"Paul Simon"

0:28Hey. Welcome to Smartless. Smart. Less.

0:37Smart. Less.

0:43Smart. Less. Wait, Sean's back in L.A. now? Yes. Since when? Last night. Or yesterday. Since last night. Pay attention. Sean, I knew it was soon. I knew it was soon, but... I know, I'm so excited. Sean, how does it feel? Baby angels come back to the nest. There's no such thing as baby angels, and then they grow up and get older. Everybody's a baby angel. A baby angel. Will said to me last week, he goes, you know you're going to get sick. And I said, what? Yeah, you're going to get sick. Yeah, right when you get home, you'll get sick. And I'm like, why would you think that? And boy, I don't feel sick, but oh my God.

1:23Sean. My body doesn't know it's not over. No. So you're going to probably just power down for about a week? No, just a couple of days. Sean, you've been up here. You have been working at this high level every day, getting yourself up to this thing every day for months and months and months and months. Is it possible that your body, like you're right, because I told myself I'm not going to get sick, I'm not going to get sick, I can't get sick. Right. And then now I'm just like shutting down and my body's like, yeah, I'm shutting down too. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, and what about just your instinct to perform and entertain and be charismatic and have presence and whatnot?

2:04Why start now? Yeah, do you just sit on the couch and Scotty's like trying to have a conversation and you're just like, no, not until October. No talkie-talkie anymore. I saw this interview, all bits aside, with Miley Cyrus the other day. And she was talking about how hard it is, how she doesn't like to tour because she creates this. it's too demanding. It creates this sort of bloated ego because she has to get ready to get up and then her relationship with the audience is being the observed and then the audience is the observer. And what she has to do to create that, she says it pulls her away from her true self and she becomes something else.

2:44And the more she does it, I mean, I'm kind of paraphrasing. But it made a lot of sense. And I get that, Sean. Every night you're up there. Yeah, it was a lot. But it was very rewarding. I'm sad and glad at the exact same time that it's over. I get to see you guys. I'm real excited whether you guys like it or not. Well, I hope that you're giving yourself the attaboy that you deserve and feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment. Yeah, thanks. And, I mean, the accolades are public, so it's unanimous. But also just sort of privately and internally over there at the show, I'm sure that you were also, like, Tony Award-level leader and creating a nice environment and you should pat yourself on the back for all that.

3:28Well, thanks. It was easy. Everybody was great. Well, here's what Sean said to me the other day, which I really related to. And he said, you would love the bits that we do backstage nonstop. He's like, I do it almost just for that. And I totally get that, Jay. You know that feeling of like just being there and fucking around in the bits. We used to have that on a thing that we used to do years ago. And we've all had it. We've shared it together. It's the bits. It's the fucking around. It's the crew you work with and the cast you work with. And then the product you push out to the public that you never meet is fantastic.

4:03But it is a very intimate process, right? Yeah. I used to do, I would do this bit right before I entered in the show where there's a little platform where the door is. You have to step up on the platform. And I pretended I lost all my faculties like five seconds before I entered. and I took both my hands and lifted one leg onto the platform and the other. Then I lifted my arm onto the door handle. And then my cue was like right there. And then you come out, give us... Yeah. I tell you what, though. I'm really excited, speaking of bits, to get into our guest today because he has so many bits to his life that each one of them individually kind of add up to this incredible, each one of them is incredible unto itself.

4:53And then when you look at it, what he's done in its entirety, it's truly, it's epic. I don't want to embarrass them. All the bits put together, you mean. Yeah, and I don't want to embarrass him. I've never met him, and I'm in awe of the fact that he's here today. He's a musical and an American icon, for lack of a better word. We've listened to, here's one of the most amazing things. He's sold millions and millions, over 100 millions of records as a part of a band. And the same amount as a solo recording artist for the last 50 years. And he's done, he's sung incredible songs that you know that are such a part of your life at different stages.

5:34Paul Simon. That are part of your parents' lives. Yeah. You know what, Jason? It's Mr. Paul Frederick Simon. No way. Yes. Are you kidding me? Holy shit. There he is. Oh, my God. Wow. Wow. What are we doing? I know. We don't deserve this. I know. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Paul, when I was, this is like so stupid, and you get this every day of your life, but when I was a kid, I listened to two albums over and over and over and over again. Yours was, The Bridge Over Troubled Water was one I memorized, and that's when they had the lyrics on the jacket. And so I memorized all the words to every song, Baby Driver, like all those songs.

6:12And then the Nutcracker. But that's neither here nor there. But I memorized every single word. It's wild to meet somebody. I've never met you. Whereas we talked about this before on the show where music is actually something that penetrates a person's soul and DNA and it stays with you forever. And you're one of them for me. It's pretty wild. I know the feeling because we toured with the Everly Brothers once and I had the same feeling about the Everly Brothers. I couldn't believe that the Everly Brothers were actually in our show, you know? And they were completely oblivious to how important of figures they were in my life.

6:59But you know what about music? It's not, of course it's true that it penetrates deeply and we all have this powerful, powerful memories enhanced by music, but isn't it also so that it's like somewhere really at its zenith between like 12 and 16 years old? The stuff that you hear then, maybe a little earlier even, that is what you love for your whole life. And, but so, so it must be that there's something really intense about our senses in that age. You know, I guess that's not a revelation. For sure, that's when I listen to it. No, it is a revelation. Well, it's not, but it does seem like those are the years in which you kind of, you open up and you grow up and you start to kind of come alive and have a sense of yourself that's separate from your identity as a child of your parents.

8:01You have an identity. And you start to see the world, I think, through different eyes a little bit, 12 through 16, right? And, yeah, so all those things hit. And, Sean, I'm with you. As I was sort of in anticipation of talking to you today, I went back and I've been listening to so much of your music over the last few days. And it, once again, kind of, it took me back to very vivid places in time. um riding in the car with my dad uh you know just being a kid and it makes me emotional now even thinking about it because it feel i can i can feel that connection yeah yeah and that must be to be and i said it for you to say that you had that same feeling with the everly brothers is amazing and i guess the question i have for you is do you when people come and say these things to you and talk about the importance or where you fit into their lives, their lives.

8:57What kind of, what is that relationship like for you? What does that do to you as a person? You know, I don't, I understand that, of course, because as I said, I felt it myself. But as far as thinking about myself in the way that others think about me, I don't. I don't think that way. I don't find it helpful. It's a distraction to think, oh, I whatever. It's like you were talking about Miley Cyrus before I revealed myself. And is that in the show? What you were talking about? Yeah, yeah. And she was talking about you were talking about her thinking about her relationship to the audience. I don't think about that because I find it a distraction to be in the audience at the same time as I'm on the stage.

10:02So I think when I'm performing, I'm just interested in listening to what other musicians of playing around me and fitting in in the most musical way that gives me the most pleasure, and interpreting the songs that I choose to sing from my repertoire in a way that makes them still be, you know, accurate or, you know, relevant to my life because I'm sure you'll all understand this. Once you have to say a line many times, and for a singer, if I'm going to sing The Sound of Silence again, I have to have a reason to sing that, or I'm just a Paul Simon cover band. So, you know, what's the good at that?

10:58Does that mean like if you were to perform Sound of Silence, let's say, tonight, you would look to sort of channel a current feeling that you have or something that you're thinking about in your life currently and apply that to the song and give that the context of the song and the lyrics as you sing it tonight? Maybe if that would work. Or it depends. As long as you're concentrating, if I concentrate on the interpretation of the song, the phrasing, it's almost, I don't know, I don't want to fall into a cliche, but I am about to. It's almost like a little bit of a zen exercise. You have to find something to concentrate on so that you're not doing it by rote.

11:44and then it's of no value. And I also believe that the audience wants to see you do that. They really don't want to see you do the same performance by memory. They won't. And I think that they can sense whether you're doing it sincerely, whatever the sincerity is based on, or whether you're doing it in an instance. They want to see you feel it like they're feeling it. Yeah, and then, well, I always say this too about songs. The listener completes the song. I write a song. You hear it. You heard the Bridge Over Troubled Water album. And what was the song you picked out? You said... Baby Driver.

12:32Baby Driver. So that's interesting. So here's a whole album. It was the album of the year and Bridge Over Troubled Water. The song was the most popular song in the world that year. But what you remembered was Baby Driver, which is interesting because when we made the album, we weren't thinking that Baby Driver was I wasn't thinking that Baby Driver was going to be. I didn't know what it was what it was going to be. I'm not surprised that you picked that or any other one. And the same goes if I said, well, what's the lyrics of Baby Driver? Well, I will say that to you. Just give me an example of the lyrics.

13:15And they call them Baby Driver. It does hit the road and I'm gone. Okay, good. Let's stop. Sorry. They don't. You have. No, it was a group. I hit the road and I'm gone. We say that a lot to Sean. It was a really good performance. That's what I'm going to take from this show, your performance. But what you said, Sean, was, and they call them Baby Driver. And they called her or him or something. They called me Baby Driver. They called me Baby Driver. But you remember it as, and they called them Baby Driver. So, which is just as interesting a line, actually. Yeah. Sean, you were saying yesterday that you loved the song Sound of Quiet.

14:02Because that's how you remember it. The Sound of Quiet. But by the way, it should be known, I just have to, while we're on The Sound of Silence, I have to bring this up because it's kind of crazy. And Jason, you'll remember this, Sean. This is news to you. Jason and I worked on a project a few, over the course of many years. And we had a moment when we were in the fourth incarnation of this project we were working on. We're in the middle of a strike, Paul, so we're not naming anything. And in this project, the camera at various times would push in on me, my character, as I was having these sort of existential moments and of sort of fear and doubt and confusion, whatever.

14:42Introspection. Introspection. They'd play Sound of Silence and it would push in and they licensed the song for this program. And they push in on my face. Hello, darkness, my old friend. And it happened about six or seven times during the series. Sounds very expensive. I know, it was very expensive. My favorite being this one, and it ended up becoming a meme that they did with Ben Affleck for a long time, starting like 2016. But there was a great one. At one point, all of a sudden you hear the music start up and I say, my character says something, it pushes in on my face and you hear, and you see a mariachi band go behind me with their trumpets, and I go, oh, it's not us.

15:23And then the camera stops pushing in. Anyway, just to say that that song had a huge impact, has had a huge impact on my life. Hey, Paul, on the licensing thing, Does every single request for licensing for stuff for music, television, commercials, anything, does it get directly to you or does that go to your manager? Does it go to your label? I mean, do you have hands-on on who gets it and who doesn't? Well, it doesn't anymore because I sold my publishing company about two years ago. Well, it was a mix, partly good and partly not good. but before that when it was up to me kind of sort of went to management and they would filter out some requests that's uh totally inappropriate you know you can pick any kind of inappropriate combination you want but otherwise yeah there was some sort of a clamp for your nose for for getting rid of snoring they probably wouldn't get you the right for sound of silence i would say Yeah, that's right.

16:25Well, I would say, just out of curiosity, how much are they? Of course, always. Not going to say, yeah, but just out of curiosity, how much for the nose clamp on some silence? To the extent you're comfortable, can you elaborate on what the good and what the bad was of selling a catalog at the risk of getting into the weeds? Yeah, sure. Sure. The good part about it is none of my children are interested in running that company or managing that company or, you know, so and I wouldn't want them to. I can understand it's not of interest to them. So there's no use to leave it to them because they don't want it anyway.

17:08And then they'll just so that means they'll go and sell it. So I'm better off selling it now and giving them the money rather than holding on to it. That's the good part of it. The bad part is you actually sort of lose contact with the thing that's part of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's weird. It's a little bit, put it this way, it's good financially and psychologically. Logically, it's a tiny bit of a wound, you know. Yeah. It's like a divorce probably or something. No. Okay.

17:52And we will be right back. All right. Back to the show. You know, Paul, I remember that one sketch you did on this one sketch show. It's very famous now. and it has to do with what we're doing to you, which is everybody, you're standing in line to get into like a movie or something. Oh, yeah, it's a very famous. And they say something like, I'm going to get this wrong. But like, you know, hey, Paul, I played in your band a lot. Do you remember me? No. Hey, Paul, I was like, you know, I was a friend of yours back in high school. Do you remember me? No. And then somebody, it builds up to the last person going, Paul, I was sitting on a little red rug in the middle of Central Park, about 10 ,000 feet from you during your live concert.

18:34And you're like, Jim, how are you? It's so great. That was funny. And it was such a... That was funny. Speaking of Central Park, is there any chance that you'll ever play Central Park again? No. There's no chance that I'll... I don't think there's much chance that I'll play again. No. Because, well, I don't... Well, I'll just say it and get it over with. I lost the hearing in my left ear about a year ago. It's just about one year now. Oh, I'm sorry. And I can't hear when drums and electric guitar are playing. I can't sing with it. I can't hear my voice in the mix. So I can't perform with a band.

19:28I might be able to perform this piece that I did, Seven Psalms, which is just acoustic guitar. I'm going to try that next month with two guitarists playing the parts that I wrote. Oh, great. And see if I, because I think I can handle that much sound. But more than that, no, it's blown me out. It's a drag. Yeah, I mean. I'm sorry. No, that is a drag. But anyway, you can't play Central Park. They don't want anybody to play in Central Park. And I think I'm the reason, too. Why? The concert that I did there in 1991 had, by the police estimate, 750 ,000 people. Jesus. I think there was just so much damage done to Central Park from just people walking over the Great Lawn that they've restricted concerts there.

20:26and when they do have them, they restrict the size. So there won't be any of those events like the Simon and Garfunkel concert. And also it took up a lot of valuable space from drug dealers and pimps and stuff. They had to move to different areas. Let me just, Paul, I wanted to talk, you mentioned Seven Psalms, which I just think is pretty remarkable. I just listened to it. And it's hard to, I was like, you guys haven't heard it yet. It's, I don't think, but it's, it's sort of part song and part album. It's kind of one, and forgive me, Paul, if I'm not doing a good job of describing it. It's like a one long piece, it seems like, and it starts with these, what I think are bells, and then kind of ends with the bells as well.

21:16Am I right in that, Paul? Almost. It is a long piece. It's a 33-minute piece, and it's meant to be played in its entirety. But the sounds that you heard as bells, they do sound something like bells. They're actually an instrument called a cloud bowl that was invented by a composer named Harry Parch. and Harry Parch is kind of a very interesting cul-de-sac composer. He said the division of an octave into 12 notes, you know, if you look at a piano and you start with C and you play to C and you include the white and black keys, you have 12 tones in an octave. He said that's a European conception that an octave is divided into 12 tones.

22:09it's arbitrary. Actually, he thought it was divided into 42 microtones. So in order to play the music that he heard, which was divided into these 42 notes in an octave, he had to invent instruments that could play in that small of an interval. Wow. And one of the instruments that he invented was this cloud bowl, which is a picture of a wine glass that's maybe three feet in diameter and another three or four feet high. Wow. Hung upside down, and you hit it with a mallet, and it produces that tone. You'll cut all of this out because it's... No, no, are you kidding? It's only interesting to musicians, but it does start with those.

23:01I was just going to say, if you're using all of those tones that are in the middle of the chromatic scale, then how would that blend in with any chord? It would just sound so dissonant. It does. If you blend it with tonal music, it's going to sound dissonant. But it doesn't necessarily have to sound dissonant in a way that is not pleasing. For example, if you're playing whatever, your keyboard or you're composing or you're making something, and in the distance you hear a church bell ringing, and maybe in another further distance you hear a second church bell, the sound of those two bells, they don't make what you're playing sound less interesting.

23:52They probably enhance it. There's something about those overtones that we really like. And I think that's maybe what Parch was onto. But in this piece, Seven Psalms, I use a lot of different bells and percussion instruments that are not really in the key, but they enhance the acoustic guitar. Yeah. Have you ever heard of the German term Klangfarben music? No, I haven't. What's that mean? It's kind of what we're talking about. It's an overall term that means, you know, it's more color in a song rather than within a chord. It's just for atmospheric kind of feeling. Well, that term applies to seven psalms.

24:43There is a lot of that to create a certain atmosphere. And in the same way that I said, oh, the listener completes the song, I believe that when the listener listens to things, if you give them a certain sound and you place it just far enough so that they can just hear it, it creates a depth in your hearing. and that depth, just like if you imagine the church bells in the distance, there's something about that that opens the listener, or maybe I'm just speaking for myself personally, but I think, I'm not, I think it's true for a lot of people, there's something about these distant sounds that open us up emotionally.

25:33And if, as a writer, a songwriter, if I can produce sounds that allow the listener to open themselves emotionally, then whatever it is that I have to say lyrically has a chance of being really meaningful. Of landing. Yeah. And of really, right, you've laid the groundwork for them to really absorb the lyrics. It's interesting to hear you talk about it in this way. I'm fascinated. and listening to Seven Psalms, it is a really remarkable piece in that I feel like albums are often meant to be heard in their entirety, at least they used to be. And this kind of, in a lot of ways, forces you to listen to it as one piece because it is kind of one continuous piece that's made up of all these different peaks and valleys.

26:29And it occurs to me, listening to you talk about it and talking about people and really how important actually the listener is to you. I really believe it now more than ever. Has that changed or evolved at all? When you started first making records or recording, I mean, before you were recording with, I guess you had been recording with art, but when you were, you recorded a lot of stuff and had some hits on your own under different pseudonyms, like Jerry Landis, I think was one of the names you used, and you had a bunch of different names. Oh, when I was a teenager, yeah, but none of that were hits.

27:02No, but you had a few charts, But did you always have that approach, this approach to music, and it just got more refined? Or when was it that you started to really understand? I don't know. Yeah, understand is right. When were you cognizant of? I think what I had naturally, I think, was this understanding. But I didn't intellectually think of it. So when I was 23 years old and I wrote The Sound of Silence, I didn't think anything other than that's probably my best song up till now. You know, I didn't think about anything. It's only later and maybe in the last 15 years or something like that, that I begin to think, why do we like this sound?

27:54What is it about this song that makes me love it and remember it from all the other songs that were happening at the same time when I was, you know, of that age, when I was really receptive to music. And if I were to throw the question back to you on a comedic level, if you're setting up a comedic environment where what you can do is going to achieve what you want, which is to get people to laugh and also to think that's true. I'm laughing, but I also know that's really true. It's part of my enjoyment is that, well, in order to do that, I mean, you can do it when you're young, you do it naturally.

28:43And later on, you think, why is that? Why is that funny? What do I need to do that? And a lot of it has to do, I think, with attention span of the listener or the viewer. So I think a lot about attention span because my attention span, well, it is what it is. So at a certain point when I'm writing, I think, oh, I'm tired of this. It's time for me to change a pattern, maybe change a rhythmic pattern, maybe change the key that I'm in, maybe change whatever. My attention span is saying that I'm bored and I'm about to bail out. That's what I think the listener does all the time. You listen to most music or most comedy.

29:35And if you're not drawn into it, if you're not hooked, you're you're leaving you're mentally leaving you know and uh with a comic if they're not funny for a long enough period of time and that might be a minute and a half maybe it's five minutes whatever you're not that set is blown you're not gonna you're gone same with the song component to comedy is is surprise and and lack of predictability and and and you you you you do that, I would think, without even trying. There's nothing predictable. There's nothing boring about your music. In fact, you're constantly changing your sound and things just become even more sort of sophisticated and layered.

30:25And I'm not sure what the right words would be, but it never seemed common. I mean, in all the decades you've been making music. And in fact, there was something very very human and vulnerable and and um connecting to uh the the real the real deep and small part inside of me always and and can you attribute that sense of by the way jb yeah to kind of to what you're saying and maybe you can put this in think about all the different types of music of the world music that that paul got into and all that stuff i mean and all that still spoke to us, even though it was different? My response to that is it's not different.