The cool, cool man

musician's musings

Fame is toxic,” says Paul Simon. “It’s really a bad thing, filled with misinformation and not helpful to your thinking at all.

The difficulty is, if you’re popular and doing good work, it’s hard to get away from.” The 75-year-old singer-songwriter has just been accosted on the pavement outside his office in Manhattan, to pose for a selfie with a fan at least 50 years younger than him. “I hate selfies,” he says afterwards.

“To be honest, I’ve always hated having my picture taken.” None the less, he remains gracious about it. “It’s a strange thing. But, you know, when Artie and I played with the Everly Brothers, I can’t begin to express how much that meant to us. So I guess it’s the same. My music plays a big part in some people’s lives.”

He has driven in from Connecticut, where he lives with his wife of 24 years, the singer Edie Brickell. The youngest of their three children started university this year. “We’re empty nesters,” shrugs Simon. His office is an airy space, high up a skyscraper close to Central Park. Wall sand glass cabinets display tastefully arrayed memorabilia, as much to do with baseball as music.

There are just a couple of photos of him with former musical partner, Art Garfunkel. Floor space is occupied by an antique Bechstein grand piano and there’s a double bass that belonged to his father, a college professor and dance band musician. A slightly heavy-handed oil painting of a slim, handsome man hangs on one wall.“That’s my mother’s idealised portrait of me,” he laughs.

Colourful analogy

The real-life Simon is shorter and chunkier, but he displays a physical vigour that belies his advancing years. Next to the painting hangs a vivid, colourful self-portrait by renowned American artist Chuck Close,who provided the cover to Simon’s latest album, ‘Stranger to Stranger’. “Chuck’s my friend,” says Simon. “He’sprobably the most famous portraitist in America. I find it fascinating how his newest work has changed.” Simon clearly sees an analogy with his own late work. “I don’t think it’s automatic that as you get older, you repeat everything and it gets more boring. If you’re still learning and thinking about your art, it’s alive. And sometimes the late work is a revelation.”

‘Stranger to Stranger’, Simon’s 13th solo album, was warmly received by critics and the public alike, going to number one in the UK charts in June. “I think it’s cutting edge,” he says, “but cutting different edges to Kanye West and Drake. I’m drawing from a different well of sound and rhythm.”

The essence of his musical gift, he says, is an intense awareness of sound. “I have very good ears. I hear stuff all the time, without even trying. I am aware of sounds all around, like the street sounds right now, and when things sound just right, I can get lost in it. That’s what you’re looking for as a musician and that’s what makes me go forward. The feeling of that is so pleasurable that you keep trying to get it again. I’m hooked.”

There are, he points out, “a lot of jokes” in his songs. “For me [humour] tells a more truthful picture of what’s going on. Because in the midst of all the chaos, tension and anxiety that we live in, people still laugh and so do I, even though I’m depressed about a whole bunch of things.”

Songs on ‘Stranger to Stranger’ offer sharp commentaries on the economic and social inequalities currently polarising politics in America and Britain. But Simon insists that he tries not to be “pointedly” political. “It should be a song, not a lecture, or you run the risk of boring people,” he says.

Special songs

He speculates about why different songs retain relevance over his career. ‘Me & Julio Down’ by the Schoolyard “captures a certain joy” he says, while ‘The Sound of Silence’ will “always be relevant” because it is “mysterious”, although “the biggest mystery is how I ever wrote that at the age of 21. Where did it come from? I really don’t know. The same with ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. It almost feels like somebody else wrote it. Those mysteries are kind of interesting.”

He recorded those classics with Art Garfunkel, in a partnership that is definitively over. “It’s done. It’s old music; it ends in 1970, and if it’s not fun, there’s no point. And it’s not fun.”

Garfunkel has a tendency to make bitter remarks to the media. Speaking to the Telegraph in 2015, he called Simon an “idiot” and a “jerk”, and claimed that by befriending Simon at school he “created a monster.” “There’s a guy who’s wrestling with his demons,” says Simon. “And I understand it’s a hard battle he’s fighting, but if you get close to him, you’ll be in the battle, and you’ll get hit. That’s the way it always is. The stuff he said in the press, it wasn’t very nice, and it really wasn’t accurate. I don’t know why he’s mad at me, I really don’t. He’s mad at a lot of people.”

Simon says he still enjoys performing because “something happens every night” and, although he is toying with the idea of taking a year off, he has no plans to retire. “My feeling about the ending of things, including my music career and going on to the bigger subject of my life, (is that) I’d like to do it well. Look at Matisse at the end. You’d think, ‘How could he possibly do anything to compare with his classic paintings?’ and then he does these fabulous cutouts. So it can happen. If I can end it well, that will be enough for me.”