Paul Simon

A precocious writer of little songs, a folk singer with a thousand pseudonyms, an admirer of the two-part vocal harmonies of the legendary Everly Brothers, a devotee of stylistic cross-pollination, partner-in-crime to Art Garfunkel in that Simon & Garfunkel which gave us so many memorable hits. A humble heart, prone to small but intensely melancholic heartache. This, in short, is the identity card of Paul Simon, born 1941 in New Jersey, at the time of his split from his great friend and collaborator Garfunkel. Already in the immediate aftermath of that split, Simon was writing and digging up songs for what would become his possible solo debut. That delightful "Paul Simon" (1972), which soon became happy reality, would be followed by "There Goes Rhymin' Simon" and "Still Crazy After All These Years", three records in which he navigates - with the same admirable ease as the parent duo - the calmer waters of folk singer-songwriting. And where he also allows himself to vary his vocabulary, with a touch of sacrilege, giving himself over to still-tentative reggae inflections ("Mother And Child Reunion"), jive ("Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard"), stomp ("Kodachrome"), blues ("St. Judy's Comet"), right up to barging headlong into the arrangements ("Silent Eyes").

After a break due to film commitments, Simon decides to take a first, decisive step towards experimentation. The new songs retain the same structure, the same feel as always, but at the same time they're given a treatment that aims to blend the sounds together as if in a dream, to bring out the rhythms like muted backing vocals, to graft foreign musics on like autumnal torpors. "Heart And Bones", the result of this process, is a sad record that finally puts Simon's poetry - suffering and melancholy over lost love - at the centre of everything, surrounded by hazy stylistic references, choirs and vocal harmonies, keyboards and Hammond organs. But the admirable intent goes unrecognised. The public wants the shy six-string troubadour of the recent and distant past with the easy chorus, not the new dark avant-garde piano-bar crooner, and the record collapses in the sales charts.

But the worst brings out the best. Over the following three years, Paul Simon throws caution to the wind and assembles a large, multifaceted band, made up in equal parts of African musicians, adaptable session men, and illustrious guests, friends and idols of the songwriter's past and present. The result, "Graceland", will clarify - so to speak - his new artistic stance. But above all it will become a new benchmark, a landmark of the 80s and a marker in the definition of trends and currents of thought. With "Graceland" is born the style aligned with humanitarian themes geared towards Third World issues: never before has Simon's warm songwriting managed to break free of romantic turmoil and marry so wonderfully with broader causes, with the broken heart of public opinion and the collective imagination of the mid-decade. It's the definitive stroke of genius of his career. "Graceland"'s Westernisation of Afro rhythms and idioms is second to none, not even to that carried out by Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads (not to mention Brian Eno, who came before them all). With the difference that in this record's songbook there's almost nothing of the former's techno-metaphysical dimension, and even less of the latter's psycho-alienated one. With "Graceland", the ethnic component of roots music blossoms, even taking on an almost planetary flavour.

There are at least three production and arrangement miracles here. "The Boy In The Bubble" delivers a breathless near-rap over a bed of crystalline accordion and electric bass mimicking a trombone, with an African female choir like angels murmuring from the sky to transfigure a heavy saltarello beat. Then "I Know What I Know": two guitars on either stereo side in perpetual tex-mex strumming, a booming syncopated, even danceable beat, sobbing African women's voices making the chorus deafening. And then of course "You Can Call Me Al", the album's hit, which pushes Simon even further from his folk roots, through unison trumpet calls, Bolivian horns, and the pounding rhythm section.

The muted country gallop of the title track, with a melancholy steel guitar in the distance and the softest wordless harmonies underneath, and the two-part reggae lullaby of "Under African Skies", with sudden soul surges, are the coherent tribute the author pays to his rural past. Here, though, the matter becomes once again dreamlike and transfigured, perfectly in keeping with the pan-ethnic yet everyday drift of the album's music. The stories in the lyrics, in general, are exactly that: stories, tales. Humble, introverted, but exquisitely communicative. They tell of difficult loves, sweet torments, of myths that unite people and give the feeling a choral quality.

A masterful a cappella Zulu choir launches "Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes", the album's centre of gravity, evenly split between African percussion grooves and fusion-style horns, with a bass scattering melodic crystals, in a tone that mimics yet another "added" horn. And "Homeless" is a kind of ideal appendix to the incipit of "Diamonds": vocal harmonies alone, murmured at first in a mix of African and Anglo-Saxon codes, then enlivened and raised in pitch in a swift mood change, led by Simon's own voice.

The ska-jive of "Gumboots", with the guitar acting as a music-box fiddle, is another great moment - perhaps the most direct one - of the fusion the record puts into practice, of the meeting between dream and flights of calligraphy. "That Was Your Mother", a mix of zydeco and foxtrot with sax, is instead an almost excessively flaunted hybrid. "Crazy Love Vol. II", with Hawaiian trappings, is a minor "You Can Call Me Al", falling back once again on themes of love and divorce, but also carving out plastic arrangements. The final stylistic carousel is "All Around The World", which by Paul Simon's understated standards is a contagious, irresistible cow-punk anthem.

Framed in time by "Live Aid" in 1985, when these themes were loudly championed by a host of artists in front of tens of thousands of people, and by a sensational recent revival of interest from bands like Indian Givers, Yeasayer, !!! ("Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard", cf.), Plants And Animals, and the now widely known Vampire Weekend who almost quote it verbatim, it remains and will remain a rampant, immediate, alluring evergreen, with precious parts and an extremely high sound quality too. Its title refers to Elvis's house-museum, but that's only a pretext for turning everyday stories into legends to be handed down, and thus latching onto the record's rock-solid musicianship. It was recorded directly in Johannesburg, and features celebrities such as Linda Ronstadt, the perfect second voice on "Under African Skies", another artist enamoured with transformism, his adoptive fathers the Everly Brothers watching over the enchanted atmosphere of the title track, Los Lobos whipping up "All Around The World", and the sprightly choirs of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, with whom Simon's voice blends beautifully. Without too much exegetical fuss, legend has it that Simon conceived it after listening to a battered tape by the Boyoyo Boys, titled, not coincidentally, "Gumboots", rather like Antonin Dvorak conceived his masterpiece "New World" simply by listening to a folkloric band of Native Americans. Call it rock's Dvorak, alongside "Passion", a "Symphony from the Third World". Millions of copies sold, and not just thanks to "You Can Call Me Al". It was faithfully followed, though shifting the reference points slightly towards Latin America, by "The Rhythm of the Saints", 1990.

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11/12/2011