Me and Paul Simon

Thank you for the lyrics

June 2025

I’ve got a date with Paul Simon this Friday.

I say that. I’m going to see him in concert.

But I love Paul Simon so much. I’m the old lover he met on the street last night. I make the sign of a teaspoon, he makes the sign of a wave. We dance by the light of the moon.

When I was in primary school in Pretoria, my mother drove a Mazda 323 (JDH356T). It was beige and it wasn’t the fun, froggy shape. It was the new model, all corners and black plastic trim. It couldn’t have been more eighties.

But we had good times in that car. My brother Rob and I used to stand between the Hillcrest Swimming Pool entrance and the edge of the parking lot chanting “Jay Dee Aitch Three Five Six Tee!”

We drove with the windows open. On Monday nights we used to rocket down Watermeyer Street to get Fudge Bars in time for the start of The A-Team. (Fudge Bars look like cigars. Hannibal smoked a cigar. It was our joke.)

In that car there were two, maybe three, TDK tapes. There was Billy Joel’s album Innocent Man and Reckless by Bryan Adams (Bryan missed a trick not naming the record Summer of ‘69). There were three Beach Boys songs in the leftover space at the end of one of Rob’s hand-labelled TDK90s.

But our top tape, the one you rarely saw because it was nearly always in the tape player, was marked just “S & G”.

This was Simon & Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park (1981). There were 19 songs and the album ran for a full 87 minutes.

To this day, I can recite the concert from start to finish: every lyric, every word uttered between songs, every roar of the crowd.

I’m not joking when I say I’ve listened to that album hundreds of times.

Have I seen the video?

Are you joking?

Since the early 1980s there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t owned a pale pink T-shirt like the one Paul Simon wore on stage that night.

I loved his voice and his music first; I fell in love with his look second.

Oh, Paul Simon. Are you the reason I love black polonecks?

Is it you that made me love careful but languid movements? Do I love heavy eyelids and shy smiles because of you, Paul Simon?

It’s true that I love every cell of Paul Simon’s being. A five foot three man who looks like an exact cross between Al Pacino in Scarface and Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit is not everyone’s New York pretzel.

But he is mine.

Would I want to hoist him onto my hip and run off with him it if it weren’t for his lyrics?

Probably not.

Because for me, it’s the words.

Paul Simon is famously musical. If you were in any doubt as to his creative genius – and, importantly, his global music vocabulary – he’d be the first one to set you straight.

Paul Simon started out writing beautiful folk songs. I think it’s fair to say that Art Garfunkel is a lovely singer, but that Paul did most of the heavy lifting in Simon & Garfunkel. (Remember when Noel Gallagher was asked if he could describe Oasis in one word and he said: “Me”? I think it was a bit like that.)

As I understand it, Paul absorbed the folk sounds, wrote the songs and laid out the harmonies for Simon & Garfunkel. His genius, even then, was to take a historical musical form and mix it up with a contemporary, urban vibe.

Smack bang in the middle of my high school years, Paul Simon released the album Graceland.

It coincided with my own politicisation. Also, we played it non-stop on a Pinelands High School Outdoor Club trip to Namibia. I remember singing along to Graceland while sitting next to Jeremy and plaiting Lucinda’s hair in the school minibus. Red dunes whizzed past the windows and the sky was enormous.

When I was an undergrad, Paul Simon did another musical fusion album in Rhythm of the Saints. Here, he incorporated Afro-Brazilian rhythms and percussive traditions in his songwriting.

It almost goes without saying that I just lifted “Afro-Brazilian rhythms and percussive traditions” from The Internet. I’m embarrassed to admit I thought Rhythm of the Saints drew from musical traditions across South America.

When most people call Paul Simon one of the greatest songwriters of all time, they think of his melodies.

I think Paul Simon’s lyric writing is criminally underrated.

Consider:

He said Delores, I live in fear / My love for you is so overpowering / I’m afraid that I will disappear - Slip Slidin Away (Greatest Hits Etc, 1977)

I was playing my guitar / lying underneath the stars / just thanking the Lord for my fingers – Duncan (Paul Simon, 1972)

There is a girl in New York City / She calls herself the human trampoline – Graceland (Graceland, 1986)

Sad as a lonely little wrinkled balloon – Crazy Love (Graceland)

Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance / Everybody thinks it’s true – Train in the Distance (Hearts and Bones, 1983)

My eyes could clearly see / The Statue of Liberty / Sailing away to sea – American Tune (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, 1973)

Still a man hears what he wants to hear / And disregards the rest - The Boxer (Bridge Over Troubled Water)

Silence like a cancer grows – The Sound of Silence (Sounds of Silence, 1966)

I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died / If I never loved I never would have cried – I am a Rock (Sounds of Silence, 1966)

I know a father who had a son / He longed to tell of all the reasons for the things he’d done – Slip Slidin Away (Greatest Hits Etc, 1977)

She was physically forgotten / But then she slipped into my pocket / With my car keys – Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes (Graceland, 1986)

I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more / I don’t expect to sleep through the night – The Obvious Child (The Rhythm of the Saints, 1990)

Believing I had supernatural powers / I slammed into a brick wall – Gumboots (Graceland, 1986)

Tell me why / why won’t you love me / for who I am where I am? – Hearts and Bones (Hearts and Bones)

Kathy, I’m lost I said, though I knew she was sleeping / I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why – America (Bookends, 1968)

We had a lot of fun / We had a lotta money / We had a little son / We thought we’d call him Sonny. – The Obvious Child (The Obvious Child, 1990)

I’m looking forward to seeing you Friday, Paul the poet.

I’ll be so glad to see you, you’ll just smile.

Images screengrabbed from The Internet.