New Paul Simon Film Debuts

So here are a few classic songs and links to new interviews, with a little help from Garfunkel, Sinatra, Rhiannon Giddens, Jimmy Cliff and Joan Baez.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books (see link) and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” which are still up at PBS.org. Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.

As you may have heard, there’s a new doc series by Alex Gibney focusing on Paul Simon that premieres tomorrow on MGM + and the promo wheels have been turning the past couple of days. It was good to see Paul still sharp and in good shape (at his age, 82, not all that higher than mine) in an extended Colbert interview, plus a little singing, and then with Amanpour on CNN. A Colbert highlight found Paul reciting, wonderfully, the lyrics to a funny/poignant song about a long married couple I’d never heard.

Trailer for the new series:

So here’s my own Simon mini-retrospective. Cartoons at the bottom. Please subscribe if you have not, it’s still free.

If you have somehow never heard the very start of Paul & Artie, here they were as Tom & Jerry back in 1957.

As a huge folk-rock fan in the mid-60s (Dylan, Byrds etc.), I was thrilled to hear “Sound of Silence” on the radio, and soon learned that Columbia had put the “rock” in “folk” by adding electric guitars and drums to the vocal track the boys had recorded earlier for their debut “Wednesday Morning 2 A.M.” album, which I promptly went out and bought and heard the original bare version:

Bought all their albums that followed in the ‘60s, and caught them in concert at the University of Buffalo in ‘68, singing this favorite, “Homeward Bound.”

It was amusing to hear Paul on Colbert claim that the favorite cover of one of his songs (besides Aretha’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”) is Sinatra’s swinging “Mrs. Robinson.” When he first heard the “ding a ling” lyrics he tried to halt the song’s release but finally backed off, and now loves it for its very (very) Rat Packiness. You can judge:

Many folks would place “American Tune” among the three or four best in Paul’s songbook. A surprise performance of the song by Queen Rhiannon Giddens at Newport, with Paul on guitar, inspired so many raves on YouTube that she was invited to sing it at last year’s major Grammy tribute to Simon:

As it happened, my first published national magazine piece appeared in Rolling Stone in 1970 while I was still in college, which found me far from satisfied with the album that surrounded “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” I will resist claiming, however, that it broke up the duo….In any case, I always loved “The Boxer” and Paul still considers it one of his best. Well, you’ve probably never hear this live version from 2016 with Joan Baez and Richard Thompson.

In any case, the Simon solo albums that followed in the ‘70s earned him many deserved hits and a stupendous amount of money. Lot of good songs to choose from, but I will go with “Mother and Child Reunion,” here live with the great Jimmy Cliff.

After a few albums of lesser merit and sales, Paul came back big in the 1980s (after soaking in African and Cajun/Zydeco music) with one of the greatest and most popular albums by anyone, “Graceland.” It was kicked off not by the title track but by “The Boy in the Bubble.”

Finally, an oddity, an unreleased demo for the instrumental groove for “You Can Call Me Al.”

Cartoons of the Day