The music legend Paul Simon was deeply “hurt” by
It’s hard to really find too many holes in anything Paul Simon ever did.
He was far from the coolest musician in the world even at the height of his popularity, but what mattered was how well the songs sounded rather than him chasing every single trend he could find. He wanted to have the respect of his peers before any kind of chart success, but it turned out that getting that respect came with a lot more bitter pills than he wanted to swallow.
Then again, it’s not like Simon wasn’t used to failure in some respects. ‘The Sound of Silence’ was already dead in the water when it was first released, and even if it did get a reappraisal once it was re-recorded, it’s not like the folk-rock icon was in love with everything that they had done. He wanted to be known for his craft, and yet here he was with a massive hit that sounded like The Byrds doing a cover of the original tune.
Even when he started working on his solo work, there were always bound to be a few hurdles that Simon had to work his way through. Hearts and Bones was an album that didn’t do justice to his songs as far as he was concerned, and even when he worked on his songwriting process, he was known to beat himself up a little too much when it came to getting the perfect lyric for whatever tune he was writing.
Not everyone needed to be as clinical about their craft as he was, but that was only because he was following in the footsteps of people like Bob Dylan. Dylan was always about pouring over every single word so it rolled off the tongue perfectly, and throughout his folk records, there was no doubt that he wanted every single verse to have the same kind of resonance as any other classic folk tune.
But there’s one distinction that separates Simon and Dylan: their tone. While it’s easy to hear Simon tell you a story every single time he sings one of his classics, it’s not clear what Dylan is going for every single time he opens his mouth. There might be a few drops of sincerity, but there’s also a healthy amount of sarcasm, a cunning wit, and some of the most caustic lines to ever come out of rock and roll.
That’s part of what makes him an icon, but Simon remembered being heartbroken when the more caustic version of Dylan showed up at a bar laughing during Simon and Garfunkel’s performance back in the day, saying, “I wasn’t furious. But I was hurt. Here was someone laughing during my performance — especially someone I admired.”
Then again, Dylan didn’t mean anything by it, either. According to his writer colleague Robert Shelton, they were there to hang out at the bar where the duo happening to be playing, but when you have one of the greatest songwriters of any generation standing feet away from you during a performance, it’s always going to feel a little bit disconcerting if they aren’t taking any of it seriously.
It’s hardly Dylan’s fault that he didn’t know that Paul Simon would become PAUL SIMON later on, but what he went through was more of a self-esteem issue than anything else. Plenty of artists have to get used to facing one rejection after the next in the world of music, but if there’s one thing that stings more than someone not liking your music, it’s someone that seems to be completely ignoring it.
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