A Quiet Evening with Paul Simon
'Seven Psalms,' hits and deep cuts on a May evening at Toronto's Massey Hall
Welcome music lovers!
For this edition of Listening Sessions, I decided to write-up my thoughts on seeing Paul Simon live at Massey Hall late last month as part of his A Quiet Celebration tour as well as on the remarkable music he has been making during the past 20 years or so. Simon is 83 now, his voice a little wispy but he remains a deeply vital and important artist. I hope you enjoy the essay!
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a personal essay but that’s about to change. I’ll explore why it appears I am seem unwilling to quit Spotify, my recent trial of Qoboz and why physical media remains, for me, the only true way to appreciate recorded music. Expect it in 10 days’ time (June 19).
Until then, may good listening be with you all!
A Quiet Evening with Paul Simon
By: Robert C. Gilbert
When Paul Simon played the final concert of his 2018 concert tour dubbed The Farewell Tour, I envisioned that the crowd at Corona Park in Flushing Meadow would be treated to a moment of transcendence. Simon would begin to gracefully play the opening chords to ‘Old Friends,’ and sing in a lullaby cadence, “old friends.” He would then be joined by another voice: lighter, higher and angelic, to harmonize on the repeat of “old friends.” As the individual behind the mystery voice emerged from the shadows, they would continue: “sat on the park bench like bookends…” even as a roar enveloped upon the realization that none other than Art Garfunkel was there to provide the send-off of send-offs to Simon’s career as a touring musician.
That, of course, was a fantasy I conjured out of thin air. Simon and Garfunkel were still in the middle of an estrangement that seemed permanent (last year, they had lunch together, opening the possibility that the rift between them was mending). More practically, Garfunkel was out on the road himself that night. The show in Queens, instead, proceeded like any other night on the tour. It was never meant to be Simon’s final time on a concert stage. If the cause was right, he would get back to the stage as he did several times in the summer of 2019.
Indeed, the idea of Simon whiling his days away in recreation and repose, turning the page for good on his life as a singer-songwriter, is impossible to conceive. That’s not only because of how he and his music have ingratiated themselves into the fabric of our culture but also that ever since he and Garfunkel, two of the countless whose imaginations were set ablaze by a thing called rock-and-roll music laid down the novelty tune ‘Hey Schoolgirl’ as Tom and Jerry in 1957, Simon has never ceased evolving. He doesn’t look back. He is always looking just beyond the horizon and challenging himself and, by extension, us, to see what is over there.
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For those who remain on the journey, the past 20 years or so have been particularly rewarding. Surprise, his 2006 collaboration with Brian Eno, is almost forgotten and while its embrace of electronics and understatement of rhythm doesn’t always gel as well as hoped, many of its moments stand as some of Simon’s most perceptive and prescient.
‘How Can You Live in the Northeast?,’ a response, in part, to the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina, envisions seeing each other purely through, among other things, geography where being from a blue state or a red state is the only taxonomy used to categorize others and from which all conclusions are drawn. The rote anger of ‘Outrageous’ has also been long since codified as has fitness-obsessed bro culture. Yet, it’s doubtful that any of its members, as they ponder, “who’s gonna love you when your looks are gone?,” would come to the realization as Simon does, that ultimately “God will.”
This kind of juxtaposition, immersing the listener in one idea and then switching the scenery, is something that runs through Simon’s follow-up album: So Beautiful or So What. Here, the electronics remained but the rhythm returned. The title track moves from recounting cooking a chicken gumbo to dramatizing the assassination of Dr. King as breaking news. ‘The Afterlife’ envisions the transition from earthly existence to the next stage like waiting to be called to the counter of the DMV while also including a moment when the protagonist tries to pick-up a women also waiting in line. ‘Love is Eternal Sacred Light’ has Simon taking on the voice of God, offering that the “Big Bang / that’s a joke I made up / when I had eons to fill,” and then ending with a series of lyrics about riding down the highway in a “brand-new, pre-owned ’96 Ford,” thumbing the radio dial to eventually rest on a station playing gospel music.
And that’s just for starters. Simon’s songs are like texts. They are works to continuously and studiously study in order to crack open their secrets, and to also delight in the turns of phrase and how he can mold words that should not work as lyrics into them. By that, I mean that he has never been constrained by the perception that pop lyrics should enforce a chilling effect on the words that can be used. Of course, the great tunesmiths have transcended this kind of straitjacket, whether it be Bob Dylan or Johnny Mercer, but I’m not sure anyone has done so quite like Simon.
Take this line from ‘The Werewolf’: “the fact is most obits are mixed reviews / life is a lottery, a lot of people lose.” They read as a pre-amble to a stand-up bit or a piece of hip poetry. They don’t naturally suggest that they can be shoehorned into a melody yet Simon manages to do so. They are heard within the first minute of Stranger to Stranger, his daring, dense recording from 2016 that marked his interest and use of the microtonality and instruments of the avant-garde composer Harry Partch.
That Simon would follow the release of such a futuristic album with the announcement of a farewell tour seemed jarring. In the release with the news, he noted, “I’ve often wondered what it would be like to reach the point where I’d consider bringing my performing career to a natural end. Now I know: it feels a little unsettling, a tad exhilarating and something of a relief.”
Simon in concert has been the antithesis of nostalgia. Oh sure, he keeps the hits, but not all of them, in rotation, but he ultimately prioritizes his contemporary catalogue. At the Toronto tour stop, those hungry for something like ‘An American Tune,’ yelling out his name, first and last separated by a certain profanity used as an adjective, would have to wait for it while being treated to ‘Dazzling Blue’ or ‘Questions for the Angels’ or ‘Wristband,’ that one both a hilarious satire of privilege and, in its way, a warning of the struggles still roiling the United States. The upcoming album he also featured, In the Blue Light, on which his cast his glance backward to offer re-recordings of 10 of his deeper cuts turned the whole concept of nostalgia on its head. More often than not, the songs he selected emerged subtly yet radically changed such as a late-night re-imagining of ‘How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns’ with lonely obbligatos by Wynton Marsalis.
In the years following his goodbye from the touring life, he has participated in three efforts to summarize and contextualize his life and work: a biography (Paul Simon: The Life by Robert Hilburn), a podcast (Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon with Malcolm Gladwell) and a documentary (In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, directed by Alex Gilroy). In the latter, he was quite forthright about his hearing loss. Simon estimates he only has about six percent hearing left in his left ear. It began to deteriorate during the sessions for his latest recording, Seven Psalms, his most ambitious and challenging work yet.
Simon wrote the work—and that description is apt as it is a continuous suite or song cycle—as the result of a dream which told him to do so and provided the title. The lyrics gradually came to him early in the morning a few days a week. On first listen, Seven Psalms is a little bewildering. The return of the opening psalm, ‘The Lord,’ twice during the work is a helpful signpost to get acclimated to its wonders. The best way to appreciate it is to see him perform it live.
Yes, that’s right, Paul Simon is back on the road, the farewell of 2018 turning out to be only temporary. The tour, called A Quite Celebration, started in April and will continue until August, hitting 19 cities in the United States and Canada for a total of 55 shows. Each will begin with Seven Psalms. At the end of May, he played at Toronto’s Massey Hall for three nights.
At a concert like this, you can usually tell who is there to commune with an artist's present or whose interest in whomever is performing petered out years, if not decades, ago. Not long after I took my seat at the back of the main floor at Massey, a couple took their seats next to me on my right. The gentleman was incredulous to see the extravagant set-up: a three-person chamber section flanking centre stage on the right, guitars and keyboards to the left, an impressive array of percussion instruments including Partch’s cloud-chamber bowls at the back, all surrounding where Simon would sit or occasionally stand. He thought it was going to be Simon solo. The prohibition against taking photos or videos during the show also struck a nerve. About the warning to get a bio break in before the beginning of the first part of the show because if you leave once it began, you ain’t getting back in until the intermission, he was silent.
It made sense to treat the portion of the show dedicated to performing Seven Psalms like a classical concert. It matched the choice to release it on CD and streaming as one track (though, for the latter, it has recently been made available as seven individual tracks). At 8:20 p.m. on May 27, Simon, the ostensible conductor/performer, appeared on the Massey Hall stage. All 2,700 assembled surged to a din of clapping and cheering, almost all rising to their feet, as Simon took in the love, touching his heart more than once.
After a brief welcome, he took guitar in hand to play the indelible opening chordal run of ‘The Lord’ and then he sang: “I’ve been thinking about the great migration.” Simon would only occasionally return to play the guitar with Mark Stewart, who has been playing with him for ages, seamlessly taking over and then dropping out when Simon decided to play a few bars. The focus, consequently, was on Simon the singer.
He may be our greatest conversational singer. His melodies never venture too far up or down the musical staff. His voice—softer than it once was but still full of New York matter-of-factness—remains the ideal messenger of his lyrics (Garfunkel will always remain Simon’s greatest interpreter). When they have been concerned with recounting the many truths of living, they remain beautifully reassuring that he is a fellow traveler along life’s journey.
Whether it be that “losing love is like a window in your heart” from ‘Graceland,’ which opened the second set that was dedicated to hits and deep cuts or that “God only knows / God makes his plans / the information is unavailable to the mortal man” from ‘Slip Slidin’ Away,’ which followed, they crystalize the most salient secret to Simon’s gift. He gets life and, by extension, he gets you as he gets me.
Watching Simon and hanging on every word as Seven Psalms proceeded along was also about observing everything happening around him and how percussion. The resonance of the Partch bells, the sudden appearance of a vibraphone line, the slipping in of a backbeat; all were part of a mystic swirl around his lyrics. Jamey Haddad and Mick Rossi manned the array of percussion instruments with Matt Chamberlin on the drumkit. After the third psalm, ‘My Professional Opinion,’ the selection closest to what could be called a characteristic Simon song, the mystery and spectacle deepened.
‘Your Forgiveness’ instructs to “dip your hand in Heaven’s waters” where there’s “all of life’s abundance in a drop of condensation,” while ‘Trail of Volcanoes’ wonders if forgiveness is truly ever possible. As ‘The Sacred Harp’ began, a familiar, expected figure appeared from stage left—it took some longer than others to recognize that it was Edie Brickell. She sang, as she does on the record, as the female hitchhiker (or perhaps more accurately, refugee) whom Simon gives a ride to and describes “her voice a blend of regional perfumes.”
The Hall seemed to shrink as ‘The Sacred Harp’ lead to the second and final repeat of ‘The Lord.’ Chamberlain’s drums rumbled as Simon enumerated, once again, the many guises of the Lord: “…a puff of smoke…,” “…my engineer…” and “…the music I hear…,” for three examples. His directness as he sang each line, as soft as a pronouncement can be made, was part of the feeling that something ineffable was transpiring on the stage.
It made my skin tingle as it did during the following set when it became clear that Simon was singing ‘St. Judy’s Comet,’ one of his finest deep cuts, or when Brickell returned to sing the Linda Ronstadt part on ‘Under African Skies’ or when Simon began strumming the familiar chords of ‘Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard’ from the decay of the ending of ‘Mother and Child Reunion.’ Nothing, through, matched the deep pleasure when the chamber ensemble: flutist Nancy Stagnita, violaist Caleb Burhans and cellist Eugene Friesen, began to sing the doo-wop line that begins ‘Train in the Distance’ from Heart and Bones.
It’s a Simon song I had heard before but, for whatever reason, it went in one ear and out the other (never hearing Heart and Bones from beginning to end is an egregious blind spot in my lifelong Simon fandom). Pretty soon, I was tapping my foot to its light, pleasurable rhythm, nodding in agreement as Simon sang of how much of life is spent yearning for the thing just beyond earshot. I almost cackled with delight when he sang of the song’s couple who, in the dissolution of their relationship, “from time to time, he makes her laugh / she cooks a meal or two.” What a poignant snapshot of the depth of connection between two people. I thought about little else in the days following the show.
There’s something else about the show that I think sums up why it was so special. As the performance of Seven Psalms concluded with the luminous ‘Wait’ and Brickell beckoning a reluctant Simon to whatever follows this existence, the Hall’s lights reflected off his guitar, shooting the rays back into the audience.
It was not an annoyance. It was instead as if the reflected light was Simon himself, grasping each member of the audience, singing directly to each and everyone assembled with whatever meaning this spectral embrace meant to everyone dependent on each individual’s personal connection with Simon and his music.
If the holiness that attended the sound of everyone singing the chorus of ‘The Boxer,’ was any indication, the bonds, no matter what they were specially composed of or if they had been burnished by Paul Simon’s recent spurt of genius, were wound tight.
It may have been a quiet celebration at Massey Hall on May 27, but it was loud with love and generosity.
Good one. More essays please.
An excellent review of Simon’s more recent work and beautifully written as always. I thoroughly enjoyed your selections, none of which I had heard previously. Bringing Wynton Marsalis into his repertoire was as genius as his musicianship. Bravo, Robert. Sounds like you had a delightful experience at the concert!