An Unexpected Career High
Paul Simon rose to fame in the latter half of the sixties as a folk icon in his partnership with Art Garfunkel, marked by timeless classics “The Sounds of Silence,” “Mrs. Robinson,” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” They went out on a high note with the blockbuster, Album of the Year Grammy winner with 1970’s Bridge Over Troubled Water album.
When they broke up in 1970, Simon embarked on a solo career which produced the #1 hit “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”and another Grammy winner for Album of the Year for 1975’s Still Crazy After All These Years. From his very first 1972 self-titled solo album, it was also clear how successfully Simon was able to “dabble in alternative cultural music styles such as reggae.” CQ “Even in the days of Simon & Garfunkel he had championed world music” such as on “El Condor Pasa” TB and he’d had a hit as recently as 1980 with “Late in the Evening,” “a perky Caribbean fantasia.” TM
However, “Simon’s output, though often brilliant, was sporadic and always seemed of its own era” CS and by 1984, he was at a low point. He was reeling from his failed marriage to Carrie Fisher, a reunion with Art Garfunkel which soured, and the ho-hum reception of his album Hearts and Bones, which Robert Christgau said “was a finely wrought dead end, caught up in introspection, whimsy, and the kind of formal experimentation only obsessive pop sophisticates even notice.” VV
He was “a middle-aged guy in a young man’s game and he struggled to find a way to write rock & roll songs for grown-ups.” CM Simon knew this, saying “When I was working on Graceland… I was thinking, ‘If I don’t make this interesting, I will never get my generation to pay attention.’ They are not paying attention any more to records.” TB Graceland was “lauded as the folk singer’s comeback record” PM and what some called “the greatest album of his career.” CQ “It made a cultural impact far greater than anyone could’ve possibly guessed.” PM
Discovering African Music
“Instead of the Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and gospel-influenced beats from his previous albums, Graceland was conceived after Simon visited South Africa and soaked up the pulsing flavor of the country – even if it meant breaking the apartheid-induced cultural boycott.” CQ
Simon was musically rejuvenated by the song “Gumboota,” TB an instrumental by the Boyoyo Boys. CM It came from a bootleg of “township jive” TM music called Gumboots: Accordion Jive Hits, Volume II. It “reminded him of the positive energy of early rock and roll and R&B.” CS Heidi Berg, a singer-songwriter who had worked with Simon as a producer, loaned him the tape WK which prompted Simon “to learn more about the township jive called umbaqanga,” TL which he has called “the reggae of the ‘80s.” VV
Simon requested Warner Bros. contacts to track down the artist responsible for the tape. WK When it was pinpointed as either South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo or the Boyoyo Boys, WK Simon was dismayed. The United States had imposed economic sanctions on South Africa because of its apartheid government. RV Nonetheless, Simon knew he had to work with these artists. South African record producer Hilton Rosenthal made the arrangements for Simon and Roy Halee, the engineer for Graceland to go to Johnannesburg in February 1985 to spend two weeks recording. WK It remains “the most spontaneous thing the world’s most rational songwriter is even rumored to have done, and that sense of liberation and adventure is all over Graceland.” TL
The “former folkie” UT threw “his ears open to a host of new players and singers” TL “and successfully matched them to his trademark songwriting.” CQ He created “exotically fanciful collaborations” UT with the aforementioned Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Boyoyo Boys as well as Lulu Masilela, Tao Ea Matsekha, General M.D. Shirinda, and the Gaza Sisters. WK Simon also brought a trio of musicians back to the States to help him record – guitarist Ray Phiri, bassist Baghiti Kumalo, and drummer Isaac Mtshali. VV
Bringing World Music Home
Back in the States, Simon also worked with the Everly Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Los Lobos, and Adrian Belew, incorporating “a great number of musical styles, including zydeco, Tex-Mex and African vocal music.” NRR The mix of those styles with Simon’s “always perceptive songwriting” AM made for “a fascinating hybrid that re-enchanted his old audience and earned him a new one.” AM
Interestingly, “in the past Simon had tended to write songs and then create music tracks for them in the studio.” TB “Graceland was the first album Simon ever made in which the rhythm tracks were recorded first.” TL He had layed down basic rhythm tracks while still in Africa and then “spent months singing along with those sketches, developing songs.” TM
“The South African angle…was a powerful marketing tool,” AM but it wasn’t without controversy. “Believe it or not, this thing of effortless beauty was once considered controversial: People felt Simon ripped off African music for mercenary gain.” EW’93 In addition, the United Nations initially blacklisted Simon for violating the boycott, TL even though he was “celebrating the musical language of the country’s oppressed majority.” CS
Simon’s relationship with the music was “deep and committed.” VV Not only did he pay the musicians triple-scale and give them composer credits, he brought Ladysmith Black Mambazo to New York for a Saturday Night Live spot VV and brought them on tour. He brought “new-found attention to the struggles of South African blacks…eventually helping to end apartheid in the country.” CS
The Impact
“All that matters now is how many barriers he smashed with his perfect blend of African and American pop.” EW’93 His introduction of world music into a pop arena gave listeners “that magical combination: something they’d never heard before that nevertheless sounded familiar.” AM Simon “set the bar almost impossibly high for everyone who came after.” EW’12 “Graceland elevated the public’s and the musical community’s interest in world music to unprecedented levels, leading to a major influx of international styles into American music over the following decades.” CS
The Songs
Here are thoughts on the individual songs from the album.
“The Boy in the Bubble”
“The growl of accordion” CC from Forere Motlobeloa, Simon’s co-writer on the song, that opens the album signposts “immediately that this is a different Simon product.” CC The Boy in the Bubble also shows how Simon had “evolved as a lyricist on this album with lines that took on an almost Dylan-esque quality.” RV The song’s “pensive refrain…was as hopeful and socially conscious as any song he would ever write.” RV It is “his most acute and visionary song in many years,” VV offering “a laundry list of miracles and wonders as Simon looks at the modern world of organ transplants and high speed communication and satellites.” CM
“Graceland”
The title cut details a road trip “‘through the cradle of the Civil War’ to Elvis’ mecca” VV and hints “that somehow the world’s foremost slave state is a haven of grace: ‘Maybe I’ve reason to believe/ We all will be received/ In Graceland.’” VV It isn’t just about the journey that Simon and his son Harper took after Simon’s marital breakup with Carrie Fisher. It also symbolizes the two other journeys Simon made – first the physical journey he made to “Johannesberg to play with African musicians” CM but also the subsequent symbolic “journey of rediscovery into music.” CM
His purpose in the song “is not to express pity – either for himself or for the other casualties ‘bouncing into Graceland.’” CC By choosing to call the song Graceland, after Elvis Presley’s home,”Simon presents music itself as offering a form of salvation.” CC Simon has said that the Grammy winning song for Record of the Year is the best song he has ever written. CM
The song features the “bubbling, insistent, sinuous playing of Baghiti Khumalo on fretless bass and Ray Phiri on guitar.” CC They provide “a perfect counterpoint to the American music the song celebrates.” CC The Everly Brothers are also featured on backup vocals.
“I Know What I Know”
The “satiric I Know What I Know” AM is a “collaboration with General M.D. Shirinda and the Gaza singers.” CC It is “a lighter piece, contrasting the Shangaan voices of South Africa with the febrile chatter of the New York party scene. The song itself stands as a tribute to Simon’s self-confidence in his new work.” CC
Simon largely eschewed “a linear, narrative approach to his words” AM and evoked “striking images and turns of phrase torn from the headlines or overheard in contemporary speech.” AM He experimented with exotic rhythms and chord structures. RV
“Gumboots”
This is essentially a remake of “Gumboota,” the song that “triggered Simon’s initial interest in the sound of Soweto.” CC This was “the style of music favoured by mining and railroad workers” in South Africa. CC The term “gumboots” refers to the heavy boots they wear at work. CC Simon is backed by the Boyoyo Boys while he sings about different ways of failing to communicate.” CC
“Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”
The “highly poetic Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” AM featured Ladysmith Black Mambazo in the song’s coda. While most of the album’s rhythm tracks were recorded in Johannesburg, this was recorded in New York at the Hit Factory while Ladysmith Black Mambazo were in town to perform on Saturday Night Live. CC Both this song and “Homeless” were “exquisitely melancholic evocation[s] of African beauty and desolation.” VH1
“You Can Call Me Al”
An element of humor shows up in the hit single, You Can Call Me Al. VH1 The song, which has been interpreted as being about midlife crisis, references an incident in which Simon and his then-wife Peggy were at a party and mistakenly referred to as “Al” and “Betty.” It features a penny whistle solo by Morris Goldberg, a white South African based in New York. CC
Initially the song failed to reach the top 40 in the U.S., but after Graceland won the Grammy for Album of the Year, the song recharted, peaking at #23. Outside the U.S., it made the top 10 in several European countries. The video featured Chevy Chase lip-syncing Simon’s vocals while Simon lip-synced the backing vocals and played various instruments. The two men – marked by a foot in height difference – eventually dance to the song together.
“Under African Skies”
“In a few deft lines, Simon sketches both man and continent. Listening to the words and the music together, it is impossible not to sense the vastness of the skies under which Joseph [the song’s main character] walks.” CC The song is set to a “lilting, walking rhythm and backed by Linda Ronstadt’s beautiful, descant, which seems to echo to the very skies Simon sings about.” CC
“Homeless”
The songs themselves are not political, for the most part. Simon professed, “I’m no good at writing politics.” VV There is “the protesty title Homeless,” VV a reference not to the social problem “affecting affluent western societies…[but] the homelessness of massacre victims in a society where political violence rages.” CC
It was co-written with Joseph Shabalala, the leader of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The a capella track featured “stirring harmonies” VH1 from that group, who Simon flew them to London to record with him. CM “The lyrics, alternating between Zulu and English, have no discernible narrative structure, consisting mainly of phrases rather than complete sentences.” CC
“Crazy Love, Vol. II”
Here Simon “reverts to the music and the themes that dominate the album. Guitarist Ray Phiri’s band, Stimela, provide the backing for the interwoven stories of Fat Charle and the singer, both of who seem to be in the throes of divorce.” CC The penny whistler on “You Can Call Me Al” makes a repeat performance here.
“That Was Your Mother”
“As if to make the point that this is a Paul Simon album, not a World Music curiosity, Graceland ends with two songs rooted in specifically American musical traditions.” CC That Was Your Mother was “recorded in Louisiana with backing from those doyens of the Cajun scene, Good Rockin’ Dopsie & the Twisters.” CC It “is a jolly romp, sung by a father to his (implicitly grown-up) son, recalling the circumstances in which the son’s parents meet. The singer reminds his son…that though he might now be a parental authority figure, he was once a young man…looking for some action.” CC
“All Around the World OR The Myth of Fingerprints”
This song may be “the bleakest on the album.” CC Simon is backed by Los Lobos with David Hildago “establishing a rocking tempo.” CC The “chorus is melancholy” CC and the “verses positively drip with ennui.” CC
Conclusion
“It is difficult now to recall the enormous impact of this trans-cultural album,” VH1 but Graceland “became the standard against which subsequent musical experiments by major artists were measured.” AM With it, Simon created music “heard across the globe” AZ and it still reaches “generations of music enthusiasts…unaware of how pivotal that one album was” AZ in birthing “the idea of World Music.” AZ It wasn’t “the first time that Simon or other Western and non-Western cultures intersected, but Graceland marked a watershed moment where world music began to emerge from being a series of isolated musical pockets to an institutionalized transnational music scene.” PM “Over the past 35 years, no American album has changed the world-music landscape more than Paul Simon’s Graceland.” PM
Notes:
A 2004 reissue added alternate versions of “Homeless,” “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” and “All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints.” A 2012 reissue included those as well as demo versions of “You Can Call Me Al” and “Crazy Love” in addition to Paul Simon telling the story of Graceland.
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