paul simon playboy interview

paul simon – 1984 playboy interview small black beetles: the overkill
made me nervous that I wasn't going to be a hit, but I set
out on my own.
Playboy: How did you find the going?
Simon: I began to stretch as a songwriter. Before, I just
wrote a song, and if it wasn't good I'd say, "They can't all
be good." Now I'd say, "why didn't that work?" And I
started exploring more kinds of music. I traveled to
Jamaica to cut Mother and Child Reunion as a reggae tune. I
wasn't going to cut it with L.A. studio musicians and try to
imitate, the way I might have with Simon and Garfunkel.
Playboy: Mother and Child Reunion became a hit, and so
did Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, from that first
album. Were you happy?
Simon: I was disappointed in its sales. I was used to
Simon and Garfunkel albums' selling 3,000,000 to 5,000,000
copies. My solo sold about half that.
Playboy: And your second, There Goes Rhymin' Simon?
Simon: That sold better than the first album, and the writing
developed. There was a hit on that album. I can't remember
what it was. Oh, yeah. Loves Me Like a Rock. My first
1,000,000-selling single as a solo. I did Loves Me with a
Gospel quartet. I was traveling around, playing music I
really liked. I went to Alabama to play with the Muscle
Shoals rhythm section. I was the first white pop artist to
play with them. Until then, they'd cut all R&B with black
artists.
Playboy: Actually, you had two hits on that second album.
The other was Kodachrome. Where did that come from?
Simon: I started to write a song called Going Home. I was
singing the melody, and then I decided, No, it's too trite an
idea, the but sound of Going Home fit those notes
perfectly. So I just let my mind slip into similar sounds.
And one of them was Kodachrome. Also, I had that first
line, the true one: "When I think back on all the crap I
learned in high school / It's a wonder I can think at all." It
was a good first line for a pop song.
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