50 years later... The Kathy who inspired Simon
STROLLING along a country lane with a rucksack on her back, she makes for an unlikely muse.
But this is the woman who 50 years ago inspired one of America’s greatest songwriters, Paul Simon.
The life 68-year-old Kathleen Chitty now leads in a quiet Welsh village gives little clue to her past.
Simon was once so besotted with the English teenager that he mentioned her in several of his hits and immortalised their romance in the haunting Kathy’s Song.
They appeared together on the cover of his first album, The Paul Simon Song Book, released in 1965.
Ms Chitty moved to the US with him but grew to dislike the huge public attention and returned home.
She now lives in a detached threebedroom house in North Wales, and catches a bus each day to her job as an administrator at a technical college, where she has worked for 25 years. Simon, 72, once described their relationship as his ‘most peaceful time’. Back in 1963, aged 18, Ms Chitty was working at the Railway Inn folk club near her home in Essex, outside London. Simon, who had dropped out of New York law school and was touring English clubs, fell for her and an intense love affair followed. As Simon’s success grew, however, Ms Chitty returned home from the US in the mid-Sixties.
Kenneth Harrison, her partner of more than 40 years with whom she has three children, said: ‘She wasn’t very comfortable with it.’
She still receives requests for interviews, but Mr Harrison, 67, said: ‘She has never spoken publicly about her past and has no intention to do so.’
Meanwhile, Paul Simon appeared in a US court with his third wife Edie Brickell after a violent dispute at their home last week. Police were called to their family home after receiving an emergency call.