7
THE FAREWELL REUNION
– 2003 to 2004 –
Jan 9 2003
US Magazine- The Hollywood Reporter
Interview to Paul Simon
'FATHER AND DAUGHTER' A SIMON FAMILY AFFAIR
By Tamara Conniff
The sweet young voice singing harmony with Paul Simon on his Golden Globe-nominated song "Father and Daughter" from "The Wild Thornberrys Movie" is his 10-year-old son, Adrian.
"We were in the car riding along, and I was working on the song, singing," Simon says. "Adrian started singing along, and it was so good that I thought it would be nice to have the feeling of a child's voice on it -- so I let him sing a couple of different takes to see what he would sing. I liked what he sang. It was a very contemporary kid-pop melody. It's all his melodies. He sang the harmony. He's very pleased to have it on there."
Simon says Adrian is a music natural: "He got the full complement of his parents' DNA. He sings like his mother (Edie Brickell); writes songs; he plays drums and piano."
"Father and Daughter" pays homage to what Simon calls "a very special relationship" he has with his 7-year-old girl, Lulu. "In a way, with Adrian singing, it balances it out since it's a song about my daughter. And my youngest, who is 4 1/2 years old, is not -- yet -- concerned with any of it. So everybody's happy. Everybody will get their turn."
Simon also took his toughest critics -- his three youngest children -- to see the movie.
"We took the whole family to see it, my mother too," Simon says. "And everybody liked it. It was a lot of fun to do that. The main reason that I took this movie was to be able to bring the whole family. I don't have to say, 'Well, you can't see that movie, because it's too grown-up.' "
Simon says he's delighted that the song is up for a Golden Globe as it's his first nomination. Simon's 1968 Grammy-winning score and song for "The Graduate" was not nominated for a Golden Globe because he and his then partner Art Garfunkel forgot to fill out and send in the nomination paperwork.
"We were just kids, we didn't bother to fill out the form that we needed to send in. I just forgot," Simon says. "I was 26 or something and wasn't paying attention. I never thought it would have won anyway. It didn't even occur to me."
Composing an original song for "The Wild Thornberrys" is the beginning of much more music from Simon. He's considering doing more film work and is in the throes of writing a new studio album, his first since 2000's "You're the One."
"I think that 'Father and Daughter,' in its sound and its straightforwardness, is not unlike the other things that I'm writing (for the album). I like that, it feels right. I'm trying to be as simple as possible and as clear as I can lyrically and keep the rhythm of it very American. It's not coming from any other cultural place."
Simon, an East Coast native, continues to feel the effects Sept. 11 has had on the nation. "People want a lot of things now, reassurance and some kind of center or vision that seems true and right. Everybody's searching for that. It's a very hard time," he says.
Jan 2003
US TV- Paul Simon & Others
Advertisement for READ TO ACHIEVE / NBA BOOK FESTIVAL
The NBA's Read to Achieve program is a year-round campaign to help young people develop a life-long love for reading and encourage adults to read regularly with children.
Reaching an estimated 50 million children a year, Read to Achieve is the most extensive educational outreach initiative in the history of professional sports.
The NBA Family wants kids to love to read and wants adults to love to read to kids. As a team, we participate in read-alouds and other shared reading and on-line activities at schools, community-based organizations, at our Read & Learning Centers or Reading Corners, in-arenas, and wherever else it is possible to read!
A promo videoclip for this program is released featuring "Father and Daughter" playing as we see
various NBA players reading to their children. Paul Simon is there, too, playing guitar and singing and reading to some kids in a library setting. He also does the tag about reading to your kids.
Jan 2003
US Awards – Grammy Hall Of Fame – Paul Simon
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in January inducted Paul's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years into the Grammy Hall of Fame
Feb 1 2003
UK Interview – The Independent – Paul Simon
Paul Simon: Rhymin' Simon
Fifty years ago this year Paul Simon first met Art Garfunkel at Forest Hills High School in Queens, New York. Simon went on to become one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the world. But, as he tells Alec Wilkinson, the task of creating new lyrics and melodies remains as tough as ever
01 February 2003
In Spring 2001, shortly before Paul Simon began rehearsing his band for a tour of Europe, he wrote three fragments of music – the first to occur to him in a year and a half. It was as long a dry period as he had ever been through. I went one night to a baseball game with him, and, going home in his car, he said: "The melodies have started to come. It's a relief."
Songwriters sometimes describe the sensation of songs arriving nearly intact. Simon has had this experience, but not often. His talent is more patient and painstaking than ecstatic. Songwriting, he says, is "trial and error repeated almost endlessly". A song usually takes him three months to finish. Typically, when he concludes a body of work, he thinks that he has depleted his resources, and that they won't be replenished. "I always feel that the situation is serious," he said in the car. "I'm in a vacuum, it's a dearth, and then there's something – a few notes, a phrase – and I say, 'I guess there's something,' but it's so small that I don't even know whether to count it."
Simon regards writing songs as the effort to find form for sounds he hears in his head. "Maybe 10, 15 years ago I realised that what I was fascinated with, couldn't explain, was sound – that you can't really say why a combination of sounds is moving or feels really good and right – and the whole game was, 'Can I get the sounds in my head on tape?' " His driver brought the car to a stop at a light. Simon looked out of the window. "I should get ready to work," he said softly. "You go into training – you play more, think more, listen more – instead of fretting over why you're not hearing the melodies."
Four years ago Simon had five songs underway when he put them aside to prepare for a tour with Bob Dylan. Several months passed, the tour was over. Visiting a friend in New Mexico, he listened to recordings of the songs – he hadn't yet written any words – and was very pleased. Then he realised that he no longer felt any vestige of the impulse that had supplied them.
"I thought they had come from an inspired place," he said, "and I was just furious with myself for interrupting the work. What a fool I'd been, I thought, because I had just arrogantly assumed that the inspiration would return when I wanted it to. Then I thought, God, I have to get the rest. Because five tracks is only half an album. But what if the point was: this was a level of joy in creating that you always hoped to attain. You think the experience involves 10 because you need 10 for the marketplace. Maybe you should just appreciate the experience, maybe that was the point, and there won't be any more." He sighed. "Anyway, another couple of months went by. I just had to wait."
The feeling of joy eventually returned. Many of the lyrics, uncharacteristically, came to him so quickly that he felt as if he were "taking dictation". After he had recorded the songs (on You're the One, his latest CD, released in 2000), he took the tapes to Los Angeles and played them for the executives at his record company. "They were nice, respectful – it's a great honour and so on – but they didn't actually understand," he said. "Or at least I thought they didn't understand. That record was hypnotic, in its way, and they were thinking more about 'speed and impact'."
On his way home, Simon stopped at his friend's house in New Mexico, and while he was there the company's response began to unsettle him. "I thought: Why am I so desperately wanting to enter the marketplace? And then I said to myself, 'You made this thing that you received f partly as a gift, and you took it immediately to the marketplace without sufficiently appreciating it. And when you intuited that the marketplace wasn't going to accept it you knew right away that you had no business taking such a thing there. The gift was the point.'"
Several weeks went by before something in him relaxed, and he thought: "You exaggerate. You were born with a talent and you worked hard at it, and the result gave people a lot of pleasure, and no matter what you did that was wrong, you can't throw that out. You didn't do it to give people pleasure. You did it to see if you could make the sounds in your imagination come out on tape."
This insight was followed, even so, by the year and a half of drought, during which Simon couldn't listen to anyone's music, especially his own, and he felt that he might not write any songs again.
SIMON IS less nomadic than musicians often are. What keeps him mostly at home is his wife, the singer Edie Brickell, who is from Texas, and their three young children. Nevertheless, he travels frequently. On a trip to Memphis to meet Joseph Shabalala, the leader of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Zulu group that appears on the 1986 album Graceland, I went along too. Shabalala wants to build a museum devoted to South African music, especially the kind he heard as a child on a farm (he is now 60). Ladysmith Black Mambazo were performing near Memphis and Simon thought that visiting the Delta Blues Museum, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, about an hour and a half south of the city, might suggest to Shabalala a plan. Simon also wanted to visit a health clinic in Clarksdale to which he gives a lot of money through the Children's Health Fund in New York, a charity he started with his friend Dr Irwin Redlener.
It is raining when Simon and I leave New Jersey in a small jet he has rented. When we get to Memphis, one of those Jeep-like cars that make you feel as if you're seeing everything from the perspective of a man on horseback has been delivered to the terminal for us, and Simon drives.
When we get to our hotel, Shabalala is sitting in the lobby, at a table by a fountain. He is drinking tea. He is a small, sturdily built man, with a round, open face. He and Simon hug each other, then the three of us go out and get in the car. Shabalala has brought a tape of South African women singing traditional lama music, without accompaniment. For several of the songs, he had written parts for Ladysmith Black Mambazo, whose 10 members are men.
The first song, a hymn, is sung in Zulu. Instead of progressing in the stately manner of a Protestant hymn, it advances like a spiritual, with hesitations in the phrasing and silences between the verses. Six or eight women take part. Their voices are pure and unadorned, and the singing is deeply felt. The men's voices enter unexpectedly after what I take to be the first verse, answering the women's, and the contrast between the two registers and textures is thrilling. "I don't know what l can do with it," Shabalala says. "I hope I can do something. I'm still working on it."
We pass shabby little shopping malls, pawnshops, a burial ground next to a junkyard, the Crystal Palace roller-skating rink, and then, as if a piece of stage scenery had been pulled into the wings, we are driving among crop rows that run on either side of us to the horizon. The road is so straight that it seems to have been taped on to the fields. The next song is a work song, Shabalala says. Along with the singers, he whistles sharply now and then, like a man calling cattle. "I never heard you do that," Simon tells him. "It's a good sound for you."
We arrive at the museum – a warehouse beside some railroad tracks – around lunchtime. The director, Tony Czech, leads us past glass cabinets with guitars and photographs, walls with displays of records, and a room that contains the shack in which Muddy Waters was born. Simon is often regarded uncharitably by musicians who don't know him. They think that to make Graceland he went to South Africa, bought some records, came home and wrote lyrics, cheated the South African musicians out of royalties, paid up only when called to account, and finally walked into the sunset with boxcars of cash. I want to know what Shabalala thinks, so, at a moment when Czech has Simon's attention, I ask Shabalala when he and Simon had first met.
"Paul came to South Africa in 1985," he says. "I was on tour. When I called home, my wife tell me that Paul Simon want to talk to me. 'Are you kidding?' I say. 'How can I go to New York? He's a New York guy.' She say, 'No, he's in Johannesburg. He's waiting for you.' But I was in doubt. How does he know me? So I take a car to Johannesburg and somebody lead me to the studio, and I find many people waiting and Paul leading an audition.
"When I come in, he stop everything, and he say, 'Joseph, I hear that you are on tour. I'm Paul Simon.' And I think, 'Is this him? There are people supposed to talk to Paul, but not me.' He say, 'I love to work with you. I am a fan of Ladysmith Black Mambazo,' and the way he say it, it was like music, like he was singing it. I discovered in his eyes this man is full of music. And I say, 'To work together, what is it about? Are there songs?' And he say 'Yes'. I say that we should work together, but I didn't know how. 'Are we going to blend together? The accent is so different.' "
On Graceland, the song "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" begins with Ladysmith Black Mambazo's voices. I ask whose idea that had been. "Paul ask me, 'Joseph, can you please bless this song?" ' Shabalala says. "He play it for me, and I listen and said, 'This song is OK.' He say, 'I still need your blessing,' so I write five lines in Zulu." I ask what they mean in English. "He sing, 'She's a rich girl, she don't try to hide it, diamonds on the soles of her shoes.' So I answer what he said. 'It's not usually so,' I say, 'but now we see girls that can afford to maintain themselves.' "
Tony Czech brings us to a stop in front of a glass cabinet that has in it a National steel guitar – a guitar, that is, with a body made of steel. He opens the case and takes the guitar out and hands it to Simon. Simon balances the guitar on his raised knee and plays a couple of simple blues figures, the way any kid in a guitar store would, and then he moves his hand high up on the neck and plays a descending line, a succinct, self-contained remark. He gives the guitar back and has his picture taken with Czech and the cashier at the gift shop, then he buys some CDs – among them one by the blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson, because Shabalala has never heard him.
The next morning, Simon and I fly home through turbulence, and neither of us feel very well when we land. f
As his driver is taking us back to the city, I ask about some lines in "Darling Lorraine", a song on You're the One in which a man and a woman meet, court, marry, squabble, make up, and then the woman falls sick and dies. The narrator, whose manner is evasive, is named Frank. "All my life I've been a wanderer," he sings. Then, "Not really, I mostly lived near my parents' home." Describing Lorraine's death late one night in hospital, Simon sings, "All the trees were washed with April rain/and the moon in the meadow took darling Lorraine." The lines are the song's emotional peak, and so mysterious and poetic that I wonder how they had occurred to him.
"It could have been the heavens, I guess, but I used the moon," he says. "My apartment's across from the Sheep Meadow, in Central Park, so that's there. 'Trees being washed', a ritual of death – washing the deceased – but because it's April it gives you a feeling of the sadness. 'April is the cruellest month' sadness. It wasn't winter trees – it was the moon in the meadow that had a kind of hopefulness to it that seemed to work."
A few years ago, Simon was on the Oprah Winfrey show to promote his Broadway musical, The Capeman, and Winfrey tried to coax him into saying that he regarded himself as a genius. (She failed.) I ask if the exchange had felt awkward. "I never thought of myself as an artist until I was in my forties," he says, "and then it was only as a personality type. I thought I was a bright guy, real smart. I could figure stuff out. I was good at things. That's what I thought, but there were periods when I couldn't explain what I wrote. I don't think I'm special, and I never did – I didn't think, I'm 21 and I've written 'The Sound of Silence'. When I wrote 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', I thought, 'That's better than I usually write.' As decades go by, you're grateful for the talent you have, but there's a time when you just put away your feelings and work. Whoever is sitting at the top of the heap, that's a genius," he says disdainfully. "Anyway, I wasn't ever sitting at the top."
He shrugs. "Actually, these observations form an internal dialogue of very little consequence, because you're going to do what you're going to do anyway. The question I have, though, is when you can create something as complicated rhythmically and thematically as 'Darling Lorraine', how do you measure the quality, especially since the earlier work was enormously popular? I can still put together 'Darling Lorraine' or 'You're the One'. It won't mean as much as 'Graceland' or 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'. Those songs had an effect on people's lives. 'Mrs Robinson' or 'Still Crazy After All These Years', or '50 Ways': they're in the culture. If the work isn't part of the popular culture, is it as meaningful? Even though there are examples of posthumous recognition, for the most part a song's a hit or it's gone."
ABOUT A WEEK after Simon gets back from London, and shortly before the rehearsals begin, I meet him at his office in Times Square, where he plays a CD he has made of the two fragments he has written – he hasn't yet written the third. One of the tracks is a slow shuffle, the descending line he had played at the museum, and the other is a briskly rising arpeggiated figure, a series of simple chords – guitar practice pattern that he has adapted. The playing is skilful and intricate, and I ask why, when he performs, he lets other guitarists play the more complicated parts? "I can't play and sing," he says. While I sit and listen to the shuffle, Simon stands behind me and sings nonsense syllables and every once in a while adds a line. "Hell, yeah, I'm angry at myself, can't blame no one else, so I'm angry at myself" is the only one I hear clearly.
After a few minutes, he turns off the CD and sits down. "That's the beginning," he says. Then he asks: "Do you mind if I play the guitar? I feel more comfortable with a guitar in my hands." From a closet, he gets one and sits down and again plays the figure he had played at the museum. "It could go a lot of ways," he says. "If I added a blues harp, it would sound blues. I could add an acoustic bass. My son Harper [from his first marriage, who plays guitar in a rock'n'roll band] thought it might sound good without a bass at all – a guitar record, which I haven't made in years."
He puts the guitar down. "A lot of it anyhow is just slogging away," he says. "The first tracks, when I came out of the studio, I was ambivalent. I went through, first, denial – I don't think it's good, but maybe it's good and people will like it. Then I get to, I don't care what people think, it's no good. I have to find somebody to help me fix it, because I don't know what to do." He leans forward and put his elbows on his knees. "I was thinking, I don't know who's going to help," he says, "and when I get over being annoyed I'll take out everything that I don't like, then I'll revise it. I worked with Vincent Nguini, the guitar player in my band, and Steve Gadd, the drummer, and we fixed the guitar part and the drums, and now it's right."
I ask if I can hear the songs once more, and he says sure. "Do you like it with the singing, or no singing?" he asks. I say I like the singing. He turns the CD back on and begins to sing quietly. From the corner of my eye, I watch him dancing, with his feet in place and his arms and shoulders moving in an angular way, as if he is a figure in a hieroglyph.
Simon is the size of a jockey, except that instead of being wiry he is barrel-chested and muscular. His hands are small and thick; they look like paws. His expression is habitually solemn, and it always has been. When he went as a child to buy comic books, people would say: "What's the matter?" and he always thought, "Why do they ask me that?" His gestures are minimal and understated, and so is his manner.
His sentences trail off and are completed by a slight extension of the chin, a mild widening of the eyes, a delicate shrug. His band members know that the remarks "Don't think so" or "Yeah, but ..." delivered with no special inflection, amount to an emphatic dismissal. The extravagant subtlety of his manner and movements must once have been a refinement, an awareness that a small man making flamboyant gestures or talking too loudly might look comical.
He has never been very comfortable with his appearance. A friend of his told me that he won't look at a photograph of himself. When I ask Simon if this is true, he says: "Yeah." Then he adds: "Actually, it's better if you do look, because then you can do something about it."
He prefers reading poetry – especially Blake, Yeats, and John Neihardt – to fiction. Fiction writers "are in the world of the imagination," he says, "and I'm in the world of the imagination, so it's too much." He also likes to read "science for the layman, because I was never any good at science, and I'm curious about it now". Growing up, he was a good baseball player, and is surprised that even though he no longer takes part in the sport he sometimes dreams that he can hit major-league pitching, or that he is standing in the outfield and can't pick up his feet. "It can go either way," he says. Fifteen or 20 years ago, he realised that he could recall nearly every piece of music he had heard as a child, and that some of it had found its way into his songs, however obscurely. John Lennon once told him that the BBC didn't play rock'n'roll when he was young, but Radio Caroline, the pirate station in the English Channel, did. "It was so far away," Simon tells me, "that the signal would come and go, and the texture of it was something he said he always tried to get into his records." The rhythms of Elvis Presley's versions of "Mystery Train" turn up again and again in his own writing, he says, each time differently.
As a singer, Simon is an adept and imaginative phraser, an ability he developed to compensate, he says, "for not having a big voice". What limits most songwriters' melodies, he believes, is the reach of their voices, so he takes singing lessons to extend his range. He says that he knows intuitively when a melody is right, but that he is less confident of his lyrics, which he sometimes asks friends to review. Among his contemporaries in popular music, perhaps only Paul McCartney is his peer as a writer of melodies, just as Bob Dylan and, maybe, James Taylor are his only peers as a lyricist.
Dylan used Nashville-style country music to present a startling version of himself in the same way that Simon later made use of South African music. As a younger man, Simon sometimes felt overshadowed by Dylan's larger reputation. Dylan's hobo persona, his subversive quality, and his contempt for authority were charismatic. A lot of people made fun of his voice, but nearly everyone agreed that the songs were compelling. Next to him, Simon and Garfunkel seemed polite, studious and eager to please – college boys. The best of their music was pretty to listen to and sometimes, as with "Bridge Over Troubled Water", had emotional force. Dylan's songs made a person feel powerful. Since Graceland though, comparisons between Simon and Dylan no longer sensibly apply or take into proper account the distinctive merits of two maverick artists.
Simon's close friend Lorne Michaels, who has known him for 30 years, told me: "Since I met Paul, he's been saying that he's getting out of showbusiness." When I ask Simon if that is so, he says: "I always ask myself when I start something, 'Is this what you want to do?' I recorded when I was 15 or 16, and the record was a hit. So I was in showbusiness. I was in the world of records at a very young age. I was already becoming what I am. Basically, what I'm doing is an idea conceived by a 13-year-old. And I often think, 'You can review that idea, because it was a 13-year-old who thought it up.' And I do review it, but I still like it." E
Feb 23 2003
US Awards and TV – Grammy Awards Gala – Simon & Garfunkel
New York City
·Sound Of Silence (acoustic)
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel performed together in public for the first time since 1993 at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, 23 February. After days of speculation, Paul and Art opened the show after a short introduction by Dustin Hoffman (of The Graduate). Their rendition of "The Sound Of Silence" was most wonderful, with beautiful harmonies and wonderful guitar playing by Simon. The two were dressed casually, and seemed to enjoy the moment.
Said Simon at the post-performance press conference, "you know, we're New Yorkers, and we haven't sung together in 10 years. In fact, we really haven't seen each other in 10 years, so it's like a reunion of family members, in our hometown, singing the song that, you know, was our first hit - really memorable night."
The pair received a special Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) at a special (non-televised) ceremony on Saturday, February 22
Feb 27 2003
US TV- ABC TV- Paul Simon
Good Morning America
· Father And Daughter (live)
Drums: Steve Gadd; Bass: Bakithi Khumalo; Guitars: Paul Simon, Vincent Nguini & Mark Stwart
Feb 27 2003
US Interview – Paul Simon
By Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith
Oscar nominee Paul Simon won't be much in evidence around Hollywood until the March 23 Academy Awards, at which his tender "Father and Daughter" from "The Wild Thornberrys Movie" could pick up best-song honors. The songwriting great is burrowed away in a New York recording studio working on the album he tells us he'll have ready for unveiling in the fall. Simon says the forthcoming disc will continue the sound of "Father and Daughter" - which turned into an adult-alternative radio hit on its own. He also says, "I get a lot of offers for film work, and I haven't done it, but working on 'The Thornberrys,' with the team from Paramount and Nickelodeon, was so enjoyable I feel inclined to do more - and longer - pieces for film. But I'm intent on finishing this album first." The man whose songs helped immortalize "The Graduate" has four children ranging in age from 5 to 30 (he has a grown son in addition to his two boys and a girl with wife Edie Brickell). And he says that yep, his little girl was "very pleased" with his "Father and Daughter" song - and so was his 10-year-old son, who sings on the recording. As far as Oscar night, "If I'm asked, I'll perform. Otherwise, I'll just sit in the audience and," he laughs, "you know,
be at an awards ceremony where you pretend you don't care, but as soon as your category is announced - you really care." Simon hasn't given up on "The Capeman" - by any means. His first effort at a full-scale stage musical opened on Broadway in 1998 with Marc Anthony and Ruben Blades starring in the tale of Salvador Agron, a New York street gang member convicted of murder some 45 years ago. It was creamed by critics. "'The Capeman' will re-emerge," he now reveals.
"It was so vociferously attacked the first time around. As one of the creators, you tend to circle the wagons and duck down, and I felt that time had to elapse to put it in perspective ... I don't have any feelings of defending it any longer." He says that "Capeman" will probably come back first as a concert performance of the music. Or as a Spanish production. Spanish? When Simon's poetic lyrics are in English? When he doesn't speak Spanish? "Conceptually, it could be very interesting," he responds.
March 10 2003
US Awards-Paul Simon
ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTIONS
Paul Simon joined Neil Young and Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels in inducting former Warner/Reprise executive Mo Ostin into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
· Paul Simon: Still Crazy After All These Years
Paul was backed by Paul Shaffer and the "CBS Orchestra."
March 11 2003
US TV- Late Night with Dave Letterman- Paul Simon
· Father And Daughter
March 14 2003
US Concert – Paul Simon
Annual Children´s Health Fund Gala
Hilton Hotel. NY
· Father and Daughter
· The Boy in The Bubble
· American Tune
· Loves Me Like a Rock
· Graceland.
The Band: Steve Gadd, Mark Stewart, Vincent Nguini, Tony Cedras and Bakhiti Khumalo
March 23 2003
US Awards – Paul Simon
2003 OSCAR AWARDS GALA
Hollywood
Paul Simon performed “Father And Daughter,” nominated in the category of Best Music (Song), at the Academy Awards. Featured in The Wild Thornberrys Movie, “Father And Daughter” marks Paul’s first Oscar nomination. Diosgracefully Paul did not win oscar.
April 1 2003
THE WILD THORNBERRYS
US Home DVD
Paramount / Wide Screen Collection 49494
It includes as bonus track the videoclip of Paul Simon´s song Father And Daughter, which was written for this movie soundtrack
April 4, 2003
HUGH MASEKALA AND FRIENDS
US Concert- Paul Simon
Carnegie Hall, New York
South African music enjoyed an unprecedented New York moment when Hugh Masekela and Friends nearly filled Carnegie Hall's and then delivered a star-studded, all-out, spirit-soaring night of music that lasted nearly three hours and left the place elated and buzzing. Paul Simon –unbilled- came onstage at the close of the show to present Masekela with a birthday cake, and then picked up an acoustic guitar to lead the band in a transcendent version of "Boy in the Bubble," the lead track from his legendary 1986 Graceland album. Speaking of Graceland, much of the original band was there on stage as well, including Bakithi Kumalo on bass, Vincent Nguini on guitar, Tony Cedras on keyboards (ah, love that accordion!), and Morris Goldberg on pennywhistle and sax.
April 9 2003
US Concert – Paul Simon & Willie Nelson
LIVE AND KICKIN´
Bacon Theatre, NY
Paul Simon joined a host of musicians, including Ray Charles, Sheryl Crow, Lyle Lovett and John Mellencamp among others, in saluting music legend Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday. Paul and Willie dueted on “Homeward Bound” on April 9th at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan as part of Willie Nelson and Friends: Live and Kickin’, which was aired on the USA network beginning on Memorial Day, May 26th at 9pm and 11pm. The two-hour special was rerun on May 31st at 2am and June 1st at 9am.
June 24 2003
US CD – Various
LIVE & KICKIN´: WILLIE NELSON AND FRIENDS
Lost Highway B0000453 – 021N04
.Track 4: Homeward Bound, duet by Paul Simon & Willie Nelson
June 16 & June 30 2003
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: 25 YEARS OF MUSIC, VOL.1 & VOL.3
Europe DVD
Vol.1: PSNL1
Vol.3: PSNL3
· Vol. 1:
- Simon & Garfunkel: THE BOXER (1975)
- Paul Simon: Still Crazy Turkey Suit sketch (1975)
· Vol. 2
- Paul Simon: DIAMONDS ON THE SOLE OF HER SHOES (1986)
August 19 2003
SIMON & GARFUNKEL: THE CONCERT IN CENTRAL PARK
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: February 21, 1982
DVD Release Date: August 19, 2003
Run Time: 87 minutes
Production Company: fox
Package Type: Keep Case
Full Screen (Standard) - 1.33:1
DVD Encoding: Region 1
Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
Available subtitles: English
• Color, Closed-captioned
• Songs: Mrs. Robinson, Homeward Bound, America, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, Scarborough Fair, April Come She Will, Wake Up Little Susie, Still Crazy After All These Years, American Tune, Late in the Evening, Slip Sliding Away, A Heart in New York, Kodachrome, Maybellene, Bridge Over Troubled Water, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, The Boxer, Old Friends/Bookends, Feelin' Groovy, The Sound of Silence, Late in the Evening (reprise)
• Full-screen format
Sept 2 2003
US 3CDs Boxset
SONGS FROM THE STREET: 35 YEARS OF MUSIC
Sony Wonder
A compilation from the TV show Sesame Street where Paul Simon appeared in 1973 with his son Harper.
Sept 9 2003
SIMON &
GARFUNKEL
TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT AND PRESS MEETING
Bottom Line Club, New York
In a press meeting at Botton Line Club in New York, Simon & Garfunkel announced in front of over 200 journalists they will embark on their first concert tour in 20 years on October 18 at the Palace of Auburn Hills, Michigan. The “Old Friends: The 2003 Concert Tour” will visit arenas in approximately 30 cities across North America, concluding in mid-December. During the announcement they played:
· Old Friends
· Homeward Bound
· The Boxer
Don and Phil “The Everly Brothers” will be "Special Guests" at the S&G concerts in The United States. They will sing 2 or 3 songs in the middle of the show and later they will join to S&G to sing 1 or 2 songs more all together.
The crew hired to tour with the reunited SIMON&GARFUNKEL are betting among themselves which American city will be home to the star pair's first bust-up. As the duo's upcoming North American tour begins selling out in the opening week of ticket sales, their sound and lighting technicians aren't convinced the pair can remain on friendly terms. One says, "The rehearsals have the most paranoid, cold atmosphere you can imagine. The crew has already started a death pool, betting on which city the duo will fall apart, possibly threatening the tour. "Simon and Garfunkel can't stand to be in the same room with each other, much less have to take the stage together every night well into 2004." However, the duo themselves insist they've put aside their differences. ART GARFUNKEL says, "We got older and put all that behind us."
Sep 10 2002
US report and interview about S&G 2003 Tour
By Roger Friedman/FOX NEWS...
Saying "this is probably the last time" they will ever do this, Paul Simon announced with his singing partner Art Garfunkel their first tour together in 20 years. This is the same 30-city tour I told you was being planned back on June 28. But Simon and Garfunkel, friends since childhood but also bitter enemies at times, appear to have finally made peace with their turbulent relationship. They sang four old songs together this afternoon at an intimate press conference at New York's Bottom Line nightclub when they made the tour announcement: "Old Friends," which is the name of the tour; plus "The Boxer," "Homeward Bound." Simon referred to the duo's long estrangement during a short question and answer period. "We're fine now," Simon said in response to a question from Parade Magazine's Sandy Kenyon. "We've had a deep, buried affection for about a decade," said Garfunkel. Simon also added, "We had a friendship that was estranged. But it was just squabbles. That's all." Mark McEwen, the radio personality and former CBS Morning Show anchor, emceed the session. Simon said, responding to my question, that the pair would probably do only three songs from his post-group career: "American Tune" and "Slip Sliding Away." The latter, he said, he always thought of as a Simon and Garfunkel song from seven years later. They will also perform their 1976 revival hit, "My Little Town," which some consider their best record. Otherwise, the content of the Old Friends tour will consist solely of the songs from Simon and
Garfunkel's landmark five albums released between 1965 and 1970. One reporter asked them if they were worried that young people did not know who they were; the reporter had been at their old grade school in Queens during the morning but found no fans. Last February I reported that MTV declined to interview the pair after they picked up their Grammy for Lifetime Achievement; a producer said they were too old. "Our first responsibility is to our generation," said Simon. It's likely they will find new fans once the tour begins, however. Their voices together still produce a magical sound that has never been duplicated. So how will they do this thing and not wind up in the usual fights? Sitting in the front row today, ominously, were five of Simon's high-priced attorneys; Garfunkel was without legal representation. For one thing, the pair has enlisted neutral publicists and managers. Simon, for the first time in perhaps 20 years, is not working with his trusted friend, Dan Klores, as a spokesman. Simon's brother, Eddie, who created The Guitar Center back in 1972, will, however, be producing the tour with Jeff Kramer of OK Management and Larry Jenkins. "I've known Artie since I was five years old," Eddie told me before the press conference. "He gave me the money to start it." They're also using neutral band members, including the famed drummer Jim Keltner. "It's a seven piece band and I'm the eighth," said guitarist Simon. "And I'm the ninth," Garfunkel inserted. "The voice is an instrument." "I sit corrected," said Simon.
Sep 12 2003
US TV- CBS TV- Simon & Garfunkel
DAVID LETTERMAN SHOW
· America
· The Boxer
Sep 13 2003
US Concert – Paul Simon
AMERICAN DRUMMERS ACHIEVEMENT AWARD TO STEVE GADD
Berklee Performance Center. Boston, MA
Paul Simon joined James Taylor in honoring his longtime friend and drummer Steve Gadd at the American Drummers Achievement Awards at a tribute event at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston. Bill Cosby hosted the event that honored Gadd, who Paul described in his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction speech as “like a brother to me.” One of the most influential drummers ever, Gadd has recorded and toured with Paul since the 1975 album, Still Crazy After All These Years.
· 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover duo with Paul Simon & Steve Gadd
Sep 15 2003
US TV- ABC TV- Simon & Garfunkel
GOOD MORNING AMERICA
· Old Friends
· Homeward Bound
· Scarborough Fair
Oct 14 2003
THE ESSENTIAL SIMON & GARFUNKEL
US CD - New Simon & Garfunkel compilation CD
Label: COLUMBIA/LEGACY 513470-2
Disc 1
1 Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (Live)
2 Bleecker Street
3 The Sound Of Silence
4 Leaves That Are Green (Live)
5 A Most Peculiar Man (Live)
6 I Am A Rock
7 Richard Cory
8 Kathy's Song (Live)
9 Scarborough Fair/Canticle
10 Homeward Bound
11 Sparrow (Live)
12 The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)
13 The Dangling Conversation
14 A Poem On The Underground Wall (Live)
15 A Hazy Shade Of Winter
16 At The Zoo
Disc 2
1 Mrs. Robinson
2 Fakin' It
3 Old Friends
4 Bookends Theme
5 America
6 Overs (Live)
7 El Condor Pasa (If I Could)
8 Bridge Over Troubled Water
9 Cecilia
10 Keep The Customer Satisfied
11 So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
12 The Boxer
13 Baby Driver
14 The Only Living Boy In New York
15 Song For The Asking
16 For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (Live)
17 My Little Town
Oct 18 to December 13, 2003
US Tour – Simon & Garfunkel
OLD FRIENDS: THE 2003 CONCERT TOUR
10/16 Wilkes-Barre, PA Wachovia Arena
10/18 Auburn Hills, MI The Palace at Auburn
10/19 Auburn Hills, MI The Palace at Auburn
10/20 Cleveland, OH Gund Arena
10/22 Columbus, OH Schottenstein Center
10/24 Chicago, IL United Center
10/25 Chicago, IL United Center
10/26 St. Paul, MN Xcel Energy Center
10/27 St. Paul, MN Xcel Energy Center
10/30 Denver, CO Pepsi Center
11/1 Seattle, WA Key Arena
11/2 Portland, OR Rose Garden Arena
11/4 San Jose, CA HP Pavilion
11/5 San Jose, CA HP Pavilion
11/6 Oakland, CA Oakland Arena
11/8 Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand Arena
11/9 Phoenix, AZ America West Arena
11/12 Sacramento, CA Arco Arena
11/14 Anaheim, CA Arrowhead Pond
11/17 Los Angeles, CA Staples Center
11/18 Los Angeles, CA Staples Center
11/28 Atlantic City, NJ Boardwalk Hall
11/29 Uncasville, CT Mohegan Sun Arena
11/30 Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre
12/2 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
12/3 New York, NY Madison Square Garden.
12/4 New York, NY Madison Square Garden.
12/7 East Rutherford, NJ Continental Airlines Arena.
12/9 Philadelphia, PA Wachovia Center
12/11 Boston, MA Fleet Center.
12/13 Boston, MA Fleet Center
The Band:
drums: Jim Keltner
piano: Warren Bernhardt
guitars: Mark Stuart and Larry Saltzman
percussions: Jamey Haddad
keyboards: Rob Schwimmer
bass: Pino Palladino
Guest Stars: The Everly Brothers
Usual setlist pattern in this tour:
"Old Friends"
"Hazy Shade of Winter"
"I am a Rock"
"America"
"At the Zoo/Baby Driver"
"Kathy's Song"
"Hey Schoolgirl"
"Wake Up Little Susie" [Everlys]
"All I Have to Do is Dream" [Everlys]
"Let It Be Me" [Everlys]
"Bye Bye Love" [both]
"Scarborough Fair"
"Homeward Bound"
"The Sound of Silence"
"Mrs. Robinson"
"Slip Slidin' Away"
"El Condor Pasa (If I Could)"
"Keep the Customer Satisfied"
"The Only Living Boy in New York"
"American Tune"
"My Little Town"
"Bridge Over Troubled Water"
Encore 1
"Cecilia"
"The Boxer"
Encore 2
"Leaves That are Green"
"Feelin' Groovy"
October 28 2003
PAUL SIMON: LIVE AT THE TOWER THEATRE (1980)
US DVD – Paul Simon
New release on home DVD
Label: Pioneer Entertainment 12062
DVD Encoding: Region free
Nov 3 2003
S&G CENTRAL PARK DVD RELEASED ON REGION 2
The Simon & Garfunkel´s Central Park Concert is released on DVD region 2 with a different cover from the US release.
Nov 18 2003
UK CD. Tom & Jerry / Jerry Landis / Artie Garr
SIMON & GARFUNKEL BEFORE THE FAME
Magic Records BFTF182
1. Dream Alone
2. Teenage Fool
3. Beat Love
4. I Love You
5. Just A Boy
6. Play Me A Sad Song
7. It Means A Lot To Them
8. Flame
9. Shy
10. The Lone Teen Ranger
11. Two Teenagers
12. Hey Schoolgirl
13. That’s My Story
14. Don’t Say Goodbye
15. Our Song
Some songs sound here better than on other compilations, maybe some digital remasters.
January 1, 2004
PAUL SIMON SIGNS NEW PUBLISHING DEAL
Paul Simon signed a worldwide agreement with Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) for his catalog and future work. The multi-year deal, which went into effect Jan. 1, calls for UMPG to administer his catalog and new songs worldwide except in North America, where the material will continue to be handled by Paul Simon Music. Additionally, UMPG will represent Simon's work globally, including the U.S. and Canada, for synchronization opportunities in TV, film and advertising. Simon was previously with Warner/Chappell. "We're looking for unique opportunities in terms of films and commercials and television," said UMPG worldwide president David Renzer. "Paul is expressing more openness to license his music if it's the right thing."
January 2, 2004
NEW RIIA CERTIFICATES FOR S&G ALBUMS
On December 4, 2003 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified 1972's "Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits" (Columbia) notched the 14 million copies. In addition, 1999's "The Best of Simon & Garfunkel" was certified platinum last month for 1 million copies shipped. "Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits" is the best ever sold S&G album.
January 26, 2004
PAUL SIMON MEETS DALAI LAMA FOR TV DOCUMENTARY
Paul Simon interviewed Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for a TV documentary about Nobel peace laureates. US singer Paul Simon along his older son Harper joined on Monday 26 a long line of celebrities who have made their way to the Indian northern hill station of Dharamsala for a meeting with exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, an official said. The Dalai Lama's press officer Tenzin Taklha Sunday confirmed the meeting and said Simon was due to stay in the hill station for two days.
The documentary, funded by the Nobel committee, will also feature interviews with Burma pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and former South African president Nelson Mandela.
"So far we have Nobel laureates like former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev interviewed by singer Bono of U2, and Jewish physicist Joseph Rothblatt interviewed by actor Michael Douglas," said production director Ines Stephan.
March 2004
Japan CD – Bootleg - Simon & Garfunkel
SAVE THE LIFE OF MY DEMO: THE BOOKENDS ALTERNATE ALBUM
Unknown Label
Previously unreleased tracks from recording sessions of Bookends including alternate lyrics and versions of many songs and a demo from Groundhog song by Paul. There are also 9 tracks with songs from Bookends album performed live and taken from several sources and finally it is also included 10 mono LP versions from many songs of that album.
1 Bookends Theme Instrumental :26
2 Save The Life Of My Child 2:39 Alternate Lyrics
3 America 3:26 Alternate
4 Overs 1:59 Out-Take
5 Groundhog 2:49 Demo/Out-Take 2:49 (Very Rare)
6 Old Friends 2:10 Demo
7 Fakin'it 3:09 7 Inch Mix
8 Punky's Dilemma 2:14 Demo
9 Mrs. Robinson 1:08 From The Graduate 1:08
10 A Hazy Shade Of Winter 2:16 7 Inch Mix
11 At The Zoo 2:04 Alternate Lyrics
12 You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies 2:23 B Side To Fakin' It 6/14/67
Live Portion:
13 America 3:33 Paris 4 Or 5/70
14 Overs 2:19 Hollywood 8/23/68
15 Old Friends 3:14 Hollywood 8/23/68
16 Fakin' It 3:09 Paris 4 Or 5/70
17 Punky's Dilemma 2:23 Hollywood 8/23/68
18 Mrs. Robinson 3:00 Oxford, Ohio 11/11/69
19 A Hazy Shade Of Winter 2:20 Baltimore 4/67
20 At The Zoo 2:07 No Source
21 You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies 1:59 Boston 3/11/67
Mono Lp Mix:
22 Bookends Theme Instrumental :31,
23 Save The Life Of My Child 2:48,
24 America 3:45,
25 Overs 2:18,
26 Old Friends 3:58,
27, Fakin' It 3:19,
28 Punky's Dilemma 2:19,
29 Mrs. Robinson 4:16,
30 A Hazy Shade Of Winter 2:20,
31 At The Zoo 2;13
Note: The Hollywood Cuts Are Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, California
March 23, 2004
THE PAUL SIMON SONG BOOK
US CD- Paul Simon
First official reissue of this item on CD with bonus tracks
Columbia/Legacy 515421-2
1. I Am A Rock
2. Leaves That Are Green
3. A Church Is Burning
4. April Come She Will
5. The Sound Of Silence
6. A Most Peculiar Man
7. He Was My Brother (Paul Kane)
8. Kathy's Song
9. The Side Of A Hill (Paul Kane)
10. A Simple Desultory Philippic
11. Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall
12. Patterns
Bonus Tracks:
13. I Am A Rock (alternate version)
14. A Church Is Burning (alternate version)
April 1 2004
US Magazine- Rolling Stone
Article by Paul Simon
The Everly Brothers
By Paul Simon
The roots of the Everly Brothers are very, very deep in the soil of American culture. First of all, you should know that the Everly Brothers were child stars. They had a radio show with their family, and their father, Ike, was an influential country guitar player, so he attracted other significant musicians to the Everlys' world -- among them, Merle Travis and Chet Atkins, who was instrumental in getting the Everlys on the Grand Ole Opry. They were exposed to extraordinary country-roots music, and so they brought with them the legacy of all the great brother groups like the Delmore Brothers, the Louvin Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys into the Fifties, where they mingled with the other early rock pioneers and made history in the process. Perhaps even more powerfully than Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers melded country with the emerging sound of Fifties rock & roll.
The Everly Brothers' impact exceeds even their fame. They were a big influence on John Lennon and Paul McCartney -- who called themselves the Foreverly Brothers early on -- and, of course, on Simon and Garfunkel. When we were kids, Artie and I got our rock & roll chops from the Everlys. Later, as Simon and Garfunkel, we put "Bye Bye Love" on Bridge Over Troubled Water, and much later, Phil and Don both sang on the song "Graceland."
Before the Everly Brothers joined Artie and me on the road last year, Phil and Don had actually quietly retired three years earlier. They basically came out of retirement for us. I said, "Phil, look, if you're going to retire, you might as well come out one more time and take a bow and let me at least say what it is that you meant to us and to the culture."
You know, the Everlys have a long history of knocking each other down, as brothers can do. So in a certain sense, it was hilarious that the four of us were doing this tour, given our collective histories of squabbling. And it's amazing, because they hadn't seen each other in about three years. They met in the parking lot before the first gig. They unpacked their guitars -- those famous black guitars -- and they opened their mouths and started to sing. And after all these years, it was still that sound I fell in love with as a kid. It was still perfect.
April 1 2004
S&G AMONG 50 GREATEST ROCK STARS ACCORDING TO ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE
US Magazine- Rolling Stone
The April issue of Rolling Stone magazine pay tribute to what they consider the 50 Greatest Rock Stars. Articles are written by famous contributors, some of whom are included in the 50. There is an article on the Everly Brothers, written by Paul Simon, and an article on S & G, written by James Taylor. Simon & Garfunkel appear on number 33, though Paul Simon solo is not included
MAY 19, 2004
US TV Film- Paul Simon
''THREE SISTERS: SEARCHING FOR A CURE''
Aired by HBO
''Three Sisters: Searching for a Cure'' is an enormously moving film by Jenifer Estess a 35-year-old a theater and film producer who was diagnosed with lateral sclerosis amyotrophic in 1997. With her sisters, Valerie and Meredith, to fight the disease they created Project A.L.S. (www.projectals.org), a nonprofit organization that has raised $18 million and catalyzed ALS research. These three sisters are witty, defiant and exhilarating to behold. Just one of the memorable moments from this terrific film: Paul Simon serenading Jenifer, by then in a wheelchair, with ''Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes'' during his performance at a Project A.L.S. fund-raiser.
May 17, 2004
US Award- Paul Simon
PAUL SIMON HONORED WITH JOE DiMAGGIO AWARD
Paul Simon received the prestigious Joe DiMaggio Award in a gala dinner which took place at Waldorf Astoria Hotel, N.Y. Simon was introduced by Phil Ramone and he performed Mrs. Robinson along Garfunkel.
The Joe DiMaggio Award was established in 1999 in memory of baseball legend, Joe DiMaggio. Mr. DiMaggio was a friend and generous supporter of Xaverian High School and was the first individual to receive Xaverian's highest honor, the Concordia Award, in 1997.
Upon his death in 1999, Xaverian's Concordia Award was renamed the Joe DiMaggio Award to memorialize Mr. DiMaggio's life-long commitment to the health, education, and well being of America's youth.
To date, the DiMaggio Award has been presented to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, tenor Luciano Pavarotti, media legend Regis Philbin, legendary statesman Dr. Henry Kissinger, and publisher Mort Zuckerman. They share the distinction of being avid fans of Joe DiMaggio and benefactors of the school. Proceeds of the gala attendant on the award consistently exceed $500,000 for a night’s take.
"These were the days of the hippie," Simon recalled. "I think he thought it was some kind of mockery that he wasn't privy to." The centerfielder told Simon he hadn't "gone" anywhere and was doing commercials for - who can forget? - Mr. Coffee and Bowery Savings Bank.
"He didn't understand," Simon said. "I tried to tell him that it wasn't in any way meant negatively about him." The song must have grown on Joltin' Joe. Every time they met afterward, Simon remembered, "he was always very affectionate.
“There has been no closer connection between icons in our memory than Joe DiMaggio and Paul Simon,”said Dr. Salvatore Ferrera, president of Xaverian. “Mrs. Robinson and Joe DiMaggio are etched forever in the minds of generations of