On the road with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon
Paul Simon is one of the great American songwriters out there. This was a union of two of the greatest and also most poetical US songwriters.
“The job of a folk singer in those days was to be Bob Dylan. You had to be a poet. That's what they wanted. And I thought that was a drag.”
Paul Simon
The Bob Dylan/Paul Simon tour in '99 got over shadowed by the Dylan tour in the fall where I saw more shows than any other year because Dylan did a lot of shows within easy driving distance of my house and he was ‘on’ and full of surprises. I went to two Dylan/Simon shows, one where Simon opened and one where Dylan opened - they alternated. The one where Simon opened was at the E-Centre, a huge indoor/outdoor pavilion, built by Sony and Blockbuster in the unlikely city of Camden, N.J. The day started eerily, waking up to the disappearance of JKF Jr’s. plane.
Simon began the show with a fairly lackluster “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Following the song he talked about John Kennedy Jr., and how events like this show how precious life is and that life is to celebrate. Simon was never more than okay despite his huge percussion-laden band. Simon’s hand problems seemed to have affected his guitar playing considerably because he mostly used the instrument as a prop and mainly just held it occasionally strumming and rarely playing, even though he switched guitars quite a few times. This is a shame because Simon was at one time a great finger-picker. While his band got a groove going during songs like “You Can Call Me Al” and “Late In the Evening,” ultimately they were just too slick and essentially soulless despite several top-notch players.
Easily for me, the most moving part of his set was when Dylan came out for “Sounds of Silence.” Maybe it was the ghost of another Kennedy tragedy hanging over the proceedings, or maybe it was the arrangement, much slower than the original Simon & Garfunkel single (and pretty much the way Simon’s been doing the song for the last 15 years or so) with Simon playing the melody on electric (finally doing some picking) but a lot of it had to do with Dylan being on stage. Dylan has presence and Simon for all his hand motions during his set just doesn’t - not at this show anyway. Dylan was singing in one of his spookier voices and immediately you knew that he was singing strongly as well.
I went a couple of nights later to Madison Square Garden but luckily Dylan was opening, so I just got the hell out of there once Dylan’s set was over. Don’t get me wrong about Paul Simon, there was a time that I really dug him. I just thought the show was the most mechanical totally boring bullshit and Ieft before it was over.
I can understand Simon’s exploration into various forms of world music, but it comes at the expense of his songs. Simon has gotten so lost in his craft that he forgot how to move people. Once upon a time he could make his songs mean something, but there’s something about his music now and pretty much from “Graceland” onward that doesn’t really make me want to take the time to figure out what he’s singing about.
I was never a fan of Graceland, I thought the songs were bullshit lyrically, and I knew about all the other controversies.
“That Was Your Mother” featured zydeco dance band Good Rockin’ Dopsie (who backed up Dylan on Oh Mercy) and took from My Baby She’s Gone.
Read More: Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin Labels Paul Simon a ‘Jerk,’ Alleges ‘Graceland’ Snub
It was like he had those tracks and just kind of pasted the lyrics in and the songs were meaningless for the most part. There's a couple of lines in the song Graceland that weren't meaningless, but other than that… What the fuck does diamonds on the souls of her shoes mean? It sounds great, but what the fuck does it mean?
I saw the Graceland show at the Spectrum in Philly and the show was great and by that I mean all the African cats and Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela. The band was outstanding. But the only thing I really liked by Paul Simon all night was this slow moving Sounds of Silence. And it's too bad because as a writer, I thought he was up there. When he did the tour with Dylan and all these Dylan fans were saying “Paul Simon, what the fuck?” I was kind of amazed because he was one of the great American singer-songwriters and they didn't seem to know it.
I thought There Goes Rhymin’ Simon was genius, the songs were great and the way that he went all over the world to specific studios to get the sound he wanted for each song and then making a cohesive whole out of the whole thing was brilliant. American Tune is the best song he ever wrote, and Something So Right is up there too. But, there's very few Paul Simon songs I've liked since There Goes Rhymin' Simon. My favorite album is Live Rhymin'. The version of Duncan on there, I can easily listen to 20 times in a row. There's a video on YouTube that's hopefully still there of him doing Sounds of Silence from that tour with the Jesse Dixon Singers and it's great.
When Still Crazy After All These Years came out with the 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover bullshit that got played to death on the radio, I was like “this is fucking bullshit.” I liked My Little Town, but I never got the “Still Crazy After All These Years” album, so I only heard it on the radio. I still remember (I think it was Rolling Stone) reviewed "Still Crazy After All These Years" and said about the song, “but Paul Simon's never been crazy. What's he talking about?”
I don't know if he still works this way, but Paul Simon had an office in NYC where he had Irving Berlin's old desk. He’d go to the office every day as if he's going to work and tried to write songs. I find that pretty comical, but I know people who've worked with him and that's what he does.
Back when I lived in Millburn, New Jersey, when Simon and Garfunkel first hit it, I used to listen to this little college station. There was a folk show on Friday nights out of New Brunswick and the DJ had the album the "Paul Simon Songbook," a solo album Simon recorded in England with a lot of the same songs on the “Sounds of Silence” album. On a lot of the songs, instead of that sweet Simon and Garfunkel sound, Simon actually sounded angry. The difference was astounding. He does all the hits by himself, like Sounds of Silence and I Am A Rock. It's funny, I've seen Simon alone a few times, and also Art Garfunkel, but I don't think I ever saw them together.
Someone I know who was friends with Jim Dickinson told me that when the Dylan Simon tour hit Memphis, Dylan stayed at Dickinson's house and that Bob would only refer to Simon as "him." On one level I hoped for Simon to inspire him, but fat chance of that. I always thought there was a rivalry between them. What would’ve been great is if they’d done an acoustic tour, but that was never gonna happen. I had it on pretty good authority at that time that it was Dylan who extended the invitation to tour, they’d ran into each other at some recording studio, and Simon mentioned he would like to return to touring.
Paul Simon is a perfectionist unlike Dylan which made the thought of them singing together something to speculate on. While I'm not a huge Simon fan, I respect him as a songwriter and as a singer and guitarist as well. Even though there's a lot things about Simon I don't like, I am also objective enough to realize that he is one of the few songwriters out there who comes close to Bob Dylan. This was a union of two of the greatest and also most poetical US songwriters.
Paul Simon:
"To me, the person who wrote the most moving lyrics was Bob Dylan, in the early days. Boots of Spanish Leather, Girl from the North Country. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. Blowin' in the Wind. It's funny to hear myself saying that. It may be the first
generous thing I've ever said about Bob Dylan. In the early days, I was always too angry about being compared with him. And then, he's hard to be generous to, because he's so ungenerous himself. I never felt comfortable with him. He didn't come at you straight. It's a big error to think that because you like somebody's work, you're going to like him."