Paul Simon explains how he created the drum sound on ‘Cecilia’
Inspired by the muse of music, St. Cecilia, the creation of the song ‘Cecilia’ is rooted in a spontaneous burst of creativity. During a gathering attended by Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, and their friends, they found themselves rhythmically pounding on a piano bench, igniting an impromptu spark of musical inspiration. Simon captured its essence on a tape recorder that night, and he found himself returning to it time and time again due to its infectious quality.
After realising the energy at the crux of the rhythm, Simon penned the song, drawing inspiration from a guy who had just been broken up with. This is evident in its lyrics, which recall, “I got up to wash my face, when I come back to bed someone’s taken my place.” Later on in the song, the pair get back together, as depicted in the lines “Jubilation, she loves me again.”
However, despite tackling the emotions someone may go through after a relationship ends, Simon says that not much should be read into the lyrics of the song. Its spontaneous emergence lends itself to being a lighthearted and enjoyable track and not much more. He explains to Howard Stern on The Howard Stern Show: “The drums, that’s all handmade. We were sitting around one night with maybe three, four people, just having a smoke, and hitting guitar cases and playing.”
He continues: “We were recording it on a portable recording device, […] and I listened to it back and I notice that something with the Nagra is causing the thing to have a slap back. So if you go bop, it goes bop bop. Then I said, there’s about a minute and 15 seconds in there that’s really good. So we say to Roy Halee, who was our engineer, let’s take this minute and 15 seconds and make a loop of it.”
The song’s unique nature isn’t just in the way it was built; however, it was also the first time Simon wrote the song after the fact. He added: “Then I said, well, play it and let me do that, and then I’ll write a song to it. That’s one of the first songs where I made the track and then wrote the song.”
Though the lyrics may seem overshadowed by the song’s catchy melody, they weren’t necessarily in true form when it came to Simon’s signature approach. One of the most memorable lines is “making love in the afternoon”, which was one of Simon’s most daring at the time. In 2008, Stephen Colbert jokingly asked him why the song’s narrator would need to wash his face after making love, to which Simon quipped: “Well, it’s the ’60s, so I can’t remember.”
Nonetheless, it became and remains one of music’s most enduring hits, with most being able to identify it within the first few opening notes. Countless musicians hail it as a significant milestone in the realm of pop rock, and it remains one of the most exhilarating chart-toppers of all time.
