British Building Styles
Hello, darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again… about those songs that are like a fist plunging into your chest and ripping out your heart.
Songs that pack such a punch that, even if you have no idea what the song is about, it doesn’t matter. The song itself is the story. It is a shot of pure emotion that alters your mood, the very molecules in the air you breathe.
Off the top of my head: Romeo and Juliet (it’s a Dire Straits song but, in my ‘umble opinion, the Killers version edges it); Someone Like You by Adele; Barbra Streisand’s The Way We Were; Elvis crooning Are You Lonesome Tonight?; Coldplay’s climactic Fix You; REM’S Everybody Hurts; Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight; Jacques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas.
My playlist, though, would have more Simon & Garfunkel songs than any other. Which is why I trailed out to London’s Serengeti, Hyde Park, for the second time in five years to hear Paul Simon; but, this time, it was his last concert on European soil. His final gig in his farewell Homeward Bound tour. It was hotter than July. As you can imagine the crowd – and the oldie Panama-hat count was already high – was already set to water the dead grass with its tears.
He came on as the sultry sun bathed us in a pink light, and he basted us with his brilliance, turning the men with white hair into happily sweating sides of gammon. In the first hour, he gave us the heartbreaker Bridge Over Troubled Water, revealing it came so quickly he was the mere ‘conduit’ for the classic; and spoke of his eternal regret that he had handed it after delivery to Art Garfunkel.
‘Tonight, on my final tour, I’m going to reclaim my lost child,’ he said, and sang it accompanied by strings not piano. I think I’d take Garfunkel’s version onto my desert island, but it worked. Goosebumps.
The sunglasses only came off when the sun had gone down and he was in the throes of a spectacular 150-minute set which did not just please the crowd; we could not have been more grateful if Simon had knelt on the ground in front of us to wash our hot, dusty feet.
He gave us plenty of Simon & Garfunkel classics (minus Mrs Robinson). He spritzed us with old favourites from Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints and teaser tracks from his new album. But as darkness fell, he sent the band off. After two hours, we thought it was all over, but he came back on an empty stage with an acoustic guitar. Then it was American Tune. It was Homeward Bound. It was The Sound of Silence.
We all stood there spellbound in the plangent knowledge that we were hearing Paul Simon singing ‘live’ for the last time in our lives. He sang songs we had heard on the radio hundreds of times over the years and, as the words fell like raindrops, he created a cosmic, communal connection to our own pasts that made tears start from the eyes. I’m surprised the electrical charge didn’t bring down the planes rumbling overhead from the sky. It was an absolute privilege to be there.