The origin of the title is said to be Simon going to a party in New York and the host mistakenly calling him Al when he left. This may have happened, but if so, it is an intriguing coincidence that the key song about the Depression, Bing Crosby’s ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime’ from 1932, has Bing playing a hobo and singing:
Say, don’t you remember when they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
‘You Can Call Me Al’ is a comic song about a confused man in New York who finds salvation in Africa. He sees ‘angels in the architecture’.
The three African musicians recorded the track for Simon’s beautiful song, ‘Under African Skies’, which he then sang with Linda Ronstadt in Los Angeles. There is nothing musically wrong with having Ronstadt’s wonderful voice on this track but was Simon doing this provocatively? She was, after all, one of the stars who had played Sun City. This is a beautiful song; talking about an African child, Simon wrote, ‘Give her the wings to fly through harmony.’
They play too on ‘Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes’ with the percussion enhanced by other musicians including Youssou N’Dour, though Simon didn’t ask him to sing. Still, Simon performed the song with Ladysmith Black Mambazo. This is a delightful song, very catchy and chastising someone who can’t appreciate the value of what she has.
The singing group Ladysmith Black Mambazo had been formed by Joseph Shabalala in 1964 and they specialised in songs and harmonies from Zulu roots. They performed in a church close to Durban but their fame spread across Africa and then abroad. Simon had seen them on a BBC documentary. He wanted to use them on his record and he sent Shabalala a demo of him singing ‘Homeless’, a song about exiles, and asked him to add a Zulu beginning and end. They met for the first time at the Abbey Road studios. It’s a lovely a cappella track although it is hard to tell what Simon himself is doing as he takes few solo passages. There’s a neat joke at the end as Shabalala adds a line in Zulu to say that Ladysmith Black Mambazo are the best singing group around. And indeed they are.
Simon did consider adding a string part and he recorded the Soweto String Quartet. Their contribution has been used as a bonus track on a special edition of Graceland.
The southern music, zydeco, had something in common with African music, mostly the prominence of the accordion and among the key practitioners were Rockin’ Dopsie and the Twisters. Dopsie played the accordion upside down because he didn’t know any better when he started. The group recorded for Sonet and Rounder and Simon was impressed with their work. He went to Crawley, Louisiana to record with them and ‘That Was Your Mother’ is a cheerful song about standing on a street corner and drinking wine in Lafayette.
Although they call themselves ‘Just another band from East LA’, Los Lobos were far more than that. Simon was taken with their 1985 album, How Will the Wolf Survive. He met them for a couple of days in Los Angeles and he wanted them to play traditional songs that he could perhaps turn round and reword. Maybe he was hoping for another ‘La Bamba’. During the session, Cesar Rosas and David Hildago played a melody they were working on and Simon asked if he could add a lyric. The result was ‘All Around the World Or the Myth of Fingerprints’.
When the Graceland record was released, Rosas and Hildago were surprised to find that the songwriting credit was ‘Words and music by Paul Simon’. They complained about their lack of credit, which created ill feeling and the matter surely could have been resolved by listening to early practice tapes. The 2004 reissue of Graceland still says ‘Words and music by Paul Simon’. Not to worry, Los Lobos hit the big time in 1987 with their soundtrack for the Ritchie Valens biopic, La Bamba.
So far I haven’t mentioned the ‘Graceland’ track itself, the reason being that it cut across the whole of the recording sessions and taken by itself must be one of the most costly tracks ever produced. Only a major star with major record company backing could have indulged himself to this degree, although the time and the effort were worthwhile.
Just see how the dollars mount up. Paul and Roy Halee went to South Africa and developed a rhythm track. Simon only kept the drums which had a travelling rhythm that reminded him of Johnny Cash at Sun Records in Memphis. Back in the States, he isolated that drum part and asked Ray Phiri (guitar) and Bakithi Kumalo (bass) to augment it. He was surprised when Phiri went to a minor key as that was not generally heard in African music. When he asked why, Phiri said, ‘Because that’s the way you write.’ Simon was happy with the result and then asked Demola Adepoju from King Sunny Adé’s band to add pedal steel guitar, which was not incongruous as the instrument was heard in some African music.
While Simon had been making this track, he has been singing the words ‘Graceland, Graceland’ over certain sections. The word did not seem appropriate – what had Elvis Presley’s mansion got to do with South Africa? – but when he was recording with Rockin’ Dopsie in Louisiana, he thought he would visit Graceland and he took nine-year-old Harper with him
There the words took shape and Simon found himself continuing the theme of Hearts and Bones. He was reflecting on his marriage to Carrie Fisher and, once he had the lyric, he asked the Everly Brothers to add harmonies. They are down in the mix so you wouldn’t know it was them.
This song contains some of Simon’s greatest wordplay. He often has great first lines and is there anything more stunning than the Mississippi Delta shining like a National guitar? As he was walking past the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the line about a girl calling herself the human trampoline came to him – there was nothing significant about it, he just thought it was fun. He admitted, ‘A lot of my lyric writing is instinctive. I don’t know why “Losing love is like a window to your heart” came out the way it did. I can’t tell anyone why it comes. It just comes.’ Interestingly though, this line is attributed to Carrie in the song. In 1990 Salman Rushdie referred to the human trampoline line when reviewing Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.
Around the same time Carrie Fisher was writing a novel Postcards from the Edge about a female character making her way back after drug rehab. It is done in the form of a diary that is both harrowing and funny. It was made into a film by Columbia with Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine and Dennis Quaid with a theme song from Carly Simon.
Later Carrie wrote a memoir, Wishful Drinking. She said that they had argued on their honeymoon. They made each other laugh but ‘the day-to-day living was more than he could take.’ She said, ‘We were both small. When we went to a party, I had to say to him, “Don’t stand too close to me – people will think we’re the salt and pepper pots.”’
Straight after making his recording, Paul Simon thought that the song would suit Willie Nelson and sent it to him, asking him to cover it. Willie listened to it casually, thought it a song about Elvis and put it to one side. Some years later, he came to realise that the song was about the healing process after you’ve lost the one you love and he knew it would suit him. He agreed to cut it if Paul would play guitar and he included it on his album, Across the Borderline. Simon also plays guitar on ‘American Tune’ from the same album, and both versions are pure Willie.
So much had been spent on Graceland that Warner Brothers undertook a heavy publicity campaign to encourage heavy sales. It could have gone wrong as the album could have been boycotted, not only by fans but also by the record shops themselves. Paul McCartney commented, ‘Everybody in all forms of art uses their influences as a turn-on. The difference with Paul Simon is that he does it very well. Graceland was in dangerous territory and he more than pulled it off.’
Graceland turned out to be a huge success, selling 7m copies over the first year. It reached No. 3 on the US album charts and No. 1 in the UK. It sold predominantly to white audiences in the States. Strangely, only one single made the US Top 40, ‘You Can Call Me Al’, and that stalled at No. 23. In the UK, ‘You Can Call Me Al’ was No. 4 and ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ No. 26.
The album did well in South Africa, helped by the popularity of the local m
usicians, and topped their charts for two months. As well as the videos, Simon performed ‘Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes’ with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and his Soweto rhythm section on Saturday Night Live.
The album won a Grammy for album of the year but ‘Graceland’ lost out to ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ as the song of the year. In 1988 Simon produced an album for Ladysmith Black Mambazo called Shaka Zulu, which won a Grammy for the best traditional folk recording and sold 100,000 copies. He then made a second album with them, Journey of Dreams.
There were problems with the album, which was sometimes called Disgraceland. Paul Weller, Billy Bragg and Jerry Dammers amongst others called for a sincere apology from Simon for breaking the UN boycott. Simon was regarded as naïve and dubbed ‘Simple Simon’.
All actions have consequences and Paul Simon remarked, ‘I hoped the ANC are as happy as I am.’ They weren’t. Both the United Nations and the ANC criticised what Paul Simon had done and Simon found himself in discussions he could have done without. Indeed, he was mortified to be criticised in this way. Their opposition was lifted in January 1987.
Paul Simon took Graceland on the road for a tour which also featured Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. Indeed, Simon was only on stage for half the time. He regarded himself as the producer of the show and in his opening remarks, he said, ‘This evening is composed of music from South Africa.’ Simon did not receive payments for the Graceland concerts and gave it to musicians and to charities. There were protests at some venues, notably in London at the Royal Albert Hall. The tour did not go to South Africa but they did perform in Zimbabwe.
Simon’s performances had some idiosyncratic touches as doo-wop was never far away and he added ‘Whispering Bells’ to the end of ‘Gumboots’. Ladysmith Black Mambazo were very well received. There were a very visual act – ten men dressed colourfully and identically, using hand and body movements to convey the meaning of their songs. Seven of them sang bass so it was a very distinctive sound.
In 1988 David Byrne of Talking Heads started his own label, Luaka Bop, and he introduced many records from Third World countries to western listeners. The label continues to this day.
Also in 1988, Harry Belafonte made Paradise in Gazankulu with South African musicians. He didn’t go to South Africa himself – indeed, he would have been refused entry if he had – and he worked to backing tapes. The Belafonte LP included Rubén Blades’ ‘Muevete’, and Blades had made his first English LP Nothing But the Truth, writing about death squads in Central America. We will be meeting him shortly.
CHAPTER 13
Lefty or Left Behind?
Art Garfunkel hadn’t worked with Paul Simon since the reunion tour and since his voice had been taken off Hearts and Bones. Paul hadn’t included him in his South African journey. Art’s voice would have suited ‘Under African Skies’ but his choice of Linda Ronstadt produced a stunning track.
Art and Jimmy Webb had travelled to Tahiti and sailed around the Polynesian islands. Art took occasional jobs, playing a hard-drinking journalist in Washington for the film Good to Go, which was later remarketed as Short Fuse.
Art was seemingly unconcerned about making new music. He told Melody Maker, ‘Paul’s heartbeat is a lot faster than mine. He is more neurotic than I am and he needs to achieve more than I do. I can sit back and eat a peach and I don’t have the urge to work that he does.’
Furthermore, Art didn’t want the indignity of making an album which didn’t sell while Paul was shifting millions of copies of Graceland. In 1988 he returned with Lefty, a baseball pose from his youth on the cover and the title referring to Art being left-handed. Lefty had some familiar components: a doo-wop revival, songs by Stephen Bishop and strings from Del Newman but the album was too soporific and didn’t get out of second gear. Individually, the tracks are fine but it is too much to take, although when Nat King Cole recorded slow love ballads, I could listen forever.
By far the best track and the only one with commercial potential (although it wasn’t pushed) was a revival of the Tymes’ US No. 1 from 1963, ‘So Much in Love’. The Philadelphia group had cut a definitive doo-wop side with sound effects from the sea, birdsong, finger snapping, immaculate harmonies and a lead singer, George Williams, who sounded like Johnny Mathis. The song had been revived by Timothy B. Schmit for Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982 and his single had made the US charts, albeit stopping at No. 59.
Art’s revival of ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ shows what is wrong with the album. The original combines Percy Sledge’s utterly soulful voice with a superb arrangement and it is pointless to do something different if you can’t do it better. Art loses the distinctiveness of the song in a ponderous setting with flutes but he must have liked it himself as he performed it on The Johnny Carson Show. Would Percy Sledge have even recognised his song?
Everybody knows the final scene of West Side Story where Maria cradles the dying Tony but they still have the wherewithal to belt out ‘I Have a Love’, a beautiful ballad from Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein. Art Garfunkel and Leah Kunkel (sister of Mama Cass) revive the song here, but the song does not sound so great out of context.
‘This Is the Moment’ has the impressive songwriting credit of David Foster, Cynthia Weil, Linda Jenner and Ray Parker Jr and it is the love theme for the American graduation drama St Elmo’s Fire, starring Demi Moore and Rob Lowe. It’s a good performance from Art, who should have sung it in the film.
The British writer Peter Skellern offers ‘I Wonder Why’ (sung with Kenny Rankin) and the Stephen Bishop songs (‘Slow Breakup’, ‘If Love Takes You Away’) are disappointing. Bishop wrote ‘King of Tonga’ which contains some nice Latin rhythms but there’s no clue as to what the song is about. Nick Holmes’ ‘The Promise’ is laborious but ‘Love Is the Only Chain’ is a good song which finds Art with the original performers, Pam Rose and Mary Ann Kennedy. It has the feel of Fleetwood Mac.
Mike Batt had become entranced with Lewis Carroll’s poem, ‘The Hunting of the Snark’. I happened to be interviewing Mike at his house in 1985 when he received a fax from Sir John Gielgud agreeing to be the Narrator. Art Garfunkel was the Butcher and his main song was ‘As Long As the Moon Can Shine’ as well as three songs with Deniece Williams playing the Beaver. Art wasn’t available for the TV concert filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in 1987 but the role was played very well by Justin Hayward.
Art performed at the White House for the Reagans and he did short tours, playing the Royal Albert Hall in 1988. He spoke between songs but never mentioned his former partner. His set included Randy Newman’s ‘Sad Song’ and James Taylor’s ‘If I Keep My Heart Out of Sight’. Art sang ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ for the Prince’s Trust at the London Palladium. He performed on a star bill with Billy Joel and Boz Scaggs at the Tokyo Dome.
Art was spending much of his time at home in New York, often writing personal poems and a collection, Still Water, appeared in 1989. Although it was no best seller, he was confident about his work as he includes poems in his stage act up to today and the individual poems from the book can be found on his website.
For a short while he was dating Penny Marshall, an actress and film director who was a friend of Carrie Fisher. Then in 1985 he was introduced to an actress and singer Kathryn (Kim) Cermak, and they married at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens in September 1989.
Warner Brothers wanted to release their own greatest hits collection on Paul Simon and they put out Negotiations and Love Songs, 1971– 1986, the title coming from his song, ‘Train In the Distance’. It made the UK Top 20 albums, but it didn’t contain anything new.
In 1987 Paul Simon was in the club Sounds of Brazil, in Greenwich Village, and he was talking to the jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and the Puerto Rican pianist Eddie Palmieri. They praised Graceland but told him that it shouldn’t be a one-off: he had to continue the trail. They told him to follow the West African diaspora and see how drumming went to the Caribbean and then to Brazil and Cuba.
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sp; Simon visited Brazil with the producer Phil Ramone and talked to musicians. While they were dining in Salvador, they heard some drummers in the distance in a poor part of town. It was a large percussion group called Grupo Culteval Olodum and Simon wanted to record them in the street. Ramone set up his equipment and this became the heavy percussive sound which runs through ‘The Obvious Child’, the opening cut on The Rhythm of the Saints.
Once again, Simon shows his ingenuity by writing about his insecurities and throwing in a melodic reference to Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’. ‘The Obvious Child’ is Jesus, and Simon refers to ‘the crosses in the ballpark’, presumably a reference that Jesus stood for peace.
Several songs on The Rhythm of the Saints continue the theme of Graceland. Both ‘The Coast’ and ‘Born at the Right Time’ could have been on that album, and on the enhanced release of Rhythm, there is Simon’s excellent voice-and-guitar demo for ‘Born at the Right Time’, but rather high-pitched for him. It is intriguing to hear the demo for ‘Spirit Voices’ as Simon’s initial lyric included a reference to ‘Graceland’.
‘The Coast’ is an excellent song about a group of musicians seeking shelter in a church. One of Simon’s best songs, ‘The Cool, Cool River’ is about terrorism and the talking blues ‘Can’t Run But’ is about Chernobyl. Despite the album’s title, the songs don’t have the bounce and the joyousness of Graceland and the overall theme is the practicality of faith in an immoral world.
Is it ‘Proof’ or is it ‘Poof’ or is it ‘Proust’? If you know what I am talking about then you will have seen the colourful and funny video for the song with Paul, Chevy Chase and Steve Martin. It’s an excellent song anyway, though lacking the commercial potential of ‘You Can Call Me Al’. ‘She Moves On’ is a bittersweet song with an infectious rhythm about his marriage to Carrie Fisher, sung here with Charlotte Mbango.
Simon & Garfunkel Page 19
