The making of ‘Graceland’
During the first half of 1984, Paul Simon was depressed, discouraged over his future as a recording artist. He was 42 years old, ancient next to MTV favourites Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna, and his marriage to actress Carrie Fisher had collapsed in less than a year.
He felt numb and sat in his car listening to music and watching workmen build a house he had planned for Fisher and himself.
One day he realised he had been listening to the same tape of South African music over and over. He decided to track down the musicians and try to record with them.
At the time, there was a boycott against Western musicians playing or recording in South Africa. Harry Belafonte advised Simon to contact the African National Congress to explain the reasons for his trip. But he didn’t do it. Simon had already been told that the musicians were eager to record with him and that was all the approval he felt he needed. He got further assurance from Quincy Jones, who said: ‘Just be sure everybody gets paid and that everybody likes you.’ Simon paid the musicians triple the US scale.
Not all the musicians knew who he was. ‘When Koloi [the producer] called, I said: “Who is Paul Simon?”’ recalls Bakithi Kumalo, a young fretless bass player so gifted that Simon made him a permanent part of his touring band. ‘Then I asked myself why someone as famous as Paul Simon would want to record with me. I was only playing music part-time. My regular job was as a mechanic.’
Initially, the musicians were stiff – so accustomed to life under apartheid that they were reserved and very careful to address white visitors as ‘sir’, but over the next few days, the mood loosened.
In his hotel every night, Simon listened to tapes of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a male voice choir hugely successful in South Africa but largely unknown elsewhere outside the country.
When Ladysmith leader Joseph Shabalala came to one of the sessions, the two men embraced. It was the first time Shabalala had ever hugged a white man. The album Graceland was released in autumn 1986. It was a huge critical and commercial success.
‘Graceland changed my life,’ said Kumalo, who has played bass with Simon for more than 30 years. ‘That was my passport to the world.’ Shabalala added, ‘That’s why we gave Paul Simon the Zulu name Vutlendela: the one who opens the way.’
In London the Graceland tour was picketed by a few antiapartheid activists and some musicians, including Billy Bragg and Paul Weller, signed an open letter attacking Simon. At a press conference, Shabalala said: ‘Those who criticise Paul Simon and say he did wrong in South Africa... they themselves are now ashamed because so many people have said this is good – especially my group. This was a good opportunity to disclose our music all over the world.’
In 1992, Simon returned to South Africa and attended a reception in his honour hosted by Nelson Mandela.