Bonca - Paul Simon: An American Tune (Tempo: A Book Series on Rock, Pop, & Culture)

Tempo: A Rowman & Littlefield Music Series on Rock, Pop, and Culture offers titles that explore rock and popular music through the lens of social and cultural history, revealing the dynamic relationship between musicians, music, and their milieu. Like other major art forms, rock and pop music comment on their cultural, political, and even economic situation, reflecting the technological advances, psychological concerns, religious feelings, and artistic trends of their times. Contributions to the Tempo series are the ideal introduction to major pop and rock artists and genres.

Bob Dylan: American Troubadour, by Donald Brown

Bon Jovi: Americas Ultimate Band, by Margaret Olson

British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence, by Simon Philo

Bruce Springsteen: American Poet and Prophet, by Donald L. Deardorff II

Patti Smith: Americas Punk Rock Rhapsodist, by Eric Wendell

Paul Simon: An American Tune, by Cornel Bonca

Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation, by Heather Augustyn

An American Tune

Cornel Bonca

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bonca, Cornel, 1958

Paul Simon : an American tune / Cornel Bonca.

pages cm. (Tempo : a Rowman & Littlefield music series on rock, pop, and culture)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8108-8481-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8108-8482-3 (ebook)

1. Simon, Paul, 1941 Criticism and interpretation. 2. Popular musicUnited StatesHistory and criticism. I. Title.

ML420.S563B66 2015

782.42164092dc23

2014023319

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This is for Angel

and

Alexey,

Nicolai, and

Annalise.

Paul Simon: An American Tune

As a fellow English major, Im relieved to know Paul Simon not only found work upon his graduation but also was able to use his degree to do what he liked. Hes made a living in the world of words, wrangling sound, sense, and meaning from them. I feel a swell of pride, too, for his having made it. And boy, has he made it. Pop icon. Consummate lyricist. Poet. Nearly unparalleled in popular song for his voice and virtuosity as a musician, Simon is one of the few narrators to have kept pace with Bob Dylans quality of comment on the American story. Hes a hero to the bookish set, the introverts, the readers of rhythm and rhyme, who believe in figurative language, and that by speakingby soundingwe can bring into existence beautiful questions and answers to save us all.

From modernist beginnings as the Jewish boy growing up middle class in mid-twentieth-century Queens, Simon seemingly had only his own ambition, self-awareness, and physical stature to overcome. A fathers approval set him in motion and his mothers devotion gave young Paul the right stuff to become half of Simon & Garfunkel and then much more as a soloist. Witty, wry, and a quick study of pop song forms, Simon sailed through the streets of Greenwich Village in the 1960s to embark on a career as a pop-folk hero in the 1970s. Taking a turn in the 1980s to explore the African and Caribbean roots of American pop and rock swelled him to even greater heights even before he had shown signs of sinking.

Simons steady hand on the wheel of his professional career, though, is not all from his confidence as a navigator. Theres as much the grip of trepidation in him borne out of steering into storms of personal uncertainties. Simon has the modernists attraction to ambiguity, the mystics search for eternity, the optimists hope of victory, and the romantics embrace of melancholy. Most of his songbook features all four dispositions in sublimely intricate arrangements. A standout example is American Tune, a song in which he took both the melody and meaning of the chorale in Bachs St. Matthew Passion, popularly known as O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, in order to state his own resolve to keep sailing on. Simon was thirty-two when he released the song in 1973 on his second solo album after the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel. Unbeknownst to everyone at the time, he wasnt even midway through his odyssey.

Simons sensitivities and insecurities have been well-attuned from the start of his career. He could deliver a song full of youthful spirit and American zest, which he often did as a young songwriter and performer, particularly when working with Art Garfunkel. Yet inevitably, naturally, a song from beyond his years followed close behind, wondering if he had not, instead, lost something precious. There has always been as much Prufrock in Simons love songs as pure pop, which speaks volumes about what we most want from the singer-songwriter in light of Simons long and lustrous career. We may be a proud, confident nation, with an inestimable wealth of resources both raw and refined, but we often worry if we have, in fact, missed the plot of life. We too often feel alone and fear we have, indeed, been asking the wrong questions.

How encouraging it is, then, to hear Simon sing what courses through our hearts and bones, too. We are not the sole sailor on this ship. In his voice, in his exquisite tenor, still strong at the age of seventy, our humanity sounds more lovely. We are reminded there is enough mysterious beauty to encourage us for the rest of our days. Paul Simons great gift is in making the journey for answers a more hopeful voyage.

Scott Calhoun