Lasers In The Jungle | paul.simon.org

You're The One|Paul Simon's latest studio album
Tracklist - Credits - Reviews - Samples - Press Release

Tracklist

1. That's Where I Belong
2. Darling Lorraine
3. Old
4. You're The One
5. The Teacher
6. Look At That
7. Señorita With a Necklace Of Tears
8. Love
9. Pigs, Sheep & Wolves
11. Hurricane Eye
11. Quiet

Released: October 3, 2004

Credits

That’s Where I Belong

Paul Simon: Electric Guitar
Vincent Nguini: Electric Guitar
Bakithi Kumalo: Bass
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Alain Mallet: Wurlitzer Piano
Evan Ziporyn: Bass Clarinet
Steve Gorn: Bamboo Flute
Jay Elfenbein: Vielle & Vihuela

Darling Lorraine

Paul Simon: Electric Guitar
Vincent Nguini: Electric Guitar
Mark Stewart: Cello and Electric Guitar
Bakithi Kumalo: Bass
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Jay Elfenbein: Vihuela
Clifford Carter: Celeste

Old

Paul Simon: Electric Guitar
Vincent Nguini: Electric Guitar
Bakithi Kumalo: Bass
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion

You’re The One

Paul Simon: Electric Guitar
Vincent Nguini: Electric Guitar
Bakithi Kumalo: Bass
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Alain Mallet: Pump Reed Organ
Peter Herbert: Upright Bass

The Teacher

Larry Campbell: Pedal Steel Guitar
Abraham Laboriel: Bass
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Evan Ziporyn: Bass Clarinet
Steve Gorn: Bamboo Flute
Howard Levy: Harmonica

Look At That

Paul Simon: Electric Guitar
Vincent Nguini: Electric Guitar
Abraham Laboriel: Bass
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Larry Campbell: Pedal Steel Guitar
Steve Gorn: Bamboo Flute
Clifford Carter: Celeste

Señorita With A Necklace Of Tears

Paul Simon: Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar
Mark Stewart: Dobro, Sitar Guitar
Alain Mallet: Pump Reed Organ
Bakithi Kumalo: Bass
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Skip La Plante: 96-Tone Harp

Love

Paul Simon: Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Sitar Guitar
Vincent Nguini: Electric Guitar
Bakithi Kumalo: Bass
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Steve Gorn: Bamboo Flute

Pigs, Sheep & Wolves

Mark Stewart: Pedal Steel Gong
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Vincent Nguini: Electric Guitar
Bakithi Kumalo: Bass

Hurricane Eye

Paul Simon: Electric Guitar and Acoustic Guitar
Vincent Nguini: Electric Guitar and Acoustic Guitar
Mark Stewart: Banjo
Abraham Laboriel: Bass
Steve Gadd: Drums
Jamey Haddad: Percussion
Steve Shehan: Percussion
Dan Duggan: Hammer Dulcimer
Clifford Carter: Celeste and Keyboard Glockenspiel

Quiet

Alain Mallet: Pump Reed Organ
Jay Elfenbein: Vihuela
Skip La Plante: 96-Tone Harp, Whirly Pipe and Rubbed Steel Bowl
Peter Herbert: Upright Bass

Produced by Paul Simon

Recorded and Mixed by Andy Smith
Recorded and Mixed at The Hit Factory, NYC

Second Engineers: Steve Schweidel, Claudius Mittendorfer, Rob Murphy
Mastered at Gateway Mastering by Bob Ludwig
Music Technician and Logistics: Jim Corona
Technical Support: Brent Spear, Nika Aldrich, Flip Scipio
Martech, Earthworks, Monster Cable

French Horns on ‘Darling Lorraine’ and ‘The Teacher’ arranged by Stanley
Silverman

Evan Ziporyn and Andy Snitzer played Tenor Saxophone on ‘Darling Lorraine’
and ‘You’re The One’ and Soprano Saxophone on ‘Old’

Steve Shehan appears courtesy of Safar Music Productions

Photography and Art Direction: Lynn Goldsmith
Design: Greg Foley
Management: Eddie Simon and Jeff Kramer
Assistant to Paul Simon: C. Vaughn Hazell

All songs written and arranged by Paul Simon

Special thanks to: Joan Lader, Stanley Silverman, Catherine Marlet, Michel Vu, Fouzia El Belkani

Reviews

Reprinted without permission from The New York Daily News:

And here's to you Mr. Simon
New album finds singer reflecting - not raging
By David Hinckley

Paul Simon pulled up a chair, realized the room's thermostat was set to "meat locker" and ducked out for a jacket to wrap over his T-shirt. When you have TV shows and a concert tour coming up and you're already sniffling, prudence is in order.

"No really intimate questions," he warned me with a straight face before he sat down again, "or you'll catch it."

Happily for Simon, he had something warm to talk about: his new CD, "You're the One," which hits the stores Tuesday as his first nonthemed new record since "Hearts and Bones" in 1983.

That does not, however, suggest there's anything plain about "You're the One," which weaves the African and Caribbean sounds of his 1986 "Graceland" and 1990 "The Rhythm of The Saints" records into the pop, folk, R&B and gospel he has been playing all his life.

The result is a gem - lyrically full, yet with a nice airy texture, reminiscent of "Graceland."

"It has a lot of space," said Simon. "It's a light record. I don't want to make records that are too complicated, because I don't think you can assume that if someone didn't get it the first time, they will automatically sit down and listen again."

Simon fans will know well the lyrical threads here: schizophrenic love in "Darling Lorraine," the order of the universe in "Pigs Sheep and Wolves," the wistful romance of "Senorita With a Necklace of Tears."

"You're the One" opens with "That's Where I Belong," a gentle ode to everyday happiness, and finishes with a warning to those who would ignore that simple pleasure: "With the hunger of ambition / And the change inside the purse / They are handcuffs on the soul, my friends. ..."

Simon has always reflected on life, and as time has gone by, it has sounded less like the wordplay of a poet and more like advice from a veteran. As he approaches his 59th birthday next week, he takes a decidedly different tack than some of his colleagues: He's rolling with the passage of time rather than railing against it.

"You might as well not rage against it or you'll waste your rage," he said, laughing. "If you fight it, you'll lose. If you don't fight it, you'll win."

STRAIGHT OUT OF QUEENS
It was 43 years ago that Simon and his Queens high school buddy Art Garfunkel, calling themselves Tom and Jerry and looking to be the next Everly Brothers, cracked the national charts with a bouncy Simon tune called "Hey Schoolgirl."

Simon has been in the business ever since, and if he no longer writes about the cute chick in the second row, he still turns to simple, catchy pop when that's the ticket for telling his tale.

"I always thought [a wide range of sounds and styles] was part of my [musical] vocabulary," he said. "As time goes on, you take what's most essentially you and you jettison what doesn't work. And eventually you have a vocabulary of your own, assuming you're around long enough to accumulate a vocabulary. There are some things that aren't so good about getting older, but that's one of the things that is."

What helps in dealing with age and time, he suggests in the song "Old," is simply to take a step back and understand that everything is relative:

"God is old / We're not old."

"People hear about things they don't remember," he said, "and they'll say, 'I've never heard of it, so it's not important.' Well, I say, 'That's what you think.' Historical stuff is very interesting. We dig up something from the Mayans or the Aztecs and people say, 'Hey, they knew this?' Sure they did. It's not new. It's old."

Or, to put it another way, what happened before is just as fresh, vital and alive as what's happening today. "Robert Johnson is modern," said Simon. "Bessie Smith. Billie Holiday. Louis Armstrong. Sinatra. They live now."

He makes that same point more playfully in "Old," when the singer remembers hearing Buddy Holly in the '50s and suggests that for everything that has happened since, including Holly's death in a 1959 plane crash, ol' Buddy goes on today.

The singer recalls that he didn't have a job when he heard "Satisfaction," and that his first smoke made him paranoid, and how at all his birthdays now his friends say, "Man, you're old."

All in all, it's a bemused, almost whimsical view, a tone somewhat at odds with the widespread view of Simon as a Serious Rock Star in the Don Henley mold.

Simon finds this image untroubling, probably figuring his work speaks for itself. He once accepted a Grammy by thanking Stevie Wonder for not making a record that year, and he appeared on "Saturday Night Live" dressed as poultry.

"People ask how I feel about getting old," said Simon. "I tell them I have the same question. I'm learning as I go."

On the particular afternoon we met, in the SIR Studios on W. 52nd St., any kind of rock-star aura was pretty much vaporized. SIR is world-class if you're cutting an album and Spartan if you just want to talk. This empty upstairs place resembles an empty school cafeteria, galaxies removed from the luxury suites where rockers
ordinarily sit for interviews. Simon was on a midafternoon break from tour rehearsals, and in his work clothes - yellow baseball cap, green T-shirt, dark green pants and that extra jacket - he could have blended easily into the thousands of New Yorkers rattling by outside.

And that's just dandy with Simon, who has a knack for being visible only when he wants to be, which means when there's music involved.

"Part of my life is music and show business and a large part isn't," he said. "I find it a strange question that anyone would ask how to keep your privacy. If you want to stay private, just don't let 'em see you. Don't talk to anyone and don't go places where you might be seen."

Since Simon and his wife, Edie Brickell, have three children younger than 10, his offstage life isn't hard to envision. It is not a coincidence that even the final stages of rehearsal for his upcoming tour are scheduled like a day job - 11 or 11:30 in the morning to 6 or 7 at night. Then he goes home.

Those who want clues to Simon's personal life can find some in his songs, but he cautions against overconfidence in that endeavor. "I wouldn't call my songs personal," he said. "I couldn't write them if they didn't come from me. But they aren't songs about me."

The most anecdotal he gets about his private life is to remark that he often sees his mother on Sunday and after he drops her off at her place in New Jersey, he listens to Don K. Reed's "Doo-Wop Shop" on WCBS-FM while he drives home.

This in turn leads right back to music, and the 1950s vocal groups that were imprinted on him when he heard them over the radio as a teenager.

The Channels, for example. "The Closer You Are." "Great song," he said.

The Passions - turns out Simon and Carole King sang the demo for the group's classic "Just to Be With You" back in 1959. "Those modulations, where they go up half a note," said Simon. "We put that into the demo."

The Dubs are mentioned. The Mystics, who did "Hushabye."

"I sang with The Mystics," he said. "But not on 'Hushabye.'"

Those were hardworking years, the late '50s and early '60s. He scrambled all over the New York music scene, writing songs here, singing songs there, trying to get a foothold anywhere.

His first album with Garfunkel, "Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.," sold so poorly that they broke up. Simon was trying his luck as a solo artist in England when Columbia Records engineer Tom Wilson put electric instruments behind the acoustic "Sounds of Silence" and it became a No. 1 hit in late 1965.

"You always knew Paul had the talent," said deejay Mickey D, a comrade of Simon in Tico and the Triumphs, who had a hit in 1962 called "Motorcycle." "He just needed the break."

It all blends into the fascinating internal map of popular music, where artists are always crossing paths in ways major and incidental. Simon has left a lot of footprints on those trails.

"I remember one time talking with John Lennon," he said. "I asked him how he knew to do his hair the way he did. He told me he'd always paid a lot of attention to hair - that if he hadn't become a musician, he might have been a hairdresser. Isn't that a strange thought?

"He asked me how I knew to hold onto my song publishing rights. I told him it was just a matter of being around the business long enough. I started when I was 14, and after four or five years of people stealing your songs, you figure out how to keep them for yourself."

In a way, Simon said, that's not unlike the learning process he underwent with "Capeman," his long-gestating, critically panned Broadway musical, which opened and closed in early 1998. "If I do it again, I'll know a lot more," he said. "But I liked the experience. I loved writing the music and working with artists like Marc Anthony and Ruben Blades. I wish it had run a year, just for the pleasure of seeing it performed. But I'm sure it will be back. There are two companies that are interested in putting it on."

ON THE ROAD WITH DYLAN

"You're the One" began stirring as "Capeman" was winding down. "Darling Lorraine," for instance, grew out of a guitar riff in a "Capeman" song. Simon also went on the road right after "Capeman," doing his first-ever tour with Bob Dylan and arranging to borrow one of Dylan's band members, Larry Campbell, for "You're The One."

"I enjoyed the Dylan shows immensely," he said. "When we were working on what we'd do together, we were up at my apartment singing folk songs. Some were obscure, some were better known. It was just two acoustic guitars and it sounded great. But as we got closer to the show, it became apparent what people wanted to hear was us singing each other's songs. So that's what we did."

His tour for "You're the One" is relatively short - Europe for the last two weeks of October, then a month in the U.S., starting Nov. 10 in Seattle and winding up Dec. 7-9 at the Beacon here.

"I'd get tired of the road if I did it more," he said. "But once I've done a record, I do want to go out and play it - see how it really sounds."

One place he probably won't be found is back with Garfunkel, although they have periodically played together over the years.

"I'd say 'unlikely' is the word," he said, although he added that his long-range plans usually include whatever the muse lays on him.

"I like to think I'll keep making music," he said. "But songs have always come to me, and I know I can't assume that will always be the case. I have to acknowledge that someday maybe they won't."

He paused for a moment while it all comes back together - the passage of time, the music, the uncertainty of life, that conversation with John Lennon.

"I guess the only thing I can be absolutely certain of," he said, "is that song publishing lasts longer than hair."
Starfile
PAUL SIMON
Born: Oct. 13, 1941, Newark. Reared in Queens.
Parents: Louis, a standup bass player; Belle, a teacher.
Brother: Eddie.
Education: Queens College, English literature; one semester
Brooklyn College Law School.
Marriages: Peggy Harper, 1970-75; Carrie Fisher, 1983-84; Edie Brickell, since 1992.
Children: Three sons: Harper, b. November 1972; Adrian Edward, b. December 1992; Gabriel Elijah, b. May 1998. One daughter: Lulu, b. April 1995.
Breakthrough hit: Simon and Garfunkel, "Sounds of Silence," 1965.
Biggest hits: Simon and Garfunkel, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" album, 1970, more than 10 million copies.
As solo artist: "Graceland" album, 1986, more than 5 million copies.
Biggest shows: Simon and Garfunkel, Central Park, est. crowd 500,000, 1981. As solo artist: Central Park, est. crowd 600,000-750,000, 1991.
Honors: Four Grammys with Garfunkel; 12 solo Grammys; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Garfunkel, 1990; nomination pending as solo artist.
Side trips: Wrote and starred in the movie "One Trick Pony," 1981. Wrote Broadway musical "Capeman," produced 1998. Neither a big hit. On freedom: "No one, from a record company or anywhere else, has ever told me what to do with my music. It didn't happen with Simon and Garfunkel, it didn't happen when I went by myself. In the '70s, I was doing reggae, working with gospel groups. The thing is, of course, that until a few years ago, you could make a record that sounded different and have a [radio] hit with it. Now you can't. Radio is so formatted now that to get played you have to make a record that sounds a certain way."
Strange but true: The song "Pigs, Sheep and Wolves" on "You're the One" was originally called "Sheep, Pigs and Wolves." "But when I sang it, it just came out reversed."

Original Publication Date: 10/1/00

Reprinted without permission from The Los Angeles Times

You Can Call Him Happy
Sure, "Capeman" was a setback, but Paul Simon has a thriving marriage and a new album celebrating love.

By ROBERT HILBURN

Brushing off the disappointment of his "Capeman," the $11-million musical that was savaged by New York theater critics and closed in early 1998 after just two months on Broadway, Paul Simon returns this week with an album that is filled with the craft and imagination that have characterized his most distinguished work.

It's a recovery reminiscent of the mid-'80s, when Simon responded with "Graceland" after two of his projects were poorly received. "One-Trick Pony," the 1980 film that Simon wrote and starred in, was a dud at the box office, and "Hearts and Bones," a 1983 studio album, went largely unnoticed.

The setbacks left Simon wondering if he hadn't lost touch with his audience. Further shaking his confidence was the breakup in 1984 of his brief marriage to actress-writer Carrie Fisher.

But Simon warns against making too much of a parallel between his state of mind during the making of "Graceland" and his new "You're the One," which will be released Tuesday by Warner Bros. Records.

The New Yorker says he was in good spirits even after the failure of "Capeman," partly because he was proud of the musical and he is in a rewarding marriage to singer Edie Brickell.

The musical textures in "You're the One" aren't as distinctive as the exotic South African ones that ran through much of "Graceland," but the songs themselves are illuminating and mostly upbeat reflections on life and love.

Simon, 58, may mock the crazy twists and turns of relationships in the peppy "Darling Lorraine," the opening
track, but mostly he toasts their comforts and rewards on the album. He also deals on the album with questions of aging and faith.

Simon will showcase the new music in a PBS special this fall, and he expects to begin a concert tour Oct. 16 in
Sweden. The U.S. itinerary includes Nov. 16-18 stops at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. Tickets go on sale Monday.

In an interview, he spoke about "Capeman," his marriage and his new album.

Question: How crushing was the "Capeman" failure?

Answer: I didn't feel it was crushing. It was a disappointment, to be sure. A lot of time went into it and we got shut down, but I thought it was a good piece of work with an exceptional cast. I thought at the time that it was likely to return in a few years--and that is already happening. There were six performances over in England recently, and there are two companies in the U.S. that are planning on doing it, so we'll see.

Q: Isn't there also a cast album on the shelf? Is that ever
coming out?

A: There is a cast album on DreamWorks that is still unreleased. We are waiting for a time when it can be
released with some attention so that it won't just vanish. I didn't record some of the best songs from "Capeman" for my ["Songs from 'The Capeman' "] album because I didn't want to give away all the really good songs. My guess is we won't wait any more than another six or nine months [to release it].

Q: Do you think it was too ambitious going straight to Broadway, rather than trying to open it on a smaller scale
or out of town?

A: We miscalculated that we would be reviewed immediately. We also liked the idea of going straight to
Broadway. That was part of the fun for everybody, including [cast members] Marc Anthony and Rubén [Blades].
It wouldn't have been the same if we were going to play for two weeks at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Broadway was exhilarating.

Q: Did you feel you had to prove yourself again after "Capeman" like you did after "Hearts and Bones"?

A: I wasn't thinking anything like that. The play closed and everybody was exhausted from the turmoil around it.
But about a month later, Edie and I had our third child, and that was wonderful. So I was in a much different place [emotionally] than after "Hearts and Bones." It wasn't long until I started hearing music in my mind
and decided to put a band together to make a new record. The only thing that came into that equation was the tour with Bob Dylan.

Q: How did the tour come about?

A: I wanted to perform and I didn't know if I could do a two-hour concert again because it had been years since I had been on the road. I thought this kind of tour would be easier. I'd only have to do an hour and 15 minutes. As it turned out, we could have done a two-hour concert. We didn't have any energy or voice problems.
I also like Bob and I like his band, and I thought it was an interesting pairing. We make different kinds of music,
but there's a certain thing that links us, no question about it. It was a nice tour. I enjoyed it a lot.

Q: How did you decide which songs you wanted to do together in the show?

A: We came in and we rehearsed some interesting stuff, just the two of us playing acoustic guitar, singing old folk tunes. Hearing Bob on acoustic guitar and singing traditional ballads is incredible. That's what we started out to do, but as we got closer to the performance, it became apparent that we were going to have to sing each other's hits because that was more appropriate to what the show was. We were playing 15,000-seaters and people were out there dancing and drinking beer, and they wanted to hear our music.

Q: How did the new album develop once you got back in the studio?

A: As I get older, the music for me is more and more about sound. Everything seems to start with sound. Once I
get the sound right, that tells you the melody and the melody [leads you] to the words. When I begin an album, I
keep a book and I write down phrases and thoughts that might work in a song. I'll then look through the book to see if there's a phrase that fits with the melody in a way that tells a story. On this album, the words came so fast that most of the songs were written in a day or two. It's like that old songwriters' cliché: "I didn't write it. I was just taking dictation." But that's how it felt. That's very different for me. It's usually like a couple of months of working on the lyrics.

Q: Have there been other songs over the years that came out in a rush like that?

A: "Bridge Over Troubled Water" came that fast, and I had the same feeling I had with some of these songs,
"Where did that come from?" I had no idea that I knew that melody or those chord changes or that I was going to say [those lyrics] at all. I wrote the first two verses in an evening. I wrote the third in the studio.

Q: How do you account for the upbeat tone in the album? You seem to be in a very good place in your life.

A: It's the first time that I ever had domestic bliss.

Q: Did you sometimes wonder if that was something that would ever come into your life?

A: Yes I did.

Q: So how did it feel?

A: Hard to believe. Then you start to wonder if it was going to last. Could something really be this good? Is
something bad going to happen when things feel this good?

Q: Do you think you just found the right person or that you are better able to be in a relationship? Do you work at it?

A: I think I've definitely matured, but I've also definitely found the right person. I'm really fortunate.

Q: What effect did that bliss have on the album?

A: There's not too much writing about the relationship in the record.

Q: But surely the relationship colors your outlook on things, right?

A: I guess it does, but it has always been my instinct to be optimistic in my music. There's some hint of melancholy or sadness here and there, but very little overt anger or hostility. I really don't believe philosophically that's my job. If all I have to say is how disappointed I am about whatever there is in life, then I don't see what the contribution is. There's already plenty of it out there. But I'm not lying when I go the other way. Love is amazing and it's like I say on the album, it's something you want so desperately, and it can make you laugh out loud when you get it. It's like medicine for us.

Q: Did you ever worry that you might have trouble writing if you were in such a happy state? There is the old
tortured-artist theory, you know.

A: I've never worried about that. I don't think it matters if you are happy or tortured. What I've observed about the creative process is that periodically I'll make up things, and then I'll have a period where I don't make up things and I start to wonder if I'm finished making up ideas. I'll have no ideas. Then, they'll start coming again and you act on it.

Robert Hilburn, the Times pop music critic, can be reached
at robert.hilburn@latimes.com

Reprinted without permission from USA Today.

Simpler Simon clears path for pop rebound

By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — The opening verse on Paul Simon's new album lays down an agenda while raising a question:

"Somewhere in a burst of glory, sound becomes a song/I'm bound to tell a story, that's where I belong."

You're the One, due Tuesday, delivers character-driven sagas full of wit and optimism, the first batch of Simonized
pop since 1990's The Rhythm of the Saints. Simon, who again crafts the wry tales and catchy melodies that define a hit-heavy career spanning 40-plus years, indeed belongs to a rare breed of enduring and evolving singer/songwriters hatched in rock's fertile heyday. But where does he belong in a Y2K marketplace rife with mushy teen pop and angry rap-rock?

"I don't know where I fit in," Simon, 58, says matter-of-factly. "I don't expect anybody other than the usual core fans who are on my trip. I want that audience to say, 'Oh, I like that. He's working, he's thinking, he's not repeating himself or taking me for granted.'"

Entertainment consumers are so fractionalized today that "you can find a cable channel that's just about your sweater," he jokes. "I know my group is out there."

Simon didn't plot You're the One with hits in mind. Parked on a chair amid the exotic art and antique furnishings in his Brill Building office, he says: "I never asked myself, 'What is the hit going to be?' In fact, I thought, 'It's very
unlikely I'm going to write a hit single.' Instead, I tried to write an album."

You can call him simple Simon. Determined to avoid anything "too complicated or too strange," he fashioned an uncluttered and accessible sound without sacrificing sophistication. The strategy meant imposing discipline on such ambitious longtime sidemen as guitarist Vincent Nguini, bassist Bakithi Kumalo, and percussionists Jamey Haddad, Steve Shehan and Steve Gadd (members of the 10-piece band Simon assembled for his
lauded '99 tour with Bob Dylan).

"When you have three master drummers, of course they are fascinated with keeping things complicated," says Simon, looking boyish in jeans, an olive shirt and a baseball cap. "I kept saying, 'I don't care if it's complicated as
long as it sounds simple .' If it's not interesting immediately, I don't think anybody's going to listen to me. I don't think anybody's going to listen to my whole generation if they don't say something very clear and very
entertaining."

After rejecting a continuation of Brazilian or Latin rhythms, Simon settled on an "American drum-kit sound" that became the foundation of a series of guitar duets. The lyrics, ranging from the tragicomic Darling Lorraine and
cautionary The Teacher to the reflective Quiet and poetic Hurricane Eye, "came so fast that I felt like I was taking dictation," Simon says. " Before, the process would go on for a month or two or three, sometimes a year.
This time, songs came in a day."

Simplicity didn't preclude serious topics. In the playful parable Pigs, Sheep and Wolves, Simon tackles capital punishment through a barnyard homicide. "I'm not sure if the death penalty is a good or bad idea," he says.
"But if you're going to have a death penalty, make sure you kill the right person."

(The song's puckish lingo was inspired by hide-and-seek games he plays with his 2-year-old son, the youngest of his three children with Edie Brickell, the singer he wed in 1992.)

Old, a wise and whimsical history lesson that puts aging in perspective, conveys Simon's frustration with pop culture's youth fixation. The benefits of longevity are voided by "a marketplace almost entirely skewed toward
teens. Look at the culture — it's eating enormously, but it's undernourished."

He says: "In terms of quality of work, experience is an advantage. But when the whole culture changes its value system, as ours has been doing, you can evolve in a way that's appropriate for your age and still wind up an artifact."

Though Simon says he'd relish robust album sales that would ensure future recordings, he won't forfeit principles for profit.

"I'm evolving in a way that seems natural to me," he says. " I don't want a hit if it has nothing to do with my beliefs or values, because the only reward I'll get is money. And fame, which is a penalty."

As is infamy, Simon's reward for composing the short-lived Capeman, a musical based on Puerto Rican immigrant Salvador Agron, convicted of a gang-related murder in New York in 1959. Simon embraced the challenge of creating a musical language for the play. It closed in 1998 after drawing savage reviews.

"Had I known I was headed for so much strife, maybe I would have said, 'Never mind,' but I've been fascinated by the story since I was 14 or 15," Simon says. "Sometimes you get so involved in the minutiae of the work,
you don't notice it's not interesting. A certain denial takes over. When I made Hearts and Bones (1983), I allowed myself to be convinced that songs I didn't like very much were good because people around me liked
them. That's a mistake."

Critics hailed the Capeman soundtrack in 1997 but blasted the stage production as stilted and emotionally vacant. Studying Capeman in previews, Simon felt the play was too long.

"I didn't know how to fix it, and neither did the director," he says. "When it went down, I was disappointed, but I thought, 'Three to five years from now, somebody (will) figure out what was wrong with how it was packaged, and it's going to come back."

And so it has, revived by a British company and pursued by two regional outfits here. Such vindication probably won't erase the stain on Simon's résumé. As Capeman's most famous collaborator, he shouldered an unfair
proportion of blame.

"I didn't know a lot about what goes on theatrically, and it wasn't my job," he says. "I was hiring musicians, getting a band together, teaching people how to sing. We were a team. But in the world's mind, I was the captain of the ship. When it flopped, everyone blamed me. It was more bewildering than scarring. The attacks were very personal, and I didn't understand why people were so happy that it was failing. I was only trying to make an interesting musical. And, in fact, I did. I think a lot of people didn't get it."

If people don't get You're the One, already drawing raves from pundits, it won't be for lack of exposure. Simon will perform on NBC's Today show Oct. 5 and 6. A brief U.S. theater tour starts Nov. 10 in Seattle after several European dates. A PBS special, Paul Simon: You're the One — In Concert From Paris, bows in early December. A full tour launches in spring. He's a shoo-in for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 2001 class (as a solo act; he was enshrined in 1990 as half of Simon & Garfunkel). And if anyone's likely to persevere regardless of critical or commercial incentives, he's the one.

"I'll keep going," he says. "I can't help it. It's a personality disorder."

Reprinted without permission from The New York Times.

Two World Travelers Bringing It All Back Home
By JON PARELES

SOONER or later, most world travelers reach the same realization: you can't leave yourself behind. In the most distant locales and unlikely situations, you still carry a lifetime of habits and memories. Yet with any luck, you'll bring back something lasting: a new perspective on space and light, on how people interact and how ideas fit together.

Paul Simon and Youssou N'Dour, two songwriters with internationalist ears, have racked up ample mileage and countless collaborators over the last decades as they made their musical reflexes grapple with foreign stimuli. On their new albums, they're back on home ground, but irrevocably changed. "If you don't know where you're heading anymore/ Go back to where you come from," Mr. N'Dour sings (in the Senegalese language Wolof) on his new album, "Joko (The Link)" (Nonesuch 79617- 2). "Carry me home, my teacher, carry me home," Mr. Simon sings on his new "You're the One" (Warner Brothers 2-47844).

Each songwriter has taken up an old role, culturally ordained. Mr. Simon is the introspective loner, an American individualist trying to make sense of private lives and offering idiosyncratic observations, strictly personal. Mr. N'Dour, doing the traditional duty of a West African griot, makes himself the voice of a community: praising historical figures, counseling virtuous behavior. Yet both songwriters revitalize their accepted function with everything they've gleaned abroad.

"You're the One" is Mr. Simon's first album without a superstructure — just a batch of 11 new songs — since "The Rhythm of the Saints" in 1990. In between, he released a live album and "Songs From `The Capeman,' " his 1997 Broadway musical. "The Capeman" touched on crime, politics, ethnic tension and troubled nostalgia. After the globetrotting of "Graceland" in 1986 and "The Rhythm of the Saints," its music returned to New York City circa 1959: doo- wop, Puerto Rican rhythms and pop.

On its surface, "You're the One" seems to head back to the folky tunes and shaky love affairs of Mr. Simon's 1970's albums like "Still Crazy After All These Years" and "There Goes Rhymin' Simon." It's full of translucent guitars and conversational vocals, and most of its songs are written from the point of view of someone who's staying put, contemplating the evanescence of love and human folly.

By contrast, "Graceland" and "The Rhythm of the Saints" were the memoirs of an unmoored, overstimulated traveler. The songs sought to make sense of the distance, and the closeness, between poverty and affluence, between tradition and technology, between the material and the spiritual. Both albums were about uncertain pilgrimages and stray epiphanies, described in the lyrics and embodied in musical hybrids.

Those hybrids peek through the songs on "You're the One," and they frequently take over. Arrangements that start out with modest fingerpicking, like "That's Where I Belong," suddenly take on a syncopated lilt and lift off. Bamboo flute, finger cymbals, cello or mbira (thumb piano) might turn up, as two percussionists send cross-rhythms flickering across and over the beat.

Mr. Simon knows so much music now that he rarely draws a song from just one idiom. While a vocal line may be symmetrical enough for a campfire sing-along, a different rhythmic slant or percussion accent sneaks in for a transcontinental second opinion. There are glimmers of country, Indian music, mariachi, Celtic slow airs, South African mbaqanga, bossa nova, reggae and Congolese soukous, and at least one gorgeous pop chorus: the one-word chorale of "Love," a benediction before Mr. Simon starts thinking about genocide in the last verse.

The Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini, who has been working with Mr. Simon since "The Rhythm of the Saints," joins him through much of the album, and their guitars intertwine like trellised grapevines or DNA double helices. "Darling Lorraine" is a six-minute study of the ups and downs of a marriage; it's also about shifting pulses and rhythm patterns, chords switching between minor and major, and the way a nearly inaudible shake of a maraca or tap of a cymbal can tease a tune forward.

In its own quiet way, "You're the One" is a completely stubborn album. It's oblivious to anything like pop fashion, relying on hand-played instruments and convoluted arrangements; its songs ease into odd meters like 11/4 ("The Teacher"), or move through ingenious, accelerating tempos like "Hurricane Eye." Although "The Capeman," in 1997, was a half-step ahead of the Latin pop resurgence, "You're the One" doesn't hint at salsa.

Where most pop and rock musicians cling to youth, Mr. Simon has always presented himself as prematurely mature. He sang "A Hazy Shade of Winter," about missing "the springtime of my life," when he was 26; in "Still Crazy After All These Years," he acted middle-aged at 33. Now, the 58-year-old Mr. Simon mocks himself in "Old," though he takes it back by comparing one life span to the venerability of the human race and the universe. Still, he allows himself a codger's chutzpah; after singing about Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, he cackles: "Disagreements? Work 'em out."

Mr. Simon may be singing about death in the album's meditative final song, "Quiet," when he intones, "I am heading for a time of quiet/ when my restlessness is past"; he may just be seeking calm. Even if he's not headed out of town, his music remains mobile.

Mr. N'Dour has an eye on Senegal and an eye on the world throughout "Joko." Where Mr. Simon allows himself the quirks of a private citizen, Mr. N'Dour makes his statements with the self-conscious care of a diplomat: Senegal's ambassador to the world. "Drop your gun and go to school," he sings, hoping to reach every urban child. He proudly harnesses the latest technology to unmistakably Senegalese music.

His band, Super Etoile, has no rival in the brisk Senegalese rock called mbalax, with jumpy six-beat rhythms and vocal lines that leap out of the off-beats. It turns mbalax inward in "Miss" and lets it gleefully race ahead in "Beykat," a tribute to hard-working peasant farmers. But Mr. N'Dour also wields Western sounds. There are hip-hop drum loops, guitar power chords and brooding trip-hop synthesizers alongside the sputtering Senegalese tama drums and keyboards programmed to plink like a kora, the griot's harp-guitar. Peter Gabriel wafts a ghostly backup vocal above the synthesized balafons (marimbas) of "This Dream"; while "Liggeey" urges everyone to work hard, talking drums chatter above a doo- wop chord progression.

"Birima," a jubilant praise song to an ancient king, juxtaposes a stuttering traditionalist guitar with synthesizers. Then it turns into a three-chord rock anthem; an electric organ clinches a resemblance to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." And while drummers add a crackling cross-current, Mr. N'Dour's voice — a searing combination of passion and gentleness — heads skyward with improvisations that laugh out loud. Until he reaches the album's last two songs, which are geared to English-speaking listeners and verge on corniness, Mr. N'Dour presides over gleaming, intelligent, unabashedly global pop. He hasn't decided to stay home; it's just that he's at home everywhere.

Reprinted without permission from The Boston Globe.

The sounds of Simon
He's homeward bound after searching the world
By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, 10/1/2000

Whenever Paul Simon makes an album, the inevitable question arises as to what culture he's investigating this time. He studied the sounds of South Africa for ''Graceland,'' his Grammy-winning, world-music breakthrough disc in 1986. And he probed the music of Brazil for the decorated ''Rhythm of the Saints'' in 1990. No artist of his time has been as daring - nor as successful - at integrating musical vocabularies from foreign lands.

Simon's new album, however, entitled ''You're the One,'' marks a return to simpler homespun roots.

''It's not about another culture this time. It's about songwriting and storytelling,'' says Simon, whose new record comes out Tuesday, followed by a tour that will bring him to the Orpheum Theatre for three nights, Dec. 1-3. (Details about tickets have not yet been announced.)

A milder, calmer, lower-profile album as compared with his multiethnic experiments, the new disc is an engaging, almost therapeutic, record. Simon delves into everything from children's fairy tales to discussions of God, creation, old age, love, marriage, and the tranquillity of nature. From Goldilocks to Adam and Eve, to the Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly, Jesus Christ, and Buddha - they are all mentioned in the course of an album that starts, revealingly, with Simon confessing:

Somewhere in a burst of glory

Sound becomes a song I'm bound to tell a story

That's where I belong.

''If you live long enough and you've seen enough stuff, you begin to accumulate experiences and start to tell of those experiences,'' says Simon, 58. ''Everybody loves a story, and stories are the theme of this record.''

Lyrics, not rhythms this time, predominate. Although he's still often backed in the studio by some of his veteran African sidemen (Vincent Nguini on guitar and Bakithi Kumalo on bass), the music has a more personal singer-songwriter tone. Simon plays electric and acoustic guitars over subdued instrumentation typified by a light, even-tempered mix of drums and percussion. The music is smooth, not edgy, and many of the songs were composed quickly, in one- and two-day bursts of inspiration.

''The words came very fast - and that's unusual for me,'' he says. ''It has happened to me in the past only occasionally. The song `Bridge Over Troubled Water' was like that. And `Slip Slidin' Away' was like that. And there have been some others, but usually they take much longer - like the song `Graceland,' which took months.''

Although the words came quickly, the album is still meticulously crafted - a Simon trademark since his '60s days with then-partner Art Garfunkel.

''I wanted to have an organic musical cohesion that gives it a shape,'' he says of the new CD. ''It has a relationship of time signatures and key changes and orchestral colors.''

It is also rife with the wisdom of someone who has been writing and shaping songs since he was a teenager in the '50s in Queens.

''I change things all of the time. That's why I wanted to be a musician in the first place,'' he says. ''And my main man is Miles Davis. He never retired. He kept going for a long time and kept doing it at a high level. I was impressed by that and always said I'd love to be like that if I can.''

The subject of age is a sensitive one for many songwriters, but Simon confronts it head on in the new song, ''Old.'' Amid guitar chords suggesting Buddy Holly's eternally youthful ''Peggy Sue,'' he recalls the first time he heard that Holly song, as well as the first time he smoked marijuana (''guess what - paranoid!'' he sings) and of initially hearing the Rolling Stones' ''Satisfaction'' when he was ''young and unemployed.'' As the years go by in the song's imagery, he sings humorously, ''Summer leaves and my birthday's here/And all my friends stand up and cheer and say, `Man, you're old!'''

''I've been getting old ever since I hit 30,'' Simon says with a laugh. ''But, you know, the truth of the matter is that it takes a long time to get really good. A long time. You see that in the adjacent fields of blues and jazz - and the same will be true in rock, too, I think.''

Not many people of any age can write with the subtlety of Simon, whose panoramic imagery is beautifully illustrated in the new tune ''Hurricane Eye,'' which merges fairy-tale references to Goldilocks and ''the old woman in the shoe'' with crisp reality checks of life in the year 2000, such as ''Finally home - home in the land of the homeless.''

''In a way, the song `Hurricane Eye' has something more lyrically akin to `Rhythm of the Saints' with that quick impression of things and that sense of swirling, chaotic energy,'' he says. ''The time signature and the subject matter is also changing in that song. That one took the longest of all the songs to write.''

Other album subjects range from the husband-and-wife dynamic in ''Darling Lorraine'' (about an up-and-down marriage that ends with the husband wrapping a blanket lovingly around his wife as she is dying) to a number of spiritual references in songs such as the meditative ''Quiet'' (''I am heading for a place of quiet when my restlessness is past'') and the very personal ''Senorita With a Necklace of Tears,'' in which he declares, ''We are born and born again like the waves of the sea/That's the way it's always been and that's how I want it to be.''

The pivotal track is the allegorical ''The Teacher,'' with light wood-block percussion and bamboo flute underlining a tale about a guru who abuses his powers and leads his disciples to ruin.

''The point is to be careful,'' Simon notes. ''Don't just follow. Think. ... Otherwise, we're all going to Jonestown.''

This thoughtful, calming album comes on the heels of Simon's failure three years ago with his Broadway musical, ''Capeman,'' about a 15-year-old Puerto Rican gang member who killed two boys in a New York park in 1959, then became a writer during a long, redemptive stay in prison. Simon reportedly lost millions of dollars on it. Many critics lambasted it, prompting a negative spiral that ended up closing it prematurely.

''It was a disappointment, but I thought it was very good and had a really good cast,'' he says, naming Latin stars Marc Anthony and Reuben Blades. ''I enjoyed making it and I was proud of it, but what can you say? You win some, you lose some. All you can do is shrug it off.''

He's been on an upswing ever since. He has a happy marriage to singer Edie Brickell (they have three children, ages 2, 3, and 7) and he exulted in last year's co-headlining amphitheater tour with Bob Dylan. The two did their own sets and harmonized on such classics as Simon's ''The Sounds of Silence'' and Dylan's ''Knockin' on Heaven's Door.''

''I enjoyed that tour immensely. Bob is a lot of fun, at least to me, he is. He's my age and my culture and we're both songwriters. ... And we went out just for the fun of playing. We weren't pitching anything at the time. I wouldn't mind doing it again someday.''

Simon is well past the point of worrying about hit singles anymore, even though some of his peers, including Santana and Cher, have scored Top 40 hits late in their careers.

''You know what? I never worried about hits,'' he says. ''At the time when I was writing a lot of hits, I figured that something was probably going to be a hit from the album out at the time, but I didn't know what it would be. Usually it was the stuff that I never would have picked - things like `Loves Me Like a Rock' or `50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.' They were odd records.

''I don't think about career moves - and I don't think it does any good to think about them,'' he adds. ''I didn't do `Capeman' because I thought it was a good career move. I did it because I got the idea for it and thought it would make a good theatrical piece. It's the same when I get the idea for a sound to an album or the sound for a band. I follow it, just like I'd follow any adventure in my life.''

Reprinted without permission from The Globe And Mail.

Relaxed and back on track
After a disastrous tryst with Broadway, Paul Simon tells
SIMON HOUPT how he got his groove back with a strong new album
SIMON HOUPT

Monday, October 2, 2000

NEW YORK -- It is already late afternoon by the time Paul Simon sits down to talk in a rehearsal studio on the west side of town. After running 30 minutes longer than expected in a previous interview, he couldn't help himself, so he popped downstairs to check on how rehearsals were progressing in his absence. An obsessive sort who quickly loses track of time, he got stuck there, pulled in by the magnetism of his own music and a compulsion for perfection.

Given his perfectionism, it is amusing to hear Simon speak of his forthcoming tour -- which brings him to Toronto's Massey Hall on Nov. 28 and 29 -- as loose. Two years ago, when he was on the road as part of a double bill with Bob Dylan, Simon and his band played a pickup gig at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. Without either the pressure or the high sound quality of a concert hall, Simon discovered the joy of a performance that was rawer than he is used to.

"I'm not inclined to be really loose about shows," he explains, unaware of the understatement. "But this was more about: Have a good time. And there was something very powerful about that."

Not so powerful that he has completely discarded his perfectionism. During rehearsal, he operates like an orchestral conductor, working with each individual musician on his or her part until he is satisfied with the whole. A few days before this interview, an aide divulged, Simon had spent more than a half-hour refining a 30-second section of one song. So perhaps we can chuckle a little at Simon's sense of "loose," though he is undoubtedly more relaxed than he has been in years.

Chalk that up, in part, to his happy marriage (his third) of eight years to singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, 34. Chalk that up, too,to his new album, You're the One, which goes on sale tomorrow. It is Simon's first studio recording in three years, and a return to form not seen since the early 1980s, before Simon threw himself into world music. That began in 1986 with Graceland, a stunning exploration of South African music that was hailed around the world. He followed it up with 1989's Rhythm of the Saints, which filtered the sounds of West Africa and Brazil through Simon's unique perspective.

In the early nineties, Simon locked himself away to work on the Broadway musical The Capeman with Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott. Based on the true story of a 16-year-old New York City gang member who killed two innocent people in 1959, the show dipped into the rhythms of the Puerto Rican barrios of New York. In the summer of 1997, Simon released an album of songs written for the show.

The Capeman's arrival on Broadway in early 1998 was an intensely troubled one. In the months leading to its opening, members of New York's theatre community treated the show and its composer with a curious mixture of envy and animosity. When the show ran into trouble in rehearsals, Simon drew heavily from his own pocket. This was judged unfair by the rest of the Broadway community, which didn't have access to such resources. Simon was accused of arrogance and of flouting the conventions of Broadway. Furthermore, the show was criticized by victims'-rights groups who were concerned it would glorify gang violence, and by members of New York's Puerto Rican community.

The musical lasted less than two months and led not just to enormous personal financial losses -- Simon's expenditures were in the millions -- but a period of reflection.

"If I didn't learn from that experience, I would then have to describe it as a really bad thing," says Simon with a chortle. "But it wasn't a really bad thing. A lot of people really liked it. A lot of people saw it." He is dressed in rehearsal garb: grey suede shoes, jeans and a worn, comfy flannel shirt thrown atop an old green T-shirt. A baseball cap covers close-cropped grey hair. As he speaks, although it is becoming dark outside and there are no lights on in this room, he doesn't seem to notice. He will stay like this for an hour and a half as dusk sweeps in, his brown eyes losing their colour, his features slowly fading to outlines, until someone comes in to tell him it is time to go home.

"I loved the process of writing [Capeman]," he says. There is a Talmudic lilt to his speech that implies a constant capacity for fascination and investigation, like a child learning about the world by asking himself and answering questions about what he sees. "Then the marketplace, not only did they reject it, but they rejected it, you know, like it was personal. That isn't any fun. I didn't like that. I didn't really know why, but even that I thought was interesting."

You're the One brings no such worries. It is a lovingly written and executed album of supple, entertaining stories that telegraphs its narrative intentions in the opening stanza of the first number. "Somewhere in a burst of glory / Sound becomes a song / I'm bound to tell a story / That's where I belong," Simon sings, sounding like a man who knows and is satisfied with his place in the universe. The words hint at how the album was built. Ever interested in rhythm -- at least since leaving Garfunkel and those ballads behind -- Simon began writing songs by developing a drum line that suggested a key or a mood. He composed a guitar melody on top which gave way to a guitar duet, then layered in the bass and, finally, the lyrics.

Many of those lyrics touch on beginnings and endings, on frailty and the transient nature of human existence. At 58, is he becoming more aware of his own mortality?

"It's a fiction for anybody to not be aware of their mortality," he says, a patiently instructive tone to his voice, "but it's an illusion that we all indulge in at a certain point in time." In any case, he figures life is just one form of existence. "Why should you be afraid [of death]? Billions of people have managed to make the transition. We all make it, it's programmed in."
Not that he's planning on making the transition soon. He is fit and energetic, a pink hue playing on his cheeks. Still, it's hard for his fans to ignore their own mortality: You know you're getting older when your music heroes begin playing benefits for prostate cancer, as Simon did recently with his friend Sting. To be fair, that was only one of many benefits on Simon's calendar. Earlier this month, he allowed his band out of the rehearsal studio to play at the Radio City Music Hall fundraiser for Al Gore. He noticeably cools when the subject is raised.

"I don't like the combination of show biz and politics," he says tightly. "I'm sorry, but I don't think it's a good thing at all, and I really would be more inclined not to be involved than to be involved. But, you know, it's hard in an election year, it's a tight election and you have a feeling that one choice is more to your values than another." He pauses, then complains about the state of U.S. politics. "Here's a guy, running for President of the United States, and for months and months all they said was, 'Really, he's too boring. There's no charisma.' That's a criticism? I don't find it a criticism."

"It's a joke, really, to think that the most telegenic should be the President. It's like saying that the most telegenic should be pop stars, so the music is going to be all about being telegenic, it's not going to be about music." Of course, that's what music has become -- what chance would the nebbishy Simon and big-haired Garfunkel have if they were to start out now? -- but Simon figures there's still enough room for artists like himself.

"Music is one of the most powerful things on the whole planet. It's everywhere in the world, and all kinds of people get nourishment from all kinds of music and I make a certain kind of music and it nourishes a certain sensibility," he says. Still, at a public interview in May as part of The New Yorker literary festival, Simon explained that prior to beginning work on You're the One, he was worried he might not find the energy or inspiration to make another album.

"I was thinking about Philip Larkin," he says now, quietly, his voice fading with the light. "You ever read Philip Larkin? English poet. Great poet. He didn't write anything for, like, the last 10 or 12 years of his life. He wanted to. He just said his muse deserted him. That was that."

It seems inconceivable that Simon's well of inspiration could ever dry up. As his continual explorations suggest, he remains open and receptive to innovative sounds and ideas, as capable of finding wonder in a line of rhythm as in a string of nighttime stars.

As if to prove the point, he begins to pull away from the specific questions about his career, the state of U.S. politics, and the new album. The light in the room is closing down now, but he is somewhere else, floating on a brilliant blue wave of thought.

"Something greater is happening," he says. He speaks at length about God, unlikely occurrences and the presence of geometric patterns that repeat throughout the universe. "People say, ah, that's just a coincidence. Okay, if you want to think that, whatever. But it's so extraordinary, it's so unbelievable, that a shrug of the shoulders is completely inappropriate to how awe-inspiring it is.

"It's knocking me out, I'll tell you. The sky and mountains and -- that's just some little thumbnail, tiny little part of it. It's un-be-liev-ably beautiful! You know? It's just incredible. What a trip."
Paul Simon plays Toronto's Massey Hall Nov. 28 and 29. These are the only Canadian dates of his fall 2000 concert tour.

Reprinted without permission from The Sunday Times.

EXCUSE me while I quote at length from the chorus of Darling Lorraine, the epic six-and-a-half-minute love-then-hate song that is one of the highlights of You're the One: "What? You don't love me anymore?/ What? You're walking out the door?/ What? You don't like the way I chew?/ Hey! Let me tell you/ You're not the woman that I wed/ You say that you're depressed, but you're not, you just like to stay in bed." Rarely has a row been better crafted; but then there are few songwriters who can polish a lyric as well as Simon. Some 40 years into his career, he's still buffing up gem after gem. Seemingly casual and conversational, his lyrics can turn on a sixpence. But despite his gift for wordplay, he's just as happy to write a song called Love, in which the whole chorus consists of just that one word, or to indulge in some good old rock'n'roll mow-m-m-mow-mow-mowing on Look at That. The sound of the album still borrows from the African rhythms that he first unearthed on Graceland, principally through Vincent Nguni's gorgeous guitar arpeggios and the counterpoint between the thud of the bass drum and the skittering percussion. The interplay between Nguni and Simon's more traditional folk-guitar playing is a particular delight, especially when Simon pastiches Buddy Holly on Old. This examination of ageing is an exception in an album of mainly storytelling songs, presented by not always reliable narrators. But You're the One is an album of subtle pleasures and, given the failure of Simon's musical The Capeman, many will have consigned him to the box marked "has-been". He could really do with a storming hit single to wrench public attention back onto his work and, without an obvious contender, You're the One may struggle to gain the audience it so obviously deserves. ME

Reprinted without permission from The National Post.

Not just a one-trick pony
Paul Simon is preoccupied with what he calls 'the emotional power of hearing' -- a power most ably demonstrated by his new album, You're the One, due in stores next week
Jeff Breithaupt
National Post

Paul Simon hears noises in his head. "It's always been the driving factor in my creative process," he says. "On my new album [You're the One, due in stores Tuesday], I was looking for a sound that I imagined, that I had in my head." So what was this aural jumping-off point for his first album in 10 years? Simon falters. "It was a certain guitar sound," he says in the deliberate tones of a man who has learned how not to be misrepresented in print. "It was a guitar sound that was kind of empty and bluesy, electric," he adds inconclusively. Simon is a singer, not a talker, but fortunately, his album, a moving feast of subtle story songs, illustrates his point.

It's early evening in Manhattan's SIR Studios, and Simon is on a break from rehearsing with his new band. We're seated in a windowless box of a room equipped with a long table and a few scattered chairs. As our conversation begins, the diminutive songwriter, one of the 20th century's best, takes a long, slow sip of tea. There's rarely sudden movement from Simon. It is all legato, measured, like his speech. Remember the record producer he played in Annie Hall? The way he floated through those L.A. scenes is not unlike the way this lifelong New Yorker, at odds with the city's frenetic energy, actually moves.

He is dressed comfortably in a loose-fitting pale-green T-shirt, black slacks and a dark green jacket that, although spotless, looks like it might belong to an auto mechanic. As usual, he wears a baseball cap that covers close-cropped hair, mostly grey, mostly gone. His round, ruddy face has retained a boyish aspect, but the 58-year-old Simon, whose storied recording career began with 1957's Hey Schoolgirl -- his first recording with boyhood friend Art Garfunkel -- has begun to look his age.

It's just over two years since Simon's first (and probably last) Broadway musical closed, a victim of merciless reviews and bad box office. Although disappointed, Simon expresses no bitterness about the fate of The Capeman, which dramatized the real-life New York murder of two white boys by a Puerto Rican teenager in 1959. "My whole life, since I started being interested in playing music, I've had ideas," says Simon, "so it really doesn't matter whether you're discouraged at the moment or not. What happened with The Capeman -- yeah, that was discouraging because I had worked a long time on it, and it was really very good. But it was only discouraging for a little while. It closed in the spring of 1998, and by September I was working with this band."

Simon spent the summer of 1998 in Montauk, a salty seaside village situated on the eastern tip of Long Island's south fork. He is quick to point out that Montauk is "unfashionable" -- by which he means it's a few kilometres removed from the furious Hamptons social scene. Although Simon and singer Edie Brickell, his wife of eight years, spend most of each summer there with their three kids (two boys, 2 and 7, and a girl, 5), the ocean-front hideaway provided an especially welcome respite that year. It was just the place to heal Simon's Great White wounds, and it was there that the sounds that would become You're the One began to emerge from inside Simon's head. "I knew that it would probably be very good for me to sit down with a band again," he says. "I just thought it would be good for me to get back up."

Simon had once before tackled an art form outside his expertise: the 1980 film, One-Trick Pony, for which he wrote the screenplay and soundtrack, and starred as a sly one-hit wonder singer-songwriter whose best days were behind him. It received lukewarm reviews at best and failed at the box office. "When The Capeman flopped, I said, 'I guess I'm going to keep making the same mistake; I'm going to keep doing something outside of what I know and just do it once,' " Simon says. "But if I did do a second movie, it would be so far advanced over where I began with One-Trick Pony."

Although his subsequent album (1983's Hearts and Bones) has three or four of Simon's most enduring songs, including the title track, a musical memoir of his failed marriage to actress Carrie Fisher, it was not well-received by critics and sold poorly.

Simon, the critics seemed to be saying, was done, not unlike Jonah Levin, the one-trick pony he had played a few years before. "They thought I was finished, so I guess I just thought I could do whatever I wanted," Simon says smiling.

Whatever he wanted turned out to be Graceland, the exuberant 1986 masterpiece that has since come to define his solo career. Simon's use of South African musicians, rhythms and styles enlivened the literate 11-song collection in delightful ways. The cross-cultural experiment proved to be a master stroke, and although it inspired a stream of patently absurd criticism from cultural partitionists who accused Simon of exploiting his new musician friends, its joyful noise won the day. "Those arguments are gone," Simon says. "Everyone plays with everyone, and that's the way it was going to be."

Of course, cultural cross-pollination is the foundation for most of the world's most exciting musical developments. Simon has known that all along. Rock and roll itself was the hub of a multicultural wheel that was just beginning to turn during Simon's childhood. "I had no interest in popular music before rock and roll," says Simon, peering out from under the peak of his cap. "I couldn't stand it. I was just waiting for it to pass, so I could listen to the Yankee game."

Once Elvis and the Everly Brothers came along, though, Simon was hooked. And it wasn't long before he and a certain gangly neighbourhood chum started singing together, first as Tom & Jerry and then as Simon & Garfunkel, the most successful folk duo of the '60s. Although Simon brushes aside a question about Garfunkel as if it were a mosquito, there is no animosity. It's just that he would rather discuss his present than his past, which is fair considering the high quality of his new album.

Its centrepiece is Darling Lorraine, a 6 1/2-minute narrative that traces the poignant love affair between two characters, Frank and Lorraine. It's a funny and heart-rending tale, a multi-sectioned epic that is among the best songs of Simon's career. He says that its "plot" took him by surprise as it was unfolding. "I had no idea where the song was headed," Simon says. "I was just going along with jokes, and then I came to the line, 'I'm sick to death of you, Lorraine.' As soon as I sang that line, I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, she's going to die.' Then it was very emotional for me to write that."

Although distinguished by its lyrics, Darling Lorraine began, as all of Simon's work has done since Graceland, with sound. "Everything since that record comes from the sound, and then from what rhythm should go underneath that sound," he says. "When I was young and first looking to music, I was unaware of what my gift was. I think the gift is that I have some ability to remember sound."

He pauses.

"One of my favourite stories that John Lennon ever told me was that when he was a kid and the BBC wouldn't play rock and roll, he used to listen to [a pirate radio station]. But because he was up in Liverpool and these stations were down in the English Channel, it would come in with a kind of 'wah-waah-waaah' sound. It would fade in and out. He said that he tried to get that sound of fading in and out into all of his records."

Simon's preoccupation with sound and what he calls "the emotional power of hearing" is somewhat surprising from a songwriter so renowned for his use of lyrics. "You can have something fantastic to say," he maintains, "but if you have the wrong sound underneath it, no one hears it."

The right sound must be underpinning That's Where I Belong, the lead track on Simon's new album, because ever since our conversation its lyrics -- especially the first four lines -- have been coming through loud and clear: "Somewhere in a burst of glory / Sound becomes a song / I'm bound to tell a story / That's where I belong."

Reprinted without permission from Billboard Magazine.
Timothy White reviews "You're The One" in his "Music To My Ears" column:

Back comes rhymin' Simon, "over the bridge of time," as he intones on his new album, "You're The One" (Warner Bros., due Oct. 3). Paul Simon sounds older but wiser, poetic as always, but rarely has he been more blithe-or more powerful.

"I'm walking with my family/And the road begins to climb," sings the renowned songwriter in the semi-autobiographical allegories of "Hurricane Eye," whose lyric intermingles his latter-day roles as poet, parent, adult partner, and child's playmate, the man seasoned in each by a lengthy career in which "the oldest silence speaks the loudest" and forged by a rare talent that has become a fatherly responsibility: "Tell us a story/About how it used to be/Make it up and write it down/Just like history."

"My feeling at this point in my life was that if I didn't make a record that was extremely pleasant-if not seductively so-it might not get listened to," explains Simon wryly, as he and his wife and three small children (two boys, ages 2 and 7, and a girl, age 5) spend Labor Day packing up to return to Manhattan after a Long Island summer at the beach. While lighthearted now, the composer is alluding to the rough critical treatment he suffered when his bleak but musically exceptional 1997 "Capeman" project excelled as a recording but closed on Broadway after a brief run.

"If you're not someone who makes records meant for dance, and you're like me," Simon continues, "then your records should consist of interesting stories. So the new album grows organically, using all these different structures, while I see how I can still keep the pulse going. And it's meant to be a journey, with a lot of incredible experiences, but told in a style that's relaxed and calm."

Underlying that serenity, however, are reverberant echoes and answers from a life span of turmoil. Initial doses might induce some to describe "You're The One" as a mere gentle gem of a record, exquisite in its meditative ease. But steady exposure reveals the 11-song, 42-minute work to be more pointed in its purposeful self-awareness than any of the artist's prior solo efforts, from the earliest sketches of his 1965 debut on "The Paul Simon Songbook" (CBS/U.K.) to the acknowledged artistic acumen of "There Goes Rhymin' Simon" (1973), "Still Crazy After All These Years" (1975), and "Graceland" (1986). The whimsy, torment, and allegorical inventories of inner and outer questing that informed those classic, self-referential releases are in refined evidence in "You're The One," but Simon's latest turn is a rapt travelogue on finding home rather than fretting over receding horizons.

Like the best of Hans Christian Andersen, Sholom Aleichem, or Carl Sandburg, "You're The One" is related with the humble hindsight of one who aims to engage a wondering child as well as a worldly elder. It's a small book of parables about angels and bogeymen, daring human intent and lowdown imposition, blue skies and black eyes, wolves and sheep, open wounds and tender scars, and things that go bumptious in the gathering night-and one more thing: the fragile gift of love in life's brief flickering.

"'Look at that!' I say in the song of that name," says Simon, "and then, 'Look at this!' or 'Where'd he go?/I don't know' in the song 'Pigs, Sheep And Wolves,' because that's the fun way you begin little stories when you try to teach your kids to be observant and open to ideas. My children are all through this record, running in all directions," he admits with a chuckle, eager to underscore his happiness with singer Edie Brickell, his third wife, whom he wed on May 30, 1992. "But in a way the finished album is closer to 'Arabian Nights,' where you try to keep someone fascinated as long as possible with good stories."

n the case of that Arabic hallmark of world literature, a trapped Sheherazade entertains her cruel husband, the legendary king of Samarkand, with a tale each evening for 1,001 nights in order to deter him from killing her. For Simon's part, the narrative impulse is entirely voluntary and kindly, albeit urgent (as indicated on "Quiet"), the 58-year-old musician quick to impart his tender insights while he's spry enough to fully inhabit such fond gestures. Most of all, when you've really got something searing to say, you don't need to shout it.

"The essence of the album is guitar duets superimposed on percussion elements," notes Simon, "with Vincent Nguini, who I've played with since 'The Rhythm Of The Saints' [1990], and [bassist] Bakithi Khumalo, who I've known since 'Graceland,' working with percussionists Jamey Haddad, who's from a Lebanese family in Cleveland, and Steve Shehan, an American who lives in Paris, with Steve Gadd, who's been recording with me since the days of [1975's] '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.' But the tracks' colors and tempos are pleasurable, using intuitive flashes, synaptic leaps, and shorthand logic to help keep the story coming."

But if prior records like "Graceland" and "The Rhythm Of The Saints" were about emotional impressions and sensory abstractions, new material like "Darling Lorraine" and "Love"-each of which originated as instrumental tracks-imparts respect for the power of the small truths fate and mortality make precious. The rich ideas in the music are executed more simply than ever before, like the murmured, cadent descriptions of a lifelong companion who's succumbing: "Darling Lorraine/Her hands like wood/The doctor was smiling/But the news wasn't good."

Whether it's everyday heartbreak and regret ("Señorita With A Necklace Of Tears") or the epic pain of cult worshippers à la Jonestown or Waco, Texas, who get devoured by leaders' deadly appetites ("The Teacher"), they get examined with grace and care for the fading pulse of each loss. Simon has learned to write and perform songs with the eye and touch of the enlightened appreciator.

As with the melodic charm of "You're The One," much of the world's loveliest contemporary music, from George Butterworth's "The Banks Of Green Willow" to Brian Wilson's "Pet Sounds," could almost be deemed at first blush as designed for children, but souls of all ages are moved because they feel that the best or worst of what's being so empathetically played and sung about will surely come to pass.

The same could be said of the inevitability of aging itself-and Simon does, on the smash-worthy first single from "You're The One," the ingeniously anthemic "Old." Experienced on its own terms, "Old" is endearing in its self-deprecation, but encountered in the context of the album, it's more stunning for its wise personal testament to the immovable verities: the eternal scoreboard of love and death. How much of the former did one generate before the latter arrived?

"Let's face it," Simon says with a laugh, "everybody outside their teens thinks they're old-women in their late 20s, men in their late 30s-and I remember once thinking musicians in their late 50s were really old, like B.B. King and Sonny Rollins, but now I know better! It's an absurd, obsessive thing, but when you get perspective and pull the camera way back above the planet, you see we're all just links."

And Simon's proper place in that linkage is the ultimate theme of opening track "That's Where I Belong" and the sum total of "You're The One." The album is the brilliant diary of a storyteller who learned to embrace the meaning of his own stories. "That's true," he says softly. "That was the outcome of the journey."

Samples

You can sample clips from each song on You're The One at Paul's official Web site in the albums section.

Press Release

You're The One, a new album from singer/songwriter Paul Simon will be released by Warner Bros. Records on October 3rd. A hypnotically beautiful, powerful song cycle rich in emotion and energy, You're The One is easily Paul Simon s most accessible and melodic album in more than a decade and features a compelling guitar-driven rhythmic pulse that is evident throughout the album. While Paul's voice has become more powerful with time, the subtlety and phrasing of his vocals gives listeners an intimate glimpse of what s been on Paul Simon's mind and the songs -- story-oriented like his earlier works -- have the lyrical intensity and beauty of Simon's later writing. Truly one of America's most gifted songwriters, Paul Simon has produced what may be his best work.

You're The One features Simon's 10-piece band with whom he has worked over the years, and whom he toured with on last summer s hugely successful outing with Bob Dylan. The release of You're The One will be followed by a fall tour slated to begin on October 16th in Stockholm, Sweden. The tour will cover 29 shows in 13 cities across Europe and the U.S. and will include material that spans Simon's entire career. A great album from the first listen, You're The One is vintage Paul Simon.