From the Tiger Beat Archives, September 1966
Editor’s note: Paul Simon retired from touring in 2021 after 50 years of unforgettable music. I found my interview with Paul and Art Garfunkel from 1966. I was struck by how so many things we take for grated today were so very different back then. . .like discussing how to meet and get to know people. And I love their comments about NOT being stars. Little did they know. . .
The bathroom is dark and the water is running from the tap. In the corner is crouched a boyish figure feeling snug and warm. He is Paul Simon and the atmosphere is the perfect one for him to create one of his great and meaningful songs.
“I like the feeling very much of being snug in a little place.” These were the surroundings in which Paul penned “I am a Rock” Simon and Garfunkel’s third chart hit, which he wrote from an experience in his own life.
“There was a year in my life when I didn’t have any friends. Not because there was nobody that wanted to be my friend, but because I was just living within myself, really. I was all alone all the time. It wasn’t a bad year. It was lonely, but it was nice. At the end of the year I said “well enough. Now I’ve got to go out and grab somebody and hug somebody.” Because you can’t be an island and a rock all your life.
“Everything in the song means the complete opposite. You just can’t be a rock and an island, you just must go out. I spent that year as I did because I had to become a person before I could go out. Afterwards, I felt much more at peace. It was like a religious experience. I just came out and I was calm and I wasn’t afraid. And I didn’t worry about ‘will people like me or won’t they?’ I was just me.”
Paul first became interested in music when he saw Alice in Wonderland. “I liked that when I first saw that and I was always walking around singing that music all the time.” Following that he started playing the guitar and loved music ever since.
Besides his songs, Paul has written several short stories but does not plan on having them published. “They’re mine. They’re for me. I just haven’t given any thought to publishing them. I don’t think they are good enough.”
“One of the short stories is about a man in an old aged home and the conversation I have with him. The conversation was divorced from reality. But not really, because after a while, I was starting to talk to him and there was very little difference between what I was supposed to be reality and his unrealistic conversation.
“It was so close that when I got out and I was talking to normal people, it was the same conversation. Then I said ‘hey which is reality?’ Maybe this guy really is where it’s at!’ It was a partial fiction, but it did happen to me.”
His partner Art shares many of Paul’s feelings and most recently has become aware of the time they gave rise to “Sounds of Silence” the idea that people don’t understand each other. Art shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly, “I’ve begun to see now that society is made up of millions of people who are just alone. . .everyone is so completely alone.
“Not painfully alone, because they’re not aware of it. But what they want to send out is not being received. They are just sort of accidentally brushing up against each other and sending slight waves across. It kills me, especially when you want to get close to somebody, you want somebody to really understand you.”
How does Art go about getting to know a person? “If you meet somebody and you’re really interested in them, you try to find basic facts about them. How old they are, what background they’ve had, brothers and sisters, education, then you get a vocabulary of just impressions. Then you move in. If the night lasts long enough you start asking them ‘what are your real hangups? your real personal problems? what areas bother you the most? You can only ask these things if you think there’s a rapport going. Otherwise they have a right to back off and say ‘leave me alone.’”
Both Art and Paul have a delightful manner of expressing exactly how they feel. Because they are such real people, they’re often touched by experiences that be-chance them.
Paul relates, “a little girl came up to me once and gave me a little necklace that had a simulated pearl in it. She said ‘I know boys don’t wear necklaces, but I want you to have this.’ I really like that, so I kept it in my pocket.”
Art is the most logical thinker. He plans to teach mathematics one day because “I love the act of teaching. I’m very excited by the notion of that I have things in my mind that I have to pass on to yours, as efficiently and as completely as I can. It’s that interaction, the psychological nature of that which fascinates me.”
Art brought up an interesting point which only goes to show how unnatural he feels as a “popstar.” He says, “just think how you feel if you made a record and people suddenly started buying your record, and you are really a big star. But you know you’re not a big star, you know that it’s all just superimposed around you. With that framework in mind you get all kinds of problems the person is going through. When you talk to someone with these things in mind you’ll get all kinds of very interesting results.”
Try it with Simon and Garfunkel and you do get some very interesting results, because they don’t think they’re big stars, just real people!
FYI: This interview took place at the Howard Johnson’s Anaheim Hotel Coffee Shop following one of Simon and Garfunkel’s headlining concerts at Melodyland Theater in June 1966. The Mama’s and the Papa’s were the opening act.
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