The Paul Simon song Bob Dylan rejected
As one half of Simon and Garfunkel and as an artist in his own right, Paul Simon has provided music with folk-rock anthems and danceable hits in equal measure. He’s the mind behind the magical ‘Mrs. Robinson’, the reflective ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, and the endlessly singalong-worthy ‘You Can Call Me Al’ to name just a few. A master of his craft, it’s difficult to imagine that any artist would turn down the offer of taking on a song penned by Simon, but Bob Dylan wasn’t just any artist.
Simon had a complicated relationship with the folk legend, one marked both by admiration and rivalry. “I usually come in second [to Dylan],” Simon once explained during a conversation with Rolling Stone, “and I don’t like coming in second.” His distaste for second place is unsurprising and understandable, but if there is anyone that seems worthy of conceding to, it’s Dylan.
Despite Simon’s professional competition with his folk contemporary, he did think highly of Dylan’s work. “‘The Sound of Silence’ wouldn’t have been written if it weren’t for Dylan,” he once suggested. Though their musical preferences may have changed, that admiration seemed to persist decades on from their heyday, as Simon’s 2011 album featured a track he had initially planned to feature Dylan.
The titular track to So Beautiful or So What, Simon’s 12th full-length solo endeavour, was intended for the folk legend. “I’d written the title track ‘So Beautiful Or So What’, and there were two verses that I thought would be good for Bob,” the songwriter told Mojo, “It’s kind of a blue song, and I thought it could accommodate his voice now that it’s real rough. I thought he could be the voice of wisdom.”
Marking the end-point of the record, ‘So Beautiful or So What’ is a folk rock number which finds Simon ruminating on the mundanity of life and the beauty within it. “You know life is what we make of it, so beautiful or so what,” he declares. It’s not difficult to imagine how Dylan’s voice might have further enhanced the track, but the collaboration did not come about.
Simon contacted Dylan through their mutual manager, initially receiving a positive response from the folk legend. “The first word I got back was that he liked it and he wanted to do it, but then I never heard anything more,” he explained. Under time constraints to complete the record, the idea unfortunately never came to fruition.
“I had a deadline, and I needed to get the album finished,” Simon recalled, “I figured maybe Bob was burnt out from touring, or maybe he had more dates to do. It was no big deal.”
Despite the absence of Dylan’s voice of reason in the song, the track proved Simon’s continuing songwriting ability over half a century into his career. Revisit the track below.
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