The opening lyric Paul Simon wrote in 1973 that the rest of the song couldn’t compete with
Paul Simon is one of those artists whose work has so many layers that sitting down and peeling them back one by one can become a full-time hobby.
Let’s do that with his track ‘Kodachrome’, a song which is laced with double meaning, irony, and high expectations that the legendary singer-songwriter didn’t believe he ever met. When he originally started writing the song, he did so with the title ‘Coming Home’ in mind, but then decided to alter it.
While he didn’t dislike the track he had originally been working on, he felt the need to create something that was a bit more out there, and perhaps one of the primary factors that pushed the songwriter to broaden his parameters was the studio he was working in, given it was far from a conventional recording space. Simon had gone to Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama after finding out they were the minds behind a plethora of tracks he liked, but the recording space itself might not have been what Simon was expecting.
“When Paul Simon walked into our studio, he thought, ‘God, what a funky place’. Because it was. He was used to working at A&R and Columbia Studios in New York, and studios in England and different places. And when he came and saw our little place, he probably thought, ‘Man, this is a rat trap’,” recalled bassist David Hood. “It just so happened that the roof leaked in our studio right over the recording console, and as a short-term fix, we taped sanitary pads across the ceiling just to absorb the water so it wouldn’t drop down on the recording console.”
The word ‘Kodachrome’ wasn’t invented by Simon but was something that had been trademarked by the camera company Kodak and referred to the type of colour which ran through a lot of the camera’s film. Simon didn’t write this song as an endorsement of Kodak in any way, but the idea of preserving and framing memories does linger throughout.
We don’t know if he did it intentionally or if it was just a slip of the tongue, but this idea pervades in Simon’s reluctance to keep the lyrics in the song the same. He would change what he was saying depending on whether it was the studio recording or if he was singing live.
On the original album, during his reference to photographs and the different colour gradients that make them up, Simon sings, “Everything looks worse in black and white”. However, on a recording of one of his live shows at Central Park, Simon sings, “Everything looks better in black and white”. The musician has admitted he can’t remember which way round he originally wrote it, yet, knowing his musical prowess, this could well be an underlying nod towards the song’s theme.
The one line that Simon is certain of, however, is the track’s opening. There is nothing more important than a good start to a song, especially when you’re a lyric-heavy musician like Simon. When he penned the opening line for ‘Kodachrome’, no matter how hard he tried throughout the rest of the song, he didn’t feel like he could live up to it. No wonder the other words throughout are somewhat blurry for him.
The opening lyric is “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school / It’s a wonder I can think at all”, and Simon wasted no time in admitting that that was the “most interesting” part of the song.
