It’s right time to end long music haul
Hitmaker of Simon & Garfunkel fame says at the age of 76 he’s had enough and is ready to ride off into the sunset. However, the signs are not altogether clear that he will be hanging up his guitar for good
Paul Simon is retiring.
“When I finished that last album, a voice said ‘That’s it, you’re done,’” the legendary singer-songwriter explains. “It’s fine. I don’t feel nervous or uncomfortable or anything. I think it’s a good idea.”
At 76, seated in a plush London hotel room, Simon looks his age, a little bit shrunken in physical presence, features pale and lugubrious, tinted spectacles on his nose, a baseball cap pulled over his balding pate.
Yet his manner is sprightly, his conversational style as relaxed and fluent as ever, and the years melt away when he talks. “I’m not stopping because I’m exhausted, I’m not stopping because I can’t sing well any more, or think well,” he insists.
“I’m stopping because it feels like a good moment to think about other things.”
Homeward Bound, his farewell tour, is drawing to a close, with just a clutch of American dates left in September before he quits the stage.
“I’ve been doing this since I was 16, I’ve never taken a break and never really seriously thought about anything else other than music. So I thought: Stop! See what happens. See what stopping does.”
He seems genuinely pleased with the notion. “Even saying it aloud sounds interesting.”
“I’d like to see the planet,” he continues, with the glee of any retiree. “I think to myself: ‘Do I want to spend the next three years making an album or would I rather go to India?’
The night before, he played his final show in Britain, in Hyde Park, in front of 65,000 people.
It was an extraordinary and moving event, with his usual dazzling musicianship and incredible songcraft lent a particular poignant intensity.
To a spellbound crowd, he closed the show, alone in the spotlight, singing an acoustic version of his 60s classic The
Sound of Silence. “For the last time,” he says, smiling.
And it is hard not to detect a hint of relief in that statement.
“There’s no time to get sentimental. I’ve trained myself to be focused on the performance, as opposed to saying: ‘Wow, look at all the people and the sun going down and this is the end’.
“When the sound is good and my voice is good, I give myself the pleasure of just singing.
“But if I allow myself to get distracted, I’m not doing my job. You don’t want to forget your lyrics in front of 65,000 people.” Yet despite this talk of retirement, he has a new album out next month, In the Blue
Light. And it is a real beauty, featuring 10 absolute gems, delicately arranged and performed, with jazzy inflections and some particularly inventive string arrangements.
There is a huge breadth to Simon’s career, which began with novelty pop in the late ’50s before flowering into the luscious harmonised folk of his superstar partnership with Art Garfunkel in the ’60s. The duo were the best-selling artists in the world when they parted ways in 1970.
Despite lucrative live reunions, their relationship soured over the years, with Garfunkel becoming increasingly bitter towards his old musical partner. Simon has made it clear he doesn’t want to talk about it any more. “There’s a guy who’s wrestling with his demons,” he told me in 2016. “And I understand it’s a hard battle he’s fighting. But if you get close to him, you’ll be in the battle, and you’ll get hit.”
Simon’s subsequent solo material merged jazzy grooves and complex chord structure into 70s soft-rock, before he enjoyed a second wave of chart-topping success with the dazzling incorporation of world music rhythms in the 80s and 90s. His collaboration with South African musicians, notably Ladysmith Black Mambazo, did much to move African music to forefront on the world stage.
A flourish of outstanding albums since 2000 brought all these strands together with a subtle electronic patina.
He has rewritten and edited lyrics for several songs on In the
Blue Light, making significant changes to Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy (originally from 1975’s
Still Crazy After All These Years)
and Love and The Teacher (from the 2000 album You’re The
One). The burning question is whether his songwriting is really over. “Well, I haven’t written anything. Not in a while,” he shrugs. “Over? I don’t see why it should be over.”
His last original album, Stranger to Stranger, came out in 2016. “I thought, ‘That’s about as good as I can do it. So, maybe that’s enough.’”
Despite his conviction that his working life is at an end, Simon makes offhand remarks about possibly collaborating again with virtuoso jazz guitarist Bill Frisell (who appears on In the Blue Light), and making guest appearances with experimental New York chamber sextet yMusic. “I could give the money to charity. I really don’t need any more money.”
He has a son, 45-year-old Harper Simon, from his first marriage to the singer-songwriter Peggy Harper. His 1983 marriage to the late Carrie Fisher only lasted a year.
Since 1992, he has been married to singer-songwriter Edie Brickell. They live with their three children on a country estate in Connecticut.
It is fair to say that Paul Simon is contemplating a very active retirement.
“Let’s see where it goes. I’ve never been bored, so I’m not worried.
“Creativity just comes, you don’t have to lock yourself away for it to happen,” he says. —