Paul Simon

I've been listening to a lot of Paul Simon lately. About a month ago, I saw on the news that he received an award from the Library of Congress called the Gershwin Prize for American Songwriting (he is the first ever recipient). That got to me to listen to all of the Simon and Garfunkel albums, which I have in a boxed set, and some of his solo music. Just yesterday I purchased his new greatest hits collection, called The Essential Paul Simon, and PBS aired the broadcast of his award ceremony, which featured Simon as well as many other artists performing his songs.

He has a staggering body of work that is easy to overlook unless one thinks specifically about it. He straddles many periods, many genres, and because of this he doesn't emerge, at least in my mind, when you think of popular pop music acts. In the sixties, when Simon and Garfunkel were at their height, I don't think they were mentioned in the same breath as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. As a solo act, Simon had some well-received albums, but again, if you mentioned the biggest acts of the 70s he probably wouldn't come up. He's sort of been a 'tweener, neither fish nor foul, selling a lot of records but not achieving a kind of Mount Rushmore status (this is not true of his devotees, one of whom is a friend of mine, who owns every Simon album and has seen him any times, I speak more of the casual music fan).

He deserves more credit. The emcee of the TV show, Bob Costas, spoke of a difficulty in making a list of Simon's 20 greatest songs. The man has knocked out some world-class pop songs, and managed to experiment with almost every different genre. When he and Art Garfunkel were known as Tom and Jerry, I'm sure they thought of themselves as the next Everly Brothers, but their first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M, was pure folk, including old chestnuts like Go Tell It on the Mountain and a cover of Bob Dylan's The Times They Are-A Changin'. Their breakthrough came when a drum track was added to The Sound of Silence, and suddenly they were a pop act.

With Garfunkel, Simon made some indelible music. A lot of his early stuff, though, had the unmistakable whiff of an English major. Consider The Dangling Conversation, which is oppressively pretentious, with references to Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Yet, I find it a very moving song due to the string orchestrations. And by the time they broke up, I consider three of their songs to be among the best pop songs ever recorded: Mrs. Robinson, America, and Bridge Over Troubled Water. Mrs. Robinson, which was also featured in the film The Graduate (among several other S&G songs), is one of those tunes that perfectly fit its time period. These lines: "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you," perhaps Simon's greatest lyric, succinctly captures a country that had become disconnected with its past. Almost as good is from America: "Kathy, 'I'm lost', I said, though I knew she was sleeping. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they've all gone to look for America." I get chills every time I hear it.

As for Bridge Over Troubled Water, a recording that certainly has no subtlety, it would be easy to dismiss it as an over-blown example of ego run amok. But for me the song holds together, mostly due to Garfunkel's vocals. Simon knew his reedy voice, which has always made me think he sounds likes he's got a cold, couldn't do it justice. The relationship between Simon and Garfunkel is fascinating. Simon, it has always seemed to me, resents the fact that Garfunkel is forever linked to him. He cut him loose in the early seventies, and except for a few songs and some reunion concerts, hasn't worked with him much since then. Famously, he recorded an album with him and then removed all of his vocals. Still, Garfunkel, like an eager puppy, is always there, as he was at the Gershwin Award, to sing Bridge Over Troubled Water, of course.

Simon's solo career has been productive, but not as consistently great, in my opinion. He's had some great songs, like Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard, Kodachrome, and Still Crazy After All These Years, but I think his only truly magnificent album is Graceland, which came out in 1986. Working with many different styles: African and Zydeco just two, there were some great achievements on that album: The Boy in the Bubble, You Can Call Me Al, Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes, Homeless and the title track, which is sort of like a follow-up to America, still about a guy looking for answers by traveling, only this time with a son instead of a girlfriend.

Since Graceland Simon has come to the same fate of other sixties and seventies giants, he's become less relevant and sales have dropped. He was involved in a Broadway musical that flopped, and his last two albums have gone largely unnoticed. But he is an always-interesting musician, and his body of work certainly stands with any from the same time frame.