Simon strives to protect artistry
Pop music writer Randy Lewis and pop music critic Robert Hilburn worked together at the Los Angeles Times for a quarter-century before Hilburn retired in 2006.
The pair sat down recently to talk about Hilburn’s latest book, “Paul Simon – The Life.”
Question: You had Simon’s cooperation – something he’s never granted any other biographer – but you retained final approval. How did that sit with Simon?
Answer. There was this huge thing early on – in the second month, third month, fourth month. He said, “If you’re going to London, here are some people you ought to talk to,” and he had a whole list of names. He had people he had his secretary send notes to saying I’m going to be calling them. But then he said, “Now Kathy Chitty (his girlfriend during his early years living in England) is off limits.” And I thought, “Here we go.”
I waited maybe five minutes – this was in a series of emails. I thought, “What do I do? I can’t let this go any farther.” So I said, “Paul, I understand your concern and respect for Kathy and you don’t want to invade her life. But nobody can be off limits. If I’m talking to a reporter, and they say, “How come you didn’t talk to Kathy Chitty?” I’ve gotta be honest and say, “Because she was off limits.” That can’t work, and it makes the whole book in question.
I told him, “You don’t have to help me find her. I’m not asking you to have your secretary contact her. But if I find her, and she wants to talk, you have to be OK with it.” Twenty seconds go by. Then he says, “I understand.” That really set the tone, and he never violated that.
Q: He often comes across as a sober, even somber guy, yet there is a lot of
subtle humor in his songs. How did his sense of humor come out during your time with him?
A: He and his son are big baseball fans, and they have the All-Fish Team – all-time players with fish names (Mike Trout, Jim “Catfish” Hunter). One day he said, “Of course, one of my favorite players on our team is Minnow Minoso.” I’m thinking, “No, Paul, it’s not Minnow Minoso, it’s Minnie Minoso.”
I was shaving the next morning, and I realized, “That was a joke!” It’s subtle like that – he doesn’t set it up. I sent a note back to him and said, “That was a joke, wasn’t it?” He sent the word “smile” back.
Q: But he does have a reputation for being aloof.
A: He’s had this reputation of being prickly, kind of a stuck-up guy. Even in the book, he says that when Edie (Brickell, the singer-songwriter he married in 1992) meets him, she says, “I heard you weren’t a very nice guy.” He says, “No, I never meant to be a bad guy, I try to be nice.” But he’s so focused.
Q: Speaking of artistry, you spend as much or more time in the book examining his music as you do raking over the details of his private life. You don’t gloss over his tempestuous relationship with Art Garfunkel, or his celebrity marriages to Carrie Fisher and more recently singer-songwriter Edie Brickell.
I think of it as two train tracks going in (parallel): You’ve got to tell the personal story, because that’s what a biography is. But I think what’s important – beyond the personal story, which is essential – you’ve got to build on that and tell why he’s important. That’s the art part. And it went deeper into the art part than you almost ever see in a biography because, again, I wanted to stress the significance of it – why he’s remembered: those songs.
When you think of all these songs he wrote … it’s almost like I wanted it to be a case study in songwriting. But I didn’t want to do it to the exclusion of his private life.
Q: Paul Simon has been the subject of controversy over the years – especially his run-in with the African National Congress over charges that he violated a cultural boycott of South Africa when he collaborated with musicians there for his “Graceland” album while apartheid was still in effect.
A: “Graceland” is the significant thing, and his philosophy is he doesn’t think anybody’s got the right to tell (an artist) what you can do. His view was, “The ANC is a political party. I don’t want the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (here) telling me what I can do. I don’t want to ask their permission.”
That was in essence what he said. He was defending artistry – he even wrote a column in the New York Times about that.
I don’t try to make his case, but he would say, “That’s what artists do: You fight battles; you’re going to find record company presidents who don’t like what you do and try to change you. You’re going to find all kinds of (obstacles) and you’ve got to fight through that.” Whether it’s writing a song and not giving up, in his mind he was justified .... So I think he’s pleased with that chapter (of his life). He thinks he did the right thing, and I think he did the right thing.