paul simon playboy interview

paul simon – 1984 playboy interview small black beetles: the overkill
don't think so. I don't believe anything that Barry Manilow
sings.
Playboy: But there are people who do.
Simon: Not everyone has the opportunity to be
sufficiently sensitized to what is genuine. If you were raised
with a lack of exposure to quality, I think it would be more
difficult to recognize it. If you just eat Big Macs all your life
and someone serves you the finest French food, I don't
think you will necessarily appreciate it.
Playboy: How do you actually write?
Simon: I wrote my new album Hearts and Bones, in two
summers - the summers of 1981 and 1982 - out in
Amagansett. The first song I wrote for his new album was
Song About the Moon. I was playing that melody, and I
didn't have any word.
Playboy: How did you come to be playing that melody?
Simon: I was playing the chords to it. What I was really
doing was playing an old Sam Cooke song, Bring It On
Home to Me. And I was singing it and altering the chords,
making substitutions. Instead of making them simpler, I
was making them more complex, just for the fun of it. This
is one way that people write.
Playboy: Where do you think the creative impulse comes
from?
Simon: I write from instinct, from an inexplicable sparkle. I
don't know why I'm writing what I'm writing. Usually, I sit
and I let my hands wander on my guitar. And I sing anything.
I play anything. And I wait till I come across a pleasing
accidentally. Then I start to develop it. Once you take a
piece of musical information, there are certain
implications that it automatically contains - the implication
of that phrase elongated, contracted, inverted or in other
time signature. So you start with an impulse and go to what
your ear likes.
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