In January 1998, Paul Simon's eagerly anticipated musical, The Capeman, opened on Broadway. Despite an enormous budget of $11 million, the show could not survive its reviews. Praised for its haunting, moving score and vivid, magnificent sets, the show was seen as inherently flawed. Critics attacked the Simon's and Walcott's telling of the story, as well as the lack of dance and movement. Two months after the Capeman opened on the Great White Way, it closed. Losing its entire budget, the show vanished from the theatre scene, despite praise from New York's Latin community. The score and sets were worthy of Tony award nominations, although the show came up empty on Tony night.

While his career has been full of collaboration, Paul Simon has earned a reputation as a perfectionist, and loner, in the studio. Despite his work with such stars as Los Incas, Toots Thielmans, the Oak Ridge Boys, the Dixie Hummingbirds, Phoebe Snow, Olodum and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, theatre critics blasted Simon for his perceived lack of collaboration on this project. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While working on his album The Rhythm Of The Saints, Paul Simon became familiar with the work of Caribbean poet Derek Walcott. A longtime friend of Paul's introduced him to Derek in New York City. The two artists became friends, and Paul eventually asked Derek to join him in bringing the story of the Capeman to Broadway. That idea had come to Paul one day, in a complete form, out of the blue. He recalled the story of Salvador Agron, a Puerto Rican teenager convicted of murder in 1959 New York. The story struck at the core of a fear of Latin people, a fear that was prevalent in New York in the fifties. West Side Story had brought to Broadway this negative portrayal of Spanish-speaking people.

Paul Simon grew up in the 1950s, and remembered the city-wide obsession with Agron. As leader of a gang known as The Vampires, Agron paraded around in a black cape with a red lining. The newspapers dubbed him Dracula, and the Capeman, with the latter eventually sticking. Once caught, Agron put on his best macho suit, telling the press that he didn't care if he burned, that his mother could watch him. Asked how he felt, he answered, coldly, "I feel like killing you." At the age of sixteen, Sal Agron was sentenced to the electric chair. The Governor of New York at the time, Nelson Rockefeller, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. While in prison, Agron became, in his own words, re-humanized. He found religion, poetry, education. He turned into a model prisoner, and despite one attempt to escape, his record was clean. He was allowed to study in a university outside the prison, and was eventually paroled. He returned to his mother in New York, where he lived an uneventful life until his death.

The story seemed perfect for a musical, at least to Paul Simon. Musically, the themes of fifties doo-wop and salsa intrigued him. Morally, the notion of redemption and forgiveness attracted Paul, and Derek. Could a man who killed two teenagers achieve forgiveness? Can society forgive a murderer? Can God? Simon put it this way: Presumably, the mother of the murdered child could never forgive the murderer. Then again, the mother of the killer probably could. In between lie the rest of us. Simon and Walcott did not want to preach to the audience, only to present an entertaining story that asked such moral questions. While the show failed, the fact that it made to curtain is a triumph in itself. Throughout its development, The Capeman became known for its controversy, which was twofold. First, the subject matter itself was controversial, and some declared it too sensitive, too daring, for Broadway. Problems also arose regarding the creative team. Simon and Walcott were never able to choose a director they could trust with the project. Simon especially wanted the show to be distinctly his, and did not want to operate the Broad-way. He refused to surrender complete control to a director, and the show suffered because of this. The day before the show was to open, the curtain was pushed back three weeks. Simon enlisted the help of a new director (the show's unaccredited, fourth one), Jerry Zaks. Although he is credited with the show's direction and choreography, Mark Morris was nowhere to be found leading up to opening night.

A recording of 13 of the show's 38 songs was released in November, 1997, sung by Paul Simon, with help from the show's stars Marc Anthony, Ruben Blades and Ednita Nazario. While a double-CD cast recording has been completed, Dreamworks SKG, the label that owns it, has yet to release it. Speculation is that once a year has passed since the play opened, Dreamworks will invest in a television special and release the album. A near-final mix distributed to Tony Award voters has been known to circulate.