THE MIRROR

June 9, 2006

Surprisin’ Simon...

Forget Simon & Garfunkel...

The big surprise is my new album, says Simon

Paul Simon is pouring coffee in his suite at London's Claridges Hotel. The legend responsible for over 200 million sales, both as a solo artist and with his childhood pal and adult sparring partner Art Garfunkel, is intrigued. I've just told him how, over the past decade, I've been following his progress at close quarters.

Last month, I was in New Orleans to see him perform material from his triumphant new album Surprise in public for the first time. Back in 1997, I was in an Indian restaurant in St Lucia when Simon turned up to meet poet Derek Walcott before working on what became The Capeman, the most heavily-panned album of his career.

"That's so funny - we're in the same place all the time," says Simon, 64, stirring his coffee with a smile.

Fearing his expression might turn to a stalker alert, I don't tell him that more recently I've seen him walking on the streets of New York, and browsing in the window of a clothes shop in central London. And, thankfully, Simon doesn't remember the only time we actually spoke, for an interview in 1988.

Back then, what had annoyed him was never made clear - questions about Art, his controversial decision to visit South Africa to record Graceland, or his ongoing battle with hair loss - but he stormed out in a huff.

Today, Simon seems altogether more relaxed and amiable, as well he might. Surprise - recorded with U2 producer Brian Eno - is his best album since Graceland way back in 1986. The world reunion tour with Garfunkel two years ago was rapturously received, and the mere mention of his wife of 14 years, singer Edie Brickell, and their three kids brings a glow of domestic contentment.

"It was pretty much love at first sight," he recalls of meeting his third wife. "I saw her singing on TV and came down to the studio to see her. That's pretty much how we got together."

Their home has guitars in every room and the whole family plays.

"It's a meditative thing for me to pick up a guitar," Paul admits, "but Edie and I don't play too much of our stuff for each other. We did make a bunch of children's songs together for our kids. We were going to record them but the kids said, 'No, those are ours', so we didn't.

"We've talked about recording together, but haven't got around to it. I hope someday we do, because we have a nice sound together."

Such is Simon's current level of serenity that not even a hair-loss question seems to ruffle his thinning feathers.

"By this age I'm back to being relatively hairy," he says, rubbing a hand over his unruly but sparse and greying thatch. "A lot of people have a lot less than I have. When you first lose your hair you think, 'Ooh', it's a blow to your vanity. But I'm well past my vanity now, that time is over."

He has even taken yoga lessons, encouraged by his New York neighbour Sting.

"I was interested, but not as advanced as he was," Paul admits. "His teacher taught me and Edie.

"She's practised for 14 years, but I go in and out of it."

The recent reunion with Art Garfunkel was much smoother than the one in 1982. That was so fractious that Simon erased all of Art's vocals from a planned comeback album.

"I didn't feel like being on a record together," he admits. "The experience had been too tense to want to repeat. But this time around we were older and we set out to ensure the reunion accomplished the healing of the rift. Nothing was going to interfere with our friendship - and I think the audience understood that as well. It was about drawing a line under the past and accepting an old, loving relationship."

Even so, he has, not for the first time, vowed there will be no more Simon and Garfunkel reunions.

"Is it wise to say never? I didn't expect that I was going to do that last tour and I interrupted my new record to do it," Simon says.

"Neither Artie nor I thought it was time to go back to our old Simon and Garfunkel career.

"I can't speak for him, but I don't think anything about that career.

"Of course, financially he has no need to go back. A master songwriter, Simon can rest assured that his timeless classics will keep him a very wealthy man until his dying day."

"The last recording of my songs I was really moved by was Johnny Cash singing Bridge Over Troubled Water," he says.

"Something about the frailty of his voice made it sound like it was the last thing he was going to say. I was really touched by it. I intended to write to him and tell him so, but he died and I didn't. I really regret that."

So how does he take to criticism, like the mauling given to Capeman?

"I didn't feel good about it," Simon admits, "but I thought 'You know what? It will take 10 years and then it will come back. And I'll be watching when it does."