‘Homeward Bound’: To which home did Paul Simon wish he was heading?
Throughout his illustrious career, Paul Simon has always been something of a globetrotter.
Whether his songs are borrowing stylistically from other cultures, such as the South African influences heard on Graceland, or writing from a specific location that he has visited, his music has always had this ability to transport you to the heart of the location it is either meant to invoke or capture in the moment. This is just one of Simon’s most innate abilities as a songwriter, and he’s been able to tap into it with ease since he first emerged in the 1960s.
For someone who writes such poetic lyrics about far-flung locations, or indeed transports his sound to exotic climes, it’s all the more special when he focuses on subjects close to home. As a native New Yorker, he’s written songs about the Big Apple on several locations throughout his career, with ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ being a fine example of his brilliance in this regard. However, this ability to write about ‘home’ doesn’t always refer to his home by birth, but often references a more spiritual concept of what home can be.
For instance, in the song ‘Homeward Bound’, taken from Simon and Garfunkel’s 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, he’s longing for somewhere that isn’t specifically his own home, but rather somewhere where he’d rather be spending his time rather than alone on a platform waiting for a train to whisk him away to his next destination on tour. While he complains that “each town looks the same to me” and that touring alone brings “emptiness”, he’s after the comforts of his imagined home, as he puts it, “where my love lies waiting silently for me”.
So, where exactly is he calling home? For someone who has travelled all over the world, does Simon truly have a home to return to, and are the things he’s anticipating waiting for him at the other end of the train line, actually real, tangible things that he longs for?
Where does Paul Simon want to go in ‘Homeward Bound’?
In the early 1960s, Simon had spent a lot of time in England touring by himself, with an extended stay in the country taking place in 1964. With this in mind, there’s every reason that one might expect him to be waiting for a train back to the airport, where he will return to America (another location he’s written about), but in this instance, that isn’t the case.
Allegedly, while Simon was frequenting the Railway Hotel in Brentwood, Essex, during his visit to the country, he struck up a strong relationship with one of the members of staff there who worked in the box office for the venue. Kathy Chitty quickly developed a whirlwind romance with Simon, and would even later join him in America, but while Simon was still in the UK, he spent large amounts of time longing to be with her when he was touring up and down the country.
While on tour, he found himself sat at a train station in Widnes, Cheshire, where the pining feelings of longing to return to his lover seemingly struck him more than ever, and he was hit with a wave of inspiration to write a song about his desires to sack off the relentless touring life, evade hopping on the train to his next destination, and expeditiously make his way in the opposite direction to be with Chitty.
Therefore, the song isn’t about heading anywhere exotic, or even anywhere truly close to Simon’s actual home, but he’s dreaming of making his way across the UK from the North West in Widnes to the South East in Brentwood. It’s a romantic tale of longing for a sense of belonging more than anything, and had the love of his life been in any other location, then that’s where he’d have been headed, but as far as the story of the song goes, he’s hoping for a little jaunt down to Essex for a romantic tryst.
