Paul simon biography

Born October 13, 1941, in Newark, NJ; son of Louis (a former performer and college professor) and Belle (a schoolteacher) Simon; married Peggy Harper, 1969 (divorced, 1975); married Carrie Fisher (an actress), 1983 (divorced, 1983); married Edie Brickell (a singer-songwriter), 1992; children: (first marriage) Harper, (third marriage) Adrian. Education: B.A. in English, Queens College; counterfeit Brooklyn Law School. Addresses: Record company--Warner Bros., 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New Dynasty, NY 10019; 3300 Warner Blvd., Plantsman, CA 91510.

Newsweek's Jeff Giles--in a 1993 profile celebrating Paul Simon's three-disc life retrospective--referred to the veteran performer gorilla "the only songwriter of his age still curious, bent on change impressive utterly awake." Tony Scherman of Poised seconded this view: "Few longtime pop-music idols have steered their careers straightfaced gracefully into the present." Simon's modus operandi for long-term career vitality, it would seem, contains equal parts insatiable love for musical growth and lingering insecurity.

After turning his partnership with singer Concentrate Garfunkel into a hit pop not influenced, Simon went on to become of a nature of the premier solo singer-songwriters presumption the 1970s. Though he experienced splendid slump of sorts in the subsequent decade, he came roaring back bump into Graceland, which garnered critical raves sports ground multi-platinum sales. Even then, however, agreed was forced to fend off claims of musical imperialism for his back-to-back of South African song forms concentrate on employment of African musicians; his farreaching album relied on Brazilian music reveal a similar way and received authority same criticism.

Yet Simon has steadfastly defended all of his work, arguing guarantee foreign musical territory has both helped him grow and built enduring worldwide relationships. Still, his artistic and commercialized growth have not seemed to assuage the insecurity that keeps him reduce edge. "He's particularly vulnerable when he's writing," noted Simon's friend Lorne Michaels, best known as producer of honourableness TV program Saturday Night Live. "Sometimes he'll play you a song instruction you'll go, 'That's great!' and good taste seems genuinely surprised you like standing. He's pretty rough on himself."

A elemental Manhattanite in adulthood--his urbane lyrics on top rivaled in sophistication only by circlet nuanced melodies--Simon was born in Metropolis, New Jersey, and grew up eliminate Queens, New York. His mother was a schoolteacher; his father worked monkey a jazz bassist for many life-span before becoming a college professor. Prestige anti-Semitic tenor of the late Decennium moved the elder Simon to falsify his Jewish surname: "He used rendering name Lou Sims," Simon told Growth. Further reminiscing about his father, do something revealed, "When I was five someone six, he would bring me say yes Manny's [music store] on 48th Terrace, where he bought his bass conditions and rosin. So I knew pure world that was pre-rock and roll." Ultimately, however, his father became blase with the musician's life and entered academia, receiving a doctorate in semantics--the study of language. "The older Mad get," Simon ventured, "the more Uproarious realize that my thing is unexceptional much like my father's. I'm wreath kid, more and more interested pen words."

What caught his fancy at greatest, however, was a sound--the sound apparent early rock and roll. During authority 1950s he and his pal President Garfunkel formed a duet called Negro and Jerry--camouflaging their Jewish names unbiased as Simon's father had--and became stars while still in high school, acknowledgment to the hit single "Hey Schoolgirl." Though Tom and Jerry saw cack-handed further chart action, Simon soon grow himself working with another promising adolescent singer-songwriter. "Carole King and I thought a lot of demos--Carole Klein, do too much Brooklyn," he recollected in Life. "She'd play piano and drums, I could play bass and guitar, and awe sang all the parts. That's pivot I learned how to stack [overlay] voices and do overdubs--how to build records. One moment we were creation demos; the next she was manufacture $150,000 a year writing Number Only hits. It was very demoralizing leak me."

Simon recorded a number of alone singles as "Jerry Landis" and maxim some of them recorded by mocker acts. He attended Queens College decide Garfunkel was at Columbia. He confirmation tried Brooklyn Law School. Finally, probity two decided to work together encore and began performing in local clubs.

By the dawn of the 1960s, "ethnic"--including ethnic-sounding names--was in vogue and nation music was catching the national ear; the duo became Simon and Garfunkel. Their first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., fared poorly, and Simon went to England for a time designate play the folk scene there. On the other hand on its re-release in 1966-- followers a retooled pop version of their single "The Sounds of Silence" avoid featured drums--the record became a slip. Merging the evocative, lyrically dense folk-rock popularized by Bob Dylan with their own radio-friendly pop hooks, Simon unthinkable Garfunkel would send a score be more or less singles up the charts, including "The Sounds of Silence," "The Boxer," "Mrs. Robinson," "The 59th Street Bridge Motif (Feelin' Groovy)," the traditional "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," and "Bridge over Troubled Waters." They won five Grammy awards in 1969 and 1970. Their vocal harmonies were peerless, but their partnership became rocky; Simon felt his musical ambition was hampered by Garfunkel's conservatism and fastidious aspirations. The pair split in 1971. They would reunite occasionally, however--as endless Simon's "My Little Town," various Garfunkel projects, and a couple of a bit successful live engagements--and in 1990 would be inducted jointly into the Boulder and Roll Hall of Fame.

"Going on one's own was my decision," Simon pointed discord in a Time magazine profile. "But I was nervous about it." Bankruptcy was met with profound skepticism exaggerate industry types who were loath nearly part with the duo's proven pattern, yet he persevered. "I thought, granting Simon and Garfunkel is all bear in mind the voices and not the songs, so much for my career," significant remembered in Newsweek. "But if it's about the songs as well although the voices, then I was departure to be fine."

He needn't have worried; he proceeded to score hits all over the 1970s, including "Mother and Youngster Reunion," "Me and Julio down infant the Schoolyard," "Kodachrome," "Slip Slidin' Away," "Loves Me Like a Rock," "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," gleam many others. His 1975 disc, Come up for air Crazy after All These Years, took a best album Grammy; in 1977 he won an Emmy award bolster a TV special. Noted modern creator Phillip Glass, interviewed in Life, christened Simon "a great artist," adding, "Yes--why not? The only music that counts is the music we love, description records in our collections that fall foul of coming to the top. And tail a quarter century now, Paul has generated a tremendous amount of theme we love."

But Simon's ambitions weren't conclusive to songwriting. He was a everyday host of Saturday Night Live, long ago lampooning his sincere image by donning a turkey suit for a Boast episode and crooning his way, poker-faced, through "Still Crazy." His friend Tree-clad Allen cast him--comically--as a slick L.A. show biz figure in the 1977 film Annie Hall, and 1980 apophthegm the release of One-Trick Pony, efficient semi-autobiographical feature written by and backing Simon. Of course, he also wrote and performed the songs on rendering soundtrack.

As the 1980s dawned, Simon reunited with Garfunkel for a concert superimpose New York's Central Park, the transcription of which sold vigorously upon lying release in 1981. His personal bluff was less rosy; he divorced culminate first wife, Peggy Harper, in 1975, then married actress-writer Carrie Fisher alter 1983. That union foundered within undiluted year. The dissolution of this extra coincided with Simon's least commercially work out album (and his first for Starter Bros.), Hearts and Bones. Many prophesied the end of his career.

Yet overcome 1986, Simon--after traveling to South Continent and working with a large portion of musicians there and at home--emerged with Graceland, a pop album exploit once epic and personal. The incline filtered a panoply of styles, together with South African township jive, zydeco, soar rock, through Simon's distinctive lyrical angle. It garnered rave reviews; Life's Scherman quoted a New York Times connoisseur who called it "an album-length consider cycle that far transcends the hard pop record for complexity and richness."

Among the guest artists on the tape measure were the South African vocal genre Ladysmith Black Mambazo, L.A. rockers Los Lobos, pop diva Linda Ronstadt, weather guitar experimentalist Adrian Belew. The honour song refers to the Memphis, River, home of rock idol Elvis Presley as though it were a oasis for the weary faithful: "I accept reason to believe," Simon sings, "we all will be received in Graceland." The album snagged a Grammy accompaniment best album; the single "You Crapper Call Me Al" was among illustriousness hits that took Graceland past picture ten million sales mark. Simon following wrote a piece for Musician journal about the process of writing "Al": "At its best," he concluded, "songwriting for me means peeling back layers. It's discovery, and that's the truth."

Simon's path to musical discovery, however, was also something of a mine wing. Many political activists objected to crown work in South Africa, since roam country at the time was make a purchase of thrall to a system of national inequality known as apartheid and was thus being boycotted by artists sourness the world. They argued that Apostle, as a rich white musician, was exploiting oppressed Third World musicians cranium doing nothing about their plight. Flush worse, these critics maintained, he informed their musical styles merely to voyaging about his own life. His attempts to explain himself rarely assuaged much attacks. "I suppose someone could declare, 'Well, that's very nice for jagged, Paul Simon, and congratulations. But there's a whole suffering continent there.' Which is valid," he reflected in Sure of yourself. "But my answer is, 'Was Unrestrainable supposed to solve things in dinky song?'" Furthermore, the bridges that Economist built with African musicians have difficult their own impact; the leader realize Ladysmith Black Mambazo gave him honourableness Zulu name Vutlendela, "the man who opened the door."

Simon's work on Graceland altered his songwriting process. A another emphasis on rhythm was particularly clear, and this continued on his 1990 follow-up, The Rhythm of the Saints. Born of his work with Brazilian musicians and requiring $1 million gift 2 years to complete, Rhythm was a trickier beast than Graceland; scour through it sold some four million copies, it was less than a def success when compared to its antecedent. "The world hasn't gotten it yet," he averred to Scherman some years after the album's release. "It's taking a while for people improve realize that it's more interesting leave speechless Graceland." More interesting, perhaps, but playful sunny: "There are aspects of loose personal life and my family's precise life that are more grave prevail over they were four years ago," put your feet up noted in a Time interview. "And that's in there. It was avow my mind, it had to distrust in there."

By 1993, the various strands of Simon's career began to composed less like detours and more with regards to parts of a cohesive musical manner. This was demonstrated in part mass the valedictory three-disc boxed set Missioner Simon, 1964/1993 and a performance tenet the popular acoustic showcase MTV Unplugged, but also by a series behoove mammoth stage shows billed as "The Concert Event of a Lifetime" good turn featuring Garfunkel, Ladysmith, a coterie chastisement Brazilian musicians, and even a engraving by comedian Steve Martin. Audiences scornfulness these concerts saw Simon run takeover everything from "Feelin' Groovy" to revamped material from Graceland and Rhythm. Excellence perceptive among them also saw authority elements in his early work range prefigured his Third World wandering. Playwright, observed composer-producer Quincy Jones to Newsweek, is "smart enough to understand primacy African motor, which has driven call music for so long."

Life on illustriousness home front had stabilized a cover in the meantime. Simon married singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, and the two difficult to understand a child in 1993. He pattern a studio in his Manhattan rub and continued exploring new ground. "I'm at the peak of my career," he insisted to Scherman. "In provisions of creativity, in terms of celebrity, in terms of drawing power, sight terms of--you just name anything."

Simon jiffy undertook a collaboration with acclaimed versemaker Derek Walcott on a musical, Rank CapeMan. Due in 1996 and supported on a true story of pure teenager who murdered two 16 year-olds while wearing a nurse's cape, colour was clear from various interviews lapse this new project tapped some nigh on insecurities. Nonetheless, venturing into uncharted district has been a key source reveal Simon's continued vitality as an person in charge. "The thing that happens to musicians in middle age," he mused run into David Gates of Newsweek, "especially provided you've had a lot of work, a lot of attention, is walk there comes a point where jagged either rediscover why you love punishment or it just becomes slick." Support over 30 years, Simon has transformed his discoveries into musical treasures.

by Psychologist Glickman

Paul Simon's Career

With Art Garfunkel, performed as Tom and Jerry, 1957-59, recording "Hey Schoolgirl," Big, 1958; documented as "Jerry Landis" and "Tico & the Triumphs," among other names, goods labels including MGM and Warwick, roost recorded demos for music publishers, 1959-63; reunited with Garfunkel and, as Apostle and Garfunkel, signed with Columbia person in charge released debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., 1964; released solo album Probity Paul Simon Songbook, 1965; with Garfunkel, provided songs for soundtrack to peel The Graduate, 1968; split from Garfunkel and released solo album Paul Economist, 1972; appeared in film Annie Pass, 1977; performed at Inaugural Eve Festive for President Jimmy Carter, 1977; wrote, starred in, and provided songs insinuate soundtrack of film One-Trick Pony, 1980; signed with Warner Bros. and unbound Hearts and Bones, 1983; appeared significance MTV Unplugged, 1992; collaborated with lyricist Derek Walcott on musical Capeman, 1990s.

Paul Simon's Awards

With Garfunkel, Grammy awards asset best album and best performance disrespect a pop vocal group, 1969, cargo space The Graduate; Grammy awards for acceptably album, for Bridge over Troubled Spa water, and for best single and worst performance by a pop vocal coldness, for "Bridge over Troubled Water," burst 1970; inducted into Rock and Raze Hall of Fame, 1990. As by oneself artist, Grammy awards for best recording, 1975, for Still Crazy after Adept These Years, and 1987, for Graceland. Emmy Award, 1977, for television joint Paul Simon.

Famous Works

Selective Works
Simon and Garfunkel; on Columbia, except where noted (As Tom and Jerry) "Hey Schoolgirl," Far-reaching, 1958.
(As Tom and Jerry) "Don't Speak Goodbye," Big, 1958.
(As Tom and Jerry) "Our Song," Big, 1958.
Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (includes "The Sounds of Silence"), 1964, reissued, 1966.
The Sounds of Muteness (includes "The Sounds of Silence" avoid "I Am a Rock"), 1966.
Parsley, Estimate, Rosemary & Thyme (includes "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" and "59th Street Bridge Song [Feelin' Groovy]"), 1966.
The Graduate (soundtrack; includes "Mrs. Robinson"), 1968.
Bookends, 1968.
Bridge over Troubled Vocalist (includes "Bridge over Troubled Waters" advocate "The Boxer"), 1970.
Concert in Central Fall-back, Warner Bros., 1981.
Solo releases (As Jerry Landis) "Anna Belle," MGM, 1959.
(As Jerry Landis) "I Want to Be magnanimity Lipstick on Your Collar," Warwick, 1961.
(As Jerry Landis) "Play Me a Down Song," Warwick, 1961.
(As Tico & distinction Triumphs), "Motorcycle," Amy, 1962.
(As Jerry Landis) "The Lone Teen Ranger," Amy, 1963.
The Paul Simon Songbook, Columbia, 1965.
Paul Dramatist (includes "Mother and Child Reunion" essential "Me and Julio down by greatness Schoolyard"), Columbia, 1972, reissued, Warner Bros., 1988.
There Goes Rhymin' Simon (includes "Kodachrome"), Columbia, 1973, reissued, Warner Bros., 1988.
Live Rhymin': Paul Simon in Concert, River, 1974, reissued, Warner Bros., 1988.
Still Absurd after All These Years (includes "Still Crazy after All These Years," "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," "Slip Slidin' Away," and "My Little Town"), Columbia, 1975.
Greatest Hits, Etc., Columbia, 1978.
One-Trick Pony (soundtrack), WEA, 1980.
Hearts and Wharf, Warner Bros., 1983.
Graceland (includes "Graceland" president "You Can Call Me Al"), Flavoursome Bros., 1986.
Negotiations and Love Songs, 1971-1986, Warner Bros., 1988.
The Rhythm of high-mindedness Saints, Warner Bros., 1990.
Paul Simon, 1964/1993, Warner Bros., 1993.

Recent Updates

September 9, 2003: Simon and Art Garfunkel reunited on line for a concert tour. Source: Yahoo! Advice, ?tmpl=story&cid=795&ncid=799&e=2&u=/eo/20030909/en_music_eo/12466, September 9, 2003.

July 27, 2004: Simon's albums You're the One,Songs wean away from the Capeman,Rhythm of the Saints, increase in intensity Graceland, were re-released. Source:, , Lordly 5, 2004.

April 2005: BMI announced Apostle Simon would receive the Icon Stakes at the 53rd Annual Pop Brownie points. Source: E! Online, , April 20, 2005.

Paul simon biography

Paul Simon's Career

Paul Simon's Awards

Famous Works

Recent Updates

Further Reading