America

Hope you find it.

The Sound of Silence

Despite how thoroughly you know, sometimes it can still sneak up on you, just how damn great Bob Dylan is. The gravitas his gravelly baritone adds here, the growling harmonica, the reminder of what a surprisingly fine duet partner he can be...this may be my favorite version of this great tune, in no small part because Dylan's ragged glory is exactly what the pristine fastidiousness of Paul Simon could use a bit more of.

[h/t: the great AllDylan.]

American Tune

"Magnificent" doesn't begin to describe this. Or, well, it does, but doesn't go nearly far enough. Stately, classy, gorgeous, transcendent. Paul Simon pretty clearly has a pretty healthy ego, and why on earth shouldn't/wouldn't he? And yet he's musically sophisticated enough, I'd expect, to listen to a cover of this calibre and still be awed.

Favorite Song Friday: America

Paul Simon is a great songwriter—that’s pretty much a given.

The man also has a serious predilection for being an uninformed, self-important tool, but hey, not all songwriters are saints which walk among us. And as a songwriter—despite at least one heartily misplaced sense of rivalry that hopefully by now he has forgotten about (though I doubt it)—he remains on a very, very short list.

(No, that’s not a height joke).

One of my favorite songs he ever wrote is, in fact, one of his greatest: 1968's “America,” from the wondrous Bookends album.  It’s such a beautiful piece of music and a such a personal and moving story; two young lovers making their way across the country in search of…something. It’s a heartfelt travelogue where the search is everything, to the point where we really don’t even know what the destination is. Nor do we need to, I don’t think.

And as much as any Simon and Garfunkel song, "America" I think truly shows just how essential Arthur Garfunkel was to the final product. Sure, Paul did the songwriting, played guitar, took an awful lot of the lead vocals. But listen to what Arthur's voice does to this song. His harmonies make it soar and lend it a level of soul that is almost impossible to imagine would be there without him.

But a recent listen of the song had me thinking about the songwriting first and foremost, and what an unusual turn it was for Paul Simon. This is one of the best examples I have ever heard of blank verse, minimalist songwriting, and it's not something Paul did too often.

Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together

I've got some real estate here in my bag

So we bought a pack of cigarettes

And Mrs. Wagner pies

And we walked off to look for America

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"

It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw

I've come to look for America

Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy

I said, "Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"

"We smoked the last one an hour ago"

So I looked at the scenery

She read a magazine

And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping

"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why"

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

They've all come to look for America

All come to look for America

All come to look for America

Now one of Paul's trump cards has always been to take an array of songwriting styles and make them work.

"Homeward Bound" is more of a straightforward rhyme scheme, with some internal rhyme for good measure ("...all my work comes back to me in shades of mediocrity..."). 

"The Boxer" goes for poetic flourish, particularly in the final verse, which is astounding when positioned with the straight narrative that largely proceeds it. It is also largely unrhymed until the end of each verse, which is incredibly difficult in its own right.

"The Sounds of Silence" has no chorus (like "Homeward Bound" does and which the "Lie la lie" part ably represents on "The Boxer") and instead depends on a series of couplets which lead up to a steady reveal at the end of each verse. 

"Graceland" embraces pop as much as it does its African sensibilities and stands as a more traditional, middle-aged update of the search we first hear about in "America." 

But "America" is written blankly as a straightforward narrative, not a rhyme in sight, and it works to a tee. It sounds like something Hemingway would write, if Hemingway were a songwriter.

Just look at the fourth stanza as a perfect example. It's downright journalistic, no images or metaphors to describe what's happening, just plain voice, first-person reporting, and it's staggering in its simplicity. Particularly considering Paul Simon's gift for being such an intricate and imagistic writer.

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat."

"We smoked the last one an hour ago."

So I looked at the scenery,

She read a magazine,

And the moon rose over an open field.

It's helped, of course, by an irresistible melody and, again, some of the most breathtaking interplay between the two singers we've ever heard. And it sets up for what follows; one of the saddest and most devastating lines rock-n-roll has ever produced. No drama, no bombast, just one more simple statement. And it hits like a hammer.

"Kathy I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping.

"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."

It's a gift to write like this, because it's so hard to mesh blank verse with melody and make it work. It's an even greater gift to have this be only one of the types of writing at which you excel. Paul Simon, flaws and annoyances aside, once occupied some very rare, very special terrain as a songwriter. He surely did.

Body Talk, Pt. 2

Context. It's so important. A hair can be a lovely thing when it's attached to the head of a beautiful woman, or rather repulsive when you find it sticking out of a glazed donut. An ostrich can be a remarkably ridiculous thing when seen from the other side of a fence or it can appear to be your ungainly imminent death, as Johnny Cash once nearly experienced.

And when a quote from one of Paul Simon's best and most famous songs pops up in the middle of an indie band's ethereally gentle love song, the unexpectedness of the context turns it from a gleefully absurdist coming-of-age tale into something painfully introspective and redemptive and gorgeous.

Homeward Bound

There aren't many musicians as accomplished and distinguished as Paul Simon. Only by teaming up with a singer as angelic as Art Garfunkel could he be considered the "lesser" vocalist in any group. He, like Joni Mitchell, quickly became as or more interested in odd chords, voicings and changes than lyrical explorations. And his backing musicians were never less the creamiest of the cream of the crop. But like Eric Clapton post-Cream/Blind Faith, he never really collaborated with a musician who could truly push him as only a legitimate equal could.

Which brings us to the following clip. I don't know the backstory of how or why Paul Simon invited George Harrison to join him on Saturday Night Live, but the pair played a pair of songs, both of which are gems. George was never the strongest singer—it's no insult to say he was no Lennon or McCartney or Garfunkel—but his rough, nasally voice blends gorgeously with Paul Simon's much purer croon. But even more than the pleasant novelty of his different timbre, it's the freedom of his phrasing that lifts this performance into the realm of something truly special.

As the hours and hours of early live Beatles performances make crystal clear, George could not only harmonize beautifully, but he could do so—as could they all—with impossibly perfect timing, all three singers synchronizing absolutely flawlessly.

He doesn't do that here, not even close. Instead, he feels free to lag a bit behind the beat at times, and add little flourishes here and there. And although I'm not enough of a Paul Simon scholar to be able to state definitely, I'm pretty sure this is one of the very, very few times any of his post-Garfunkel partners felt free enough do so. Which, of course, he should have. Because here's the thing: Paul Simon is a hugely important musician, and insanely talented and accomplished. And he can stack his catalog up against absolutely anyone in the history of the music with confidence.

Except that George could pull out "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Taxman" and "If I Needed Someone" and so on and so forth and oh by the way I was in the fucking Beatles did I mention that? And he wins.

Now, I get the impression that George would sooner have pulled out one of his own molars than actually do or say any of that. But the point is, of course, that he didn't have to. There was never any need to, 'cuz everyone always knew it at all times.

Which is how you get a performance like this. George's verse is ever so lovely, the way he plays ever so slightly with the melody, although, really, it's more the way his phrasing is so very him. The way he toys with the dynamics here and there, getting softer or louder, and his timbre, getting rougher or smoother, and most of all the way he sings the title the second time after Simon joins in again, the little roulade he drops, is just subtly spectacular. How he weaves in and out of Simon's vocals so assuredly...it's just...well, listen.


Just check out that "oooh...sweet!" look Paul gets on his face at 2:30, as George plays his little blues run to close things out; it's clear Simon himself knows something special just happened.