Paul started in Paris, busking by the Seine and sometimes sleeping under the Pont Neuf. He said, ‘I did some busking. I sang whatever was popular that had a loud high ending. I was particularly good at loud high endings. If you sang the note for a long time, you tended to get paid for it.’ Paul lived in a convent for a week, which suggests he could have written a ‘Sisters of Mercy’ before Leonard Cohen.
While in Paris, he saw Los Incas, who performed music from the Andes using charangos and pan flutes, at the Théâtre de l’Est Parisien. They gave Paul an album which contained the highly melodic ‘El Condor Pasa’ with its quickened ending.
Simon met many English and French beatniks and he befriended David McLausland who ran a folk club in Brentford, Essex. David was impressed and invited him to the club. Indeed, when Simon came to the UK, he stayed with David’s parents. David had attended the Campion School in Hornchurch and somehow the school scarves found their way onto the cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s 1966 album, Sounds of Silence. On the first night at his club, Paul met Kathy Chitty, a quiet girl taking tickets on the door. They became an item and at least three songs are dedicated to her – ‘Kathy’s Song’, ‘Homeward Bound’ and ‘America’.
The music writer Mike Ledgerwood recalled, ‘Paul Simon sang for his supper for a paltry three quid a night in crowded, smoke-filled Essex clubs, frequented by bearded, beer-swilling folk fanatics.’ Paul was good and appealed not only to bearded beer-swillers in Essex but to folk clubs throughout the country. He’d stop at a city, find a folk club and ask if he could perform. He said, ‘It was a great way to spend my time. I was roaming around a small country where everything was new and exciting.’
With a broad simplification, there were two types of clubs in the UK. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger favoured a traditional approach, the finger-in-your-ear clubs, where you could only perform songs relating to your region. The other, more flexible, approach related to the growing interest in writing your own songs.
MacColl was suspicious of songwriters. Even the term jarred with him as that implied individual endeavour. He regarded song-making as being an on-going conversation with what had gone on before; a collective experience, if you like. He was rigid and inflexible and in 1961 he formed the Singers’ Club in London, not, you note, the Songwriters’ Club. Songwriting to him was self-indulgence, although he wrote some beautiful compositions, famously ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’.
The UK folk song revival came about in the 1950s, and by 1958 there were hundreds of folk clubs. They were loosely associated with left-wing politics especially CND and with beatniks and poetry.
Simon met several up-and-coming and highly influential musicians around Soho. Davey Graham had been born in Leicester in 1940 and he was turned onto the guitar and folk music by Lonnie Donegan in the mid-50s. He was a fast picker but he mellowed after lounging in Morocco. You can see him on YouTube playing ‘Cry Me a River’ in a 1959 TV documentary made by Ken Russell. The comedian Bob Monkhouse was a strong advocate of his work and in April 1962 Davey made an EP, 3/4 A.D., with his friend the blues singer Alexis Korner. It included the instrumental, ‘Anji’.
Davey Graham set the scene: ‘I was in Menton which is a small village noted for its lemons and its fresh mountain air. A lot of people with bronchial trouble go there and it is on the coast between Italy and France. Anji was there and we slept in Napoleon’s bedroom, but most of the time five of us lived in the same room which was part of a cobbler’s shop. We were arrested when four of us went riding on the same motorcycle and we found ourselves in jail. The fifth one of us, Alex Campbell, put on his best denims and carried a novel under his arm to look respectable and went to the police station to get us out.’
Davey continued, ‘I wrote “Anji” in Menton. It is a simple soleares which is found in Spanish music. It’s a little like “Hit the Road Jack” and it’s a good way to start a tune. If you are sitting down for a jam with some musicians you don’t know, they often say, ‘Do you play “Pennies from Heaven” in F or B flat?’ which is anathema to a fingerstyle guitarist like myself. If I suggest a soleares chord sequence, we can get a Latin rhythm going, especially with a drummer. I had taped “Anji” so that Bert Jansch could learn it and I had thrown in a quote from “Work Song” by Cannonball Adderley. Paul learnt it from that and he made a happy enough job of it. I made some good money from it but I wish I had done something else with that money.’
And who was Anji? ‘Anji was a half-Czech girl who used to bottle for me when I was busking. Why did I call it that? Well you would if you had deflowered a girl like that.’ With that track, Graham had created DADGAD tuning and he appeared in the cult film, The Servant, written by Harold Pinter and starring James Fox and Dirk Bogarde.
In January 1965, Davey released the LP Folk, Blues & Beyond, which had a spirit of adventure about it, and not content with that, in April, he put out Folk Roots, New Routes, which he made with Shirley Collins. In 1966 Simon recorded ‘Anji’ for the Sounds of Silence LP.
Paul Simon was taken with his work but Davey Graham was an erratic performer, openly known for heavy drug use: ‘I did a couple of sessions with Paul but they were never released because he wasn’t satisfied. He asked me to join him sometime in the 70s. I don’t remember why I turned it down but not doing that was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.’
No to Paul Simon but yes to the American folk/blues guitarist Stefan Grossman. Grossman says, ‘When I came to England, Martin Carthy took me to meet Davey Graham. I knew that he had problems with substance abuse and we got him back on his feet. We toured with him and soon he was starting to play really well. We did some very nice albums together.’
Another fine guitarist, Bert Jansch, born in Glasgow in 1943, heard ‘Anji’ when he was in St Tropez and adapted it, recording his version in 1965. Jansch was much more approachable than Graham and was often seen around Soho. He became part of Pentangle. When I met Bert Jansch and tried to sort out the timeline for ‘Anji’, it only added to the confusion. ‘I got “Anji” from Jill Doyle, who is Davey’s sister and I think I recorded it about two months before he did. We were both recording for Bill Leader at the time and Davey was working with Shirley Collins.’
And how would the listener distinguish between the two versions? ‘Well, Davey’s is right and mine’s wrong! Mine’s much faster and I think I nicked a bit from another tune and stuck it in the middle and Davey doesn’t play that.’
In short, I think Davey recorded ‘Anji’ in 1962 and then did a tape for Bert Jansch early in 1965 where he added some of ‘Work Song’. This was what Bert recorded on Bert Jansch, released April 1965, which is what Paul Simon followed.
Al Stewart said, ‘Bert Jansch was a great influence on the guitar players on the English folk scene at the time. Everybody wanted to be Bert Jansch or John Renbourn or a combination of the two. I had never seen anyone play acoustic fingerstyle until I saw them and it was “Wow, what is this?” On an average night at Les Cousins which is where everybody went to see Bert, the whole of the front row could all play “Anji” on the guitar.’
Paul Simon had several bookings around London, and Wally Whyton saw how his charisma was taking shape. ‘At places like the Railway Inn at Brentwood, Paul was the biggest thing going. He had an incredible way with the birds. He sat there wearing a polo-neck sweater and black cord jacket doing Dylan numbers and things like “The Sound of Silence” and “I Am a Rock” and the girls used to go mad.’ Simon’s performances at the Railway Inn were recorded by a BBC engineer, Dennis Rookard, and they can now be heard at Essex Record Office.
Wally Whyton did a booking with him and Redd Sullivan and he recalled that ‘Paul liked a lot of the good old rock’n’roll numbers. I am sure it was only Art’s influence which stopped him from doing more of that. He started off with “Teddy Bear” one night and I came back with “Peggy Sue”. Once we got going, we went on like that for the whole session.’
Alan Bell of the Blackpool Taverners recalls, ‘I r
emember Paul Simon playing at Accrington Stanley’s football club, the old supporters’ club, which was the venue for a folk night. We were top of the bill and he was the supporting artist. The organiser had booked him for £5 but because he had a really good night, he gave him an extra £2 10 shillings so he got £7 10 shillings (£7.50) for the gig.’
The sheet music cover for ‘The Sound of Silence’ has been changed over the years to match Simon’s current look, this one is from 1975. Nice tash, Paul. If things don’t work out, you can always join the Village People
Harvey Andrews said, ‘Paul was supposed to come to the Jug O’Punch in Birmingham but he got his dates mixed up and came the following week. Ian Campbell was furious. How could this little guy turn up on the wrong night? He said, ‘Well, as you’ve driven all this way, we will let you do four songs.’ He stood up, all in black, which was his trademark, and he sang “A Church Is Burning”, “He Was My Brother”, “A Most Peculiar Man” and “The Sound of Silence”. By the time he’d finished, I was hanging from the rafters as I’d never seen or heard anything like it. He was an astonishing guitarist and I got to know him very well. I was the first person in Britain to record a Paul Simon song, which was “A Most Peculiar Man” for my first EP, and I got a letter from Paul saying “Thank you”, which was rather nice.’
Performing to great acclaim in the folk clubs gave Simon increasing confidence in his material and he was determined to break into the US market. Wally Whyton of UK skiffle group the Vipers recalled, ‘Paul always believed he’d make it big. He kept telling us he would.’
Paul performed at the Edinburgh Folk Festival in 1964, but his record of ‘He Was My Brother’ had meant little – it had been released on a minor UK label with negligible publicity and the name Jerry Landis on the label.
When Art’s term finished, Paul asked him to come over. They attended the Flamingo in Wardour Street to hear the Ian Campbell Folk Group. In a neat twist of fate, the group didn’t turn up. The social worker Judith Piepe takes up the story, ‘There wasn’t anyone around to entertain the large audience. Then suddenly we noticed a young kid with a guitar sitting on the floor. Curly Goss the promoter asked him his name. He said he was Paul Simon and he was American. Anyway, this unknown kid from New York was dragged on stage and he started with “A Church Is Burning” and he followed it with “Leaves That Are Green” and “The Sound of Silence”. Just then he waved to a tall fair-haired kid at the back of the club and together they sang “Benedictus”. Everyone was flabbergasted. They’d knocked the audience out. We soon learnt to our disappointment that both were returning to New York the next day.’
A former refugee and now a social worker in the East End of London, Judith realised that the themes of Paul’s songs were relevant to her own work. She invited him to use her flat as a base when he returned, an offer she extended to several folk musicians. Back in New York, Simon graduated from Queens in English literature and he enrolled at Brooklyn Law School to please his parents. He soon lost interest and completed little more than a term.
While he was away, Piepe was planning bigger and better things for him. She bombarded the BBC with requests to broadcast his material. She was persuasive and they agreed to record his songs, but in an unusual way. One of Paul Simon’s songs would be broadcast every day for two weeks in the Five to Ten slot. The song would be played and Judith would introduce each one with a short introduction about its relevance to modern living. The gist of what she said can be read on her liner notes for The Paul Simon Songbook or in the essay accompanying the songs in sheet music form.
This was not the first time that the BBC had used contemporary songs in religious broadcasting, but in the past it had been in a derogatory way. An example that affected me was the morning a vicar on Lift Up Your Hearts cited the lines about scratching your partner’s back in Elvis Presley’s ‘Treat Me Nice’ as the ultimate in depravity. My mother was horrified that her young son owned this record. This time the music was treated more sympathetically. Simon’s songs were polished and pertinent and even if they were hardly religious, they did exhibit considerable understanding of the way we behave.
There was an unintended consequence as it made the songs seem ripe for sociological discussion, which continues on the internet to this day. I have a BBC script for Jesus Christ – A Most Peculiar Man in which Peter Baldwin sang Simon’s songs and Dr John Vincent, a Methodist minister, supplied the commentary. He said, ‘Many of Paul Simon’s songs abound in scriptural echoes and even more take up the theme of contemporary Christian searching.’
Judith Piepe received many letters praising the series and asking whether the songs had been recorded. She found that Oriole had been taken over by CBS and she recommended that the Jerry Landis single be reissued with a new label bearing Simon’s own name. This was not cost effective but because he was signed to the parent company they agreed to record an album of Simon’s songs. Judith informed Paul, who was still frustrated by his lack of success in America. It was easy to build up a reputation on the UK folk club circuit but it was more difficult in the States as the clubs were so far apart and he had been greeted with some scepticism in Greenwich Village.
Meanwhile, Tom Wilson had been working with Bob Dylan on new tracks with rock musicians for the album Bringing It All Back Home. He proposed a similar trial with Simon and Garfunkel, which was no hardship as they had often worked with session musicians. The plan was to make a single and Wilson favoured the wistful ‘Wednesday Morning 3am’, but thought that the song needed more edge as the singer was on the run after a robbery. Simon reworked it, dropping a verse, adding a chorus and renaming it ‘Somewhere They Can’t Find Me’. For the B-side, he wrote an upbeat song pleading with a girl not to leave him, ‘We Got a Groovey [sic] Thing Goin’’, a lyric he omits from his published collection. The tracks were recorded on 5 April 1965 but the single didn’t sound commercial and the idea was shelved. Odd that nobody realised that ‘The Sound of Silence’ was the song to go for.
In May 1965 Paul Simon went into the CBS studios in New Bond Street, London and made The Paul Simon Songbook. It was recorded over three afternoons and the studio rate was eight pounds an hour. The engineer was Mike Ross-Trevor (later called Dr Rossi by the Stooges) and Reg Warburton was the producer, although Simon virtually produced himself. It was a simple affair with Simon singing to his own guitar accompaniment. It worked very well and several songs have not made a greater impact with more lavish arrangements. This is largely because the songs are often straight reporting and their matter-of-fact nature suited uncomplicated presentations. Unlike the mediocre Wednesday Morning 3am, I would describe this album as a classic.
The album is based around his Five to Ten performances. Despite this, a bootleg album of the original broadcasts appeared, so religious broadcasts were being sold under the counter.
Both ‘The Sound of Silence’ and ‘He Was My Brother’ are reprised from Wednesday Morning 3am, and when combined with ‘A Church is Burning’, ‘I Am a Rock’ and ‘A Most Peculiar Man’, we have an album of intense, literate and thoughtful songs. The anti-war song ‘The Side of a Hill’ is about the plight of a dead child.
But there is lighter material – ‘Kathy’s Song’, ‘April Come She Will’, ‘Leaves That Are Green’ and ‘Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall’. ‘Patterns’ is a song about how life continues.
Simon is always aware that he is engaged in the process of writing while he is working. In ‘Kathy’s Song’, he explains how forced the process can be and the opening line of ‘Leaves That Are Green’ is about the very song he is writing. The conundrum starts ‘I was 21 years when I wrote this song’, a line that found a new home in Billy Bragg’s ‘A New England’. In ‘Homeward Bound’, Simon writes about performing his songs, while in ‘The Sound of Silence’, he is concerned that they may be ignored.
Although often regarded as a British Springsteen, Ian Prowse of Amsterdam highly rates ‘Kathy’s Song’: ‘That has always been a touchstone for me. L
ove songs that are done well work best for me and I’ve returned to this one many times for inspiration. It is also a song about writing songs, which is a very difficult thing to get right.’
Paul Simon said, ‘I tend to think of that period as late adolescence. Suicides and people who are very sad or very lonely make a big impact on an adolescent mind. You tend to dramatise these things. It was easier to write because I wasn’t known. I didn’t have set standards and so I wrote about anything I saw.’
The only song from the BBC series that is omitted on the LP is ‘Bad News Feeling’, a ballad about drug addicts in the same vein as ‘A Most Peculiar Man’. In its place we have the engaging oddity ‘A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Lyndon Johnson’d Into Submission)’. As might be expected from the title, this witty tirade is full of in-jokes. It works extremely well and the bridge includes Simon’s impersonation of Bob Dylan. Perhaps he should have used that voice when he recorded their insipid version of ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’.
Although Dylan’s writing was influencing Simon, the results were very different. Dylan’s vocals were loaded with marked mannerisms: ‘At its very best,’ said Time magazine, ‘it sounds as if it is drifting over the walls of a TB sanatorium.’ That’s a compliment? On the other hand, Simon’s voice is clear and precise with perfect enunciation. Dylan sounds bitter and resentful, while Simon is sorrowful. Dylan castigates his listeners while Simon simply tells his tales.
The sheer force of Dylan’s songs and their interplay with his own personality bulldozed their way into our minds and led to him being hailed as the new pop messiah. Simon knew he didn’t have this sort of personality and he wanted his songs to speak for themselves.
Simon & Garfunkel Page 4