paul simon playboy interview

paul simon – 1984 playboy interview small black beetles: the overkill
believe your song is gone so soon / I barely learned the tune
... So long. So long." It was direct.
Playboy: How did you break up then?
Simon: Well, Artie waited until the album was finished to
tell me that he was going to do Carnal Knowledge. I realized
then that I was certainly going to follow my own instinct
and make my own albums. We did our last concert at Forest
Hills tennis stadium, shook hands and didn't see each
other for years.
Playboy: Were you hurt?
Simon: Definitely, though I'm not sure I realized then how
much. I felt as if Artie had fucked me over - not because
he did the movies, which was our understanding, but
because part of him saw those movies as an opportunity to
fuck me over. It was as if he were saying, "Hey, I've always
felt like a nobody. Now you're going to be the nobody."
And he rammed that home.
Playboy: How?
Simon: By saying, ' You can't come to the movie set. I'm
really only interested in movies. Movies are the much more
important art form. I'm into movies. I'm very good-looking.
I look like a movie star. My friends are Jack Nicholson and
Mike Nichols." I mean, he really made me feel bad. I
understood his frustrations, but I hadn't done anything to
him. I never said that our partnership had been unequal.
Maybe that made it worse. I lied. He lied. We said, "We're
Simon and Garfunkel; I write the songs, Artie arranges them."
We would parade that. It was a joint statement all through
the Sixties. Everyone believe it, and of course it was never
true.
Playboy: When it was clear that Simon and Garfunkel were
finished, what did you do?
Simon: I went to Clive Davis, who was the Columbia
Records president at the time, and said, "I'm going to make
a solo album." And he said, "You're making a tremendous
mistake. You'll never be as popular. Don't do it" But I did,
of course. I wanted to get away from the big
orchestrations, anyway, make simpler, funkier records. It
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