Simon, Paul

PAUL SIMON

Born: Newark, New Jersey, 13 October 1941

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)

Often remembered as the creative half of the singing duo Simon and Garfunkel, singer/songwriter Paul Simon is one of the most accomplished pop songwriters in American music history. Whether playful or poignant, Simon's songs are driven by agile, often sophisticated lyrics and engaging melodies. He has recovered from commercial and creative slumps by making incisive changes in his musical handiwork to remain at the forefront of the industry since the 1960s.

Priming Rhymin' Simon

Simon grew up in the Forest Hills section of Queens, New York, under the erudite auspices of a mother who was a schoolteacher and a college professor father with a doctorate in semantics. Louis Simon was also a jazz bassist and exposed a preteen Simon to the world of jazz; however, like many teenagers growing up in the 1950s, Simon soon became enthralled with the sound of rock and roll. In 1955 Simon and a boyhood friend from the neighborhood, Art Garfunkel, formed a singing duo called Tom and Jerry with Simon singing and playing guitar and Garfunkel accompanying vocally. The conservative political backdrop of the 1950s fueled the boys' idea to call the twosome Tom and Jerry, avoiding any possible stereotyping for their Jewish names. They broke up when Garfunkel went away to college but recorded several singles together, including "Hey, Schoolgirl." Meanwhile, Simon went on to perform solo under the name Jerry Landis and scored some limited radio play with "Lone Teen Ranger."

Simon and Garfunkel re-formed in the early 1960s, this time under their own names, and recorded an album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964). The album fared poorly, the duo broke up, and Simon moved to England to work solo in the growing folk scene there. Back in the United States, however, a song from Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., "Sound of Silence," had been remixed and released as a single. It gained tremendous popularity, eventually reaching number one on the charts. Simon and Garfunkel quickly regrouped and recorded their next album, Sounds of Silence (1966), which included their surprise hit in addition to Simon's folk anthem, "I Am a Rock." Simon and Garfunkel recorded three more albums of Simon's songs until creative differences forced them apart in 1971 shortly after the release of Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970).

Going solo after such success with Garfunkel was perilous territory for Simon. Along with the two previously mentioned songs, their partnership had spawned radio classics including "Homeward Bound," "The Boxer," "The 59th Street Bridge Song," "Mrs. Robinson," and "Scarborough Fair/Canticle"—all written by Simon. The duo won five Grammy Awards, and their work was later acknowledged with an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2003 Grammy Awards. Nevertheless, Simon's first solo album after the breakup, Paul Simon (1972), went platinum and started a string of successful releases and major hits throughout the 1970s.

Some of Simon's best-known hits include "Kodachrome," "Slip Slidin' Away," "Still Crazy After All These Years," "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" and earned him the tag "Rhymin' Simon." Along the way, he reunited with Garfunkel for special projects and appearances, most notably a concert in New York's Central Park that was released as an album. Afterward they agreed to re-form and cut a studio album but ended up disagreeing about Simon's material so it was scrapped. Most of those songs went into Simon's Hearts and Bones (1983), a spectacular album that inexplicably sold poorly. Simon had been experiencing a decline in sales since his ambitious One-Trick Pony (1980), which was a soundtrack to an autobiographical film that he scripted and starred in as an actor.

Exploring the World's Musical Terrain

Although no contemporary folk/pop artist in the post–Bob Dylan era was more successful at blending poetic lyrics with catchy music to produce hits, Simon still yearned for something creatively different. In addition, he felt a change in the musical atmosphere, a greater interest in ethnic, world music. Simon traveled to South Africa and soaked up varieties of the country's rhythmic music by working with many tribal musicians. Simon placed his lyrically powered songs within this framework to produce one of the greatest triumphs in contemporary music history, Graceland (1986). The album sold more than 10 million copies within two years, and critics across the board hailed it for its musical richness. Graceland earned Simon a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1987. However, the album also brought criticism from political groups who accused Simon of carpetbagging in the struggling third world milieu and for using their music to tell his stories. Nevertheless, Simon employed a similar strategy with his next album, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990). This time he traveled to Brazil, worked with local musicians there, and produced an album of his songs that again focused on ethnic rhythms and sounds. Although interest generated by The Rhythm of the Saints paled in comparison to Graceland, it still managed to sell 4 million copies and was a major success under any other definition of success.

In late summer of 1991, Simon, a resident of Manhattan's Upper West Side, performed (as he did with Garfunkel ten years previous) in a concert just a few blocks from his home in Central Park. The free event was attended by 750,000 people who peacefully watched Simon do selections from his deep catalog of hits. The concert was released later that year as Paul Simon's Concert in the Park (1991). Although Garfunkel was conspicuously absent from the Central Park concert, Simon teamed up with him in 1993 to perform at a variety of benefits and promote a three-CD box set retrospective of their music.

In another creative adventure, Simon began writing songs for a Broadway show concept that eventually materialized when the musical play The Capeman (1997) opened in New York at the Marquis Theatre in 1997. The play, based on a double homicide in Manhattan's Hells Kitchen district in 1959, opened up old wounds for relatives of the victims—many of whom reside within blocks of the Broadway theater district—as Simon's play cast the perpetrator in a sympathetic light. The show's songs were somewhat well received, as were the musical performances of the two leading men, Marc Anthony and Ruben Blades. However, The Capeman was marred by a poorly conceived story, terrible dialogue, and clumsy staging as Simon insisted that there be little movement or anything else to distract from his music. Only a swell of interest generated by the production's skewed view of history kept it running for as long as it did—sixty-eight performances—and it now lies in the record books as one of Broadway's biggest flops. An album of the show's songs, Songs from the Capeman (1997), performed by Simon, was released.

In 1999 Simon went on tour with a singer/songwriter of equal legend, Bob Dylan. They successfully toured throughout 1999 and into 2000, performing concerts that contained their own solo sets, which were followed by a forty-five-minute set of them playing together.

Simon received a Grammy Award nomination for his ninth solo album, You're the One (2000). The album was less conceptual than his work of the 1990s and harked back to the introspective and melancholic wit of his earlier work. Simon received his second induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, this time as a solo performer. He earned one of America's grandest tributes when he was honored at the 2003 Kennedy Center Honors.

Aside from being one of the most important songwriters of his time, Simon is also an enchanting performer with a rich voice, and his classically influenced folk guitar style is highly revered.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Paul Simon (Columbia, 1972); There Goes Rhymin' Simon (Columbia, 1973); Still Crazy After All These Years (Columbia, 1975); Hearts and Bones (Warner Bros., 1983); Graceland (Warner Bros., 1986); The Rhythm of the Saints (Warner Bros., 1990); Paul Simon's Concert in the Park (Warner Bros., 1991); Songs from "The Capeman" (Warner Bros., 1997); You're the One (Warner Bros., 2000). With Simon and Garfunkel: Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (Columbia, 1964); Sounds of Silence (Columbia, 1966); Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (Columbia, 1966); Bridge over Troubled Water (Columbia, 1970); The Concert in Central Park (Warner Bros., 1982). Soundtrack: One-Trick Pony (WEA, 1980).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

J. Perone, Paul Simon: A Bio-Bibliography, Vol. 78 (Westport, CT, 2000); L. Jackson, Paul Simon: The Definitive Biography of the Legendary Singer/Songwriter (New York, 2003).

donald lowe