The person Paul Simon thought would ruin his career: “Make life as difficult as possible”
Why anyone would want to derail the career of someone who is lining their pockets with cash at no extra personal effort is baffling, and wanting to do it specifically to one of the most beloved acts in the history of pop music really does make the mind spin. There shouldn’t be any reason to want to destroy the career of Paul Simon of all people, and despite having had a rocky start to his career and breaking up with Art Garfunkel after just one record before reconciling for four more, by the 1970s, he had proven himself to be a much-beloved songwriter.
There was one particular individual who seemed to think otherwise, but if you were after any sort of reasonable answer as to why he might have wanted to derail Simon’s career, good luck getting one. As head of Columbia Records’ parent company, CBS, in 1975, when Simon released his final studio album for the label, Walter Yetnikoff always had a dislike for the songwriter, and Simon insisted that he was hell-bent on bringing his output to a standstill.
While Still Crazy After All These Years might have been his final recording for the label, he did have his Greatest Hits Etc compilation album released via Columbia in 1977 before switching allegiances to Warner Bros, who obtained his whole back catalogue in the move. Yetnikoff was not pleased about this acquisition, and instead of allowing Simon to continue with his career, he sought to continue to cause problems for him instead.
Yetnikoff was known for being a volatile person to deal with, and an even trickier businessman, having had disputes with many other high-profile artists throughout his reign of terror. Even the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, failed to get on the right side of the label boss, with Yetnikoff labelling the singer as an egomaniac who enjoyed nothing more than “ranting about being not only the biggest artist in the world but the biggest mogul”.
There are multiple stories as to why Simon left Columbia for Warner, with some sources saying that a row had taken place between Simon and Yetnikoff when the artist refused to allow him to have a drag on his joint and others claiming it was due to Simon accusing the label of conning him out of royalties for his records. Regardless of why he left, the aftermath of the situation was not pretty.
Simon’s first release for Warner was One-Trick Pony, a poorly received album that accompanied the semi-autobiographical film of the same name in 1980, and Simon blamed a large amount of its less-than-lukewarm performance on the executive’s mission to bring him down. In an interview with Playboy in 1984, Simon opened up about the career and personal struggles that he was experiencing during this period and did not hold back when it came to being critical of his former boss.
“I had switched labels from Columbia to Warner Bros with great trauma,” Simon explained. “When I left CBS, it became company policy there to make life as difficult as possible for me. And that began a terrible personal battle for me and Walter Yetnikoff, the president of the company.”
While the determination of Yetnikoff to be victorious in his battle against Simon seemed unstoppable, he finally managed to resolve the situation after taking drastic action. “It only ended when I threatened to subpoena people to testify that he had told people he was going to ruin my career,” claimed the singer.
He might have experienced a downturn in fortune around the time of the switch, but he would eventually go on to make the most exceptional recovery, releasing his most acclaimed album, Graceland, in 1986. Yetnikoff would pass away in 2021, leaving behind a complicated legacy where he was equally beloved for his nurturing of talent and his erratic methods of handling situations.
