New Podcast Release: Paul Simon

In this episode of “Lives Well Lived”, Kasia de Lazari-Radek and I speak with Paul Simon about the moments and mysteries behind some of the most enduring songs of the last sixty years. We begin with The Sound of Silence, which he wrote at twenty-one and still describes as a song whose meaning has shifted over time—from a rabbi singing it in Hebrew, to a Native American playing it on a wooden flute, to a girl performing it in a small Amazon village.

Paul reflects on the feeling of inspiration “like taking dictation”, why that sensation shaped Graceland and Seven Psalms, and how his work has changed as craft, age, and experience became more central to songwriting. He also speaks about The Capeman, the harsh criticism that followed, and Steven Sondheim’s insight that the musical failed because “there was a fault in the story.”

We discuss accusations of cultural appropriation, the spiritual thread running through Seven Psalms, and the moment he began to lose his hearing while writing it. Later, Paul talks about supporting E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth Foundation, giving to mobile medical units for children, and why he still thinks he “should have given more.”

And toward the end, he reflects on the simplest measure of a life: “Are you happy?” and answers that question.

Below are highlights from our conversation. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

The mystery of writing The Sound of Silence

PETER SINGER: Paul, you wrote The Sound of Silence, the breakthrough hit for Simon and Garfunkel when you were 21 years old. The opening words are “hello, darkness, my old friend.” Is the darkness still your friend?

PAUL SIMON: Oh, that’s a good question. Well, not in a metaphorical sense. Do I like darkness? Yeah, I do. I don’t seek darkness over light or something like that. What I feel about The Sound of Silence, which I was 21 or 22 years old when I wrote it, was I have no idea how I wrote that at that point in my life.

Both the words and the melody… of all the songs I wrote, and that’s a pretty early one, of all the songs I wrote, I have a feeling that if any of them are to last for a hundred years, that would be the one. And the reason I think that is that recently somebody sent me a YouTube video of a rabbi singing The Sound of Silence in Hebrew. I saw a YouTube of a Native American sitting out somewhere in the West… dressed in traditional Indian garb, playing a flute. And he was playing The Sound of Silence. And I thought, if that melody has reached this guy, and he bothered to learn it on his wooden flute, there’s something powerful about it.

There’s another story… we stopped in a village on the Amazon, a really small one, maybe 15 structures. A girl was sitting in one of the huts playing the guitar… and she said, “I know an American song,” and she played The Sound of Silence. I’m in the Amazon. I’m not going to say I wrote that song… but how did it get there?

So there’s something about The Sound of Silence that’s beyond my explanation, including the tone of it and the language and what it was about. Still seems like I wouldn’t really have any idea about what I wrote. And the fact that when I do a show, I always close with The Sound of Silence, just me and guitar. I understand the power of the song. And it seems to have changed its meaning over the years… it seems appropriate to sing that song. There’s some element of—let’s call it—mystery to that.

How fleeting moments of inspiration shaped his greatest songs

PETER SINGER: Okay, though you certainly spanned more than one generation in your songwriting…

PAUL SIMON: It was unusual that I went from the sixties all the way through the mid-eighties writing hits. It was Graceland that extended that and really opened up a whole way of thinking to me about music and cultures and how they interact.

By the time I was writing Graceland, when those moments would occur where something—some powerful line—came into a song, I would stop and I would recognise: well, something… this is that feeling when you’re just taking dictation. You’re just… it’s just coming, and you’re writing it down. And to a great degree, that’s what happened with Seven Psalms.

When those moments occur, you realise: something inexplicable is happening. And I write something, and it’s really good. And later on I could recognise: that’s that feeling. That’s the moment when it’s not craft, it’s something else.

How broader cultural change shaped his career across decades

PETER SINGER: You got accused of cultural appropriation, and I wonder what you think of that accusation. Is that a real thing—to appropriate somebody’s culture?

PAUL SIMON: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s possible. How do you do that—appropriate somebody’s culture? If I write a song in the style of Soweto township jive, does township jive go away for everybody else? Do those sounds leave that culture and just become part of mine? No, they don’t.

And of course the reverse is true. If somebody from Poland decides that they want to make a rock and roll album… they haven’t taken anything away from American culture. So I don’t believe that’s a valid criticism.

The emotional cost of failure: The Capeman

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: May I ask you how you cope with criticism and failure of that kind—how a musician of your sort copes with that? Are the wounds deep?

PAUL SIMON: Yes, because they were… quite personal. You withdraw and lick your wounds, and then you wait to see what to do next.

The Capeman was a very interesting failure. It had its flaws—there’s no doubt about it—but it was very interesting in what it was trying to achieve. It gave me the opportunity to write songs in the genre of fifties urban music, and also in Latin grooves because the boy was Puerto Rican. I thought that was an interesting combination of sounds.

But… the reviews were just terrible. It was doomed. And I understood later what Steven Sondheim told me: the most important element in a Broadway musical is the book. It’s not the music. You can write great music, but if you don’t have a story, your musical won’t work. And what we had was… half a story. There was a fault in the story.

Seven Psalms, spirituality, and writing from dreams

PETER SINGER: Your most recent album seems to have a more spiritual component. Is that something you’ve become more interested in?

PAUL SIMON: Yes, I think it is a more spiritual endeavour. But the way it came to me was different. It came in dreams. I would wake up at three and five in the morning three or four times a week, and there would be words just coming. I would write them down. If I started editing, everything stopped. So I said: whatever this is, it’s happening without my working at it.

As the lyrics came from my subconscious—or from wherever—they seemed to have that spiritual element. I thought: I’m just very grateful to be alive and to be on this planet… If the explanation for this creation is that it was made by a creator, then I say: great job. I love your work. And if the answer is something else, then I’m no less grateful.

I prefer the God answer because it’s a really great story… and once I let myself go into that, then I didn’t quite feel as awkward when I was writing Seven Psalms.

Losing his hearing and how it reshaped his work

PAUL SIMON: Then what happened was I started to lose my hearing. And this really made me angry. I thought: just when I’m writing and it’s all coming so easily, this happens. And then I said: maybe this is a valuable piece of information that should be examined. It opened up another room to investigate when I was writing.

When I perform Seven Psalms, I tell audiences it’s an uninterrupted 33-minute piece. Most people have never heard it. There’s no radio now, and there’s no place to hear it unless someone tells you about it. And I wouldn’t allow them to pick one song out of the 33 minutes on Spotify. You have to play the whole piece or not.

I find that people are rapt. It has some kind of effect.

Philanthropy, The Half-Earth Foundation, and The Life You Can Save

PETER SINGER: I’m wondering as you get older whether you’ve thought about what you want your philanthropic legacy to be.

PAUL SIMON: E.O. Wilson contacted me about The Half-Earth Foundation and I said, “I’m about to do a small tour. I’ll give you all the money from the tour for your foundation.” So I was able to really get his foundation going. It was maybe three million dollars.

I just gave the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss half a million dollars. Your book was inspirational—the most effective places to give your money… made me think about that. I hardly gave away the amount I should have. I will endeavour to give more.

Asking whether he has lived a good life

PETER SINGER: Are there things you would like to say about how well you’ve lived?

PAUL SIMON: It’s not an easy question. It seems to me the most basic question, as you look back over your life, is: are you happy? And I am.

I think of myself as a selfish person, but I try to be as generous as I can. I’m proud of what I achieved. If your family loves you, if you’ve been generous… that value system… I wouldn’t disagree with what Jesus had to say.

Whether he will ever write again

PETER SINGER: Are there more gifts coming from you that we are going to get?

PAUL SIMON: People ask me all the time: are you writing? Are you still writing? And I’m not. There’s actually nothing that I want to say.

Since the hearing loss, the guitar doesn’t really sound that good to me. Either I will or I won’t. It would be great to have that feeling of making something that totally surprised you… but it doesn’t feel like it’s imminent.