Bad luck at every turn: Paul Simon’s “cursed” tribute song to John Lennon
Easily among the most talented songwriters of their generation, Paul Simon and John Lennon were also notoriously strong-willed (at best) and egotistical (at worst) during their simultaneous ascents to superstardom. And whilst some self-assured, cross-Atlantic rock rivals found a way to forge lasting friendships during the 1970s (think David Bowie and Lou Reed), it was never quite the case for Rhymin’ Simon and the Working Class Hero.
Nonetheless, following Lennon’s murder in 1980, Simon—like millions of other people in New York and around the world—was deeply affected by the loss. He and John clearly respected each other’s work over the years, but they often betrayed those feelings when speaking directly about one another. Simon, for example, told Rolling Stone in 1972 that “many things [Lennon] has done, I think, have been pointless,” while John was captured on a 1979 home recording calling Simon a “company man” and a “singing dwarf”. Respect, of course, sometimes breeds competitiveness and bitterness.
Now, with Lennon suddenly gone, Simon was left to reflect and re-frame his feelings. For years prior, he had been working on an idea for a composition—originally as a play, then as a song—called ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’. Spurred by a childhood memory of listening to the radio and hearing about the tragic death of R&B singer Johnny Ace in 1954 (killed in a game of Russian roulette), Simon developed the idea of connecting that event with another shocking gun death: the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963. He was still working on the song when John Lennon was killed on December 8th, 1980. In the aftermath, Simon incorporated Lennon into the lyrics as “the third member” of this tragic collection of men named John, all gunned down before their time.
“It’s a song about the violence that I’ve grown up in since I was a child,” Simon told US talk show host David Letterman in 1982. The Lennon-inspired passage of ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’, which closes the song, is quite powerful, as Simon describes the night of Lennon’s death, the eerie mood that followed, and the tragedy of a truly pointless loss: “On a cold December evening / I was walking through the Christmas tide / When a stranger came up and asked me / If I’d heard John Lennon had died / And the two of us went to this bar / And we stayed to close the place / And every song we played / Was for the Late Great Johnny Ace”.
Released on the 1983 album Hearts and Bones, ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’ also features a stirring instrumental outro by composer Philip Glass. The song’s lyrical heft, unusual chord structure, and beautiful melody really ought to rank it among Simon’s very best, but from the very first time he played it, it seemed like something cosmic was preventing the song from reaching its audience.
The most glaring incident occurred during Simon and Garfunkel’s famous reunion concert in New York’s Central Park in September of 1981. As he reached the Lennon-inspired section of ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’ in front of half a million people that day, Simon had to abruptly stop playing as a deranged audience member suddenly jumped on stage and started moving toward him. Security dragged the man away quickly, and Simon, clearly unnerved, tried to compose himself. He ultimately finished the song, but it wouldn’t appear on the album version of the concert.
A year later, when Simon appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, he discussed the Central Park security incident before attempting, again, to play ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’, which most fans still had never heard. This time, at roughly the same point in the song, one of Simon’s guitar strings got jammed, and he again had to stop playing, leading to an unplanned commercial break.
“Apparently, the song is jinxed,” Letterman joked when the show returned from the adverts. “I’m now beginning to have my doubts about whether I should perform this song at all,” Simon responded before deciding to power through and finish the performance.
When ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’ finally came out in its proper recorded version—interruption-free—in 1983, it failed to connect again, as the Heart and Bones album proved to be a disappointing commercial misstep for Simon. Paul later remarked to People magazine that the whole thing was “cursed before it really got off the ground,” as his decision to make another solo album, rather than record a new Simon and Garfunkel album after the Central Park concert, seemed to set up the project for instant rejection.
Forty years later, though, ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’ is still a poignant listen, cursed or not. It shines a light on a culture of violence and the helpless feeling that follows a horrible loss.
