“The best time of my life”: the English town that inspired a homesick Paul Simon hit
If anybody knows the rambling roads of America, it’s Paul Simon.
His name can be found littered over a catalogue of road-trip playlists, soundtracking the endless solitude of a long straight by-pass or the unpredictable joy of winding around a gorgeous coastal road. His voice and songwriting seem to be inherently linked with the adventurous element of one of the world’s most vast countries.
His finest album, Graceland, is a perfect example of that, with the title track telling the emotional tale of his spiritual journey to Nashville. The rolling rhythm and rambling guitar melody perfectly capture the hopeful horizons of America’s vast stretches of roads, and so he’s become a trusted voice during any journey.
But the dusty roads of those worlds couldn’t have felt further away from Simon when he wrote one of his truly great travelling hits. The 1966 track ‘Homeward Bound’ has something of a double meaning, written by Simon while in the UK and subtly missing the comfort of his home country. But more than that, it was written out of a desperation to get out of Liverpool and back home to his partner in Essex, who waited patiently for his train to come unstuck.
“That was written in Liverpool when I was travelling,” Simon started. “What I like about that is that it has a very clear memory of Liverpool station and the streets of Liverpool and the club I played at and me at age 22.”
Unfortunately, Simon’s memory isn’t quite as clear as he thinks, because the actual station he wrote the song at was in Widnes, a town just outside of Liverpool and closer to Warrington in truth, and in fact, there remains a plaque at the station in honour of Simon and his hit song, which was penned on the cold edges of that platform.
Nevertheless, it was a view into Simon’s life that revolved around the vibrant songwriting scene in the UK at that time, one he desperately tried to inhabit as a means of kickstarting his career. At that time, Simon was just a young creative, buoyed by the excitement of travelling the world, and so there was an innate sense of innocence that laced the song.
In ‘Homeward Bound’, he explained, “There’s something naive and sweet-natured, and I must say I like that about it.”
Adding, “And that means that I wasn’t angry or unhappy. And that’s my memory of that time: it was just about idyllic. It was just the best time of my life, I think, up until recently, these last five years or so, six years. This has been the best time of my life. But before that, I would say that that was.”
It was something of a full-circle moment for Simon when George Harrison joined him on stage during his SNL appearance ten years later in ‘76, where the pair delivered a performance of the song. Written in the shadows of Liverpool and later performed with one of the city’s finest musical exports, it ultimately proved just how fruitful a trip it was for Simon.
