Word: musically
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...MUSIC...
That's a knowing bit of self-mockery you hear in the voice, making room for the accent that would brand him as a sure New York boy even if his music weren't so uptown all on its own. Simon is well aware of his penchant for self-reflection -- self-immersion sometimes -- and knows how to undercut and play against it, as anyone who's seen him larking around on his producer pal Lorne Michaels' Saturday Night Live shows over the years can instantly attest. The man who wrote Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard...
Lots of others think they know too. It's one thing to work into the new record musically, as Simon's friend Quincy Jones does when he says, "Paul goes straight for the throat. And he's smart enough to understand the African motor, which has driven pop music for so long." But it's another to cast the lyrical runes for references to his personal turmoil, especially when he is hands-down champion of the Confessional Songwriters, Elliptical Division. Perhaps it's just another kind of standing invitation...
...living room, within easy reach, like so many cerebral snacks. In case this sounds a little rarefied for a rock guy -- even a rock guy who sang a few tunes to Derek Walcott's poetry class at Boston University -- it should be added that Simon also enjoys listening to music as various as Miles Davis, Prince and Public Enemy. It's not always the sounds of silence up there on Central Park West...
...those very sounds, of course, that made stars of Simon and his best friend from Forest Hills, Queens, Art Garfunkel. Under the "nom de 45" Tom & Jerry, the boys had a minor hit single in 1957, then followed the folk-music trail into the new decade. Oft-told rock legend 192: how a house producer at Columbia Records without Paul's knowledge added electric guitar, drums and bass to an earnest, intimate, acoustic ballad of Simon's; and how The Sounds of Silence, with its new rock underpinnings, became a No. 1 single in 1966. It was a fluke...