The man in the bubble
It’s surprising that until now no one has produced a t houghtful, detailed biography of Paul Simon. His songs have been a vivid part of the cultural landscape for two generations, and in many cases have installed themselves happily in our memories.
More than that, his story is rich in struggle, ambition and rivalry, features that inspire the best biographies. The good news is that Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon ( Henry Holt Publishers), by Peter Ames Carlin, is a book Simon’s admirers will enjoy. Previously the biographer of Bruce Springsteen, Carlin is a resourceful researcher and a serious student of popular culture.
Moreover, he obviously loves Simon’s writing, the solo songs as well as the early years of Simon & Garfunkel. But he also loves, perhaps even more, the thinking, the feeling and the strenuous effort that Simon has put into his work over the decades. Carlin helps his readers share the arcane processes of music- making and encourages us to feel the tension that arises as each song goes from one version after another until it turns into an adroitly made anthem that we’ll love for decades, like Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes or You Can Call Me Al. Carlin understands the way Simon’s poetry reflects his feelings, so he sets the immediate events of his life alongside the songs in the book’s narrative line.
This is not in any sense an official biography. Simon didn’t give the author any help but he’s so often put his feelings on record that even if he gave Carlin days of interviews they probably wouldn’t have yielded much that wasn’t already available to a dedicated researcher.
Carlin doesn’t blur the outlines of certain embarrassments in Simon’s career, such as the musicians who recorded with him and believed they didn’t get the money and credit they deserved. On a more interesting level, he doesn’t shy away from the great ongoing embarrassment of Simon’s working life: His on- again, off- again relationship with Art Garfunkel.
They became friends at age 11 in school, began making records together in their teens, became famous together and then famously broke up. But that wasn’t final, as it turned out. In fact, the legends surrounding their separation only added to the impact of all their subsequent joint performances, which included a world tour and a concert attended by hundreds of thousands in Central Park, perhaps the greatest single event in the life of either.
On the Simon vs. Garfunkel case, Simon has let us know that the first serious break came around 1970 when Garfunkel grew less interested in the recordings they were making than in his performances in Catch- 22 and Carnal Knowledge, films directed by Mike Nichols.
Simon was apparently jealous when Nichols announced t hat Garfunkel had “movie- star looks.” It seemed a bit much that Garfunkel was taller, had a better voice and might become a movie star as well. And of course there were times, in the early years, when many people didn’t understand that the songs were by Simon — from the breakthrough with The Sound of Silence in 1964 to everything that came after.
To t his day, however, Simon insists that Garfunkel is his oldest and dearest friend and best collaborator. But in more or less the same breath, Simon acknowledges that there are times when he just can’t stand him.
There’s a fierceness about Simon’s competitive attitude, which may go back to harsh words with his father. Louis Simon was a danceband bass player ( later a t eacher) who disdained Paul’s enthusiasm for 1950s pop songs. He just couldn’t take seriously his son’s future in the business — until the world convinced him he was wrong. Those arguments with his father apparently left Simon with a lifelong identity crisis, and a tendency to question his abilities.
Tales of Simon as a competitor go back to his early teens, when he played stickball for money on the streets of central Queens and sometimes made $ 15 in an afternoon. He proved his angry independence in 1986 when he recorded in South Africa even though the official anti- apartheid movement said he shouldn’t. He made it plain he would record when, where and how he chose, defiantly placing art ( in this case a masterpiece, Graceland) well above politics, however well-intentioned.
It may seem less remarkable now that Bob Dylan has a Nobel Prize for literature, but for a long time Simon has had a serious reputation stretching far beyond the empires of pop. Like many other writers and composers, he constantly struggles to push back the boundaries of his work, incorporating alien modes of composition, unusual instruments, and adventurous forms of recording.
That was the reason he was invited to Atlanta three years ago, to be celebrated, interviewed and listened to in Emory University’s Richard Ellman Lectures in Modern Literature — an honour previously granted to Seamus Heaney, Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie.
Simon accepted this tribute graciously and at one point pleased the audience by bantering t hrough a “public conversation” with his friend Billy Collins, a former U. S. poet laureate. He confessed to the faculty and students that he had managed to write only two songs in the last three and a half years.
He added, “People ask quite often, ‘ What took you so long?’ as if it were a pizza delivery. The answer was that I was trying to write the whole time.”
So at age 75 he’s doing what he’s always done, making new music and sharing it if it’s good.