Simon & Garfunkel

by Spencer Leigh

  The CD may be in its final days but the reissues continue. In 2013 there was The Complete Albums Collection, but with same bonus tracks as the remastered CDs, and then the cut-down Original Album Classics: Paul Simon, which was five albums in a pack with bonus tracks.

  In 2011 there was a new Paul Simon album, So Beautiful or So What, which marked a return to his original method of songwriting, and was produced with Phil Ramone. He would work out songs on his guitar and then bring in the musicians. Not that the songs themselves sounded too much like his earlier ones. He said that his prime influences were 1950s rock’n’roll and African music, and when he spoke to students in Florida, he said, ‘Forty per cent of my music is based on “Mystery Train”.’ He had decided to make his album without bass as there was no bass on Bo Diddley’s records. He used Vincent Nguini’s guitar throughout and had Indian percussion.

  The title song combines Miles Davis’ title, ‘So What’ with a Bo Diddley-styled rhythm. Simon is cooking a chicken gumbo and telling his children a bedtime story but he wonders what life is all about – is he just a raindrop in a bucket? There’s not much melody but it is an infectious groove. Following his tour with Bob Dylan, he realised that Bob’s old bluesman voice would be ideal for a couple of verses. They shared the same manager, Jeff Kramer, which made negotiations easy. Bob agreed but didn’t get round to it.

  The songs were about his preoccupations – the meaning of life, the fact that he was going to die, the nature of God – but at the end of the day, his message was probably no deeper than a disco record: life is what you make it.

  Bizarrely, and probably uniquely, Simon opened his album with a seasonal song, ‘Getting Ready for Christmas Day’. Simon had found a wartime sermon from the Reverend J. M. Gates dating from 1941 on the Goodbye, Babylon box set. He samples this during the song and relates it to soldiers fighting in Iraq.

  ‘The Afterlife’ is a comic look at what happens when we die. Simon is waiting to receive attention but ‘You gotta fill out a form first’. When he finally reaches God, all he can say is ‘Be-bop-a-lula’, which is akin to the secret of the universe in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Simon’s love for 50s rockabilly is in ‘Love and Blessings’, while the theme of ‘The Afterlife’ can be twinned with ‘Love and Hard Times’ in which God and Jesus revisit Earth but don’t stay as they have further work to do. The song then turns into a love song for Edie.

  Paul evolved another love song to Edie, ‘Dazzling Blue’, as he was driving from New York City to his home in New Canaan, Connecticut. It is a love song but, being Paul Simon, it posed the question ‘What is love?’ The title refers to Edie’s favourite colour and the track has a great rhythm.

  An old guy who saw action in Vietnam is working at the carwash in ‘Rewrite’, but his main interest is in finishing his screenplay. He is eliminating family trauma and substituting car chases and how the main character saves his children. Simon includes wildebeest sounds, which were recorded on a family holiday.

  ‘Love Is Eternal Sacred Light’ is a history of creation from the Big Bang to the final Big Bang (‘the bomb in the marketplace’, which echoes ‘the bomb in the baby carriage’ in ‘The Boy in the Bubble’). Simon sings, rather tellingly, ‘Some folks don’t get it when I’m joking / Well, maybe someday they will.’

  There is more reflection on mankind in ‘Questions for the Angels’, wondering how important we are. Simon sees Jay Z advertising clothes and wonders if it has all gone too far. If all human life were to disappear, would a zebra grazing in Africa miss us? As well as the nine songs, there is a folky instrumental, ‘Amulet’. Simon hadn’t intended it this way but he found the chords too complicated for lyrics.

  When Paul Simon did a show with Diana Krall, he gave her an advance copy of his new CD. She took it home and played it to her husband, Elvis Costello. Elvis sent him a flattering email, which led to him writing the booklet note for the CD. Around the same time, Paul McCartney praised Simon’s songwriting, saying that his lyrics had the economy, phrasing and rhythm of the best poetry.

  In 2012 Simon issued a new 2CD/DVD set, Live in New York City, recorded at the 1,200 capacity in Webster Hall in Manhattan. It included some songs from So Beautiful Or So What but only two songs out of twenty relating to Simon & Garfunkel days – ‘The Sound of Silence’ and ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’. In Memphis he added ‘Mystery Train’ and the instrumental ‘Wheels’ to the set list. The band played Bo Diddley’s ‘Pretty Thing’ with drummer Jim Oblon singing and Paul Simon on harmonica. Another addition was ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and he would look upward with a ‘Thank you, George’.

  Edie Brickell was working as well, often writing songs with the comic actor and folk musician Steve Martin and recording with him. She occasionally appeared in concert with Paul Simon but usually to sing comic country songs such as ‘You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly’. As it happens, they had three children – Adrian, Lulu and Gabriel.

  Harper Simon meanwhile had suffered from depression and took drugs but he tried to keep his musical career on track. Edie made an album with Harper Simon as the Heavy Circles in 2008 as they had written several songs together and the additional musicians included Sean Lennon. The CD, simply called The Heavy Circles, was produced by Harper with Bryce Goggin and collected decent reviews.

  In 2009 Harper released his first solo album, Harper Simon, again with Sean Lennon among the musicians and he had written ‘Tennessee’ with his father about his mother’s background. Another song ‘The Shine’ was written with Carrie Fisher, and his dad then revised it. Musically and lyrically, the song has something of ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ about it. Paul Simon plays on ‘The Audit’.

  The cover of the album was a series of sketches by Tracey Emin entitled Get Ready for the Fuck of Your Life. With a little push, this family could be up there with the Wainwrights. Indeed, in 2014, Paul and Edie were arrested by the police after a family argument. The matter was reported in the UK press, notably in a Daily Mail feature which contrasted Edie with his UK girlfriend of the 60s, Kathleen Chitty, who lived with her partner in a mountain village in Wales.

  In 2012 the American resonator and lap steel guitarist Jerry Douglas made the highly acclaimed Traveler with some famous friends like Eric Clapton and Alison Krauss. The album was beautifully crafted and Douglas was joined by Mumford & Sons and Paul Simon for ‘The Boxer’.

  In 2013 Harper was back with Division Street, an album of all his own songs and with Benmont Tench on keyboards and Pete Thomas from the Attractions on drums. This was much more of a group setting, not unlike Talking Heads, but it wasn’t as distinctive as Harper Simon. Harper’s weekly talk show is on the internet and the links are on his website. He has yet to interview his father or his father’s wives but TV doesn’t get much worse than this. He is incompetent and the mistakes are retained. One guest, the screenwriter Buck Henry, seemed amazed that Harper even had a show, commenting, ‘There’s an animal escaped from the zoo up here.’

  Simon had had an operation for carpal tunnel syndrome but he still had trouble with his hands and in playing the guitar, but he liked touring and he went out on a double-header with Sting. On their 2014 tour, Sting was performing ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ with Simon, much to Garfunkel’s chagrin. O Sting, where is thy depth?

  Meanwhile, Art Garfunkel was working with Jimmy Webb and he added his voice to the delicate ‘Shattered’ on Webb’s 2013 album, Still Within the Sound of My Voice. Considering that Webb has been such a close friend of Garfunkel’s it is surprising that he has come to songwriting rather late.

  Art Garfunkel told Rolling Stone, ‘Will I do another tour with Paul? Well, that’s quite doable. As far as this half is concerned, why not? But I’ve been in the same place for decades. This is where I was in 1971.’ He then added, ‘How can you walk away from this lucky place on top of the world, Paul? What’s going on with you, you idiot? How could you let that go, jerk?’

  In 2015 Garfunkel was on tour and play
ed the Royal Albert Hall. He commented, ‘I was once a little curly-haired boy and now I’m an old entertainer, but the heart is still young and the voice is back.’ His son James joined him for an Everly Brothers song and at one stage Art looked into the wings and said, ‘Come on out, Paul.’

  In order to raise funds, the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir combined ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ with Coldplay’s similarly uplifting ‘Fix You’ for a charity single, ‘A Bridge Over You’ (eccentric title), for Christmas 2015. The pundits expected Justin Bieber to have the No. l but the Canadian star asked his fans to support the choir, who then had the Christmas No. 1, undoubtedly helped by a very touching video. It was a robust arrangement, being seventy-five per cent ‘Bridge’ and twenty-five per cent ‘Fix You’. The good doctors and nurses had resuscitated ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’.

  Also in 2015, the hard rock band Disturbed released their new album, Immortalized, which included a cover of ‘The Sound of Silence’. The lead vocal by David Draiman was intense and angry, far harder than Simon & Garfunkel’s original. It became the third single from the album and the video is heading for fifty million hits on YouTube, an astonishing achievement. Simon has said how much he enjoys the new version, which has given his song a new audience. Simon himself chose to perform ‘The Sound Of Silence’ at an event to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 rather than the requested ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’.

  In April 2016 Art Garfunkel announced that a memoir incorporating his poetry would be published later in the year and it was clear from the extract that he is not settling for being the junior partner. As Simon was also working on a book with the noted Los Angeles music writer, Robert Kilburn, I wondered how the two very different musicians were going to view the same events. There were some similarities though, as they both supported Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination and allowed him to use ‘America’ as his campaign song. Sanders was the one who had the most to say about eliminating poverty in America.

  As both Simon and Garfunkel would reach the age of seventy-five in 2016, it looked as though this could be a momentous year, but Paul Simon told Rolling Stone that he had had enough of his former partner and that they were no longer on speaking terms. There would be no more Simon & Garfunkel concerts but he has said that before. He said that audiences were coming to the concerts to hear ‘You Can Call Me Al’ rather than the Simon and Garfunkel hits, but I somehow doubt that.

  You will have gathered from this book that the question is not ‘When will Simon & Garfunkel reform?’ but ‘When will Simon & Garfunkel next reform?’ Over the years, they have got together and split up several times.

  One huge factor that is overlooked when bands reform is the split of the proceeds. It is highly unlikely that the income would be divided equally and, in this instance, Simon’s management would argue that he is the one who can fill stadiums on his own and so his share of the take should be that much higher – possibly 70:30 and that is on top of songwriting royalties. Hence, the very event of a reunion is more likely to stoke the fire and make a problematic relationship even worse.

  It is possible that either or both of Paul Simon’s autobiography and Art Garfunkel’s memoir could sour the water completely but, despite what Simon is currently saying, the good money is on a final reunion tour. Until the next one, that is, or until it is time for one of them to say, ‘Hello darkness, my old friend’.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Fighter Still Remains

  In 2015 Paul Simon had a new partner, the king of the white doo-wop singers, Dion from Dion and the Belmonts.

  Paul Simon has said, ‘Everybody’s hometown has a big effect on their writing — the first things that you see and hear and love.’ That obviously applies to Simon himself and it can be seen in Dion, who lives in Florida but is drawn back to his adolescence in the Bronx for his songs. The tattooed stud in his 1961 hit ‘The Wanderer’ was someone he envied from afar. Paul Simon and Dion knew each other well and Simon was delighted to be a temporary Belmont along with Lou Reed in 2009 when Dion performed ‘A Teenager in Love’ at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

  In 2015 Paul Simon got together with Dion for an homage to their home city, ‘New York Is My Home’. Simon is largely doing back-up vocals although he does take the lead in the bridge. Their voices work extremely well together and the words are strong, with Dion nearing his vintage best when he sings about his girl in the Bronx. The video is entertaining with Dion, at the age of seventy-six, still looking good and ultra-cool, but Simon looks like Eric Burdon in need of a tailor.

  Dion told me, ‘Paul and I have been friends for a long time. When I wrote it, I saw it as a love song for the city of my birth. He’s from Queens and I’m from the Bronx. We are both at home in New York and he is great with harmonies amongst his other gifts. He loved the song and we worked on it together. He put a unique, very distinctive touch to it.’

  It is a great track, especially as they both have such recognisable voices. ‘Yeah, and even his gift for the window dressings is very distinctive,’ continued Dion. ‘We had a good time and we did a video in Manhattan among the cobblestones.’

  Dion also comments on Paul’s generosity of spirit. ‘I was at his apartment when there was a terrible downturn in this country, financially and economically, and Paul wanted to do something special for the city and he put together a great concert in Central Park and he did some charity work at Madison Square Garden and it was off the Richter Scale for me, it was, whoa, really touching New York with an empathetic hand.’

  The song did well on download and became the title song for Dion’s new album in 2016. Paul Simon used the track as one of five bonus cuts on his new album, Stranger to Stranger.

  Meanwhile, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell released their second album, So Familiar, and they had also written a bluegrass musical, Bright Star, which was tested in various cities and moved to Broadway in March 2016. Edie must have been apprehensive after the mauling received by her husband’s musical, The Capeman, but an Americana musical from two proven songwriters had potential and if Steve Martin doesn’t know what works on stage, then who does? The reviews were mixed, the general feeling being that the plot was creaky but the music was good. Meanwhile, Paul’s former wife, Carrie Fisher, was not only starring in the new Star Wars film but also featured on a UK postage stamp.

  Simon was in the UK in April 2016 to announce Stranger to Stranger, which was being released in June, and to perform one of the tracks, ‘Wristband’, on the BBC programme, Later… with Jools Holland. It was an impressive performance, held together by Danny Thompson’s double bass. Being Paul Simon, the lyric covered fronting a band, meeting St Peter at the Golden Gate, and world poverty as the children are born without wristbands. I was expecting a verse about being a hospital patient too but that never came.

  We all know Jools Holland is a hopeless interviewer (deliberately so, I think) and the conversation didn’t work well as Simon was hesitant on basic facts about his career, even asking if the Seekers were Australian. He seemed doddery – or perhaps suffering from jet lag – but he did make the interesting observation that ‘everything was better in 1964’.

  Fortunately, Simon was more coherent elsewhere. He said the new album was about ‘getting you to hear something in a new way. It’s about making music that sounds old and new at the same time; music with a sense of mystery.’ He added that, ‘Sound is the theme of this album as much as the subjects of the individual songs. If people get that, I’ll be pleased. The right song at the right time can live for generations.’

  The album was produced by Simon and Roy Halee and they were willing to experiment. Simon was intrigued by Harry Partch, a classical composer who devised instruments to fit his own tunings. Simon and Halee studied his devices at Montclair State University in New Jersey and used them for ‘Insomniac’s Lullaby’.

  ‘Wristband’ is a very good example of their approach to sound: it is doo-wop street harmonies with a touch of African rhythms, and y
et it sounds completely new. Its inspiration surely stems from 2012 when Simon was a guest on the US show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He was backed by the cast of the hit musical Stomp, who clap and bang metal and plastic waste bins for a brilliant percussive sound. They provided the accompaniment for ‘Cecilia’ but it was unfortunate that he sang it with Fallon himself whose leaden vocals weighed it down. Nevertheless, it was an excellent invigorating sound.

  Simon performed excellent versions of ‘Wristband’ and ‘Duncan’ on A Prairie Home Companion with the musicians including Chris Thile and Sarah Jarosz and these performances were included as bonus tracks on the album. Another bonus track was Simon’s theme song for Louis CK’s TV series Horace and Pete, but the lyric is little more than a fragment. Released at the same time, but not on the Stranger CD, was Simon performing ‘The Boxer’ with Joan Baez and Richard Thompson on Joan’s 2CD/DVD set of the New York concert to celebrate her 75th birthday.

  Stranger to Stranger’s sound also involved the Italian electronic dance music artist Clap! Clap!, the project of Italian music producer, C. Crisci, and several flamenco musicians.

  The new album seemed especially encouraging as Bob Dylan released at a new album at the same time, Fallen Angels. This contained no new material. Indeed, Bob was continuing his quest to record the Frank Sinatra songbook, but had he given up on writing songs?

  Paul Simon went on an extensive US tour to promote Stranger to Stranger, which started at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on 29 April and then went to the Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, the Hollywood Bowl, the Greek Theater in Berkeley and ended in home territory at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium on 1 July.

  Simon has also spoken to students at Yale and other universities from time to time. His most interesting piece of advice is that you shouldn’t bother with a song unless you can see yourself working on it six months from now. As his song said, everything is neatly planned.