Paul Simon's rock 'n' roll has always been a little different. Raucous, unreconstructed and soul deep, rock is, first of all, about feeling. Or so it is thought to be. But Simon's songs are also about thinking, about the half- rational process of measuring out passion in small portions, like time- release capsules, detonating long after consumption. They are stately, funny and absurd, with elusive rhythmic changes and melodic surprises that come up fast and take the tune off in a whole new direction.
This is music for a great rock musical that has never been written. It would be a show that assumes a certain level of sophistication and psychological voyaging on the part of the listener, as well as an abiding interest in the melancholy, ruminative personality of the composer himself. Simon trafficks in arms-length introspection and sardonic social speculations as easily and elegantly as Carl Perkins tied up his blue suede shoes.
Simon is articulate about his craft. Many songwriters dodge interpretive discussions, but Simon will dig in, talking about a tune with the fluid confidence of a seminar master. Indeed, he has taught a few songwriting classes, and can cut loose about "pressure to keep music either raw and unsophisticated or to keep it young. On the one hand, that might make rock vital, but on the other, one reason my generation has stopped listening to music is that it doesn't have anything to do with their lives. In the '60s, it was what was happening in your life, in the life of your community. Now you hear what's happening in the life of an adolescent community. I wanted to say what I had to say, and have my generation say, 'This is about our life. Not about our children.' "
That sounds a little defensive, as well as prideful, for a past master songwriter who is passing 43. It may be that when Simon embarked on the project that was to become his splendid new album, Graceland, he was, in his own words, "not hot in any way." One-Trick Pony, the 1980 feature film he wrote and starred in, bottomed out at the box office. A 1983 tour with his old partner Art Garfunkel was a nostalgic about-face. Hearts and Bones, in 1983, did not even offer up one high-charting song, a novel situation indeed for the author of such classics as Bridge Over Troubled Water and Mrs. Robinson. What was needed, clearly, was something a little different. It was called Gumboots.
A musician pal of Simon's passed him a bootleg cassette of instrumental music with that intriguing name, subtitled Accordion Jive Hits, Volume II. Simon played it all during the summer of 1984, hearing in its unsprung beat echoes of old rhythm and blues, '50s style. The music on the tape turned out to be mbaqanga, or "township jive," from the streets of Soweto. Simon became obsessed. In January 1985, he took off for South Africa and began to record with Soweto's Boyoyo Boys, Tao Ea Matsekha (a group from Lesotho), and General M.D. Shirinda and the Gaza Sisters. "It was very interesting," Simon reports, "but very strange."