It was the year 1970 that Simon and Garfunkel had split, albeit the pairs’ musical ventures were far from over. After having released 3 commercially successful solo records the decade before, the 1980s beckoned a truly exciting and exploratory period of music and art for Paul Simon.
It called him first, into the world of film.
1980; One Trick Pony
He’s got one trick to last a lifetime, but that’s all a pony needs
As the name suggests, One-Trick Pony was Simon’s ticket out of the folk singer-songwriter box he so gloriously dwelled in, prompting audiences to rethink exactly what he was capable of.
The album was released alongside a film of the same name in the mid 1980s, with Simon writing, scoring, and starring in the picture. Playing a commercially withering folk-rock has-been called Jonah Levin, the film although not largely considered to be biographical, does allude to Simon’s experience within the famine or feast industry that is the music business.
"It's really more a character study than it is a plot, or adventure story… It’s about people I've known, composites of people. Maybe it doesn't translate outside the world of rock and roll, or rock culture.” — Paul Simon 1980 BBC Interview
Raking in just shy of million dollars at the box office, this modest reception is of course not the first relation between Simon and the silver screen, having written ‘Mrs Robinson’ solely for the purpose of soundtracking the 1967 film The Graduate, thirteen years prior.
The One-Track Pony soundtrack however harboured a brighter fate. The record is best known for the Grammy-nominated hit ‘Late in the Evening’ which later on peaked at no.6 in the US charts.
This was also the beginning of a newly developed sound for Simon, gently moving away from the folk/blues fusion adhered to on his eponymous solo debut LP, moving toward heavier textural spheres and widening stereo mixes.
1982; The Concert in Central Park
I wish I was homeward bound
Though a decade of solo records had separated them, the early 1980s briefly rekindled the duo whose prose and harmony soundtracked the folk rock revival of the 60s.
Amassing a crowd of over 500,000 the free concert has gone down in history as being one of the finest live music events, and the most memorable show to have taken place in New York City.
The show was recorded live in 1981, and released a year later. With 19 tracks on the record, the duo embrace about 20 years worth of composing, collaboration, and aesthetic evolutions in a 75min opus.
1983; Hearts and Bones
You take two bodies and you twill them into one
Once the realisation of the magnitude and effect the Central Park benefit gig had hit, the duo set off on a world tour in 1982. In between shows and pit stops, Simon and Garfunkel hit recording studios all over the world to produce what would have been a reunion album entitled Think Too Much. This however was not to be, and after the resurfacing of creative disagreements and general bickering yet again, the album was cancelled. Garfunkel was dropped from the project, and the work previously composed by Simon became his 1983 solo record, Hearts and Bones instead.
In the scheme of things, Hearts and Bones lies relatively untouched as a body of work. It was recorded over 2 years, with mixes coming out of 6 different studios, and at the hands of 4 producers, the album transcends the traditional lost love lament, and rather picks apart astute reflections of tumultuous relationships, both with people, and with Simon’s past. The record dips deeply into autobiography, revisiting ideas planted in early Simon works, reshaping their sentiment with a rebalancing of “ordinary” and “enriched” language.
“That device in lyrics writing, repeating a line that is not the title, shows up all over Graceland. I learned that lyric trick writing Hearts and Bones.” — Paul Simon 1984 Cinemax TV Special
Hearts and Bones is friendly companion to what would later arrive on Graceland.
1886; Graceland
The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar
It’s no secret that Paul Simon has been an ardent musical explorer for quite some time, incorporating into his compositions almost every style of traditional American music known to man. His lengthy lineage of sound has rattled with the aesthetics of jazz and gospel, gospel and doo-wop, even branching out into reggae, salsa and Latin American folk. In Graceland there was a shift from his lyrical comfort of New York imagery, and toward telling a story perhaps not entirely his own. Instead of a lyric first, music second approach, this record tells a sonic narrative which pedestals rhythm, percussion and bass contours as driving compositional forces.
Unlike anything Simon had ever done before, at least to this scale, Graceland is a deep dive into South African musical traditions, political awareness, and the controversial role of an artist’s duty to the world they find themselves in.
At Simon’s fingertips we have an ultimate cosmopolitan of sound, of which can be heard so brilliantly in all his contributions to the world of 80s music.
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