Amid the fogeyish splendour of a Claridge’s suite, Paul Simon is a small,
cerebral figure on a large sofa. The creator of some of the least disposable
pop songs of the past four decades doesn’t, of course, do hotel dress codes;
he is wearing a lived-in sweatshirt and jeans. With his smooth skin and lack
of height, he is a curious mix of age and youth — a 64-year-old schoolboy.
Unlike the insecure fitness freak in one of his wry new tunes, Outrageous,
he doesn’t bother to paint his hair “the colour of mud”.
The singer is a little tired, partly because the previous night he played a
Radio 2 invite-only concert — in which subtly retooled versions of The
Boxer, Slip Slidin’ Away and Graceland were greeted with something close to
rapture by an army of greying fans. But it’s also because he has spent most
of the week here talking up his new album, Surprise. He will be heading for
Heathrow and home as soon as I’ m done.
For most people, the surprise in question is that Simon enlisted Brian Eno,
knob-twiddler supreme for U2, Talking Heads and Bowie, to wrap “sonic
landscapes” around his delicate tunes. “From Grace- land to space land” was
one wary verdict, but in fact Eno’s subtle treatments are often highly
simpàtico to a restless musical mind famous for exploring African and South
American rhythms and melodies — and who tells me that the traditional pop
song form is played out.
“Brian is a very interesting guy,” says Simon. “I was aware of him since his
Music for Airports album and for what he did with David Byrne. We were at a
dinner party held by a mutual friend in London and fell into conversation
easily. He invited me to his studio and it started from there.”
Collaboration was “a very satisfying experience” after some initial creative
hiccups. Eno, feeling they were getting nowhere, has talked about how he
suggested that Simon leave the studio in Primrose Hill, North London, to buy
a Mother’s Day present. Simon shrugs: “He just wanted to get a certain sound
and it was going to take half an hour to achieve this. I wouldn’t have
minded hanging around.”
On the album, his first for six years, Simon muses on time and tide, love and
human folly, in his familiar role as downbeat New York everyman. For those
who still have Simon pigeon-holed as a sentimental folkie, Surprise will
take some getting used to — but has gorgeous moments as the music veers
between hard-edged and pretty.
Two songs — How Can You Live in the North East? and Wartime Prayers — address
the fears and insecurities of life in post-9/11 America. Why, though, didn’t
the singer follow the lead of his peers — Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen —
and really put the boot into Bush? Simon, who talks slowly, carefully, in
the fashion of the lawyer he once briefly trained to become, says: “I didn’t
want to make a political statement. I am anti-political — opposed to the
whole game, not just Bush and the Republicans. The whole political process
is deeply hypocritical and untruthful. It’s just a charade. So I don’t see
any reason for taking the prevailing political point of view and writing a
song about that. People who agree with you, they don’t need it; people who
disagree with you will just turn their ears off.”
Yes, he says, he has endorsed John Kerry, Al Gore, George McGovern (trounced
by Nixon). “But it’s usually because I don’t like what’s coming over from
the other side, not because I’m powerfully in favour of the Democrat
candidate.”
But if the state of America makes him uneasy, his personal life is serene.
It’s a long time since Simon had to visit a shrink because huge fame and
wealth had failed to bring the expected happiness. He lives in Connecticut
with his third wife, the singer Edie Brickell, and their three children —
two boys and one girl. The album’s final track, Father and Daughter,
inspired by 11-year-old LouLou, plonks Simon’s heart firmly on his sleeve.
The singer says that he often works through ideas for melodies and lyrics on
the school run — though the process of music-making still remains deeply
mysterious to him.
Like so many dads, he frets over pornography on the internet and repulsive pop
lyrics (“We’re living in a culture that has an enormous river of stupidity
that feeds into the marketplace”). But he’s happy to be living a homely,
non-celeb existence. It is only rarely that someone on the street stops and
tells him he must be Neil Simon — or Art Garfunkel.
So how is Art? Their friendship, after some well-publicised ups and downs, is
intact, says Simon. In 2004 the barnstorming “Old Friends” reunion tour
culminated in a free concert at the Colosseum in Rome that drew 600,000
people — 100,000 more than Paul McCartney the previous year. But there won’t
be another get-together. As the sound of Surprise attests, Simon isn’t in
the mood for nostalgia (his assessment of the huge-selling S&G albums of
the Sixties: “Pretty good for young work”).
“Going back is a hard job to do,” says Simon, now sounding like somebody who
has spent time with Brian Eno, “to rethink what it is that people imagine
Simon and Garfunkel was about — even though it wasn’t. To try to give them
what they think they remember and stop at 1970 and don’t think or play
anything you thought or learnt after 1970. I did it for a year and I thought
it was an interesting set of problems to work on. But that was enough.”
The car for Heathrow is waiting, Simon snaps on his baseball cap; one last
question. It’s almost 50 years from Simon’s first hit, Hey, Schoolgirl, a
throwaway teen tune that earned him and Garfunkel an appearance on American
Bandstand under the names Tom and Jerry. Has Simon’s epic career taught him
wisdom? The singer grins. “I couldn’t answer that. I really have no idea.
Somebody I met who was considerably older said to me that yes, you do
eventually get wisdom. But unfortunately it occurs too late.”
Paul Simon in concert, Radio 2, tomorrow, 9pm; Surprise (Warner) is out on
Monday
