What does ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ actually mean?
When Paul Simon chose to emerge from his brief hiatus and announced that he was going to be pursuing a solo career, many speculated how he would fare without his trusty partner in Art Garfunkel by his side. After calling it quits on the highest high imaginable, Simon would have a big task on his hands following up Bridge Over Troubled Water with an equally stunning release.
What the public tended to forget or ignore is the fact that Paul Simon was the writer behind all of Simon and Garfunkel’s original output, and even though Garfunkel sang a number of the songs, Simon was the lyricist, too. That’s not to diminish Garfunkel’s input as an incredible vocalist, but Simon did much of the heavy lifting and, therefore, was perfectly equipped to go out on his own.
Poetic and imaginative, there was always a tenderness to the lyrics that Simon wrote, and he always seemed to have an excellent knack for tapping into real human emotions through his words. It’s hard not to feel moved by his work in this regard, and anyone who recognised the weight of his contributions to the duo would know that his fine work would inevitably continue into his solo output.
Given that, you might think that one of Simon’s early solo hits, ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ is all about a parent and their kin coming together and sharing a familial love. In actual fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth, and the song has a far sadder and slightly morbid origin story than one might originally think.
So, what does ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ actually mean?
The song isn’t totally misleading in its meaning, and the song is about a ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ as the title would suggest, but the inspiration came from two different places that are far from suggestive of this reunion being a happy one or one worthy of celebration.
The primary inspiration for the song was inspired by the death of someone close to Simon, and in a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone, he revealed that “last summer we had a dog that was run over and killed, and we loved this dog.” Simon would go on to explain how some of the lyrics referenced the grief in a straightforward but relatable way, having never experienced a grief like this. The line, “I can’t for the life of me remember a sadder day,” is the most direct reference to how he felt about his pet’s passing, but the song’s title is from another source entirely.
In the same interview, Simon revealed where he stumbled upon the phrase, excitedly telling the interviewer, “You never would have guessed” its origin. Simon explained: “I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called ‘Mother and Child Reunion’. It’s chicken and eggs. And I said, ‘Oh, I love that title. I gotta use that one.’”
Despite taking the song’s premise from a dead dog and a vegan’s nightmare, the out-of-place, upbeat reggae backing track is unusually chirpy for such a glum subject matter, and Simon also claimed that this came from having made a mistake on a Simon and Garfunkel song before. Having intended to bring this style to ‘Why Don’t You Write Me’ and failing miserably, he ended up attempting it again as a solo track to much more positive results.
It’s now regarded as one of his best, and it certainly put all fears to rest that Simon’s solo career wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful.
