Paul Simon: A life in lyrics
“Well, for me Elvis Presley is the king of rock, Sam Cooke is the king of soul, James Brown is the king of funk, but when it comes to songwriting I think Paul Simon is the king,” Jack Savoretti tells me. It’s hard to argue. Simon’s ability to weave words with melody is as seamless as rain into a river. And he defined part of this himself when he said, “I sound sincere every time.”
His tracks are dripping with rung-out experience. It is hard to find a more truthful writer anywhere. He has extolled his life story in the songs he has written. Every anthem hints at his wandering path through life, the people he has spent it with, and all the potholes on his memory lane along the way. It is a beautiful ride and long may it continue.
With his tracks being snapshots of vistas collected on the journey of his life, it primes his words to be probed out to reveal the life of the man behind them. Thus, we’re looking at how the lines he has sung have been plucked from the pages of his own story. As José Saramago once wrote: “If I’m sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?” Simon’s art thrives on that tenet.
Paul Simon’s life story in lyrics:
“Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again.” – ‘Sound of Silence’
Simon was somewhat of a child prodigy. Hailing from Queens in New York City, he began performing with his school friend Art Garfunkel in his early teens. However, like many who enter the arts early, he was yet to find his voice as a songwriter, writing kitsch TV-inspired songs as the 1950s came to a close.
It was then that the beatnik folk scene appealed to him. However, covers were the order for the day in Greenwich Village and Simon wanted something more. When he heard about Garfunkel’s friend who suddenly went blind in college and acquired the nickname ‘Darkness’, Simon thought he’d write a song about his struggle with adversity and hit upon something universally transcendent. This new style launched his career and shaped his future stories of our trials and triumphs.
“I have my books and my poetry to protect to me.” – ‘I Am a Rock’
With his career underway and his voice established, Simon looked forward to the next chapter of his life with Garfunkel alongside him. However, sadly, his fist furore was a damp squib. Their debut flopped despite the adulation it has since received and Simon had to return to the drawing board. “There was no place to play in New York City,” he would later bemoan. “They wouldn’t have me.”
With this in mind, he absconded away and focused on his graft. He insulated himself from the cruel music industry with the art and poetry that inspired him in the first place. Feeling like an outsider but unperturbed he was an island that would soon send out ships of influence, nevertheless.
“Every day’s an endless stream of cigarettes and magazines, and each town looks the same to me.” – ‘Homeward Bound’
Determined to pursue the arts, he headed over to England to peruse the burgeoning folk scene over there. “I had a lot of friends there and a girlfriend there. I could play music there,” he later said of his happy time in Old Blighty. However, the wind-whipped Isle can be harsh, and as he toured, he noted his experiences on the road.
‘Homeward Bound’ tells the tale of a man finding out that life on the road, even with growing success, can be filled with a yearning for home. “That was written in Liverpool when I was travelling. 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. It’s like a snapshot, a photograph of a long time ago. I like that about it,” he later said of the song. “That’s my memory of that time: it was just about idyllic. It was just the best time of my life.”
“Sail on silver girl, sail on by, your time has come to shine.” – ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’
As he found his happiness in life, his art soon started to take root in society at large. From humble beginnings, by the time the 1960s came to a close, Simon & Garfunkel were a huge act all over the world. It was at this time that he ventured back to the gospel songs of his youth and penned an encapsulation opus of his life so far. It was his time to sail on.
The triumph was also a mark of where Simon found himself in his career as well as his life. As Simon said of the ease of the craft behind it: “I have no idea where it came from. It came all of the sudden. It was one of the most shocking moments in my songwriting career. I remember thinking, ‘This is considerably better than I usually write’.”
“Paul, you better look around. How long you think that you can run that body down?” – ‘Run That Body Down’
However, profound success brought considerable strains. He parted ways with Garfunkel, and his lifestyle was wayward in the early 1970s. As ever, with Simon, the tumult did not escape him, and he captured his tale of burning the candle at every end in song. His life and career “seemed to be okay” on the surface, but there was trouble in paradise.
However, he would later find salvation when he met Carrie Fisher. In her 2008 memoir, Wishful Drinking, the late great Fisher would reflect: “Years ago, there were tribes that roamed the earth, and every tribe had a magic person. Well, now, as you know, all the tribes have dispersed, but every so often you meet a magic person, and every so often, you meet someone from your tribe. Which is how I felt when I met Paul Simon.”
“One and one-half wandering Jews returned to their natural coasts.” – ‘Hearts and Bones’
Simon’s relationship with Fisher was defined beautifully in his masterful ode ‘Hearts and Bones’, an anthem which he describes as “a better song” than ‘The Sound of Silence’. With wedding vows on his mind, he wrote: “Two people were married, the act was outrageous, the bride was contagious.” He later reflected in an interview with Paul Zollo, “That was one of my best songs. It took a long time to write it and it was very true. It was about things that happened. The characters are very near to autobiographical. It’s probably the only track that I really like on that album.”
In the end, what we are left with is a track of honeyed belle that seemed to prognosticate the bittersweet arc of their love affair very clearly. Thus, despite the prickly pastures it stands within, it is a patch of beauty that remains untouched by torment. As Fisher would remark in an interview in 2016, shortly before her passing, “I do like the songs he wrote about our relationship. Even when he’s insulting me, I like it very much.”
“Cars are cars all over the world.” – ‘Cars are Cars’
The personal highs and lows of this time in his life were also reflected in his music and its success. He might have thought that he hit a lyrical zenith, but it was a commercially fallow patch. ‘Cars are Cars’ is the sort of track that explains why—‘Hearts and Bones’ might have been a masterful triumph of the craft, but he struggle to reach that consistently.
This train wreck of a track proves that even masters are fallible. Simon might be the “king of songwriting”, but amid a self-professed artistic peak, he still found himself falling foul of halt-baked efforts brought about by the tugging nags of an unsettled life.
“My travelling companion is nine years old, He is the child of my first marriage, But I’ve reason to believe we both will be received in Graceland.” – ‘Graceland’
This led Simon to seek some sort of spiritual awakening when his mid-40s came around. Nevertheless, Going to Graceland is somewhat of a cliché, and that’s exactly why Paul Simon rejected the notion when he was coming up with his epic track. “I kept singing ‘I’m going to Graceland’, and every time I’d sing it I’d think well I’m not going to keep that,” Simon explains, “This is not going to be a song about Elvis Presley.” But the words wove their way into Simon’s psyche and suddenly he simply had to scratch the itch.
For Simon, this education was a bonding experience between him and his son. It was littered with memories and the tales of a nation. And then comes the culminating pin drop of the King’s old haunt. “And then I went to Graceland,” Simon says. “I didn’t tell anybody I was coming. I didn’t get any special treatment. I just waited in line… I was singularly unimpressed.” The gaudy glitz and glam of the museum is built in the image of Elvis’ second phase when his original tenets had been shed for a patent leather pastiche. It seems incongruous with what has come before it on the dirt roads of America’s backstory.
However, when you finally grapple with it, the whole narrative catches up with you. Just as Simon asserts: “I came outside and there’s his grave and it said, ‘Elvis Presley whose music touched millions of people all around the world’, and I read that and I just started to cry, I mean this guy was loved by everybody.” He was the end of a journey and the start of a new one for Simon.
“I drank a cup of herbal brew, The sweetness in the air combined with the lightness of my head.” – ‘Spirit Voices’
Thereafter, following his euphoric time in South Africa, Simon’s spiritual journey continued. He ventured around the globe like the pilgrim of folk he was back in his days on Bond Street in London or Greenwich Village when he first started. Songs like ‘Spirit Voices’ document his Ayahuasca trip in Brazil.
“Ayahuasca has always been there. Nobody outside of the Amazon knew anything about it,” he told Billboard Magazine. Adding: “And there are several main sets of healers that use ayahuasca. I wouldn’t say that it heals – but I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t. It seems to work sometimes for some people, seemed to really not work for other people. I’m not a proponent and I’m not a detractor. I just wrote the song because this had been my experience.”
“There could never be a father love his daughter more than I love you.” – ‘Father and Daughter’
With a more settled disposition, Simon embraced fatherhood and his art followed suit. As Joe Strummer once said: “I don’t like the idea that people who aren’t adolescents make records. Adolescents make the best records. Except for Paul Simon. […] He’s hit a new plateau there, but he’s writing to his own age group.”
Adolescents are often innovative in their music because they are reckless with their progressiveness, but this is not a look that sits well on older shoulders. Simon, however, proved you can pen odes of great maturity and move forward with innovation all the same. His tales were as sincere as ever even with a life that seemed less eventful on the surface.
“Questions for the angels, who believes in angels? Fools do, fools and pilgrims all over the world.” – ‘Questions for the Angels’
With his latest artistic outings, Simon has looked back on his life reflectively. He has always been a wanderer—a spiritual pilgrim, and now he seems happy to embrace the romanticism of that. This acceptance, once more, has kept his art personal, sincere, and true to his life and times.
“There are very few who are continuously obviously pushing themselves. Paul Simon can still pull out an amazing song,” Andrew Bird told us. “There aren’t many people who make it that far and are still pushing themselves.” Such is Simon’s outlook on life, he can even grasp inspiration from gearing down. Music to him seems easy, it’s just like keeping a diary, it’s life that can sometimes be tricky.
