#david yaffe

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

How Paul Simon Became the Voice of a Generation

Documentarian Alex Gibney discusses his latest film, on the life of the musical star.

 Window in His Heart

Alex Gibney’s new documentary chronicles Paul Simon’s course from voice of a generation to aging performer who’s not ready to hang up his guitar

BY DAVID YAFFE

MARCH 16, 2024

A 21-year-old Queens College student wrote a song in his parents’ bathroom about how we would all be swallowed up by death. Do your best to make music, but silence will defeat you in the end. “Hello, darkness, my old friend,” he began, singing to the tiles. This was not an obvious chart-topping topic, yet “The Sound of Silence” eventually became a No. 1 hit, and Paul Simon, with his childhood pal Artie Garfunkel rocking a harmony, broke very, very big.

When he sang, “Losing love is like a window in your heart,” he was singing about his divorce from Carrie Fisher, but he was really singing for anyone who had lost love and was still reeling. Simon lamented that he could not sound enigmatic like Dylan. He always sounded sincere. Maybe it was because he was part of something larger. “There is something where the music is coming through you,” he said. “You’re a part of it, but it’s not starting with you—it’s coming from somewhere.” O.K., but when he sold his catalogue, he kept the $250 million.

He had a farewell album in 2016 and a farewell tour in 2018, but then a voice came to him in a dream, telling him he would write something called Seven Psalms, even providing lyrics. Simon would transcribe like a biblical prophet. The message would have something to do with dying, right back to where he started in “The Sound of Silence.” Gibney’s In Restless Dreams follows Simon’s quest to record the album after the final album, while he was losing the feeling in his hands and his hearing in his left ear, first gradually, then suddenly.

“The artistic process is about real shit,” Gibney tells me. “Because I was around when he was doing the work, it was like Picasso painting. Paul needed an audience, particularly when it was hard for him. He was having issues with his hands. There was one day when he came in with a huge bag of Theraguns, a muscle relaxer for his hands. He had issues with his playing, his hearing, and his singing, and he let us watch him struggle through that. That was both very generous and vulnerable. But it also helped him, because he knows how to rally for an audience. The extra energy was useful to him. Watching him in the present gave me more insight into the past.”

When Brickell sings, “Heaven is beautiful. It’s almost like home,” I cannot listen without tears. We want to hear the songwriter of “The Sound of Silence.” We’re not ready for actual silence. Losing love is a window in your heart, but what about losing everything? “The big mystery about life,” Simon says in the film, “you can never solve the mystery. That’s what’s so great about it. You don’t want to solve it.”

After Seven Psalms, Simon went back to doing what he was doing before: writing songs. He’s still working out how to perform with the one good ear, and he hasn’t given up. Neither should we. We’re on our way. We don’t know where we’re going.

In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon premieres on MGM+ on March 17

David Yaffe is a professor of humanities at Syracuse University. He writes about music and is the author, most recently, of Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell. You can read his Substack here

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

The Band were from Canada, and had released their debut, Music From Big Pink, in 1968, the same year as Song To A Seagull. Decades later, The Band's keyboard eminence, Garth Hudson, was still marveling over that album. "We all fell in love with Joni. There are certain Canadianisms that sneak across the border, and she was very careful in creating her vignettes," Hudson recalled. "I wondered how she came up with those melodies---so analytically creative.

Garth Hudson on Joni Mitchell, “Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell,” David Yaffe, 2017.

[diegoquotesbooks]

When Blue was released in June 1971, its emotional intimacy shocked some of her peer group. Johnny Cash said, "You've got the weight of the world on you."

David Yaffe (Reckless Daughter)

[snortleme]

JONI MITCHELL’S OPENHEARTED HEROISM:  Mitchell writes about emotional information: who controls it, and how it is squandered or hoarded, withheld or weaponized. This requires some reconnaissance, which for Mitchell involves falling in and out of love, over and over—not so much a research method as a form of self-surgery. Her songs report on those lessons, which are, in an instant, in performance, happily forgotten.  - The New Yorker, October 9, 2017 issue

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

Joel Bernstein gave me a tape of it [Blood on the Tracks] and it was really good, really good. But people said, 'Oh, it's like a Joni Mitchell album,' so he went and recut it with his brother in Minnesota. They butchered it all up. They stomped all over it. But originally, the writing was different, it was more vulnerable, and the orchestration was subtle, very like when I was using just a little of that stuff to my performances. It had Al Kooper on it, but he was mixed kind of under, y'know, like some of his early players. It was beautiful. And one night, I had a party here, and it was so star-studded, you wouldn't believe it. It made the newspaper. It said, 'If a bomb hit Joni Mitchell's house, it would have wiped out the music industry and the acting industry.' And you wouldn't believe the crashers. Robert De Niro crashed it, David Bowie crashed it, Robin Williams crashed it, and Bob [Dylan] crashed it. And the bootleg of that first Blood on the Tracks was playing. They were out in the garden, and somebody said that Bob wanted to see me. And the bootleg was still playing, and I said, 'Why didn't you put that out?' And he said, 'Somebody stole the tape.' Which was not true. He chickened out. People said it was like a Joni Mitchell album. There was some stylistic production to it, but not the material. It was more honest. He'd already cracked by the next one. He took the vulnerability out of it, and in the process took the depth out. The New York sessions were touching. The Minnesota sessions were not touching at all. He asserted himself again as a man.

Joni Mitchell on the New York vs the Minnesota sessions for Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”---Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell, 2017.

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

The story has often been told that Joni sang "Helpless" from behind the curtain, so as not to detract from making a grand entrance before it was time for her set. But Joni remembers it somewhat differently. "I said, 'I'll do it offstage,' because it was going to take such concentration." Neil and Robbie wanted her to "lock up with them in three-part harmony. No way I could do that." she recalled. "Their pitch was all over the place. And Neil calls out to me, 'Sing with me somehow,' not realizing why I can't. He was just unaware. CSN was always out of tune. They were never aware of how out of tune they were, partially because of drugs, I guess. When Neil played on 'Furry Sings the Blues' he had to play on four harmonicas. It was kind of adventuresome. It was very unusual harmonica.

Joni Mitchell, “Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell,” David Yaffe, 2017.

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

Leonard Cohen, “First We Take Manhattan,” I’m Your Man, February 2, 1988.

“Joni would hear lyrics like “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin,” and think, “He’s still singing about making conquests!”---“Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell, David Yaffe, 2017.

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

Charles Mingus, “Self-Portrait in Three Colors,” Mingus Ah Um, October 1959.

“Mingus instructed Joni to write lyrics for two melodies from his 1959 classic album Mingus Ah Um. One had the painterly title of “Self-Portrait in Three Colors”---The song has an elaborate melody, with an impressionistic meeting of euphony and dissonance that would hit Joni’s sweet spot....When Joni was at work on the album, she mentioned “Self-Portrait in Three Colors” among the album’s projected contents.”---David Yaffe, “Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell,” 2017.