That's My Story

In an interview, Simon once explained how he discovered metaphor. He rushed in to tell his father about a song he had just heard, "See, she's an angel... but she lives on Earth!" The song, of course, was 1954's "Earth Angel" by The Penguins.

This 1958 song is like that one, but only in cadence and mood. In other words, it is a slow dance number, such as was heard at proms.

The song's title is somewhat misleading. The song does not follow a narrative or tell a story. Rather, it might be the response to a query like: "Why ya so glum, kid? What's yer story, eh?"

The "story" is one of the oldest, summed up in the song's line, "I can't tell you I love you." It's one thing to have a love that's unrequited, but this one is simply unspoken.

It all started, you see, "a month ago," or an eon in teen-time. It was a classic case of love at first sight: "That's when I saw you/ Your eyes were aglow/ And then I could see/ That you were for me." The crush is so innocent, it would not have ruffled a feather in the days of troubadors with their lutes.

The speaker dreams of her all night long, but then awakens to heartbreak, because he can't speak of his affections except in fantasy. He never says what's holding him back-- perhaps simple fear of rejection. There is no mention of a rival, for instance.

Metrically, the line quoted above is bravely asymmetrical. The verse goes:
"I go to sleep at night
And dream of you
I wish I could hold you tight
The whole night through
But when I'm awake
My heart could just break..."

And then we expect a line with maybe two or three metrical feet. Instead we get the jarring, almost stumbling "I can't tell you I love you," which throws off the rhythm entirely.

This effect mirrors his problem. He's fine right up until he thinks of actually expressing his feelings, and then he gets tongue-tied and trips over his own words.

As in the previous song, the next participants in the story are his "friends." They notice that he has become morose, "always moody and blue." But he can't tell them about his crush either. He wishes he could tell them, so they would know that he is "not to blame." But once again, he can't just spit it out.

The 1966 Beach Boys song "God Only Knows" supposed to be the first pop song with the name of The Deity in it. But here, the next verse starts: "O Lord above please hear my prayer/ Show me where she is and take me there."

In a way, Simon's invocation of the Almighty is more brave. Brian Wilson and company use the word in the sense of the cliched expression "God only knows," which one might say if asked what happened to his missing bike; it is the equivalent of "Who knows?" "I have no idea," or "Search me." Here, Simon speaker is actually offering, he says, "a prayer."

Part of the problem in this case, it seems, is that there is always someone else around, especially (we assume) at school. What the speaker prays for is "one moment alone" with the object of his affection. Then, he says, without the distractions of others, "we'll know we're in love."

How many of us can appreciate the pain the speaker is in, seeing her so closely, yet being kept apart by his own fears and the potential whispers of the schoolyard.

The speaker concludes-- in the same drawn-out speech pattern we later hear in the spoken bridge of "You Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"-- "That's my story." You and a lot of other people, pal.

Funny as it is to hear a poet like Simon admit to being at a loss for words, we all know it's easier to say on paper, and in dreams, what we simply can't bring ourselves to say aloud.

Next Song: Teenage Fool

Our Song

In 1957 and 1958, Simon and Garfunkel were still known as "Tom & Jerry." They released some singles under that moniker in those years, collecting them in an album called simply Tom & Jerry (10 tracks, two of which are instrumentals). I cannot find the release date of this album definitively, only one site that estimates: "1958?"

Since we have, in this blog, been dealing with whole albums as much as possible, we will discuss these songs in the order in which they appear on this album, not in the order in which they were released prior to that as singles.

The first song on this album, "Hey Schoolgirl," has already been discussed, since it appeared on a box set. So we move directly to the second song, titled "Our Song."

Musically, it starts with a howl of sadness, stretching out the vowel in "She's go-o-o-one." Then it jolts into a speedy clip, about as fast as "Wake Up, Little Susie," which it sustains until the end. The song is certainly a rock song, but there is a touch of country twang in some of the guitar solos.

The song itself is about that special kind of torture that happens when a song that was "our song" is caught coming out of the radio, long after the "our" has ceased to be. The speaker is trying to move on, but the radio will not let him, so he is upset with "every DJ on the radio."

He mentions a practice which I am not sure still exists, that of "playing dedications." A listener could call in to a radio station and request that a certain song be played, "dedicated" to a certain other party the listener was sure was also listening. In this way, people could flirt, strengthen a relationship, tell a third party to back off, or even break up, depending on the message the given song contained. Someone might dedicate a song to an entire group, such as one's fellow graduates, as well. The DJ would say something along the lines of: "And here's "Earth Angel," dedicated from George to his angel, Martha."

In our speaker's case, the song he shared with his girlfriend is one popular enough to be dedicated with regularity. So he not only keep hearing the song, but mentions of couples who still share the song, while he no longer does... adding to his torment: "He (the DJ) doesn't know/ That once upon a time/ Our song made two hearts chime/ When you loved me so/ Won't they ever let me forget/ The day that we met."

Then comes a two-line bridge that seems out of place: "What will our friends say/ When they know that you've gone, gone away?" How would they know, relative to the content of this song? By the lack of his dedicating the song for her? By his reaction when the song comes on once again?

Functionally, the line only serves to remind the listener again of "Wake Up Little Susie," which it resembles strongly, and which contains the line "What're we gonna tell our friends/ When they say 'oo-la-la'?"

Our song, "Our Song," ends with this sliver of ironic hope: "...somehow I know/ She's bought the radio/ That's playing our song." He's fairly certain that she is not coming back, but at least she has to listen incessantly to this now-painful song, too. He doesn't want to actively make her feel bad, but if she does...

Next Song: That's My Story

The Girl for Me

As promised, once all of Simon's current work has been discussed, this blog returns to the very beginning of Simon's songwriting career.

His very first work, "The Girl for Me" is consists of one unassuming verse, repeated once. In its entirety, the verse is:
"The girl for me
Is standing there.
That's the one
Flowers in her hair.
I always loved her
And I know she'll be true."

He copyrighted it under the name "Jerry Landis," as for a while he and Garfunkel went under the name of "Tom and Jerry." Garfunkel was "Tom Graph." The year: 1955.

From this simple, even simplistic song, one of the great songwriting voyages of all time set sail.

The song does not seem to require much explanation, but it is interesting to note what is not there. Missing is any indication of what it is that makes the girl the one for him-- there is no discussion of her beauty, her wiles, her laugh, or any other attribute.

Perhaps the "flowers in her hair" mark her as demure. Twelve years later, in 1967, the song "San Francisco" contained the lines "If you're going to San Francisco/ Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair." Why? To mark oneself as a member of the with-it counterculture, not as a demure wallflower.

No, this girl is passive, just "standing there." What she offers is fidelity, the assumption (not an expressly made promise-- she says nothing at all) that "she'll be true."

The girl is desirable for her passivity, it seems. The flowers, like all plants, cannot move of their own volition. And she would never be motivated to make the ultimate move, to transplant herself to pastures she felt greener.

Simon was 16 when he published this song, which is impressive on its own. Perhaps the song reflected his personal teenage insecurity about having a girlfriend capable of independent action. Or perhaps, he was mimicking the songs he heard on the radio and elsewhere in the Brill Building and felt that a song aimed at a "good girl" would find a likely audience.

It could be about both, in a way. Perhaps the "girl" can be seen as the music industry itself. He wanted to be part of it, as he "always loved" it (what teenager doesn't want to be a pop star?). But he wanted it to hold still while he approached it. He needed it to "be true" and not leave him for another songwriter, should he not be a hit right away.

Luckily (for us as well), Simon's talent (and ambition) were evident to the adult professionals in the office, and they let him stay.

As it turned out, Simon's relationship with his music would prove to be one of his most enduring. He "always loved" it, and it always loved him back.

(This song is on YouTube. Simon plays it for an interviewer, well into his adult career.)

Next Song: Our Song

The Shine

Paul Simon is listed as the third writer on this track. The first, naturally (this is on his album), is Harper, is son with his first wife, Peggy Harper. The second? His second wife, Carrie Fisher. With three writers' ideas involved, this is the longest track on the album (it's also in 3/4 time, appropriately enough).

It's incredible that these three people are able to write a song together, given their tangled histories. But perhaps not so surprising that the song is a break-up song full of regret, a number of the "how did we let it fall apart?" variety.

It begins with the idea of twilit space, "between waking and sleeping/... where the land meets the sea" (shades of "Scarborough Fair": "...find me an acre of land/ between the saltwater and the sea strand.") There, speaker says, "the shadows are keeping/ the shine that you once kept for me."

It's an interesting idea, taking the idiom "she's taken a shine to you" and imagining that "shine" as an entity of its own. The time between wakefulness and sleep is also the time of stars and moons, which also shine, and which appear in the next verse. Their shine is outside, however, while his former lover's, from her "sun" has "abandoned [his] room."

There's a line in the film The Philadelphia Story in which a man tells his would-be lover: "You're lit from within," and that idea mirrors the next set of images: "Your luminous smile.../ glows from your bones deep within/ Auroras were born on your skin." Women have been described a "radiant" before, but this woman is almost radioactive in her intensity.

Next, we have some technological imagery, relating to the speaker's regret. He wishes to "rewind our lives" as if it were a videotape and "erase the danger with a magnetic pen." This verse loses the light-based metaphor of the previous verses, but perhaps there is no way to convey a return in time with such imagery. Light is light, yesterday as today.

The next verse has a very simple, but very poignant couplet: "Maybe I didn't love you the way that you wanted/ But I've never loved anyone more." Well, we found the "danger," then, didn't we. This relationship was doomed from the outset; while the amount of love was never in question, the way the love was conveyed was not what its recipient required.

"It dazzled from your sun to mine," is how that love was transferred. Perhaps that was the problem. A sun does not need to receive light, and so both participants in this relationship were so busy "shining" love forth from themselves, they did not stop to receive any of it from the other. "I've never loved anyone more" sounds wonderful, until you realize that too much light is not necessarily illuminating but, after a point, a blinding light (compare to a "deafening noise").

The speaker concludes that he needs some, as we say today, "alone time," now that he realizes that "nothing I say seems to change your mind." Again, perhaps what he should be doing, instead of saying anything, is listening.

Unfortunately for a song that has been fairly lovely to this point, it ends on an unsavory joke. The dismissive expression "(stick it) where the sun don't shine" tells the listener to please deposit his opinion in a part of the human anatomy that is, shall we say, rarely in need of sunscreen.

Had the song ended, "Everywhere I look is just a canyon/ Where the sun will never shine," well, fine then. It would have been sad-- and fitting, since the bulk of the song was about being in his lover's "shine," and now he is relegated to the shadows.

Instead, the last line is about a canyon "where the sun don't ever shine." This "don't," I'm sure, is meant to merely sound casual, which was a wrong choice on its own, given the lovely poetic language we have had thus far: "The stars are all laughing and twinkling/ In a language they share with the moon." Sadly, instead of simply being colloquial, the word conjures up the above colloquialism.

Up to this point, the song is as pretty a break-up song as they come, a lullaby a heartbroken soul sings to himself as he fitfully drifts off to sleep, alone in the dark, after the shine has worn off.

Next Song: The Girl For Me

[Note to readers: This concludes Simon's current output to date. As was discussed, when this point was reached, this blog will circle back around to Simon's first, 1950's-early 1960's work... and progress forward again until his first official Simon and Garfunkel album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., until the promise in the blog's title-- Every Single Paul Simon Song-- is fulfilled.]

Ha Ha

This is a country waltz that examines three ideas on the nature of, as the title indicates, comedy. But it is a waltz, a dance for two, and we see how well a jesting joker (to mix my metaphors) dances with a queen of hearts.

One of the ideas of comedy is that of "schadenfreude," laughter at another's misfortune. As Mel Brooks put it: "Tragedy is when I cut my thumb. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer." The other is the truism: "Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry, and you cry alone." The third ties them together, the idea of laughing at oneself-- of getting amusement out of one's own misfortune, which means the others are "not laughing at you, but with you."

The song begins with the first idea: "You'd think it's funny/ if I got a pie in the face/ One's man's disaster is another man's laughter."

In the chorus, the speaker explains, "laughing is all I do." However, the listener might think this is a reaction to his being single: "You've only known me since I've been lonely/ So you don't believe it's true." When attached, we assume, the speaker might be more serious; he assures us that no, he laughs even while in a relationship. Hmm.

The next line tweaks a saying by adding the word "an." The saying is "I don't know you from Adam," the Biblical primogenitor standing in for any random human.

He speaks to the listener, whom we now know is a woman, as he says he doesn't know her from "Eve." His pick-up line is: "We've only got boredom in common/ Why don't we... leave/ And go... laughing all over the town." A cheap date, to be sure.

But then he makes a counter-assertion to the one above. He repeats the idea that she might assume he is different when in a relationship... but this time confirms it: "I'm different when I'm fooling around." Well, not that different, if that is the expression he prefers for intimacy, and the level of intimacy (simply physical) that his is capable of achieving.

The next line is worthy of Shel Silverstein: "One time I laughed all the way/ From Flagstaff, Arizona to Baton Rouge," which not only rhymes on the beat instead of at the end of the line... but finds the two American cities named after, of all things, poles ("Baton Rouge" is French for "red stick"). He continues this shaggy-dog story by saying this trip wearied him so greatly that, on arrival, he slept, Rip van Winkle-like, "for nearly a year." This laughing-all-the-way story may have a double meaning-- it may represent a series of performances on tour, a series of dalliances during a journey... or both (not all groupie stories are untrue).

Now that he has made this confession, he also confesses his affection for the woman he is addressing: "I could have been dead," he says, at least emotionally, "But I met you instead/ Now everything's perfectly clear."

Uncharacteristically, we wind up with "the moral of the story," which is: "Laugh, or the joke's on you." (Would that Fat Charlie the Archangel, from "Crazy Love Vol II," would have learned this lesson so young!)

Then the song ends with that same assertion: "You've only known me since I've been lonely/ So you don't believe it's true." The antecedent of "it's" is unclear; she doesn't believe what's true? Is he saying that she doesn't believe in not taking oneself seriously? But what would that have to do with when she met him?

Or is he saying that she doesn't believe that he has absorbed this lesson, and that he feels that knowing her has been valuable? This must be what is meant. On the one hand, if one doesn't take anything seriously, how could one learn anything? On the other, if one doesn't take anything seriously, one doesn't take oneself seriously, either-- and so he did not need her to learn this insight at all; he already behaved that way.

He does try to assure her that he is different in relationships, but he falls short, by admitting he only sees them as a chance to "fool around." While she may feel glad that she has had somewhat of an impact on this speaker, and she is probably attracted by someone who can be self-deprecating, she should still be wary of a relationship with him.

After all, he has said outright and repeatedly that he takes nothing seriously: "Laughing is all that I do." If so, how could he take her, or their love, seriously? If it's true, it's nice for him that he has learned from her to laugh at himself. But that isn't the basis for anything... serious.

Musical note:
Sean Lennon, son of Paul Simon's contemporary John Lennon-- and so Harper's musical cousin of sorts-- plays celeste on this track.

Next Song: The Shine

Tennessee

Simon's first wife was Peggy Harper, and they had a son in 1972 whom they named after her maiden name. In 2009, Harper Simon cut an eponymous album, and he invited his father to participate. Together, they wrote three songs, and the first one on the album is this one.

It's autobiographical, from the speaker's standpoint, although in the third line, he adds the caveat: "Most of it is true."

The first line, however, is "Howdy," and in the country-flavored song, the speaker describes how he identifies more with his mother-- he's "proud [his] mama comes from Tennessee"-- instead of New York City, where he was born and raised. (Harper himself was born and raised in New York, but I was unable to determine if Peggy was from Tennessee.)

He says she is, specifically, from Newport, "a place of moderation, common sense, and decency." While he has moved to her home state, he hasn't achieved that style of behavior, just as yet: "It's nothing like the way I am/ But it's how I'm gonna be."

So, how has he been, then, thus far? Well, he was "kicked out of" several schools, received many "incompletes" and finally "bought a C," by which he means bribed his teacher to give him a passing grade, or perhaps paid a student to take a test for him. (At this point, we know the song is not autobiographical to Harper, at least as far as he left out the part where he attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music.)

Next, the speaker says he"rambled around/ from Slumberville to Lonesome Town," which might be the locale of the Heartbreak Hotel.

At some point, he got bitten by the musical bug. He "joined a band" which proved unsuccessful but, undeterred, "booked some time on Nashville's Music Row." He tried to use music to connect to his Southern roots: "Don't want no electric guitars in the background."

Now, this plan is a work in progress. "I got issues/ I got pain," ("issues" being typically New York word) he admits, "There's a lot I can't remember/ Even more I can't explain" (this couplet is pure country, however).

See, he's "trying to concentrate on how you find serenity/ When you're born in New York City/ But your mom's from Tennessee." He feels that the bustle and shallowness of New York might be what has made him feel aimless, so his theory is that if he can-- through music-- reconnect with his traditional past, perhaps he can find both physical and emotional stability.

Perhaps by connecting with his roots through roots music, he can finally feel, well, rooted.

Musical note:
Paul sings harmony on this track, and played guitar on others on this album.

Many "ringers" were brought in as backups. A very good list is available at Harper's Wikipedia page; ones from the rock world include drummer Steve Gadd, and Steve Nieve, one of Elvis Costello's Attractions. It can be assumed that Paul was responsible for the presence of some of them, but Harper had been playing professionally for some time and it would be unfair to assume he had made no musical friendships of his own. In fact, there seem to be at least three generations of musicians here.

Next Song: Ha Ha

So Beautiful or So What

“There are only two ways to live your life," Einstein once opined. "One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Simon more succinctly puts this: "So beautiful, or so what."

This driving song starts off with the speaker describing the "chicken gumbo" he is making, then shrugging "life is what you make of it." You have certain ingredients, but the choice of how to combine them is yours.

His next example is a "bedtime story" he tells his children, which may or may not have a happy ending. In either case, the moral remains the same-- the story is the work of the storyteller.

He continues with a gush of humility-- he is "just a raindrop in a bucket," one nameless, indistinct entity among many. He is but "a coin dropped in a slot," a means to an end. "An empty house on Weed Street," even.

Next, we have a musing on "the way we're ignorant," going so far as to "seek out bad advice." Why? We will "jigger it and figure it," rationalizing our (mis)behavior anyway. Even better if we can blame our misdeeds on the urging of others. 

Worse, even though "life is what you make of it" and you can, therefore, actually make something of it, we "play a game with time and love/ Like a pair of rolling dice"... and leave major life decisions up to chance!

The last verse is a major shift-- to a famous photograph of the men who pointed to the direction from which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s fatal bullet originated. The speaker adds the idea of the responding police siren singing the spiritual "Savior, Pass Me Not." 

Why this historical reference here? Dr. King taught that justice was up to us, as individuals, in the ways we chose to treat each other. His own life story embodied the idea that a person could make his life be the way he wanted it to be. So we choose to make of his death what we will-- a warning to not get involved, or a call to get involved and carry the torch he passed us, spreading the light.

The theme of this song is stated outright several times. But the placing of this song as the last on the album serves to somewhat dismiss the spiritual, divine musings that permeated the rest of the album. We're never going to know, ultimately, what goes on in Heaven. And, since we couldn't affect it even if we did know, our best bet is to focus on the world we do have and can shape.

This echoes a teaching from the Talmud. The giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, at the Revelation, was not just a spiritual event. It had practical, even legal, ramifications. God gave the Bible to the humans... and it is ours now. "It is not in Heaven" anymore, say the rabbis. It is here, and it belongs to humanity.

Hopefully, this is only Simon's latest song, not his last. But it marks a culmination of a lifetime of theological pondering. In  the very first song we covered, "Bleecker Street," Simon noticed that seems to be a "fog" hiding God from humanity. All these years and songs later, he has stopped trying to pierce the fog with his eyes. 

He is resigned that "life is what you make of it," and that your own attitude, while it is all you can control, is all that matters anyway.

Musical note: 

The unusual instruments this time are...

the bansuri, a wooden flute from India, 

the croatles, a set of tiny tuned cymbals arranged on a rack and struck with mallets

the saz, a Middle Eastern string instrument with a round back, resembling a long-necked lute

the resonator, a guitar with a steel plate over the sound hole, sometimes called a dobro.

Next Song: Tennessee