Paul Simon's 'Graceland': Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little loan stories behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your boys in the bubble of banality, your human trampolines of trivia spinning in infinity, to which I say, Amen and hallelujah. My name is Jordan Roun Talk but you can call me Betty. I'm not setting you up for this. And I'm and I'm Alex Tigel and you can call him al. No, you can't. Don't do that. I don't like that. That's one of the only nicknames I don't like. I've never called you out. Thank you, good moving on. Yes, I think everybody here knows what I'm talking about. In fact, everybody here knows exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about one of the most beloved and controversial albums in history, Paul Simon's master work, Grace Land. It's a free quin entry on all time best album lists, and deservedly so. As far as I'm concerned. It was a success on pretty much every level, artistically, commercially, and culturally. Uh, it's certainly a favorite of mine and Oprah as I understand. The music was unlike anything I'd ever heard before, blending South African rhythms, modalities, and vocals with American dance pop music, plus a little bit of zydeco and Southwestern Mexican sounds for good measure. In an era of overblown pan global musical statements like We Are the World, Grace Land was much more successful at linking cultures through music, even though it caused an international incident in the process that nearly killed Paul Simon on several occasions. HIGL, what do you think of this record? It's amazing. I love this record. I love Paul Simon. I was not supposed to. I'm first and foremost a punk, first and foremost to punk. Uh. You're not supposed to like Paul Simon, but yeah, man, I mean I love Paul Simon. I am as incredible songwriter, world class dick head. Uh, short king, um, A list of reasons go on and on. Incredible guitar player, great singer. Uh he is an underrated guitar player. You're absolutely right, and and vocals too. In his voice. I don't think he's ever sounded better than on this record. I just I, you know, there's all these great isolated vocal isolated takes of this from the box set, and the version of Diamonds on the soles of her shoes that's just based in vocals, that little run that he did, like it's so his voice is so good on this um no. I you know, I never mercifully. I was like, I this was not like the cliche of like yuppie dinner music for me, Like, ID never heard this record growing up. I knew you can call me al from like the radio, but I never heard this record in my house. I never heard it through friends. It was really only in college when Vampire Weekend came around, and to a lesser extent, Dirty Projectors more rich white guys from New York who were stealing African sounds much more so with Vampire Weekend. I mean, they have a song called Cape Hodd Quassa Quassa, and they also took like so much of the production cues off this Dirty Projectors a little bit less so, but they definitely had some of that kind of African tonality and vocal stuff in there. And then I, you know, I I almost went back to school for ete musicology that was like my alternate reality career track, and so I was I didn't know I'm learning this live on Like I did not know that. I was super interested and I am super interested in in all of it, um and but particularly Africa African music, and and you know, this was um just kind of a gateway for it. And then like I got into all kinds of Molly and music and and uh, like I got really interested in in Bida music like thumb piano stuff, and obviously faila Cootie was huge for me, and yeah, all that stuff is just so fascinating to me. And you know, it's it's it's an incredible record in terms of the political dimensions of it, but also in terms of just the sheer sound of you know, because I'll talk about this a little later on, but like this is eight six. Basses and guitars had only really been around. Electric basses and electric guitars were not that old. So like the sound of of these guys playing centuries old African music on electric instruments is still kind of a new thing, at least in terms of the scope of like African music and that history. So it really is like kind of a quietly revolutionary thing in terms of getting it into into Western ears. It's just so funny that it comes across, you know when you think of like people who are like super into deep afrobeating, like deep faila Couti, that's like you faila Coutie was like almost killed by the government. So there's like really that's like edgy, like raw actual revel or like sub Saharan stuff like tanaro In, like those guys were rebels against the government. And then it's just so funny to me that there's all that like really interesting like counter cultural African music that has become popular, but the most popular form is like the most milk toast little nebishy white dude, And it's such a thorny, complicated legacy. And I'm so excited to talk about it. Yeah, we'll touch on it more later on the episode. But yeah, I mean it's impossible or at least irresponsible to talk about the amazing music on grace Land without discussing its genesis in South Africa, where apartheid was still the law of the land. Yeah, I mean two things can be true at the same time. It's ultimately what this is. It's like it's a collection of amazing songs that touched millions of people, not least of which some of the people who helped make it. But it can also be some of the worst examples of white privilege. And also Paul Simon being a dick. It's like two things can be true at the same time, man, and and you know, owing to our positions and privileges, I do think we should foreground some of the negative stuff, at least to kind of check the millions of dollars this made. Yes. Paul Simon traveled to South Africa to record this album with local musicians, violating a boycott that had been established by the United Nations Anti Apartheid Committee. This uh cause some problems, and by seeking to make music that transcended politics, Paul Simon found themselves at the center of a human rights crisis that unfolded basically on the world stage. It was an incredibly complex issue at the time, and the conversations around it really remained difficult to this day. Upon the release of Graceland in six people generally felt one of three ways about Paul Simon. I'd say to some he was a rebellious hero taking a stand for artists against bureaucracy into solitary and regimes. Others thought he was a naive and idealistic hippy who undermined the anti apartheid caused by going there. And still others thought he was a thief, like countless colonialists before him, going to Africa and plundering what was there. Paul Simon himself summed up this public perception in later years. He said, here's this white guy from New York, and he ripped off these poor innocent guys. I wrote about all this in an article for Rolling Stone tied to the album's thirtieth anniversary, and which I'd like to site now, not because one of those guys who likes to quote himself, but I just don't want to accidentally self played Durie and get in trouble. Uh. The fundamental debate surrounding the ethics of Graceland hinges on two questions. Was Paul Simon right and breaking the boycott? And did he have the right to make the album at all. Let's discuss question one first. There are many who would argue that the South African cultural Boycott was a deeply flawed strategy that did more harm than good for the disenfranchised people that it was put in place to support. This view is shared by all of the musicians who played with Paul on Graceland. Sax player Barney Rochabana said in in South Africa, we had no opportunity. You could have dreams, but they never come true. It really destroys you. But Graceland opened my eyes and set a tone of hope in my life. Yet this very uplifting revelation is countered by Dolli Tombo, the founder of the Artists Against Apartheid organization, who felt that Paul Simon put the show based ambitions of a handful of local musicians above the struggle of a nation. Tembo told The New York Times, we were fighting for our land, for our identity. We had a job to do and it was a serious job. And we saw Paul Simon coming as a threat because it was not sanctioned by the liberation movement. And then we get to question to the question of whether Paul Simon had the right to make the album at all, and this question has gotten more complicated with the passing of the decades. It's important to remember that terms like cultural appropriation didn't really exist when grace Lam was recorded in n Whether you called it borrowing, paying homage to, riffing on, or stealing. White artists have been incorporating traditionally Black music into their work for most of the twentieth century. Uh go back to you know, George Gershwin even but Grace Laan was groundbreaking because it wore its influences so nakedly and it credited them, which was crucial. South African musicians and singers were invited to share the spotlight, giving many of the mainstream international exposure for the first time, and Paul Simon's assistance that Graceland was a true collaboration you know in quotes is up for debate. But the album did manage to provide a platform for a group of musicians who were legally prohibited from participating in an international stage, and that counts for something. Still, elements of the grace Land project remain problematic to some. The South African Trombonis and anti apartheid activist Jonas Guangua summed up the thoughts of probably countless black artists when confronted with Graceland success. So it has taken another white man to discover my people. He asked, Yeah, I mean, the other big thing about this is that Paul Simon tried to duck a lot of this just by paying people more, but he ultimately, um, you know, it's still the exact same Chess Records Berry Gordy thing like that John Mulaney famously said, you'll give me, you'll you'll take all my songwrits and just give me a shiny new Cadillac. Mr. Gordy Like, yeah, you could pay people really well to record, but if you're not giving them songwriting credits and percentages off that a's still a one day paycheck or a one you know, like the motame musicians, like you pay him by the hour. Sure that's fair in the moment, but you're still ultimately in control of the publishing and making millions of dollars off of it over fifty years instead of hundreds of dollars off of it over several hours. Well, Paul put I think five out of eleven songs on Grace Land he has co writes with some of the African musicians he played. Initially though, okay, I believe so okay good. I thought this was one of those I I mean, I I wasn't a retro. I was gonna say, I thought it was like a led Zeppelin thing where he was like, fine, I'll do it. Oh. All lots of challenging questions to consider as we dive into this fascinating story about an album that for me, represents a high watermark and record of music and a brilliant cross cultural experience that, as I said earlier, it succeeds on nearly every level. So that further ado, here is everything you didn't know about Paul Simon's grace Land one. Well, we're gonna start at the very beginning in nine four, Paul Simon was at a crossroads. Actually, no, he wasn't. He wasn't at a cross roads at all. He's basically at rock bottom. And this was not a place where Paul Simon ever really found himself. He dominated the seventies with a string of critical and commercial hits like every big Paul Simon's song that isn't on Graceland. But he entered the eighties with One Trick Pony, which was a film written by and starring himself, plus an accompanying musical soundtrack. Neither of these, the album or the movie was especially well received. Have you ever seen this. Nope, you neither don't want to. Alright, moving on, But Paul Stock rose in September of one when he and Arc garf Uncle reunited for their famous concert in Central Park, which drew a mind blowing five thousand people to the Great Lawn and became one of the biggest musical events in history, bigger than would Stock supposedly, that is crazy. They planned a subsequent reunion tour, but then old tensions quickly returned, and a proposed reunion album tentatively titled Think Too Much fell through. They've been recording it together, but Paul ultimately wiped Artie's vocals from the track, which is an underdiscussed petty move on his part. I love that Paul Simon's ala. You could always be counted on for some kind of deliciously petty knife in the ribs, even his own. Yeah. The resulting solo album was released in three as Hearts and Bones, which is just one of the most crushing records of his career. It's filled with allusions to his troubled relationship with actress Carrie Fisher, and the only thing sadder than a devastating breakup record is a devastating breakup record that flops, which Hearts and Bones did. It became the lowest charting record of his career or totally outstripped by the new vanguard of MTV hit makers like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince and Paul Simon would later say, I had a personal blow and a career setback, and the combination of the two just put me into a tailspin. And he even told his friend Philip Glass, the composer, that he was no longer interested in writing hits around this time. So, with his career at a low ebb, his personal life and shambles, and completely estranged from his singing partner, Paul Simon spent the spring of pondering his next move, and he did so in the driveway of his property in Montauk, Long Island, watching workmen build the house he planned for himself and Terry Fisher, which honestly, that should have been a song. That is devastating. He would just sit in the driveway, spark up a joint and listen to tapes. There's absolutely no more mid century like white guy image than someone sitting in their Montuck driveway stoned watching workmen, watching workmen build their house. Next to snl Impresarios Lord Michael's. Yes, that's a John Cheever short story. Yeah, pretty much so. He's sitting in the driveway in the past the time. He would often listen to tapes, and he especially liked one specific tape, a bootleg tape of South African music with the handwritten label Accordion Jive Hits Volume two. Now, the way that he obtained this tape is an interesting story. Grace Land was obviously a major collaborative effort featuring work by a host of unrepresented people and cultures. But grace Land likely wouldn't have happened at all had it not been for Lauren Michael's, the producer Saturday Night Live. There are several ways that Lauren was basically the fairy godfather of the grace Land story, and we'll touch on more later. Lauren and Paul were close friends and neighbors out on Long Island, and yeah, I think Paul was building his house either close to or directly next door to Lawrence and lawt talk. Now, a lot of people forget that Lauren Michael's actually left Saturday Night Live in nineteen eighty five, years into the show's run to try his hand at making what was basically a primetime version of SNL, and this new show was called, fittingly the New Show. And unfortunately, the new show failed to catch on and was canceled in the spring of after I think just nine episodes. It didn't last long, and this was bad news for the defunct show's band leader, Heidie Berg, who had been lured away from her prior gig on SNL. She chose poorly. She went to Lauren one day after the show got canceled to try to figure out what her next new gig could be, and Lauren suggested she go to speak to was good friend Paul Simon, who kept offices from him just down the hall of New York City's Brill Building. So Heidieberg paid Paul a visit and played him some of her songs. One thing led to another, and eventually he offered to produce an album for her, and as an example of how she wanted this album to sound, Heidi Loan's Paul this bootleg tape with the homemade label Accordion Jive Hits Volume two. It was Township Jive music from Sueto, which was a black suburb on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Yeah, township is interesting. Um. It comes from like the literal townships, which were these I mean they were slums. They were racially segregated slums in in South Africa that the government basically pushed everyone who wasn't white into. Um. It's almost like a lative American reservation essentially. But you guys can live here, yeah. Um. But it's it's funny because there's so many micro genres in there that all fall under the heading of township. I mean it's almost like saying like blues or rock music, um, because they all these all these guys were living in these environments, and everyone took the kind of music that they grew up in and came and and found new influences from and combined them in different ways. There's one in particular called Kuala music that it's just all built around penny whistles, which is why you hear so many like penny whistle sound and and all over the I mean, and it's just that's they were like, you know, so much of this stuff comes from being like, well we have a very cheap instruments, what can we do with that? And you know it's the answer is incredible things. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, there's a lot that folds into that genre specifically. I mean there's there's a great UM music comp uh series called The Indestructible Beat Molly Brown. Yes, No, the Indestructible Beat of Soweto, which is so like very like it. You know, it's when he went down there. Yeah, yeah, it's it's one of the most formative comps of of that uh that is that came out at the time, and it's got Ladysmith Black Mambazo on it. Um So. Anyway, so this tape that she played Paul was filled with jangly guitars and saxophones and really interesting percussive elements and most fascinating to her accordions because she really loved this accordion sound that was a hallmark of this music. Yeah, the the accordion is so interesting in I mean, the term world music is problematic. You can't take every kind of music that isn't American music and flatten it into one label. But um, let me just say that the accordions presence on the international, non europe non American stage is very interesting because like in like in UM, a lot of Mexico like Tehano Konjunto music and from Mexico. Like the reason that a lot of the that stuff developed is because they would get either missionaries or sailors coming in with like concertinas and accordions, and then people would take those instruments because they were cheap and portable, uh and and basically take music that had been purely vocal passed down through oral tradition for decades and centuries and then just start supporting it to these instruments. So in Africa you get it because sailors had brought like concertinas in and so they sort of spread through the continent from the coasts and also through missionaries who brought accordions in. And that's how you know because you don't have like read organ keyboard instruments in very very old African traditions, that's not so much a thing. But they adopted this stuff because you could take it from village to village, you could travel with it, and that's where you get that sound that so much of it is based around. I mean, you hear it on the opening track of Grace Land The Boy in the Bubble Um. I think it's the first sound that you hear on the record, and that wasn't an accident, Like he wanted that kind of wild cartwheeling accordion sound, very disorienting, the sort of Harald that this was going to be a very new kind of sound that you hadn't really heard accordion and gated drums, gated verb. So Heideberg, Lauren Michael's friend uh lent this cassette to Paul Simon on the condition that she could have it back in a week. This was her favorite tape and there's only one copy of it. So Paul put it on his car stereo during one of his drives out to mont talk to supervise the construction of his new house, or sit in the driveway and moon over Carrie Fisher. But much like Heidieberg, he was instantly captivated by this music. He later said, it was very good summer music, happy music. It sounded like very early rock and roll to me, black urban mid fifties rock and roll, like the great Atlantic tracks from that period. Yeah. And and the thing that I love about this comparison is that, like, um, you know, he says later on something that isn't true, which is that this music only has major chords in it, which is not true, but it's very funny that he got that coming from folk music and coming from early rock and roll, which by and large is one four five major tonality. Chord progressions and spent even like the bass patterns and sold music and blues patterns are coming from the pentatonic scale, which is what you hear in a lot of African music. It's all based around major and minor pentatonic um these, which is is kind of an oversimplification because those are the building blocks of all music. There's a really cool lecture that Bobby McFerrin gives that is up on Yes, that Bobby McFerrin, which is up on YouTube, where he basically he um he's pretending to be on a keyboard on stage and he tells the crowd like, here's your tonic, your root note, m M, and then he jumps on stage from like position to position, up and down, up up the mind, up the major pentatonic scale and he's like, here's your scale. And then he starts jumping around and skipping notes and the crowd follows him and he's like he's using this to illustrate that it's like this really ingrained like scale that is like universal to almost all forms of music, almost all um geographical locations in music. I mean, if you start tearing apart like the way that pentatonic actually the arrangement of those notes actually works. You hear it in like native American music, you hear it in Chinese music, you know. So it's really interesting. But particularly his comparison to rock and roll in blues because like folk music, cliche is the one four five chord progression. Same with early blues and rock and roll. Um. So yeah, I just think it's interesting that he heard those I mean, obviously of course he heard that last Paul Simon, but that compares it is very on the money in a way that is not just a fascile weird thing to say. So after about a month of listening to this tape, which I have to add is well over a week, remember Heideberg wanted it back in a week. One of this tape back in a week, he said that he started improvising melodies over it as he listens, And this wasn't a serious attempt to compose anything. He was just singing along to the cassette for fun. And aside from the nondescript title accordion Jive Hits Volume two. The tape bore no hint of the music's origin. He knew it came from South Africa, but that was pretty much all he had to go on. So you would say, after a couple of weeks of driving back and forth to the house and listening to the tape, I thought, what is this tape? This is my favorite tape. I wonder who this band is. And eventually he called Warner Brothers label chief Lenny Warnker to help track it down, and Warriker got in touch with South African producer Hilton Rosenthal, who identified Paul's favorite track on the tape as an instrumental called gum Boots by the Bayoyo Boys, and Paul had an idea of buying the track outright and writing his own words and melody to record over top, which is something he actually has a history of doing. That's what he did for the Simon and Garfuncle song El Condor Passa from the Bridge over Troubled Water album that had been an old Indian folk song that he just bought the rights to and wrote his own music over top. So, uh, poor Heidi never got her tape back, nor did she get the music, the album that he was supposed to produce with her. Um, she finally met up with Paul. Uh. She got the sense that Paul was like kind of avoiding her. Say that. Yeah, So she catches up to with him backstage at one of his concerts and she gets talking with him, and he he talks about how excited he is to go and record me an album of this music that he'd heard on the tape, and she importedly holds out her hands and says, where's my end? Uh? Yeah. Uh. The other thing that I've heard here is that she was like talking to him about this and she was like, well, I'm just going to get studio musicians to make something that sounds like this. And he said to her, why don't you just go to South Africa record and she was like, I'm not rich. And the wheels began turning in Paul's head. Uh. Their relationship obviously deteriorated. She was name checked in the liner notes to Graceland, but too little Too. She later said, I loaned him the tape because I wanted to make a record. I didn't loan him the tape so he would make a record. There are two slightly different versions of this story in two wildly contrasting biographies. There's Peter Ames Carlin's Paul Simon bio from and then there's Robert Hilburn's bar from. The Hilburn one was made with Paul simons cooperation, and it's a lot more sympathetic yeah, and the Hillburn one goes out of its way to note that asked if she'd ever thought of going to South Africa to record the music, Heidi said no, she just liked the accordion. Part. Carlin's version is that she was like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna I'll just recreate it here with student musicians in the States, and Paul Simon was like, well, why don't you go to South Africa? And she was like, I don't have your credit card, ah, or I guess liquid assets. Um. But the end result of all this is that Paul Simon got his mojo back. No longer sitting in his driveway for his unbuilt house watching day laborers, Paul Simon finally felt sufficiently motivated to steal from black people. Uh His longtime engineer Roy Haley later said that he knew Paul would bounce back from his post Hearts and Bones depression because he was the most competitive person I've ever known. And this manifested in Paul's apparently rejuvenated creative spirit and his desire to make this record. There's a there's a Randy Newman's story here. Let's go to Georgian's Randy Newman Corner. You love this story. I want to I want you to read it. Oh, thank you. I love this story too. Randy Newman tells this great story of playing whiffleball with Paul Simon once, which I want an oral history of that moment. I don't know how that came to pass, but apparently Randy Newman was on the pitcher's mound and Paul Simon was batting in this whiffleball game, and as he stood at the plate, Paul was just muttering to himself, I've gotta hit it, I've gotta hit it, and Randy said, you know, he could have been kidding, but it felt serious. He really cared about that stupid whiffleball game. Good for him, I would have goals. I want to know, if I want to know, what do you think Randy Newman's does. Randy Newman's was Randy Newman a whiffleball guy. I see him more. He's like, okay, wrastler, oh yeah yeah, no absolutely, or a bowler. I could see him as a bowler stocky yeah. Uh. They started have discussions about how to go about recording this album, and the bootleg Boyoyo Boys tape really wasn't up to technical standards, so they would have to rerecord it for Paul to be able to sing over top of it, and the brass at Warner Brothers tried to convince him to just get some good players and record it in New York. But much like James Cameron, Paul wanted authenticity. He wanted to go there. He wanted to use the players in the region and record it on their home turf. And Paul Simon was sort of famous for doing this, going on these musical field trips, you know, to get the sounds that he wanted. When he wished to explore the emerging reggae sounds on his nineteen seventy two track Mother and Child Reunion, he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica to record in the famous Dynamic Sound studios, and when he wanted to add an extra dose of funk to the album, there goes Ryman Simon. The following year, in nineteen seventy three, he went to Alabama and recorded with the Muscle Shoals sound Rhythm Action. As he told National Geographic in I learned pretty early on if you want to get the music right, you should probably travel the words being played, as opposed to asking musicians who are not familiar with it to copy it. So he decided he would have to go to South Africa. And what's more, he thought this was the perfect time in his career to do it. He was so commercially cold that he could take risks without having to justify it the anxious label executives. He said, part of me thought, great, no one's gonna be looking over my shoulders saying what's the next single gonna be? Or what the hell are you going to Africa for. Suddenly no one's saying anything about me, and I'm just going by my instincts. I was just excited by the music. So to get the sounds that he heard on the bootleg Accordion Ji Volume two tape, he would have to go to South Africa, and, as he later said with hilarious understatement, at first I thought it's too bad the tape isn't from Zimbabwe or Zaire and Nigeria because life would have been simpler one of those more convenient African countries for me, Paul signon, God, it's so inconvenient that they're under apartheid rule. For me, Paul Simon makes my life so much God. He's like an old real building era hustler, and that's how he talks about dealing with the South African government. He's basically thinks that they're trying to hustle him. He's really what it boils down to. M hmm, guy. His beautiful, beautiful music recording in South Africa in the mid eighties was dangerous a and prohibited b by the United Nations UM. This was the time of the famous aforementioned international boycott in protests of the South African government who instituted apartheid or separateness, whereby the white minority ruled and disenfranchised every one who wasn't white. Um, they weren't even citizens. I stopped them of the citizenship and in all their rights. Yeah. In December, the U in General Assembly passed Resolution thirty five slash two oh six, which forced all states to prevent all cultural academic, sporting and other exchanges with South Africa and ordered writers, artists, musicians and other personalities to boycott the nation. This was so strict that it technically extended to working with South African players who weren't even in the country at the time. Paul Simon did not believe this applied to him. Depending on your stance, uh, you could simply say that he was making an argument on behalf of art transcending all borders, or he was simply angered that it inconvenienced him and his love of accordion music. Again, two things could be true at the same time in the In the two thousand twelve documentary Under African Skies, Paul Simon returns to South Africa for the first time in twenty five years and meets with Dali Tambo, who is the founder of Artists Against Apartheid and the son of the African National Congress President Oliver Tambo. He had been an outspoken opponent of Grace Land and Paul sits down with him at Tambo's home and argues that Paul Simon was right. Tambo tells him, we've been saying to artists at this point in the history of South Africa. The expression of your support must be non participatory. You can't go there. If you go there, you become part of apartheid's attempt to gain international legitimacy. That is how solidarity works. You. If you break a strike line, you are a scab. If you break a boycott, you are in violation of it. And uh, you know, we'll get into the Sun's City thing later. But it's interesting that Simon and garf Uncle turned down an offer to perform at Sun City. This is a resort that was located in the supposedly independent tribal homeland, ninety miles outside of Johannesburg. But in practice, what it was was a loophole for the South African government to bring white international superstars in to perform in what was essentially South Africa under the veneer of a different name and legal jurisdiction. So, in any event, Paul Simon didn't like being told what to do, and he wanted to make the kind of music he wanted to make exactly where he wanted to make it. And this was early and Paul happened to run into Harry Belafonte, yet a star studied recording session for the Granddaddy of all charity singles We Are the World As One Does. Paul knew that Harry was a legendary civil rights activist and he asked his advice on how to handle the South Africa situation. Harry encouraged Paul's musical endeavors, but he also encouraged them to check with quote the powers that prevail in the African National Congress, which was South Africa's anti apartheid opposition party WE, which had been led by Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment in nineteen sixty four. PAULA didn't want to ask permission. I didn't want to wait. As Harry Belafonte said in the Under African Skies documentary, I can't read this is the right phase. Harry seems to give him the benefit of the doubt. He takes a very generous read on the situation, he said. Paul declared that the power of art and the voice of the artist was supreme, and to beg the right of passage was against his instinct. Paul had a much more quaint way of putting it to Dolly Tombo. He said, it's like having your dad tell you not to take the car out on a date that you really want to go on, you take the car anyway. Paul Simon was a little more articulate to The New York Times. He said, I knew I would be criticized if I went, even though I wasn't going to record for the government or to perform for segregated audiences. I was following my musical instincts and wanting to work the people whose music I greatly admired. Incredible good for him, and I say that sarcastically. Paul Simon also went to his black friends as king, begging them to tell him he was an okay person for doing this. He went to Quincy Jones, which, as you very eloquently described, it is like going to mom after Dad said no um. Quincy was more laid back about the whole thing, UH, telling Paul, just make sure everybody gets paid and that everybody likes it. And so Paul Simon, Uh, in the spirit of time immemorial of white guys everywhere, believing there is no problem you can't throw money at until it goes away, offered triple US Union scale two hundred an hour instead of fifteen an hour to the musicians and promised to share writing credits, writing musical or lyrical input. South African mus be getting fifteen bucks an hour Jesus Christ for like what ten songs a day? You said when they were cutting this stuff of that studio. Uh. Yeah, and uh that was a good enough deal that even the South African Black Musicians Union passed a resolution to formally invite Simon to record in their country. I have tons of black friends. They all said this was okay. My incredibly wealthy black friend Quincy Jones said this was okay. So I'm doing it. Have some money. Please tell me I'm a good person. Tell me, please tell me I'm a good person. Please have some money. It's complicated. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information in just a moment. Paul an engineer Roy Halley flew to South Africa in February for what they intended to be a semi secret trip. But as we said earlier, Paul Simon's career was at such a low EBB that there was really no need for secrecy. He said, I was so cold that I could do this all privately. Nobody would be checking in And THO has often been said that the South African musicians were thrilled to perform with the star of Paul Simon's caliber. This is not strictly true. There was a mixed response among the local South African musicians, with some very eager to play with him and some not so much. Basist but Keithi Kumalo, who worked the day job as a mechanic in a car garage, had no idea who Paul Simon was, and when he finally made the connection, I think it was with Mother and Child Reunion was the only song that he sort of dimly was aware of of Paul's. Even then, he was even more confused as to why this American superstar wanted to record with them. He said, I kind of wondered what we were doing. I mean, I continued to ask myself, who's going to want to hear this township music in America? Yeah, he's so funny, and all the interviews with him, he's like I was listening to weather Report. I was very much into jazz fusion at the time, so it must have been very baffled by this five ft three Jewish songwriter coming in and stuffing money down his shirt. With producer Hilton Rosenthal on hand to bridge the cultural gap as best he could. They hold up in Johannesburg's Ovation Studios, which was a state of the art, twenty four tracks studio, and called in a steady stream of local musicians. They're the Boo Boys who set this whole journey off with their song on the bootleg tape Paul loved, as well as members of the popular South African group called Stimmela. There was Lulu Massilela and General M. D. Sharinda and the Gaza sisters. And given the skepticism I just mentioned, it's probably understandable that the first day was a little tense. The musicians went out of their way to call all the white people sir, and they were very concerned about doing the wrong thing because, like I said, they were used to cranking out like ten songs today and this was far from Paul's m O. Instead of having a specific song in mind, Paul just wanted to play and see what happened. And the whole idea was that they would jam for ten to thirty minutes, very loose, no headphones, almost garage like room, and then Paul would go back to America and try to piece together tracks and write lyrics over top, and sometimes he would use only a little bit of a jam and a good example of this is the song Graceland Itself, which I believe only pulled the drum track played by VC Kumalo, although they might have actually re recorded it I think about it. But this technique, it was not unlike a modern hip hop producer chopping up pre existing songs to create new beats. And this completely inverted the normal way that Paul made records, which was writing a song first and then coming into the studio to record the track. And this was essentially an anecdote to what he thought had gone wrong in his previous album, Hearts and Bones, where he loved the songs that he'd written, but he felt that the tracks themselves weren't very exciting and kind of come up short. So in this case, he could start with a really exciting track and then bill a melody and lyrics around it, and if he wound up not really liking the song he wrote for it, he could scrap it and go back to the original basic track and start building it up again. And that's what happened with the album's opener, The Boy in the Bubble, it was an entirely different song at first, and he wrote several different songs that went over top of it. Yeah, Paul's longtime an engineer, from going back to the Columbia days. A guy named Rory Haley or Halle told Sound on Sound in two thousand eight. Paul certainly wasn't going to tell those guys what to play. But he's a master organizer. He's extremely smart, and he was great at determining which section would be nice as a bridge, or chorus or an intro, while striking up friendships with the group members with whom he could communicate. These included the guitarist Ray Peery, who always had a wealth of stuff going on in his head. He was smart. He could tell what Paul liked, and he would just go into the little catalog in his mind and come up with something. Whenever Paul said what do you have, Ray, the response would be, well, I have this. That saw the songs really evolved. Hayley continued, Paul has great musical ears, and when it came to sifting through all the material and deciding what to use, where to make edits, and how to shape things into a track, he had a lot of that in his head. He has an incredible mind, and there wasn't anything that he didn't make a mental note of while listening to the musicians play their grooves. Yeah, we'll get to this later, but there's a story when they were recording the basic track for the song grace Land and Ray starts playing and he moves to a minor chord, which Paul said was unusual for the kind of music he'd been hearing them play. Hearing Ray play, and he asked Ray later, like, what made you do that chord? And Ray sideralts, I'm imitating the kind of music that you do, like the kind of American folks stuff that you play. So yeah, he's he's a real m v P of these sessions. Ray Peery. Paul described the sessions in South Africa as for the most part, euphoric, that's his words, except for you know, apartheid. Ah. He told MPR in twenty two, Well, in the middle of the euphoric feeling in the studio, you would have reminders that you're living in an incredibly tense racial environment where the law all the land was apartheid, and the black musicians would have to leave around sundown, so they could be bust back to their township as required by law after dark. They were prohibited from writing, public transport or even being in the street in Johannesburg after curfew. And there was a moment when Paul was in the middle of recording what would become Gum Boots, when the sax player packed up his instrument at five o'clock because he could be arrested if they found them in town. And Paul told Rolling Stone in there was a surface tranquility, but right below the surface was all this tension. And there was a story that he told in the Under African Skies documentary where the Boyoo boys were having a hard time nailing apart that Paul wanted, and Paul was getting visibly frustrated, and one of the white engineers at the studio leaned over and kind of elbowed him and said, see, this is what we're talking about. They can't do it. I'll tell you they can, but they can't. So that's uh, not great, not great, Bob. Speaking of the studio, one of the biggest knocks against Graceland is that it sounds dated, particularly to the mid eighties, and probably the best example of that is the drum sound on this record, which is a choice. It is very funny to me to conceptually have uh, these quote unquote low fi quote unquote authentic sounds, like to be like, oh, I want to get like the most authentic like African, you know, playing musicianship possible, and then to be like, but I want the drums to sound like Phil Collins, and that is exactly what he does. The sound on this record of those drums. As we mentioned earlier, one of the first things you hear on this record is the drum sound of the eighties gated reverb. It's a little difficult to explain, but you will if you hear it. And there's all compets of punch in. I can punch in the opening of the Boy in the Bubble, So what that is? And this is so fascinating and and this became it you heard on in the Air tonight. It's probably one of the most famous because that song is like drums, but also on Let's Dance, as I mentioned, Hounds of Love. It is huge on all the hair metal records. And it was a mistake. It was a complete and utter mistake, and you can blame Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel and a producer named Hugh Pagum. Phil Collins was drumming on a Peter Gabriel song that would become this song Intruder, And there was a solid state logic console that they had that was new at the time. It was a new console and had a multi channel compressor that was built into it. UH and a compressor is a musical piece of musical technology that essentially takes quiet sounds and makes them louder, and takes loud songs and makes them quieter. It's a gross over simplification, but that's essentially what it does. It's how you get a more even consistent tone from UH instruments vocal for recording purposes in studios, and previously you had to patch that that technology in one channel at a time. And with the advances in the time at the time in digital technology, this console that they were using was one of the first ones that could just apply compression to every input channel. And what happened was the way that it was built, it also had it applied to the talk back channel. When you're recording in a studio. A talk back mike is a mic that is in the live room that feeds back into the control room so that the musicians can talk in the live room while they're recording or in between takes, and people in the control room can hear it because in a normal situation, those rooms are separated and soundproofed. So the compression, because the way that this console was built, the compression was also applied to the talk back mike because the thinking was, oh, well, if the musicians are in like opposite corners of the room and someone is talking from one corner of the room and his voice is very quiet, we need the compression to make it as loud as someone who is physically closer to the mic. So what happened was Phil Collins was talking on this and then suddenly started playing drums without telling cue pagum, I'm going to play the drums down, turn off the talk back mike. And when they heard the way that the drums sounded through this talkback mike and through this specific digital compression, they all flipped because it sound It made the acoustic sound of these drums suddenly huge and really in your face and really amplified. And the record the console wasn't even set up to record from the talk back mike, this guy, Hugh Paget, had to modit to be able to record from that, and then he added a noise gate, which is another device. And what a noise gate does is it cuts off all signal below a certain threshold. So the sound that you're hearing there is a very very loud attack the initial of the drum of whatever the acoustic signal is, and then very little of the acoustic decay that would naturally follow in a room. Now, the other half of the gated reverb sound is another specific piece of technology that, as all things must can come back to Prince. Prince was his drum sounds enormously influential on stuff like um, you know, Dirty Mind and uh, Sign of the Times. But there's a very specific combination that he used, which was the Lynn Drum. Lyn drum machine Roger Lynn into a digital reverb box called the A M S R M X sixteen. Now that digital rever box had a number of settings presets that you could use um small hall, spring reverb, plate reverb, large hall, and one of the presets was something called non linear reverb. And what that means is that normal reverb decays the longer goes on right because in the true sense of reverberation, there is less sound reverberating in a space, so it's going to get quieter. Nonlinear flips that, so it actually gets louder as it it starts off with a quiet sound and actually gets louder if you look at the wave form. And Prince's staff engineer at the time as a woman named Susan Rogers, and she's one of the people who was an architect of this sound. She now teaches at Berkeley. She describes the effect of having this noisegate, having this very compressed drum sound, and having non linear reaverb on it as a tidal wave, an enormous title wave of sound that suddenly stops. You hear it on these early eighties things, and then it became just kind of the drum sound of the eighties you heard on all these pop records, hair metal. And then when the nineties rolled around and um Nirvana killed all of those people, Um, the trend immediately came back to very swung back around, largely thanks to Steve Albini two very dry drum production, very very dry, natural sounding, just the sound of a drum set in a small room, and the other big swing around that was hip hop producers going back to old crate soul samples. So you stopped. You basically started hearing acoustic drum sounds on stuff again at J direct on stuff, Yeah, directly from the like Beastie Boys, like Paul's boutique. Those were drums samples as opposed to being like a Lynn drum or a DM like an Oberheim or one of those media's drum machines that you hear on like rock the Bells, like like some of the deaf jam stuff is very drum machine heavy um. And then it came back around as all things must, like you start hearing him and and Jack the stuff that Jack antonoff, Jack antonof loves a gated snare, loves gated reverbs. So you have heard that sound start to come around, but it is uh yes, instantly screams eighties. Sorry, I went on a long ramp there just as you were about to say, I have something to say about that. Oh no, no, I mean I you know what I mean. First of all, I hate that sound. Well, it's deeply unnatural. That's what's so interesting to me about it. That's just it's cold. It literally it makes me feel cold. It was like something about it. That's but that's why it's so revolutionaries. You hear these guys who were like, you know that the sound of their entire musical life had been like would drums in a room? And then if you get bored with that and you're suddenly like, I want to reinvent the way that drums are literally conceived of and heard. You can imagine flipping overhearing like that those ear those Prince records or something like this, and being like what is that like dubstep or like how we like like it's the shock of the new. It just immediately became very overused. Yes, well, I mean he you questioned why Paul would use something that really screamed pop, you know, dance pop when he was went all the way to Africa to try to get the most authentic sounds for these records. I think that he wanted it to be a blend. I mean, I think he wanted it like so much of the I don't think he wanted to do a you know, field recording this type of album. I think he wanted to show that there were connections between these types of music that wouldn't have been obvious and That's why I won't get too later. When he made zydeco record, things are requarded with Los Lobos, who had kind of a Mexican Southwestern influence of sounds. He wanted to show the connection between all these unlike genres of music. So I think that that was you called it a choice earlier in a in a way that was sort of meant to be sarcastic. But I think that there was a choice. I think that was the reason why he did it. I think that it was added this the most modern, cutting edge element that he possibly could at that time to try to make something new. I mean, it seems like the kind of thing that um I mean not so much with the gated drums, but a lot of the stuff that David Byrne was doing around then too. He did get Adrian to the common factor. There's Adrian Blue coming into to make stupid guitar sounds. Adrian Blue played the uh the riff on you can call me Al, which is next to those big gated drum sounds. It's probably the other most Eighties sound on this whole record those because that's a guitar playing a sack synth. Well, needless to say Paul Simon felt somewhat relieved by the time he left South Africa uh In about two weeks he returns with rough tracks, but it would ultimately become Graceland, The Boy and the Bubble, I know what I know, gun Boots Crazy Lot Volume two and I believe you can call me al Accounts Ferry. When that one was started, he hold up at Manhattan's Hit Factory Studios with certain key members of the African groups he was recording with, including the aforementioned guitarist Ray Pierry, bassist Bakithi Kumalo, and the drummer Isaac Mitchali, and they fleshed out the tracks together, and Paul made a point of flying these musicians first class, having them picked up by white limo drivers and booking them into top rate hotels and getting the meals at five star restaurants. In the documentary We Keep Mentioning Under African Skies, he tells the story of the musicians wanting to go see Central Park and they asked Paul where to go to get a permit to go there, and Paul somewhat tearfully told them, you know, you don't need a permit, you just you just go, which is actually a very sweet, touching moment. Uh. And then Paul decided to take a quick trip to colonialism HQ London, Ah. He went to record with and he went to record with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the legendary South African acapella choir. The group's name comes from the town of Ladysmith, South Africa, and Paul had first seen them in the nineteen seventy nine BBC documentary called Rhythm of Resistance The Music of South Africa, but he didn't really dive into them until he made his journey to South Africa, and while he was there, he couldn't get enough. He listened to their tapes over and over. He said he used to fall asleep listening to him during his stay in South Africa, but adorably, he said, he was too shy to actually call them to invite them to work together when he was recording there, and he explained in the Under African Skies documentary, I was bewitched by Ladysmith Black Mambaza because they were so beautiful. The music was enchanting. It was all acapella, and it was so beautiful that I was intimidated. They were so good at what they did, and it was so contained that I didn't know at the time how I could possibly fit into their world. But eventually someone associated with Ovation Studios put in the call the Ladysmith's leader, Joseph shabbal Alla, to come as a guest to one of the final Johannesburg sessions, and Joseph and Paul got on like a house on fire. Paul some uch sheepishly asked if he could write Ladysmith Blackman Bozza was a song and send it to them and see if they were interested in collaborating on it, you know, no strings attached. He said they could change it however they wanted, and if they didn't want to do it, that was fine with him. Joseph shabal Alla said yes, and the men embraced, and he later said that it was the first time that he had ever hugged the white man, which is also very sweet and it's very touching. Their relationship would become very close, so close that Paul would produce Ladysmith's first album from Warner Brothers seven's Shaka Zulu, which wanted Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Recording. Paul went back to America and in the summer of nineteen he wrote the song that would become homeless. He sent a very simple piano demoo Joseph encouraging him to change it however he saw fit and they collaborated it, mixing in Paul's vocals with their own piece that was based around a Zulu wedding tune. But when it came time to record, Paul decided he just couldn't handle another trip to Johannesburg. He said, basically the vibes were too heavy, so they DeCamp to Abbey Roads Studios in London in October. But when they actually got into the studio, something wasn't working. It just wasn't coming together. The tractor wasn't coming together, and this really upset Ladysmith, Blackman Bozzo because, like so many of their comrades in South Africa, they were used to recording upwards of ten songs a day and the fact that they couldn't nail one was really hard for them. So completely by their own accord, these singers went back to their hotel and they worked until after midnight to revise their part of the song. They changed the lyrics to something that they thought would better fit with Paul's Homeless theme, and they sang about people living in caves on the side of a mountain, cold and hungry, using their fists as pillows. And they practiced until late until the night, and by the next morning when they returned to the studio, they had this perfect blend of two songs from two cultures. And to their absolute delight and complete surprise, because it was a very close knit group, Paul actually went into the studio with them and joined them around the microphone to sing his delicate vocal takes, and Joseph later said, I nearly fainted. I'm thinking, who is this guy? He's my brother? Why is he hiding himself in America? I call him brother? I find that very tough. I love I love Josepha. He died a few years back, which is very sad that he's an incredible musician. And Paul gave Joseph a credit on Homeless, as well as on Diamonds on the soles of his shoes, which will talk about a little later. That was a late addition to the track listing. He also gave the accordion player Ferrairi Motlo Hiloah a credit on The Boy and the Bubble. He gave General M. D. Sharinda credit on I Know What I Know, and members of the Boyolia Boys credit on gum Boots. This was the re recorded version of the instrumental track that Paul first heard on the bootleg cassette tape from Heidi Berg and sent this whole African adventure into motion in the first place. And this type of music is traditionally a favorite of miners and railway workers, and that's why the title is gum Boots. It refers to the heavy boots that they wear on the job. And hilariously, Paul wasn't all that happy with the Boyolia Boys when he recorded with them, and he later said the only reason the song gum Boots made the cut for the album was because this was the song that got him hooked on this genre of music and it felt wrong to not include it. He later told song Talk. If it wasn't the gum Boots led me into the whole project, I would have dropped gum Boots from the album because I think it's the weakest link of the South African cuts. And as he did with all the South African tracks, Simon gave writing credits the original writers of the song and in total, that's five out of the eleven tracks on Graceland that he split credit for, which was very important to him the show that he wasn't just going to Africa and plundering their music solely for his own personal game. And in fact, the only grace Lan musicians to openly accuse Paul Simon of plagiarism were Americans. The last two tracks on the Graceland track list they bucked the South African theme. Paul knew after coming back from Johannesburg that needed to have a few more songs to pass out the album. Uh he attended a Louisiana Occasion music showcase at Carnegie Hall and while listening to the music, he noticed a similarity between the accordion centric township music he was making and the zietical sounds of the Gulf Shore. And he thought this could be a really cool thematic link between these two cultures. And like he said in the Under African Skies documentary, that's really the secret to world music. People are able to listen to each other and make associations and play their own music that sounds like it fits into another culture. So Paul and Roy Halley made a trip to Louisiana and a recorded track for what became That Was Your Mother in a small studio behind the music store with a Zyetegal band called Good Rock and Doopsie and the Twisters. I can't get enough of that name. It all seemed to go fine until Grace Landon was a hit, by which point Rock and Doopsey demanded co writing credit and royalties on That Was Your Mother. If you listen closely, you can hear certain similarities in chord structure and the accordion passages to a zydeco song called My Baby She's Gone, which is registered to one Alton Ruben, Sr. A k A. Rock and Doopsy keep on saying as much as the cashtag rock Yes. Now. I've seen two explanations for why this case was dropped. One was that Paul Simon's lawyers hired Occasion music scholar to look into this claim and found that Bogus or two Good Rock and Doopsy decided that the exposure was all the payment he needed and decided not to make any further claim. I call that the old intern exploitation excuse. Yeah, Zydeko is really fascinating. I mean, aside from the fact that there's obviously the similarities between the accordion music and the stuff that you hear in in some township music. Uh. Zydico is wild because nobody has any idea where that word actually comes from. Depending on who you ask, it's either like a bodlerization of um, a French word for green beans, like a proverb LEAs erico song something which means like the green beans aren't salted, which is like a proverb that they would say like well times are hard, like las erko blah blah blah, and that's it was transmitted into Zydeico. But there are also scholars who think that it comes from some phonemes that you hear in different African languages UH that are tied to singing and dancing, and you know that part of I mean, this is why I'm obsessed with like New Orleans culture and stuff, because it is so purely syncretic. I mean, you get French creole culture, you get uh coming from Haitian and that part of the African dyspora, but then you obviously get all the stuff from the slave trade, and then you get like the Acadians and zydeco is h so fascinating in that regard, especially the way that they kind of conceive of where their beats fall, like when you mentioned feeling like off kilter, the way that those accordions work. That's something that you see in music that's based kind of around the clove a pattern, because you can think of different beats as interchangeable because of the way that they're all based on repeating two bar patterns. Um. And you hear that with like some zydeco music, when with like some of their fiddle reels and some of the accordion stuff, you can basically hear um how different parts of it can come in on the offbeat, the upbeats of the downbeats, and it's still squares out the same. It's just endlessly interesting to me. You can cut all that. Um Oh, I love that. I feel like you should do the the Los Lobos because I don't know, for some reason, I just feel like you would have love Los Lobos. They're great. Um. I don't really think they've ever really gotten there, do man. I mean. The other group that accused Paul Simon of plagiarism was Los Lobos, who are long running, incredibly long running m l a rock band. They are Mexican American and they had just come off of their probably the biggest album, How Would the Wolf Survive, which was voted the third best album. Was this the Passant job Pole? Yeah? That just behind Born in the USA and Purple Rain Um and at Warner brother Chief Lenny Waronker's was it Waronker war wrong Waronker Lennon Warner at Warner Brothers chief Lenny Waronker's recommendation. Paul Simon got in touch with them after the collaboration with Good Rock and Dopsy because it felt like a good fit accordions why not. But they did not get along. They were like already a big band. They were a big regional band and this and this record how the Wolves of Ive had kind of broken them wider and Uh. They didn't like the fact that Simon approached the session the same way that he approached the ones in South Africa, where he basically said, well, let's jam um. Los Lobos band leader Steve Berlin said in two thousand and eight, we go into the studio and he had quite literally nothing, no ideas, no concepts, and said, well, let's just jam. One full day of playing yielded very little, but he did take a guitar part on the second day Paul Simon that he liked, which supposedly the crux of Los Lobos issue is that that was a song that they were working on independently. Uh, and that guitar part became all around the World or the mid the Fingerprints. According to Berlin, what they played in that studio that day is exactly what ended up on the record. And so because Paul had credited the African musicians that he worked with, Los Lobos assumed they would also be credited. Ah, this did not happen. They were not, aren't they They're still not on their Yeah, no, they're not on there now. And and this Steve Berlin guy is still just about it. He's quoted as saying it was not a pleasant deal for us. I mean, he quite literally, and in no way do I exaggerate when I say he stole the song from us. And he claims that he brought the matter to Paul's attention, and he was met with the less than conciliatory response of Sumi, see what happens. And Steve Berlin holds a grudge to this day, dubbing Paul Simon quote the world's biggest prick. Simon, however, disagrees. He says that it was a case of opportunism after the album became a huge hit. He's quoted as saying, the album came out and we heard nothing. Then six months passed and grace Land had become a hit, and the first thing I heard about the problem was when my manager got a lawyer's letter. I was shocked. So that was the story of the music on grace Land. But there was still a lot of work to be done to shape these recordings into what you hear on the record. Like we said earlier, this was just raw Mati aerial with no melody in mind yet And in a sense, grace Land was edited together, not unlike a film, and the process was long and very laborious. As engineer Roy Halley said, the task was enormous. There were no songs, no arrangements. We were looking at months of editing, editing, editing, taking things from here on a track, putting them there, take this out and recopying things. Paul had to turn the tracks into songs and he had to put words to each one, and in fact, Paul said that he considered putting the record out just as it was quote, because you can't do any better than this. Anything I put on here now will just make it worse. So it took a while before I had the courage the right over these tracks. And the process was a challenge, since you know, they're extremely busy tracks, and finding holes for the words was very difficult. If you'll allow us our hashtag Rick Beatto corner, will let Paul explain, Uh, it was very difficult because patterns that seemed as though they should fit together often didn't. I realized that in African music the rhythms are always is shifting slightly, and that the shape of a melody was often dictated by the baseline rather than the guitar. Harmonically, African music consists of essentially three major chords. That's why it sounds so happy. So I could write almost any melody I wanted in a major scale. And Paul walked around carrying a legal pad in which he jotted lyrics. Starting in the summer of n and Paul and you can probably imagine, was something of a perfectionist, which meant that there are many cases where he just rewrote songs over and over and over again. I think that's what ended up what happening with the Boy in the Bubble, and also songs like Graceland they took something like three to four months apiece to write. I think others like all Around the World and Crazy Love came together slightly quicker, but still it was a tough task. Yeah, and you know, uh, he is wrong there are minor chords in African music. I think the other quote that I've read from this specifically was that in the township stuff and and some of the harmonic stuff like He's he was saying like I would try and get Ladysmith Black mom Bouser to sing like minor chords and they couldn't distill hear it, Yeah, like the tonality is different there. But that statement is not really correct. But uh, he is right about the rhythmic stuff. And that's really interesting because you know, drum set, the trap set is like a recent invention when you compare it to the scope of African music, right, so, and neither is the electric bass or electric guitar. So a lot of this stuff evolved from um having uh multiple percussion instruments being played like like shakers and handclaps, uh being transported over to the drum set, and a lot of the interlocking patterns that you actually hear in high life music or in township music is what you're hearing is guys who took and learned um melodic patterns from thumb pianos, and they would split up the treble and bass parts of like a thumb piano, of these interlocking repeated rhythmic austinados that you hear in thumb piano and myrda music. And so the really trebly, jangly guitar parts are the treble side of the of like the melody side, and then someone would take the bass part and put that on bass guitar. So that's why the one of the reasons that the music is so complex is that, first of all, it comes from drumming first music, and second of all, it's basically you know, they were taking centuries of oral and rhythmic vocal music and percussive music and transmuting it onto twentieth century instruments. And then the other thing that I read that his engineer did was he was like, yeah, I threw a bunch of like rhythmic delays on everything. So that's why the bass lines are crazy on That is because you're actually hearing like like slap back delay and time based delay effects on bass guitar, which you really never never are used to do. But because he's such a tremendous bass player and he's playing fretless and the basslines are so vocal, it almost comes across as acapella music. You hear him, it sounds like like somebody's singing bass register parts, but it is very slippery, as any bassist who's tried to learn those will tell you was. But Keithi Kamala, Yeah, yeah, yeah, And he, as I mentioned earlier, was like a big fusion guy. I mean he he talked about loving like weather Report and listening to like upright bassists. And this was back before like fretless electric basses were really such a thing, like really manufactured. I mean, the guy who's probably most famous for playing fretless electric bass is Jocope has Storious, and he really legitimized the electric bass as far as jazz goes. Like everyone was like, oh, you have to play upright to play bass, and he basically pride the frets out of an offender jazz bass with like a putty knife and threw a bunch of boat epoxy on the fretboard because he lived in Florida and created like a rutless electric bass out of it and got these really beautiful singing, sustained tones on it, and then everybody who heard him like flipped their and that's when you start hearing it become a popular thing in fusion, and then it also kind of crosses into the pop world. Pino Palladino is like one of the most famous like jazz like session basis of all time. He played fretless, not a bunch of stuff in the eighties. Um you hear fretless based on a lot of stuff on Kate Bush's stuff. Uh, and be keithy is it true? His intonation is perfect And that's one of the things that Roy talks about him that sound on sound article, He's like, Oh, that dude had like the best ear I've ever heard from a basis, Like we know that was part of the reason he said he could get away with doing like reverban delay on stuff was because his pitch was so perfect on that instrument that you could he could throw in these time based processing and it didn't make it sound like out of tune. Yeah, great. Just god, I can't talk enough about the base on this record. It's so insane, I mean just that. Yeah, the little run on diamonds on the soul, the rue shoes, it's incredible. Or even just like the way that he throws in like like you don't it doesn't sound like a like it just doesn't sound like any other kind of bass playing, you know, like just call me out a little like just like he does these big sliding octaves that it just it sounds like like horns. It sounds like like like a low brass section. This is really incredible stuff. Um. Anyway, Well, back to the lyrics. Paul Simon got a lot of flak for not making Grace Land his soap box and writing lyrics that spread awareness of the human rights violations in South Africa, and Paul opted not to do this for several reasons, the first and most pragmatic of which is that he felt he was a subpar political songwriter. Uh, introspection and relationships were more his thing. He said, I don't think I'm a very good angry songwriter. And it's funny because American Tune one of my favorite songs. It's just him being depressed. That was George mcgoverned, that George mcgoverned laws instead of writing something political. He's just like I'm sad now. He also didn't want to make this his soapbox record because he didn't want to risk coming across as preachy. You know, if he tried to go to Bob Dylan, Bob Geldoff root and he thought that would be a turn off to listeners. And he explained this position in the Under African Sky's documentary. He said, are you gonna get up there and say I have incredible indignation with the sin of apartheid? Well, that's fine if you can say it musically, and if you can't say it musically, it's a flop because no one's gonna want to listen to you. That's the old you get more flies with honey approach. I guess he wanted to write his best songs and if the songs were good enough, they'd raise awareness in a much more subtle but potent way. He explicitly said he didn't want to write the kind of song that Peter Gabriel did with Bico, which was, you know, a very good yet overtly political song about South Africa, and Peter Gabriel himself praised a Land, saying it did more to quote help people around the world know that there was more to Africa than suffering, which is a good quote. And Paul wanted his album too, in his words, touch on the part of the culture where people laughed and life was being celebrated. And finally, Paul said that he didn't want to go political because he thought it wasn't his place and that it would be arrogant to do so. He said, the most sincere expression of my respect for these musicians was not to go and stand up and say, let me describe your plight and your burden. I'll do that for you. My idea was they play their best, I'll play my best. They didn't say come in here and tell our story. They just said, yeah, you can come in, We'll play with you. But still, upon the release of Grace Land in many people criticized Paul Simon for not addressing apartheid in his lyrics, to which he responded, this is kind of great. Was I supposed to solve things in a song? I mean, we could debate the endlessly complicated issues around this all day. But to some up, I'd like to quote this line from Paul that seems to articulate his reasoning. I still think it's the most powerful form of politics, more powerful than saying it right on the money, in which case you're usually preaching to the converted. People get attracted to the music, and once they hear what's going on within it, they say what they're doing that to these people? Yeah, I mean he's right, Bonno was wrong. Rock and roll did not change the world, Like I'm sorry it didn't. The world still a nightmare. I don't know, it's interesting, it's really interesting. I there's so much in there about like did he empower the guys to to come over to the to have music careers? I mean, certainly Keithie seems to think so, a lot of these other guys think so. But you know, I do think yeah, I would have been a much worse record if if it was uh. Part that is really bad? Uh part that is really bad? Boom boom boo, man walks down the street. Part that's bad. Show me your papers now the highlight of this episode. Uh. The only line that Paul said that he'd written in South Africa was reportedly from The Boy in the Bubble, and those lines were the way the camera follows us in slow mo, the way we look to us all, which kind of has a kind of sums up his feelings of being in Johannesburg, very paranoid line I feel like. Musically, Paul spent a long time working on drafts of the lyrics to The Boy and the Bubble, only to realize that he'd given his best ideas a way to Philip Glass for a project they're working on together. So he went to his buddy phil and asked for his lyrics back, which he promptly got, despite the fact that Philip Glass already had written music around Paul Simon's words. Um, you know, we gotta have like a tally of Paul Simon being a dick on one column Paul Simon being right on the other. But as you pointed up begin the episode, those are not mutually exclusive. But good god, I just I mean, I just I just love the going back to It's like when Jeff Bett, you know, wh Jeff back down, I was reading about um how he wrote Superstition with with Stevie Wonder, and Stevie Wonder was like, actually that one's mine, and Jeff Beck was like, what are you talking about I want that song or we wrote that together, that that was that was a writing session for me and and Stevie Wonder was like, uh no, and because I record everything myself and at like all hours of the night, he got his version out first and then gave Jeff Beck up an inferior song. Song is still good because we've ended his lovers. But dude, the dude that do it though, right, Well, the story is that because back was such a perfectionist, he like he took so long to like go over his solos and stuff that it basically just took too long. Stevie was like recorded it in like a day and and got his version out first, and Jeff Beck was supposedly pretty red asked about that. But just imagining Faul Simon showing up to Philip Glass and it's like, I need this. Back to Philip Glass, you know, fresh off klanis close, like i'stein on the beach Philip class, and so I am I need that? So you did write him another one, though? Are we still on for Stickball? Later? While Paul I gotta beat I gotta beat Randy Newman. I got Randy's on. I gotta beat Randy Newman, Will you help me beat Randy Newman? Philip Philip, Mr Philip Glass. But yeah, he got his words back, and that's on the opening track, the Boy and the Bubble, and got the memorable line these are the days Americle and wonder. That was reportedly the first song that he worked on in Africa, and he said he always knew it was going to be the opener because of that said earlier, that disorienting accordion sound goes a long way in signaling this new to American listeners, at least sound and those drums. It was like an announcement, you haven't heard this before. And the lyrics are very much at odds with the sound of the record. And it takes a tremendous amount of skill to mesh a line like the Boy and the Bubble and the baby with the baboon heart with African rhythms. Incredible, And that line it's supposedly inspired I assume by the medical case of baby Faye, who was a little girl who underwent a heart transplant soon after birth. Her case is sad, so I won't elaborate, And the title is thought to be inspired by the medical cases of David Vetter and Ted Da Vita, who were heavily immunocompromised kids who had to live in a sterile bubble essentially, and their story was later dramatized in the nineteen seventy six made for TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble starring John Travolta, which is what got him the role in Greece, and also two thousand ones Bubble Boy starring Jake Gillenhall, which is what got him the role in Donny Dark. And now I'm kidding, um, you know, I I thought this was a specific incident, so I googled it, and there were actually two incidences of bombs and baby carriages making international news that might have inspired Paul Simon, at least that are online. One was a two in Belfast and the other, and this is the one that I'm willing to bet money on, was January, so the timing is sort of works out in West Germany. But neither of those news articles. One was from the A P and the other was from I think New York Times mentioned a radio though, so still up in the air. If you were a loved one knows which radio Paul Simon was referencing well, benmov you five bucks working at like a quick break. But we'll be right back with more. Too much information and just a moment. Now we've got to talk about the title track, Grace Land, And as we mentioned earlier, the backing track came from a jam that was done in Johannesburg. But the only thing that Paul liked was the sun Record style traveling rhythm played by VC Kumalo the drummer, and it reminded him of this country rockabilly Johnny Cash style shuffle, no doubt, sowing the seeds for the Elvis connection that I have nothing to drum on. The train beat they call that, can you do it? You got got heart of things to drum on. No, it's like a recognized no, I'm not gonna do that. No, it is it is it. It's like the country. It's like the classic country country took a took. Yeah, but it's supposed to sound like a train going by. So Paul kept the drum pattern and played it for guitar us Ray Perry, who added some chords over top. And we hadn't mentioned this earlier. What was unusual that he used a minor chord, which is not unheard of but uncommon in John Rust of South African music, and he told Paul that it was the type of chord change that he'd heard in Paul's own music, so he was just imitating him. So that's cool. You get some American South African cross cultural exchange happening. And Paul would say the track for grace Land is a mixture of the two musical worlds, not something that was an intellectual decision, but an organic experience. And he rounded out the rhythm section with drummer Isaac Michelle and Bassis Pagethi Kumalo, plus a steel guitar over dub from guitarist Demola and a Posiu, and the track reminded Paul these early rock songs that he loves so much. He later said, the track is a beautiful emptiness to it. That's what made me think of Sun Records when there was nothing but slapback echo and the song it's a song about commonalities in this case between music, which is ironic because it's a song about his imploding relationship with Carrie Fisher. They were married in three and divorced a year later, but had an on again off a gun relationship throughout the rest of the decade, and Carrie Fisher would later tell Rolling Stone that Grace Land quote has part of us in it, and She's confirmed that lines like she's come back to tell me she's gone, as if I didn't know that, as if I didn't know my own bed, as if I had never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead referred to her. She confirmed that she had a habit of brushing her hair from her forehead, and Paul talked about the She's come back to tell me She's gone line and the Robert Hilburn book, saying it's half funny, but it's also heartbreaking about how hard it is to break up. It's as if she's telling me something I don't know, as if I don't know my own empty bed. And then of course there is the crucial line of the song, losing love is like a window to your heart. Everybody sees your blown apart, and Paul later said when that came out, I thought somebody had punched me in the heart. I just lost my breath. I just sat down. But at the same time, that part of my brain that's a songwriter thinks that's good. There we all have such a great outlet for our most heartbreaking thoughts or the tremendous ability to emotionally compartmentalize your trauma. It's probably no coincidence that the B side to the Graceland single was Hearts and Bones, which was the title track of Paul's previous record, which explored the breakup and an even more stark, emotionally bleak terms. Do you know that song is just devastating, good tough. Why can't you love me for who I am where I am? Because that's not the way the world is, baby, This is how I love you. Baby. That's a hell of a line, thankfully. Carrie Fisher admitted that she felt honored and privileged to be a part of Paul Simon's music, but not all the lines were actually about her. One of my favorite lines in this song, one that's vexed fans for decades, is there's a girl in New York City who calls herself the human trampoline. Turns out it doesn't really mean anything, Paul explained the song talk Magazine. That line came to me when I was walking past the Museum of Natural History for no reason I can think of. It's not related to anybody or anything. Just struck me as funny. Alas thought that was like slut shamming or something. Yeah, I kind of did too. I always thought that there was some Yeah. Paul worked really hard on the lyrics to this extremely wordy song, adjusting the phrasing variety of different ways uh, and the section that he worked on the longest was the chorus UH. For a time, the working line for that was driving through waste Land, which he ultimately changed to going to Graceland. He was working for a long time under the assumption that Graceland would be a placeholder because he didn't have any intention of making the song an actual tribute to Elvis, But he couldn't get the phrase out of his head, and he decided to not only keep the line but also make an actual pilgrimage to Graceland to quote see if there was something the song was telling me. So, after recording these ideico track that became that was Your Mother and Louis Sienna. In the spring of eight five, Paul drove up Highway sixty one, hence the line the Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar, which was first shining like a bottleneck guitar, then shining like an open tune to guitar, and then finally shining like the National guitar, which is the all metal resonator model that famously around this time would have seen on the cover of the Dire Straits record Brothers in Arms. Um. I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the Civil War. I'm going to Graceland, Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee. Uh. Paul Simon loved singing Memphis, Tennessee because it reminded him of a Chuck Berry song. And when he arrived at Graceland, he got no v I P treatment because he hadn't told anyone that he was coming, so he was literally waiting in line, hence the line poor boys and pilgrims with families. He admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that the visit left him singularly unimpressed until you finished the tour and you come outside and there's Elvis's grave and it said Elvis Presley, whose music has touched millions of people around the world. And I read it and I just started to cry. I just thought it's really true. This guy who was loved by everybody being in the crowds at Graceland. It's almost like a religious thing about Elvis. So the song started to right itself. It became a narrative. It became about this father and son journey to mend a broken heart, and grace Land became like a metaphor. He had embarked on a physical journey to collect ideas in Africa, and he would spiritually journey home to the rock Forefather to revitalize his love for music. And uh, it's funny that he also had harmony singing forefathers. The Everly Brothers singing on this song obviously a huge inspiration to anyone who's sang harmony following them, particularly Simon and Garfunkele. Their first group was when they were called Tom and Jerry, was essentially just Everly Brothers rips. Oh yeah. They used to get Everly's Brothers records and go home to their bedroom and practice together, and they would sing right next to each other and they would watch. They would look into each other's open mouths and study their tongue placement on their palate of their mouths to try to get their voices to blend, almost like a family. You know, they say that a lot of family singers can blend in ways that most people can't. So you got the Beach Boys there, you know, three brothers and a cousin. Because certain minor ways that families have the same speech patterns, it lends itself to having that perfect singing blends um and sounds like they got that artificially. I just wanted to know if that was the Talking Heads reference that, because there's that line in Now You've Melody where he says, singing to my mouth. Oh, I don't know. Maybe that's a great question. No, David Burns a weirdo, so maybe the part about traveling with his young son, Harper, who's the child from his first marriage, is a bit of a dramatic poetic license. To hear Paul Simon describe it, he sort of figured out the meaning of the song as he wrote it, and it revealed itself to him line by line. He said, this is a search for something and there's been a breakup. Eventually I understood that the song is about why we are traveling to Graceland to find out how to get healed. That's why I named the album Graceland. It seemed to be about finding something that you could call a state of grace, the healing of a deep wound, and that's what was going on in South Africa. There was a deep wound and then an attempted healing process. But his son was not in the car with him. That's so good, though, I mean, somebody who's going through, you know, a personal romantic crisis and using that as a jumping off point. So then yeah, I mean, that's really that's really good. That's why he's Paul Simon and and you're not, um, yeah, you you said it's up there with the Boxer or American Tomb, one of these songs that's an expression of hope that is also simultaneously unfathomably sad. It's it's I mean to me, it's the musical equivalent of Paul Newman and cool Hand Luke getting beaten up and not staying down. Oh, I mean, I mean the Boxers. Maybe a little too on the nose with that. But supposedly that line in the Talking Head song comes from David Byrne seeing uh Inuit throat singers who sing into they sing face to face with people with partners, so that each other's mouths can act as a resonating chamber, which sure can't do post COVID. Yeah, and in the Classic Albums documentary about it, of a very dead pan, Paul Simon says, that's the best song I ever wrote, without a trace of joy in his delivery. But ever the perfectionist, he does say that there's one line he'd rewrite, which is the and my traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets. I'm looking at ghosts and empties. According to him, those are too many words. So I remember earlier in the episode when I talked about Lauren Michael's being the patrio and saint of Graceland. He introduced Heidieberg to Paul and she's the one who turned him on the South African music. Well. Lord Michaels is also responsible pretty much directly for the creation of the standout track Diamonds on the Soles of His Shoes, which was a last minute edition to the album. Grace Land was originally slated for release in the spring of nineteen six, and Lauren Michaels, who had returned to SNL by this point, booked his friend Paul on SNL for a performance on May tenth, along with the Ladysmith Black Mambazo, I would imagine making their American TV debut, but Warner Brothers or at least Winnie Wronker, Poor Wronker. One day, we'll get his name a bit Lay and Mohasteen who ran Waterer Brothers. They were both blown away by Grace Lam and they pushed the release back to August instead of April to basically get more time to implement a bigger promotional strategy. So instead of canceling his SNL appearance, uh Lord Michaels kept his buddy all on for that may to give people a taste of what would be coming on grace Land, and Lauren said he was a little nervous about the whole Ladysmith Black Mambassa thing. He apparently took policide beforehand and asked, do you really think people are gonna like this? I'm counting on you for that. I was gonna say that wasn't bad. Let me think of Dr Evils, saying thankfully. The performance was met with a rapturous response. In the Under African Sky's documentary, Lauren referred to the occasion as quote a revolution and taste in the United States. It was the synthesis of two cultures and the obvious affection they had for Paul and that Paul had for them. It was the perfect moment, and Paul decided to capitalize on that energy and also take advantage of the fact that all the necessary players were in town by going to the Hit Factory recording studio about a week after their SNL performance, and it recalled thinking, you know, well, we're all here, we might as well do another track, and that was pretty much the birth of Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, which was apparently the first time the acapella group Ladysmith Black Bamba a Soo It ever sung with musicians. Paul worked it up with Lady Smith's leader Joseph Shabalala, who contributed the opening Zulu refrain, which translates roughly to it's not unusual, but in our days we've seen those things happen. They are women, they can take care of themselves, and it's essentially a comment on the independence of women in the modern age, which Paul did in his own way, detailing the relationship between the poor boy and the girl who was so rich that she had diamonds on the bottom of her shoes. I thought that was him about him and carry as well, because not like he was poor at that point, but she was way richer than he was. She was Hollywood royalty. He was a five foot three guy from Queens. Well, yeah, but maybe they got together. He was late seventies, after nine, I I know, but maybe. I mean, yeah, I wouldn't put it past him. But the image might have been inspired by the Township music's history as the music of migrant cole and diamond workers. And I'm also really intrigued by the possible double meaning in the songs title. On one hand, it could show that she's frivolous and spoiled and she's got these incredibly expensive things that she can't even see just on the tolls of her shoes. But also, diamonds are the hardest substance on earth, and they would make excellent shoe soles, So in a way, it's almost a ruthlessly practical thing to do. So maybe it's like you know something that you know, what good does the diamond do? Really when it's on your finger, it doesn't do anything. If it's on the soles of your shoes, at least it's being useful, So I don't know. I also feel this way. My dad and I would get into debate. Wasn't a debate because we both agreed the fifty nine street Bridge song slow down, you move too fast. You need to make the morning or moment. I forget if it's morning or moment. Last we both always thought, don't slow down, you gotta make the most of the moments. Speed up. I take it for all it's worth feeling groovy. Sorry sorry anyhow, Diamonds on the soles of her shoes was a triumph and Paul Ladysmith Black Bambabs have performed during their second appearance on us SO Noel on November to why to claim it is a truly joyous TV moment. It's it's hard to find online, which is kind of a bummer, but it's in the Under African Skies documentary. I think all the SNL stuff is on Peacock. I oh, well then, I mean, because that's where I found Keith Jarrett's otherwise unpublic as I have to, I'm bringing this back to Keith Jarrett. That's where I found Keith Jarrett's SNL performance. Which is it the full episode or is it the actual performance? Because it's a full, it's a full well you have too, sorry, Okay, so you should watch this November six. That version of Domonds on the Solsifers Shoes is just like there's so it just is one of the most joyful musical performances I've ever seen on a on a TV show. It's so nice. It's up there for me with like, not in terms of historical importance necessarily, but in terms of seeing like the Beatles on the Sullivan They're just so happy, all of them. It's really sweet. Grace Slam was released on August six. The cover art depicts a sixteenth century Ethiopian Christian icon from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Boy, there's uh, there's a lane. There's a lot of stuff in there. Uh, Salem mass Art Museum holding a piece of Ethiopian Christian art, a lot to unpack their people down the street from Hocus Pocus filming locations. Dissertations have been written on less. It was Paul Simon's first million selling record since There Goes Ryman. Simon in nineteen seventy three went on sell fourteen million copies worldwide. One album of the Year at the Grammys and Record of the Year for the song grace Land. In eight the popularity was almost universal. Robert Christal's Village Voice review opened with opposed, though I am to universalist humanism, this is a pretty damn universal record. I like it. You start that out with an intellectual one and then go hick, go Jeff Foxworthy, And this is the damn universal record within the democratic bounds of pop accessibility. It's biculturalism is striking, engaging, unprecedented, sprightly yet spunky, fresh yet friendly, so strange, so sweet, so willful, so radically incongruous and plainly beautiful. A In the Voices year end poll of the US pop critics, grace Land was voted the best album, and no less an authority than Joe Strummer told The l A Times shortly after its release, I don't like the idea that people who aren't adolescents make records. Adolescents make the best records, except for Paul Simon, except for grace Land. He's hit a new plateau there, but he's writing to his own age group. Graceland is something new. That song to his son is just as good as blue suede Shoes before you were born dude, when life was great. That's just as good as blue suede shoes, and that is a new dimension. Rolling Stone was a little more subdued, with David Frick offering the passive aggressive observation that Graceland had become quote a daily soundtrack in urban yep be condos and suburban living rooms and on radio airwaves from Australia to Zimbabwe. Much of the commercial success of the record, though, is thanks to Paul having scored his first MTV hit with you Can Call Me Al. I bet you were wondering when we're going to finally mention al. I can't believe that we made it this far without really talking about you Can Call Me Out. That lead riff came from Stamella guitarist Ray Peery, though I've seen mixed reports about when they first started working on the song, but I believe it began as a jam during the Johannesburg sessions and they finished it up in New York and one of the producers at Ovation Studios supposedly told Paul the next day, you know, I think he recorded one of your hits yesterday. So it was clear early on that this song had potential. And I didn't realize this, but the parts that I assume we're saxes were actually a guitar synth played by Adrian Blue, who was known to me mostly for playing with David Bowie. Well, it's funny because he's also on the Talking Heads record. I mean you know it's when his remaining light eighty three eighty yeah, so it remaining light is arguably another touchstone in white people stealing African stuff. Um, but yeah, Adrian Blue is also on that record. Uh that is I was I believe I was correct. That is the the Roland uh G five oh five or g R three hundred guitar synth. It is a synth on there, but it does have real horns layered over it. I read in the Sound on Sound article. So, but the coolest bit of studio trickery on al is the slap based solo played by Buck Keithi Kumala, supposedly on his birthday, which would have made it during the New York sessions. The thing that's cool about it, other than the fact that it whips, is that Paul loved the sounds so much that he decided to artificially extend the solo by playing the tape backwards, so the result is a musical pal drome with one measure, the descending phrase mirrored by the reverse ascending portion. I'll probably punch that in here. It was enormously effective and technically impossible to reproduce live exactly has heard on the record, which I think is cool. It's a very beadily thing to do. Doesn't stop people from trying, though you can see. No, I can't play the single one of these lines I've tried. So let's talk about the meaning of you can Call Me Al, starting with the title. It stemmed from an incident that took place at a party poll that attended years before with his then wife Peggy Harper. During the evening, they chatted with the French composer conductor Pierre Boulet, and apparently this man was hard of hearing, because as he prepared to make his exit, he tapped Paul on the shoulder and said, I'm sorry, I have to leave AL and give my best to Betty. And Paul found this foot pall extremely funny and it became a running joke between the then couple. Peggy would call Paul Al, and he'd call Peggy Betty. The memory came back to Paul as he started writting the words to rape Herri's Riff, and he saw overall is basically about a self obsessed man in the midst of a midlife crisis and seeking purpose and redemption and ultimately finding it becoming more self aware. It's not all that dissimilar to the themes of the song Grace Lam. In the documentary Under African Skies, he explained, you can Call Me Al is really the story of somebody like me who goes to Africa with no idea and ends up having an extraordinary spiritual experience. He then goes essentially line by line to explain the song, so allow me to paraphrase. It opens with something akin to an old vaudeville joke. Man walks down the Street's an old setup. Guy walks into a bar. Man walks down the street, and he wonders, why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard. It's word play. Don't end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard. He's writing about himself and how he doesn't want to be irrelevant, and you know, in a way, I fear's death. The second versus a variation on the first with another borsch belt style joke, a short span of attention and a short little span of attention. It's uh, it's a dick joke, folks. Sorry. Uh. He's racked with fear. What if I die here? Who will be my role model? And you're not supposed to have sympathy for this guy? By the second verse, Paul said because by this point, he said, way too many complaints, and the chorus is essentially him talking to a woman a partner will make an alliance. I'll look out for you if you'll look out for me and guard against the things that we have to fear. And the verses we should be gun fairly straight at the beginning of the song have started getting more and more abstract by verse three, and, as Paul himself explained during the Graceland episode of the Classic Albums documentary series, by the third verse, the lyrics have become abstract but autobiographical, as he describes his journey to South Africa where he had a spiritual experience. A man walks down the street. It's a street in a strange world. Maybe it's the third world, maybe it's his first time around. He doesn't speak the language, he holds no currency, he's a foreign man. He's surrounded by the sound, the sound of cattle in the marketplace. Interesting to me that the more autobiographical he gets, the more abstract he feels he has to be. That's just an interesting insight into Paul Simon's psychology. But then he looks around and around and lets the experience move him. He sees angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity, and by that point there's nothing left to say but amen. In Hallelujah and the video for the song, it's become one of the most recognizable with the eighties, and once again it's owed pretty much directly to Lauren Michaels. Paul used his time doing the SNL performance to make a video for you Can Call Me Al, which was the first single off of Grace Land, but he wasn't happy with the result because it was basically just a boring performance clip of him on the Rockefeller Center stage. So Lauren played the song to Chevy Chase while they were hanging out on Long Island and suggested that Chevy do something for the video, and Paul and Chevy been old friends since SNL launched in nine. Uh, Paul, I think was a guest on the second episode of SNL. I think that was the one where he reunited with Art Garf uncle, And I think he was in a bunch of sketches in that episode two. But Paul in the early years of SNL was a very familiar faces A great sketch of him. It was a video sketch of him playing basketball with said Julius Irving. I think it was Duck. I think it was Julius Irving. And it's so funny because I mean, Paul's like five two five ft three. Have you never seen this? Oh it's great? Oh no, it was a Harlem glob trotter Connie Hawkins. It's so funny. And they have like, you know, the whistling Sweet Georgia Brown playing in the background and like, and I think the whole joke is Paul Sivag just schools this like seven ft tall guy. And then there's the one where he starts singing, um, he sings something in a turkey turkey suit. Yeah, I think it's still crazy. I think you're right. Yeah. So yeah, Paul Simon and Chevy Chase go way way back. So Lord Michael said, will be funny to pair them for a video, and Lauren came up with the idea, along with director Gary Weiss, of having Chevy just ferociously lip sinking the song while mugging and gesturing and basically doing everything in his power to steal this spotlight from Paul Simon, who looks on glumily, completely upstaged. And Paul himself had the idea of being the one the lug large instruments around in the room while Chevy mind which is medium funny for me. The only thing funnier than sad Paul is when they pick up the horns and start doing the motown style dance moves. It's the video is very funny. MTV put the video in the heavy rotation and the song eventually reached number twenty three on the Hot One, and when Paul played the huge New York City Central Park concert at Chevy joined him on stage to perform their horn dance from the video. So for keeping score, Lauren Michaels is directly or indirectly responsible for turning Pole to South African music. Getting diamonds on the soles of her shoes written getting that you can call me ol video made and spreading the music to the masses with two highly rated performances on SNL in less than six months. So that's pretty crazy. Lauren Michaels, I hate to say it, kind of the m v P of grace Land statement. It doesn't give me any pleasure to say that. But well, as we mentioned earlier in the episode, going to South Africa in the mid eighties was a whiskey move because it violated a literal international mandate. So now we've reached the find out portion of the episode, in which Paul Simon deals with the fallout of this complex socio political situation. For all the success and praise that greeted Graceland, some critics felt it amounted to a kind of musical colonialism. White man going to Africa strip mining raw materials and bringing it home to the West where it could be refined and sold at a massive profit. That was proud of that line. It's good, yeah, especially with there's having a song with diamonds in it. Yeah, African record, bold choice, Paul, your family back down here. It's big, big, big, like up the boom boom? Uh does zo what does he say? Big helicopter? He has bling bang. Yeah, she's christ I had when I worked at v H one. I think I think the last time we did a blood Diamond bit on this show, I did the same thing. By job there was basically writing a listical day and one of them was Leonardo DiCaprio's most ridiculous accents and ah he has quite a few from the Aviator doing Howard Hughes and Jake or Hoover his boss that accent for the departed, but of course blood Diamond was high high in that list. Cultural appropriation, particularly at the time, was something of not only unknown concept but a gray area, but for many involved in South African politics, it was not violating. The cultural boycott was pretty absolute and UH could be interpreted and often was as tacit support of the brutal racist regime. James Victor Gable, the former Ghanaian ambassador to the u N, declared at the time him, when he goes to South Africa, Paul Simon bows to apartheid. He lives in designated hotels for whites. He spends money the way whites have made it possible to spend money there. The money he spends goes to look after white society, not to the townships funnily enough or not funnily enough. I don't know why I went with that, sayway. Linda Ronstat's appearance Friend of the Pod Linda Ronstat. Uh, that's the first time we've used that this episode. I can't believe we're going for three hours and haven't done a friend of the pod. Uh. Friend of the Pod. Linda ron Stats appearing on the album also sparked a major controversy. Not phrases you usually see attached to eat one another Linda Ronstat end controversy so much we all do Jordan's Okay, find me someone who hates Linda ron Stat, and I find you a cold dead, not beating heart. She do added with Paul on the song Under African Skies, which had a bit of lyrical input from her as well. Um she grew up in the American Southwest and drew parallels between that and the African sunsets. As she said in the classic album's documentary for Graceland, Paul called me up one day and said, I'm having a hard time writing. Give me some images from your childhood. I said, okay, I took all my words back from Phil and I still something I need something from you. Come on, already, won't return my calls. All the Africans are tapped out. Los Lobos. Los Lobos is pissed. I've gone down the oppression list to white woman and I've landed you. Give me your childhood. Please. It's a shame that one won't make it the air. That's a good bit, she told him. Okay, I grew up in Tucson near the San Xavier Mission. I've loved that place and considered it my spiritual homeland. I told him about the mission, and he included that part in the song. It is an interesting it's a good conceit. It seems to tie you with this theme of trying to get through lines between music of different cultures. But Linda Ronstad had performed at the aforementioned South African luxury resort Sun City in May of nine three, which was the venue was located in a semi independent and semi fictitious territory that starts with a b uh. Though officially integrated, the area was effectively the South African equivalent of the North American Indian Reservation, where many displaced black individuals had been relocated, and either Ronstad misunderstood the geopolitical complexities of the region, or had fallen victim to a promoter's clever ruse to lower international superstars to their resort. But in any event, she accepted the five hundred thousand dollar fee the page a well in eight three money, which caused a controversy. Linda gott defensive at first, saying she was booked as a last minute replacement act and had only two days to decide whether or not to play there. And like Paul Simon, she called her black friends. She called her friend is at Motown? Did you make that up? No? She caught her friends at Motown and said it's this okay? And they said yes. And then she got defensive. Also like Paul Simon, she told Rolling Stone, the last place for a boycott is in the arts. I don't like being told I can't go somewhere. Linda, though she repeatedly said that her appearances were not an endorsement of the South African government, Ronstadt received worldwide condemnation for the concerts. As we said earlier, Paul himself had previously turned out offers to perform its on City, but his decision to feature Linda prominently on this particular album came with some implications. Nelson George of Billboard liking it to using gasoline to put out birthday candles. That's good. Robert Christcu predictably was another cynic. Even if the lyric called for total us divestiture, Linda Runstat's presence on grace Land would be a slap in the face to the world anti apartheid movement, A deliberate, considered headstrong slap in the face, So that's not good. Paul tried to do some damage control by citing the invitation from the South African Black Musicians Union and insisting that all the musicians were there on their own free will and paid fairly. They split food, lodging, transport, and songwriting credits. He said, I wasn't going there to take money out of the country. I wasn't being paid for playing to a white audience. I was recording with black groups and paying them and sharing my royalties with them. And guitarist Rape Pierry agreed. In the documentary Classic Albums grace Land, he said it was two way traffic. We used Paul as much as Paul used us. There was no abuse. He came at the right time, and he was what we needed to bring our music into the mainstream market. Over fourteen million people in the world now no South African music. And Mkeithie Kumala, who played bass with Paul for decades, I think by this point is said, Grace land changed my life. That was my passport to the world. And Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo has said that the group gave Paul the Zulu name boot Landela, meaning the one who opens the way, and Paul also cided the fact that he consulted with Harry Belafonte and Quincy Jones in his defense. Paul also went to speak before a crowd of African American students at Washington d C's Howard University in January n a appearance that rapidly turned into a debate with the crowd, many of whom thought that this rich white guy had made a ton of money singing on top of South African singles. Basically, one sophomore music major asked them, how can you justify taking over this music? For too long, artists have stolen African music. It happened with jazz. You're telling me the Gershwin story of Africa. I'll go there, I'll listen to the stuff, and I'll culturally diffuse it. And in response, Paul said, I went as a musician and I interacted with other musicians. It's true there is another level to the story, but this is the beginning, a sincere beginning. I tried to introduce this music to people who have never heard it before. Sincerity doesn't seem to be held in high regard. I'm here, I'm listening. I respond the best I can, at least them into dialogue. I have always intended that this music they used to serve the African people. What do you think about that? It's it's alarmingly close to the apologies people make today when they're forced into some kind of racially tinged corner. You know, I am learning and participating in a dialogue. I am here, I am listening. Yeah, I see you, and I respect you. Have some more money, please? Well. The debate heated up when Paul announced a six month world tour entitled Graceland the African Concert. He didn't need he didn't need the suffix there just just the Graceland tour have been fine, okay anyway. It would feature his crew of South African session players and Ladies with Black Mambazo, as well as South African exiles Hugh Meskela and Miriam mcaba and as Dawns. Paul found himself on the u N Anti Apartheid committees boycott violators list, putting him in some pretty unsavory company. He wrote an impassioned letter to the u N and at a press conference the day before the tour was due to start, he proudly announced that the UN committee had removed his name from the boycott list. Controversy over right. No there was criticism and even active protests from anti Apartheis groups all over the world. When the tour hit London, there are picketers as well as an open letter from some big name rock musicians, including Paul Weller and Billy Bragg. They and others were angry that Paul had gone to South Africa in the first place, and we're also angry by the lack of overt protest music, which we touched on earlier, which made it seem as though he just took their music but lacked the courage to back their basic cause. As with the Graceland record, Paul thought that the tour was the political statement, you know, especially considering the addition of Hugh Meskela and Mary Mackaba, both of whom have been living in exile I think for decades. Both of them aggressively wanted to tour as well. And Marie Mcaba, I don't think she was even allowed back in the country to bury her own daughter. So you know, these people wanted to be out there. So Paul thought the tour would put a face to the atrocities happening in South Africa by allowing audiences across the globe to hear this beautiful music and seeing it being performed by these brilliant, virtuosic, charismatic people. And Paul's staged not one, but two massive outdoor concerts in Zimbabwe, which was as close as Paul could get to South Africa, and at one point during each show, the musicians sang the South African national anthem, which was always a very powerful moment, and initially Paul would step back during this moment because he wanted the musicians to you know, this was there, this was their moment. Again, he didn't want to speak for them, but all the musicians really wanted him to stand with them and sing with them, so they taught him the words and for the rest of the tour he would sing the national anthem alongside them, and this was his way of very quite literally standing with them. And the other side of this argument, as expressed by Dolli Tombo in The Under African Sky's documentary, was that the boycott was designed for South Africans to stand together as a nation and what was good for a few artists was not good for the benefit of the nation. Paul counted this by saying that he was sick of feeling as though artists worked for politicians. To him, it was a slippery slope from asking permission to enter a country to make music to having to get lyrics signed off on in various other forms of censorship. And Paul's quote at the time was what gives governments the right to wear the cloak of morality? Their morality comes out of the barrel of a gun. It's a thorny issue, and both Paul and Dali Tambo basically agreed to disagree with utmost respect for one another. Some twenty five years after the fact, there's a very touching moment in the Under African Skies documentary where they embrace, which is very powerful all of us to say. The grace Land tour was tense. Before every concert. They had bombs sniffing dogs go through each venue, and a few theaters were evacuated and shows postponed because of the bomb threats, and in one city a hand grenade was thrown into a building that housed some sound equipment for the concerts. Paul was obviously distressed by all this, and he would have been much more distressed to know that, at the time his name was on the top of a hit list. He was saved from this tragic fate by apparently none other than Stevie Van Zante of The Street Band. This is according to Stevie van Zante of the E Street Pant. Stevie had been active in the South African freedom movement for many years, founding the Artists United Against Apartheid organization, and he had written, produced, and performed on the protests song Sun City and even As Paul Will sing on it, but Paul had refused. He'd asked to see an early draft of the lyrics, which had called out his friend Linda Ronstaff by name, and he decided no, maybe not, maybe I won't do this uh, and things between Paul and Stevie got pretty cold for a while. Stevie, who it should be said, likes to talk like tell story's, claimed that Paul started questioning his pro Nelson Mandela's stance around this time, going so far as asking Stevie, what are you doing defending this communist? Yeah, I don't know if that's it's just it's just, Stevie says. So. Stevie's anti apartheid activism led him to the South African township of Suato to meet with a group of militant black radicals known as the Azanian People's Organization or as OPPOE. And these people were so hardcore that they had a lengthy discussion with Stevie about whether or not to kill him on the spot simply for showing up again. This is according to Stevie, that's how serious they were about violating the boycott. Stevie later said, I eventually talked him out of killing me. Yeah. Sometimes I really wonder how philography is but very medium to vary. But Stevie eventually gained their trust and was supposedly shown their hit list, with Paul Simon at the top of it. Davy later claimed in spite of my feelings about Paul Simon. I said to them, listen, I understand your feelings about this. I might even share them, but this is not going to help anybody if you knock off Paul Simon. Trust me on this, all right, Let's put that aside for a moment. Give me a year or so to try to do this a different way. I'm trying to actually unify the music community around this, which may or may not include Paul Simon. But I don't want it to be a distraction. I just don't need that distraction right now. I gotta keep my eye on the ball. And they took him off the assassinations list. I'm just picturing, Uh, what's his name for the soprano? Yeah, he's in the Sylvio Dante. Is it funnier if he's as Sylvio Dante, or if it's funnier if he's in the like Gypsy do rag and like Pirate bouse your mindleage may very Yeah. So yeah, he is a great storyteller. I wouldn't put him past him to make up all the stuff just to make Paul feel kind of bad for being a little easily little weasiley, a little stinker to him, just a little stick. That is the perfect Paul Simon, just a little stinker. Paul was being mean to me and you know what, I got his name off the That would be the funniest way for the story, as if Stevie made up this whole story getting Paul's name taking off a hit list in South Africa is the perfect kicker to this is that Stevie made it up to make Paul Simon field. But it had a happy ending, except for the part where Paul Simon almost got killed again. Despite the best efforts of presumably E Street Band bassist Gary tallon Uh or who's the John Mellencamp what other Heartland rocker might have might have helped. The political instruments of apartheid had started to fall apart by the end of the nineteen eighties, and by Nelson Mandela was a freeman. This victory jump started the fight for a majority rule in South Africa and the cultural boycott was lifted. At the invitation of Mandela and with the full support of the African National Congress, Paul Simon and his band were welcomed back to the country for a series of five shows in early making him the first major international artist to perform in a free South Africa. The visit started off well with formal reception from Mandela and quite literally Paul Simon's photo op and shot at Redemption, but then later that night, someone threw three hand grenades into the office of the promoter had booked him, destroying it completely. No one was hurt, but Paul was understandably shaken. A sect of the militant as Appo organization, the one that supposedly had him on his on their hit list, claimed responsibility, and while Stephen Van's aunt had supposedly been successful in persuading them not to kill Paul, they still did not want the concerts to occur. Paul paced his bedroom for hours debating whether or not to cancel the shows, but local security forces insisted that this militant organization consisted of quote three guys in a fax machine. Simon had at clandestine media with representatives of the organization and an effort to negotiate a truce with Paul, offering them a portion of the tours proceeds, but they refused to compromise. Later, they appeared at a press conference to deliver a pretty unambiguous threat. We have always pointed out that should his show go on, there is the potential for violence. Nearly a hundred demonstrators congregated outside the venue before the show on January, many brandishing placards that promised blood on the souls of Simon's shoes. But was that a poetic license or an actual verbatim signage. I think it was actual of a brandom signage. I believe hell yeah, that rules. But ultimately they were dispersed by eight hundred policemen and Paul Simon was finally able to perform for the people who had inspired his music. Well, I think we've just about reached the end of our discussion of Graceland, and give the complexities around this piece of art, I feel wary of tying up this episode in a neat little bow. Something about having a Hollywood happy ending feels inappropriate given the content. But Nelson Mandela was freed, part thought was dismantled, and these songs continue to touch people's hearts and serve as an access point for an untold number of people to discover the sounds of not only South Africa, but many different cultures. And you know that sounds like a happy ending to me. Paul Simon later said of Graceland, it made a very powerful point. Gently. It wasn't an album that said there's terrible evil here in South Africa. It said there's incredible beauty here. And that's a very powerful point. Yes, I agree, No, there's I mean, I would just say that for anyone who is interested in this stuff, the Indestructible Beat of Soto compilation is a really good place to start. Um. There's also a bunch of compilations called rough Guides that do a different sort of stylistic breakdown of these different things. There's a record labor called Sahil Sounds that there's a lot of good stuff from Sub Saharan Africa. Um. And there is a website called Africa as a Country that writes about a lot of this cultural stuff that I can recommend. Um. But you know, it's always good to be curious about all this kind of stuff. And again that's a net positive, That's how I think about it. So if it gets more people listening to that and learning learning about it, and more music fans and more musicians, is not only learning about people who aren't like yourself. Those are not bad things, folks, Thank you. For listening. This has been too much information. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan Runtug. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtug and Alex Heagel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcast us and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.