fame and reputation. He is, at this stage of his life and career, his own man. “I know what I know, I’ll sing what I said, we come and we go, that’s a thing that I keep in the back of my head.”

Gumboots

As the title indicates, this song is another tribute to the accordion-based music that had triggered Simon’s initial interest in the sound of Soweto. Backed this time by the Boyoyo Boys, he tackles a subject perennially popular with poets and songsmiths – love. Among the challenges which this subject presents is the difficulty of finding anything new to say but Simon rises to this challenge. Three vignettes which show different ways of failing to communicate are separated by a chorus which elegantly sums up a feeling every lover has suffered at one time or another. “You don’t feel you could love me but I feel you could”.  The song ends with a repeat of the opening two lines, as if to make the point that this is a process that goes around and around forever.

         This was the first song that Simon heard on his bootleg tape. It is the style of music favoured by mining and railroad workers in SA; ‘Gumboots’ are the heavy boots they wear at work.

Diamonds On The Soles Of her Shoes

Unlike the previous songs on the album, which were initially recorded in Johannesburg, ‘Diamonds...’ was recorded entirely at The Hit Factory in New York, when Ladysmith Black Mambazo were in town for an appearance on Saturday Night Live. Curiously, the song opens, unlike the “African” songs, with a verse in Zulu. It also features the popular West African star Youssou N’dour, as well as our old friends Baghiti Khumalo and Ray Phiri.

          Ladysmith Black Mambazo open the song a cappella, before the familiar bouncing beat kicks in and establishes a cheerful, danceable groove driven headlong by the startling bass guitar of Baghiti Khumalo. The lyrics themselves are somewhat obscure. The rich girl whose non-standard footwear provides the title seems to be involved both with the singer, who takes her for granted, and, doubtless on the rebound, with a poor boy whose “ordinary shoes” can only walk her to a doorway on Upper Broadway.

         Maybe there are metaphors here, or subtle allusions to New York street life, or a surreal re-working of the ‘Down In The Boondocks’ theme. Maybe Simon is just having fun – “and I could say ‘oo oo oo ...’ as if everybody knows what I’m talking about”.

You Can Call Me Al

Rumour has it that this song has its origins at a party Simon hosted wherein he met the composer Pierre Boulez for the first time. As he was leaving, Boulez called Simon ‘Al’ and the hostess, his then wife Peggy, ‘Betty’.

         Whether or not this is true, the song itself has moved a long way from such a simple social misunderstanding. Its theme is an old Simon favourite – alienation. The three verses depict various instances – the man who feels “soft in the middle [though] the rest of my life is so hard”; the man who, having lost his wife, his family, and his role-model, finds “my nights are so long”; the man lost in “a street in a strange world”.

         Now, though, merely depicting social alienation is not sufficient for the revitalised Simon. As in ‘Graceland’, he offers redemption from such angst. This time it is not music but friendship which provides the means of salvation – “if you’ll be my bodyguard I can be your long lost pal”. A penny whistle solo by Morris Goldberg (a white South African based in New York) offers plaintive support to the music of Baghiti Khumalo and Ray Phiri, underlining the fragility of human relationships which Simon so frequently sees and so sympathetically describes.

         ‘Al’ was a number four hit in the UK, helped by an unusual, slightly surreal, video whose principal attraction was its stark simplicity in the age of big budget, often pretentious, rock videos. Shot with one stationary camera on one set, it featured Simon’s friend, the actor Chevy Chase, appearing as Simon, playing a Fender bass guitar, while Simon himself appears dressed similarly in the same location, almost as a guest in his own video.

Under African Skies

If ‘Graceland’ offers the possibility of redemption through music, then the subject of ‘Under African Skies’ is its achievement – “after the dream of falling and calling your name out, these are the roots of rhythm and the roots of rhythm remain”.  

         Set to a lilting ‘walking rhythm’ and backed by Linda Ronstadt’s beautiful descant, which seems to echo to the very skies Simon sings about, the song opens and closes with a pen-portrait of ‘Joseph’ (a name undoubtedly suggested by that of his collaborator Joseph Shabalala but perhaps more accurately to be taken as symbolising an African Everyman). In a few deft lines, Simon sketches both man and continent. Listening to the words and the music together, it is impossible not to sense the vastness of the skies under which Joseph walks.

         The middle verse, which shifts curiously from Simon’s own, masculine, gender (“my nursery door”) to the feminine halfway through, contains his clearest statement of the redemptive power of music – “give her the wings to fly through harmony and she won’t bother you no more”.

HOMELESS

Co-written with Joseph Shabalala, the leader of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, ‘Homeless’ is unlike any of the other songs on the album. Sung entirely a cappella, showcasing the remarkable range and power of Shabalala’s ensemble, the lyrics, alternating between Zulu and English, have no discernible narrative structure, consisting mainly of phrases rather than complete sentences. The theme, as we shall see, is African.

         Simon has said that “[we] wrote in English and Zulu, starting the piece in the middle and working outwards to the beginning and end”. The crux of the song, therefore, is the verse beginning “Strong wind destroy our home, many dead tonight it could be you”. This song is not about homelessness as a social problem affecting affluent western societies (not least London, where the song was recorded at Abbey Road Studios). This is the homelessness of massacre victims in a society where political violence rages. The haunting power of the key repeated chorus “We are homeless... moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake” works not just literally but as a metaphor for the political dispossession of the black South African majority.

         The song ends with a verse in Zulu which translates as: “We would like to announce to the entire nation that we are the best at singing in this style”. What, in another context, might simply be an amusing piece of a performer’s egotism becomes a statement of defiance. We do not accept, Ladysmith Black Mambazo proclaim, the sub-human status to which our oppressors wish to condemn us. We do not merely deserve better – we are better.

CRAZY LOVE, VOL. II

With ‘Crazy Love, Vol. II’ Simon reverts to the music and the themes that dominate the album. Guitarist Ray Phiri’s band Stimela provide the backing for the interwoven stories of Fat Charlie and the singer, both of whom seem to be in the throes (sic) of divorce.  (It may be conjectured that this is the “second volume” of the title, divorce being an established stage in the life-cycle of American love affairs.)

         The chorus lines (“I don’t want no part ...”), repeated with subtle rhythmic variation after each of the song’s three verses, shows Simon rejecting the “craziness” of a life “on fire ... all over the evening news” and telling his ex that this time “the joke is on her”.

         Initially recorded in Johannesburg’s Ovation Studios, the song was completed at The Hit Factory in New York. Morris Goldberg, the penny whistler on ‘You Can Call Me Al’, makes another appearance, this time on soprano sax.

THAT WAS YOUR MOTHER

As if to make the point that this is a Paul Simon album, not a World Music curiosity, Graceland ends with two songs rooted in specifically American musical traditions. The first of these was recorded in Louisiana with backing from those doyens of the Cajun scene Good Rockin’ Dopsie & The Twisters.

         Opening with the robust accordion of the great Dopsie himself (Alton Rubin Sr.), and thus linking the song to the Gumboots accordion-based style which originally inspired the album, ‘That Was Your Mother’ is a jolly romp, sung by a father to his (implicitly grown-up) son, recalling the circumstances in which the son’s parents met. The singer reminds his son (whom he loves, despite his being “the burden of my generation” – a pun Simon uses to great poetic effect) that, though he might now be a parental authority figure, he was once a young man “standing on the corner of Lafayette” looking for some action. It is an observation few children relish hearing or are capable of fully understanding.

         It is a mark of Simon’s maturity that he can use this subject, and in a song of such danceable brio. (Irony is added by the presence in The Twisters’ line-up of two of Dopsie’s own sons.) It is also remarkable that, in such a seemingly simple song, he simultaneously takes the “child’s” position vis a vis a musical “parent” and pays homage to Clifton Chenier, founding father of Cajun music and “the King of the Bayou”.

ALL AROUND THE WORLD or THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS

The final song is perhaps the bleakest on the album. The second “American” track, this time backed by the Tex-Mex stars Los Lobos, it also features the accordion – David Hildago establishing a rocking tempo which, with the long and beautiful “oo oo oo” vocal melody, belies the unvarnished grimness of the song’s lyrical content.

         If the chorus is melancholy (the sun getting first “weary” and then “bloody” before setting, the lack of any answer to the question “what’s a better thing to do?” in “the black pit town”, and the universality of this condition “all around the world”), then the verses positively drip with ennui. The first verse, in the voice of the cynical, faded “former talk-show host”, defines “the myth of fingerprints” – far from being unique, as criminologists affirm, “I’ve seen them all and man, they’re all the same”. The second verse uses the image of an army post – that it is abandoned only adds to the world-weary tone – as a classic example of the crushing of individuality, in this case of the army’s new recruits. The third verse largely repeats the first but, with no need to repeat his definition of the myth, Simon ends with a bleak conclusion – “that’s why we must learn to live alone”.