Old

"Summer leaves and my birthday's here/ And all my friends stand up and cheer/ And say, 'Man, you're old!'" Now, Simon's birthday is in October, and when he released this album, he was 59 (he was born in 1941, and the You're the One came out in 2000.)

Since this accusation has been leveled "down the decades, every year," Simon finally decides to "stand up" in response. He's not "old," he says... relatively speaking..!

He begins his argument with the assertion that you can trace his age though comparison to some of the landmarks in rock'n'roll. "The first time I heard "Peggy Sue" I was 12 years old," he says, and "First time I heard "Satisfaction," I was young and unemployed." 

But he may have overstated his case. Simon turned 12 in 1953; "Peggy Sue" was not released until 1957, when he was 16. At least he is less specific about the Stones' hit, which came out in 1965, when Simon would have been 24. Simon and Garfunkel has released their first album the year before, but it was not successful; Simon recorded his solo Songbook in 1965, so this is more accurate. It would be one year more before "Sound of Silence" and he would never have to worry about employment again.

What about his other historical milestone, "Russians up in rocket ships" during the Cold War (when "the war was cold")? Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in 1961. So Simon was 20 by then, not "12." But Sputnik, the Russian (and first) satellite, was launched in the same year as "Peggy Sue"-- 1957. 

OK, enough fact-checking. Four or even 14 years here or there is nothing to whine about. He's 59, give him a break. The point is, he's not "old." You want old? He'll give you old!

How about Jesus' birthday, Christmas? That's 2,000 years ago... now you're talking old! And... Buddha! That's 6,000 years ago! Even Mohammed's time was 1,500 years ago.

Notably absent from this list of religious figures is Moses. Which is surprising, given the fact that Simon himself is Jewish. He readily acknowledges this fact in songs like "Hearts and Bones." Then, here, he does mention "The Bible" and "The Koran" has being "old." And maybe you could argue that "The Bible" covers both Judaism and Christianity, but still. Of the three "Western" religions, Judaism is oldest-- twice as old as Christianity. So his point about relative ages would have been strengthened by mentioning Abraham, say.

(Simon then adds his advice to the question of fights and wars that have dogged the Christian-Jewish, Muslim-Jewish, and Christian-Muslim relationships for millennia: "Disagreements?/ Work 'em out." Oh! Of course! Why didn't anyone think of that?!)

But Simon is not here to broker peace treaties. He is too busy racing backward through history... Humanity "has walked the earth for 2.7 million (years)," he says. I am not sure what standard of "humans" he is using, but fine. Then he goes back to the Big Bang, "13-14 billion" years ago. 

OK, now the closer: "Consider that The Lord was there before Creation." So, what does "old" mean to Simon? "We're not old/ God is old." 

As for himself? Well, the whole human race has not changed noticeably since it showed up in the first place. "Take your clothes off," he says, and you'll see "Adam and Eve." Everything human from "war" and "genocide" to "Buddy Holly" continues as well. 

Simon's Bookends album came out in 1968, when he was 27; on that album, he recorded the song "Old Friends," in which he set the bar for what he considered "old": "How terribly strange to be 70." If you know Simon, don't remind him. In 2012, he turned 71.

(Paul McCartney, meanwhile, has long since passed the mark of "When I'm 64"; that song came out in 1967. And McCartney is only a year younger than Simon.) 

Musical Note:
Steve Gadd, Simon's longtime musical collaborator, is the drummer on this album.

Next Song: You're the One

We've Got a Groovey Thing Goin'

With all the seriousness, even somberness, of their work so far, it's nice to see the guys just letting their hair down, letting off some steam, and having fun on this track.

The song is reminiscent of the duo's teen-pop Tom and Jerry days, while also showing that Simon was aware of the "British Invasion" of hardscrabble blues-rock coming out of blue-collar England. It would be easy to point to his introverted, isolation-ridden lyrics and conclude that Simon was unaware of the world outside, but that would deny the equal amount of his material concerned with the suffering of others and references to current events of the Civil Rights era. Here, he shows he listens to the radio for the music as well as the news.

Now, is this song significant in the way the tracks that made it onto "Greatest Hits" are? No. But is it important in the understanding of-- to borrow a phrase-- another side of Paul Simon? Yes. For all his sobriety, Simon is capable writing and performing a purely fun, funny song.

Yet, even with all its flaring horns and funky keyboard work, this is still a Simon song. For instance, he does throw around colloquialisms like "a'runnin' right over," "what you're kickin' away" and the word "groovey" itself. But the title still starts with the grammatically correct "We've" instead of the contextually consistent "We Got a..." This, the duo fix in the performace, in which they clearly sing "We."

Within a the space of a few words, Simon shows again that he is a New York college graduate and not a Liverpuddlian coal miner: "There's somethin' you ought to know/ if you're fixin' to go." The context calls for "oughta," (compare to the phrase "you oughta know," either from "Words of Love," by the Mamas and Papas or Alanis Morissette's song title) but Simon both writes and sings distinct hard "t" both at the end of "ought" and the start of "to." You can take the boy out of the suburbs...

Also, we know that it is a Simon song because-- even as upbeat as the music is-- the song is still a downer, a break-up song. Well, a trying-to-prevent-a-breakup song. The speaker pleads to his departing girlfriend that the relationship is good, that he is good to her and faithful... and that "I can't make it without [her]." Ultimately, his plea for her to stay rests on his fearing (here's that theme again) isolation.

On another level, the song parodies such "I'm beggin' you to stay" songs, tossing out one cliche after another. On this level, Simon is saying, "Oh, sure, I can write one of those songs, like everyone else is. But why should I, if everyone else is." In fact, the very next track is one of the key songs in his catalog of isolation works-- "I Am a Rock."

When I discussed "Somewhere They Can't Find Me," I suggested Simon would have been better served, while writing a rock song, not retro-fitting an existing song but simply building one from the ground up. Here, he has done so, and the results are much more satisfying. This is still a B+ effort, with its nose-thumbing attitude and list of hackneyed expressions, but it is a solid improvement. (Simon's first real success in this endeavor, from a songwriting standpoint, comes on the next album with "...Pleasure Machine.")

Every songwriter, no matter how serious, has a just-for-fun song or two like this. Sting has "We'll Be Together." Springsteen has "I'm Goin' Down." Peter Gabriel has "Sledgehammer." These songs don't mean anything, but since when has music needed to? If anything, they mean that even a life of contemplation and activism is pretty hard to lead all the time. All work and no play makes for a dull songwriter, too.

Next song: I Am a Rock