Rivalry and Respect: Bob Dylan on Paul Simon as “one of the songwriters of our time”
“I usually come in second to [Bob Dylan], and I don’t like coming in second,” Paul Simon told Rolling Stone in 2011. “In the beginning, when we were first signed to Columbia, I really admired Dylan’s work. ‘The Sound of Silence’ wouldn’t have been written if it weren’t for Dylan.“ This dichotomy of competition and coveted reverence perfectly describes the relationship that the folk masters have endured over the years.
In early 1966, the diminutive New Yorker began work on the third Simon amd Garfunkel album. At the time, Dylan was causing quite an uproar with his transition away from the Amish folk traditions by embracing positively charged ions and electrifying the genre. The whole situation opened the door for Simon to get his claws out and pen a parody. He channelled his lingering peeve into the mocking ‘A Simple Desultory Philippic’.
Simon added a caricatured twist of organ and psychedelic guitar – both elements that had recently entered Dylan’s oeuvre – to the song’s musicology. Then, he takes a look at Dylan’s songwriting style by seemingly deriding his penchant for throwing in obscure lines and listing off literary and pop culture references. In a Dylan-esque vocal affectation, young Simon purred: “Not the same as you and me, he doesn’t dig poetry / He’s so unhip, when you say Dylan / He thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas, whoever he was.”
This seemed to confirm what people had often wondered: was there a clash between the two biggest folk acts of the day? On paper, the pair were the ultimate contemporaries; they both even journeyed to England to learn the folk ways of Bond Street, but their beginnings were stoney. The week before Simon and Garfunkel were set to play their first scheduled show at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, Dylan met Simon, and the duo famously had nothing to say to each other in an awkward and cagey encounter. Things got even worse when he burst out laughing during their hushed subsequent set.
However, this was actually rather typical. Paul McCartney has openly said that the era of peace and love in music was heavily built upon “competition” and “rivalry”. The critic Robert Shelton was there at the time of the duo’s early scoff and simply passed it off as “an encounter typical of New York’s paranoia and instant rivalries”. So, it perhaps comes as little surprise that since the years have passed, respect has flourished between them.
Simon now earnestly admits that they both had different strengths, explaining, ”One of my deficiencies is my voice sounds sincere. I’ve tried to sound ironic. I don’t. I can’t. Dylan, everything he sings has two meanings. He’s telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time. I sound sincere every time.”
And he ranks the master of irony among the greatest songwriters, telling Mojo: “I’d put it at [George] Gershwin, [Irving] Berlin and Hank Williams. I’d probably put Paul McCartney in there too. Then I’d have Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.” Before adding a second sub-Mount Rushmore list of notables: “Then, in the second tier, [John] Lennon is there, [Bob] Dylan is there, Bob Marley and Stephen Sondheim are there, and maybe I’m there too. It’s about whose songs last.”
Likewise, Dylan has proved self-effacing when it comes to Simon and a few others he holds dear. He bemoans three of his heroes that he feels he could never stack up to in this naturalistic sense. ”I don’t consider myself a songwriter in the sense of Townes Van Zandt or Randy Newman,” he told USA Today. ”I’m not Paul Simon. I can’t do that. My songs come out of folk music and early rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s it. I’m not a classical lyricist, I’m not a meticulous lyricist. I don’t write melodies that are clever or catchy. It’s all very traditionally documented.”
Heaping praise on Simon, in particular, Dylan remembered the time the duo finally agreed to be friends and supporters of each others brilliance with a remarkable set of duetted live covers back in 1999, and explained, ”I consider him one of the preeminent songwriters of our time. Every song he does has got a vitality you don’t find everywhere.”
You can check out a couple of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon’s live duets below.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.