The song Paul Simon used to parody Bob Dylan: “He’s so unhip”
The medium of song has often been used as a conduit for explaining one artist’s feelings about another. These can be full of love, hatred, or somewhere in between. Alternatively, a track can be used to rip off one’s heroes to sound the same, with the faint hope of reaching the same level of success. One such moment occurred when Paul Simon sat down to write a classic tune and emulate his contemporary, Bob Dylan.
We’ve even seen artists in the same band write songs about one another, such as The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac and The Libertines, to name but a few. There have also been the likes of Tupac and Biggie taking a deadly gang rivalry into the realm of song, and we’ve also witnessed artists like Nick Cave really lay into themselves via a track of their own making. That’s without even considering the art of parody.
One of the most surreal and iconic examples of making a mockery-inducing piece of music is Simon and Garfunkel’s number, ‘A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission)’. Taken from the duo’s third album, 1966’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, it is an odd delight that shows both Simon and Garfunkel to be what we all know they are: somewhat envious, lovable whingers.
It was who the parody song was aimed at that makes it all the more spectacular. The target was none other than ‘The Bard’ himself, Bob Dylan. Simon and Garfunkel’s effort comes from the moment Dylan started to establish himself as an icon.
During this mid-1960s period, Dylan had already released his most iconic hits, such as ‘The Times They Are a-Changin”, and had exhausted his acoustic troubadour guise, thus starting to experiment with electric music. Recorded in June 1965, Simon and Garfunkel was just one of many of Dylan’s contemporaries who were weighing in on his newfound fame and experiments with the electric guitar.
Objectively, Simon and Garfunkel were the first to take a swipe at Dylan’s newfound measure of success. The two expertly added the instrumentation of the day, with the twists of the organ and swirling psychedelic guitar sounds creating a perfect pastiche of the type of folk-rock that Dylan was producing at the time.
Simon, being the perceptive eye that he is, also uses the lyrics to take a forensic look at Dylan’s songwriting style. He seems to mock Dylan’s unique penchant for throwing in obscure lines and his ability to reel off an extensive list of literary and pop culture references.
In a Dylan-esque vocal delivery, he drones: “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.” Lyrically, it is clearly a barbed jab at a generation’s newly anointed poetic voice.
Although, at first inspection, this might seem to be quite a thinly veiled dig at Bob Dylan, Simon has always maintained that it was actually written as a satirical exploration of his artistry rather than a full-on dig at a man whom he has frequently hailed as an inspiration. He told Rolling Stone: “One of my deficiencies is my voice sounds sincere. I’ve tried to sound ironic. I don’t. I can’t. With Dylan, everything he sings has two meanings. He’s telling you the truth and making fun at the same time.”
However, knowing of their first icy meeting with one another, there is a good chance that Simon had always set aside this track to give Dylan what for. The week before Simon and Garfunkel were set to make their debut at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, a chance meeting with Bob Dylan proved as icy as a January morning in Manhattan. The two icons-in-waiting reportedly exchanged little more than awkward glances and cagey silences, leaving both camps as distant as ever and only a hair’s breadth away from disaster.
When the big night arrived, Dylan, ever the provocateur, positioned himself at the bar alongside critic Robert Shelton. As the duo’s set began and a reverent hush fell over the crowd, Dylan broke the spell with an ill-timed fit of laughter. The room bristled, and the stage shrunk. Simon and Garfunkel soldiered on, casting withering glances his way, but Dylan’s cackles refused to quit, leaving the audience squirming in second-hand embarrassment.
Shelton later chalked up the incident to poor timing, though he didn’t rule out that Dylan’s frosty meeting with the pair the week prior might have added fuel to the fire. He described the incident as “an encounter typical of New York’s paranoia and instant rivalries”—a snapshot of the city’s unforgiving creative scene where even the quietest moments weren’t safe from a sharp edge.
Whether this was the catalyst for Simon to pen the mocking song or if he was let down by his inability to sound ironic, only Simon himself would know for sure. But one thing we can be clear of, ‘A Simple Desultory Philippic’ is certainly not meant as an ode to the legendary man.
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