With a career that spans almost 50-years, starting with his partnership with childhood friend Art Garfunkel in Simon & Garfunkel and extending to the present day through his solo career, Paul Simon has repeatedly defined and redefined Popular music. In this week’s cover story, Simon talks to FMQB about his new album, So Beautiful Or So What, as well as songwriting and his efforts to put something back into the world.
Paul Simon
By Jack Barton
With a career that spans almost 50-years, starting with his partnership with childhood friend Art Garfunkel and extending to the present day through his solo career, Paul Simon has repeatedly defined and redefined Popular music. The plethora of awards Simon has received – from the Grammys, the American Film Institute, the Library Of Congress and everyone in between – only underscore the tremendous influence he has exerted on songwriting since the beginning of his career as part of the social consciousness of the ’60s, incorporating meaningful messages into songs that also became hugely popular. And it is not only his lyrics that have set Simon apart from the pack through the decades. His 1985 mega-hit album Graceland is widely credited for bringing African rhythms and World Music, in general, to be accepted into the musical mainstream.
With a history rich in success, Simon opened 2011 readying So Beautiful Or So What – his first album for Hear Music/CMG – for release, and once again found himself showered with accolades. Co-produced by Simon and longtime cohort Phil Ramone, So Beautiful Or So What is a collection of songs that beautifully capture the current emotional and social climate of a world in changes, using interesting juxtaposition of lyrics, melodies and rhythms to convey the complexity of his ideas.
In a recent conversation just a few days before Simon inducted Neil Diamond into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame – a place where Simon resides as both a solo artist and a member of Simon & Garfunkel – Simon talked to FMQB about the new album and songwriting, as well as his efforts to put something back into the world.
Congratulations on what many have called your best work since Graceland. Are there times while you’re writing when you just know that a certain collection of songs are more special than usual?
Yes, I did know. Somewhere around two-thirds of the way through I thought that the album was unusual in a way that I found satisfying. Maybe that’s because I started off writing the ballads first.
Do you have a process where you choose particular motifs for songs and then build the album around it, or do you just write what comes out naturally?
Since Graceland, I’ve been starting with a rhythmic premise on all the albums. Well not the Capeman, but the other albums. This time I decided I would break that habit and go back and just sit with a guitar, by myself, and write a song the way I used to sit and write songs. The first three songs that I wrote were the ballads. “Amulet,” which I thought was going to be a song but then it was too complicated harmonically to make a simple melody flow over it, and then “Love And Hard Times” and the “Questions For the Angels.” After those two I began to go towards rhythm. But it was when I added the piano to my guitar part on “Love And Hard Times” that I thought the album was going to be special.
After decades of all the success and all the accolades, what keeps you inspired to keep pushing your art to another level?
It’s really nothing about inspiration at all. Accolades, prizes and that stuff actually are not particularly beneficial. They just tend to bring with them a lot of misinformation. So really what it is, is just luck. I really like the process of writing and recording, and it usually begins about a year-and-a-half after I finish some other piece of work. I don’t need any inspiration for it; it just starts to come with an idea. In this particular case, I began with songs with interesting harmonic changes, and that’s really it.
Once you begin, once you get two or three songs or even maybe four songs, you know what the arc of the album is. At that point you can head toward one direction or another. Also, some albums are like explorations where you go to some area that you’re really not familiar with, and other albums are summations where you gather all the information together and you share what you’ve been thinking about. That also is not actually a choice, it just comes that way, and (So Beautiful Or So What) is in that category of the summation. It has a lot of elements that I’ve already explored but that have evolved into their current shape. I mean “Dazzling Blue,” probably would have been a good Simon & Garfunkel song; Folkie changes. And “Waiting For Christmas Day” and “The Afterlife” are like a combination of 50 years of Rock & Roll; Bo Diddley and West African, or Bob Marley, kind of rhythms.
It’s interesting you mention those two songs, because one of the things I’ve noticed in your work over the decades that is prevalent on the new album is that you’ll have songs that have really deep lyrical content with a light hearted upbeat rhythm – they almost sound like a little sing-along – and then some of your more positive songs will be in the slow, minor key, ballad arrangements.
It’s like a conversation between the lyrics and the music. They’re not the same voice. It’s a dialogue really. So the music may answer the words with “I agree with you,” or maybe, “Yeah, but…,” and that creates, at least in my thinking anyway, more complexity to whatever the thought is, because it says “Well, the opposite is true too, to some degree.”
That is the way I think about the world really; not just as a songwriter but just in general. In fact there was a song onYou’re The One, actually the song was “You’re The One,” that starts off with one verse about some complaint about the person who broke another person’s heart. Then in the next verse it says, “But when I hear it from the other side, it’s a completely different song. I’m the one who made you cry, and I’m the one who’s wrong.”
That’s really just the way the world is. We give our point-of-view, but somebody else has got a point-of-view. You try and capture a feeling for the complexity of whatever the issue is and you’re probably making a song or a short story or a novel or whatever.
Talk about how your co-producer, Phil Ramone, figures into the creative process; his name seems to be more associated to yours than even Art Garfunkel’s.
I would have to say he’d sort of be the equal of Roy Halley in terms of producing, because Roy Halley did all the Simon & Garfunkels albums and Graceland. But Phil did Still Crazy After All These Years and There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. Phil Ramone was like one of the biggest engineers of his generation, and then, when I first started to work with him, he started to become a producer. The first song that we worked on was “Me And Julio,” and the first album we worked on was There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.
First of all, Phil brought a really great bunch of musicians to my sessions. He introduced me to Steve Gadd and Richard Tee and Tony Levin. He used to own a studio called A&R, and that was a really popular studio in the ’70s and into the ’80s, so he would see a lot of new players when they came in, and brought a lot of really talented people to work with me, which was a big gift for a producer. He also introduced me to Quincy Jones who’s been my friend since then.
One of the things that Phil does that’s very helpful to me is, I have a tendency to reach a certain point and get frustrated and say, “Okay, never mind, forget it, let’s just move on. I can’t get it; I don’t know what it is.“ And he’ll say, “Don’t quit now, you’re not that far away. Really, it’s a lot better than you think.” He’ll keep you motivated, without being a liar either. If you caught him in a lie, you wouldn’t believe what he said. So he brings that.
He was a child prodigy violinist so he knows his music and he knows his theory, and he knows his engineering, and he knows many, many musicians – and he knows me! He lives in the next town from me, so he’s 15 minutes away from where I record because I record in a little studio at my house.
You’ve carried the social consciousness of your generation through your life. Talk about some of the causes most important to you and tell us why.
The main thing I’ve done was I co-founded the Children’s Health Fund in 1986 or ’87 with Dr. Erwin Redlener. The Children’s Health Fund is a mobile pediatric doctor’s office. It has two little examining rooms and a doctor on board, a driver, nurse and a computer person to keep records. We started that to deal with the homeless problems in New York that were really evident in the late ’80s. Then we switched over to focusing on the children of this homeless population. Now there have been over two-million doctor/patient visits across the country, and we have 13 or 15 different sites around the country. Also, what we found was that these mobile units were very effective tools for the natural disasters of Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina. When some communities are flattened by a hurricane or a natural disaster and local clinics are wiped out, these mobile units come in and fill the gap temporarily, or even longer. I think we have three or four units still permanently stationed in the Gulf, mostly in Louisiana but a couple in Mississippi, as well. Why do I do that? Because it’s right to try and help and do good.
I was looking over your discography while preparing for this, and I’m struck by how much time and patience you were afforded to develop at the different stages of your career. Do you think the industry allows young talent the same opportunity today?
I don’t know about the success because my timing was very fortuitous. We became popular in the ’60s just as the albums became the main art form. The albums as an art form emerged really with The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper and The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds; those two albums. We were very close to that. So as far as success goes, there were a lot of albums being sold and a lot of interest in music as one of the main expressions of popular culture. Today, as we know, there are very few albums being sold. Music is still a very important part of popular culture but so is film and video. So “yes” to the first part of the question that somebody starting today can definitely have a long and interesting career with the opportunity to evolve, but if they were starting right now they would be struggling for awhile.
But people will be able to make a living, and they don’t seem to be discouraged from it. More and more people want to be musicians. It’s so much pleasure to make music. There are people who want to be painters. How do you make a living as a painter? People never made a living as a painter. They’re still a lot of painters out there.
[eQB Content by Jack Barton]
