Paul Simon

After the 1970 breakup of Simon and Garfunkel [see entry], Paul Simon went on confirm his stature as a first-rate songwriter and performer. His terse, exquisitely crafted songs have drawn on early rock & roll (particularly doo-wop), reggae, salsa, jazz, gospel, blues, New Orleans, and African and South American music, in some cases presaging the conscious blending of world music into mainstream pop by over a decade. In an unassuming, distinctive tenor, Paul Simon has sung of matters personal and universal with attitudes ranging from the whimsical to the reverent. Simon stands apart from most folk-based singer/songwriters of his generation in that he has created a wide-ranging body of work in which the purely musical vocabulary - of style, instrumentation, and sounds - is as evocative and as expressive as his lyrics.

Simon had recorded solo in England between Simon and Garfunkel’s first and second albums. On his first album after their breakup, Paul Simon (#4, 1972), he began working from a broader stylistic palette and playing with such celebrated artists as jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli; the first single, “Mother and Child Reunion” (#4, 1972) was cut in Jamaica; and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” (#22, 1972) showed a clear urban Latin influence. Although Simon had ventured outside the classic folk-rock idioms with Garfunkel (“Cecilia,” “El Condor Paso”), as a solo artist he pursued these new directions in earnest while returning to such American genres as gospel on There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (#2, 1973); “Loves Me Like a Rock” (#2) featured the venerable Dixie Hummingbirds on backup. That album also included “Kodachrome” (#2, 1973) and went on to sell 2 million copies. The next year’s Live Rhymin’ (#33, 1974) featured the Dixie Hummingbirds and the Peruvian folk group Urubama.

Despite their sometimes rocky relationship, Simon and Garfunkel never completely severed ties. They performed at a George McGovern fund-raiser in 1972 and Garfunkel was a frequent guest at Simon’s concerts. In 1975 they collaborated on their first record since 1970’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, the single “My Little Town” (#9), which turned up on both Garfunkel’s Breakaway and Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years (#1, 1975). The latter, purportedly about the dissolution of Simon’s first marriage, generated the hits “Gone at Last” (#23) (a duet with Phoebe Snow) and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” (#1), and won a Grammy for Best Album of 1975.

Next Simon played a small nonsinging part in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in 1977, and started working in television, hosting Saturday Night Live and his own special. His Greatest Hits (#18, 1977) yielded the 1977 #5 hit “Slip Slidin’ Away.” In 1980 Simon starred in One Trick Pony, for which he wrote the screenplay and soundtrack. The story of a journeyman rock & roller, Pony received mixed reviews and flopped at the box office, although the salsa-influenced “Late in the Evening” became a #6 hit. In 1981 Simon reunited with Garfunkel again in Central Park; the concert was documented on a live album.

A year later, the pair toured together, intending to collaborate in the studio. When those plans fell through, Simon released Hearts and Bones (#35, 1983), the least commercially and critically successful work of his career to date. Including a collaboration with composer Philip Glass, the album failed commercially, and with the end of his second marriage, to actress Carrie Fisher, Simon reached a personal and professional low point.

Seeking inspiration, Simon traveled to South Africa in 1985 to explore its indigenous music, which he had been studying. After participating in the recording of “We Are the World,” the all-star anthem for the USA for Africa hunger relief project, he began recording in Johannesburg. He emerged with Graceland, a dazzling collection influenced by South African dance music and featuring the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo (for whom he’d later produce two albums), the Everly Brothers, and Los Lobos. Graceland scored #3 in 1987 - a whimsical single, “You Can Call Me Al,” reached #44 (and #23 in rerelease in 1987) - and won a 1988 Grammy for Album of the Year.

Recording in South Africa caused Simon to be blacklisted by the United Nations and the African National Congress (ANC) and to be picketed in concert by antiapartheid protestors. To his credit, Simon spoke at public gatherings, where he addressed his critics face to face and defended his actions, insisting that his motives in breaking the boycott on recording in South Africa were musical, not political. The UN and the ANC dropped their bans in early 1987 after Simon wrote the UN pledging to abide by the terms of their South African boycott. Simon then released a best-selling home video of the Graceland concert in Zimbabwe.

In 1990 The Rhythm of the Saints, incorporating strains of West African, Brazilian, and zydeco music, reached #4, and Simon and Garfunkel were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The next year, Simon hosted a free Central Park concert (at which Garfunkel was pointedly asked not to appear) that drew an estimated 750,000 people. In 1992 Simon married Edie Brickell [see entry], then the lead singer for the New Bohemians; he coproduced his wife’s first solo album in 1994.

Simon performed a series of 16 concerts at the Paramount in New York City in the fall of 1993. A retrospective of his career, the concert event also included a reunion with Garfunkel. Over the years, Simon’s charitable and social work has involved fundraising for Amazonian rain forest preservation, New York’s homeless, and South African children. For his humanitarian efforts, the United Negro College Fund accorded him its highest honor in 1989. In 1997 Simon won an Emmy for a televised concert special (“Paul Simon Special”), received critical praise for the three-CD Simon and Garfunkel retrospective, Old Friends, and collaborated with Nobel Prize–winning author Derek Walcott on a Broadway musical. The show, The Capeman, based on the true-life story of a young Puerto Rican immigrant sent to jail for the murders of two Manhattan teens, failed financially. However, it received a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score written for Theater, and its accompanying CD was warmly received. In 1999 Simon toured with Bob Dylan; the former rivals were recognized as the premier American songwriters to have emerged from the ’60s. The following year, Simon released You’re the One, a solid set of songs with no overarching conceptual framework. In 2001 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)