Paul Simon is one of the great American entertainers—a mantle he's worn since he started singing harmony with grade-school friend Art Garfunkel in a duo called Tom & Jerry. In the following six decades, Simon has written dozens of classic songs. His partnership with Garfunkel produced numerous hits like "The Sound of Silence," "America," and "Bridge Over Troubled Water." And Simon's solo career has been equally fruitful, as an engine of eclectic pop music (the gospel of "Loves Me Like a Rock," or the imported reggae of "Mother and Child Reunion"), and also as an ambassador of global sounds (the 1986 album Graceland, and 1990's The Rhythm of the Saints). He talks to host Alec Baldwin about how he has—and hasn't—changed after all these years.
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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing the railway station. Got a ticket for a destination show and today legendary songwriter Paul Simon on two one that stands may suit case and guitar and and every stop is neatly plan for a poet and award words. Paul Simon doesn't often give interviews. He occasionally tours, recently with Sting, but mostly Simon lives a quiet life at home in Connecticut with his wife, singer Edie Brickell. There he spends his time making music and writing songs. He's written hundreds, a large number of which are among the most popular and admired in music history. Bridge Over, Troubled Water, Coda, Chrome, Slip, Slide in Away Graceland, to name a few. Over the years, the way he creates his songs has changed. The process has evolved. There's still elements of it that are like the my first instincts about writing, but otherwise it's become much slower and much more complicated. I think, well, because it's entwined with record making with me that's singing both, and it's a complicated process. Now it's um to you know, to do it abstractly without referring to one particular song probably wouldn't show you as much as if I gave you an example but described what it was like before they just came ripping out of you all the time. Um, um not No. I was never a really fast writer. But when I was in my early twenties h and I wrote all the songs for all the beginning songs for Simon and Garth phone Call, that came pretty fast. I was living partly here in partly in England, and yeah, well really you know, I mean within a five year period of from like nineteen sixty five to nineteen sixty nine, I wrote us God, most of my big hits, you know, Bridge Over, Trouble Waters, Sound of Silence, Mrs Robinson, the Boxer, Homeward Bound, I am a rock, Let's see America Feeling Groovy as a hit for somebody else. Um. So I was faster, but now I'm much slower. This last group of songs that I've been working on has been probably taking me about three years. But it isn't like I finished the song and go onto the next. I just keep working on the songs. So some of them are like a work in progress. That's like three fectionism. No, I don't like that word because it implies about nine questions that use the word perfectionism in them. So I well, I just don't think it's It's like any performance. If I said to you, oh, I like, you're just like you know, you're just a perfectionist. You know, you know, why do you want to take another take? It was great? You're a perfectionist, you're you know. Your answer would be, there's no perfect. Not going for perfect. I'm going for something that I know and I know and when it happens for me. That's what you would say. As a performer, you can how can I think it right? You know? I mean, but even if you've got it, you wouldn't say, well, this is a perfect performance. You would say, no, I realized my vision or I realized how I wanted to play this, but you wouldn't describe it as perfect. Right. Perfect doesn't have anything to do with it, with the whole, with the whole thing. It is added a question. It's like Japanese temples where they always leave some imperfection and a zen temple because the idea of striving for a perfect temple was an affront to you know, God, It's not possible for man to do a thing without import with with no imperfection. When you write music, now, is there like a state you want to get into? Is there a place? Is there a whole you when you left alone for a couple of hours to think about it. I mean, I find them basically thinking about this all the time when I'm not thinking about um, you know, my wife and family or some little crisis that comes up or something like that. If my mind is just you know, free to go where it wants to go, it goes to the songs I'm working on constantly, just all the time. When you wrote music before, whether any of them that just came right out of you and it s well, sometimes they do in the early ones, of course, like the Sounds of Silence. I wrote that when I was twenty one years old, and I have no idea. I couldn't have taken very long. But I mean, I have no idea how I even wrote that song, because and at the time it wasn't like I was really surprised that I wrote it. I thought this was good, this is a good song, but I had no idea of what that was. Same with Bridge over Trouble Water. You know, I wrote it. I said, this is better than I usually write. This is a this is this is a this is a good song. But I didn't know that it was going to be a song that was going to be fifty years and people you know would know it for you know, the songs you've made that have been in the film soundtracks? Were you appreciative of that? And great depends on that depends on how they were used or something. You know. Look, there's no time that I've that I could say I object to the way my song is used in uh in your movie, because I mean if I objected that much, I don't have to give him a license. I control publishing. So so I mean sometimes I think, oh, this is really good, you know, like, um, when I see the other day Anderson's film about the family, Wes Anderson Tenant Bounds, Yeah, the Tenemy, the Royal Tenor Bounds. Right, I just saw the Royal Tenant Bounds. Again. The other dadn't seen it, probably and I don't know what ten years or something like that, eight years or something, and they used me and Julio in there, and it's perfect. Comes in said there, I said, perfect. All I could say it about somebody else's work. Anyway, it's a it's a very good choice. It's sort of explodes and a joyous what happened on the joy with the kids? Yeah, that's great. I never watd that film. That's why I know that film. I love his films such an on Ball. Yeah, I like his films a lot, and I really like that one in which I hadn't seen in a while. And you know, I love Gene Hackman's performance. And was Cape Man the only musical you did? The others who were on the drawing where that was the only one everyone did conceive nothing that was Yeah, it takes so long to make them. Well, it takes me a long time to do anything, you know, to do anything. But it took a long time to make the to make the cape Man, that was about five years. And then the idea began. When the idea was um, I think it was after Graceland and and the Rhythm of the Saints, I said, well, I mean it's time to do something else. I know, how do I follow those albums? You know? So I'll do I said, okay, I'll try to take my hand out a musical and then that kids salad grown. He's just in my memory from when I grew up here. So I picked him because that would mean that the music would be doo wop. And also he was Puerto Rican, so that means it would be Latin music in there too. So to me, I said, I could be interested in listening to a musical that was due up in Latin. I like both of them. I think it would be a nice And here's the story. So that's how I picked it, you know. That's that's why I did it, you know. I mean, as as it turns out, we we didn't do it very well. And what do you mean by that? Why? Well, I should I shouldn't really put it that way. It was notably unsuccessful critically and everything, and there are serious flaws with it as a piece. But actually a lot of it was really good. I mean, I think a lot of people were thrilled by the attempt that you met people who were you know, oh yeah, it wasn't like yeah, yeah it had. It brought a lot of goodwill. People liked it and uh, but it wasn't a success. But when it came back at Bam, I know whatever, it was seven eight years ago, and then when it was done in Central Park two years after that, they were both successful. Anyway, I think it was a very interesting piece and I'm not, by any means embarrassed by I think it's some really good things in there. Certainly the best doop song I ever wrote is in there. And uh, but anyway, I don't really have any interest in doing it. You don't. Are there other things you think of? Do you think about films? Just scoring film? Never that was the that was the deviation for you. Um. No, it's not something that I think of. But if somebody came to me with a really interesting like for example, there's a an old friend of mine who's will play right, and he asked me if I would write some guitar music to a new play that he wrote, And I said, yeah, it's kind of interesting idea. But I wouldn't think to myself, I'd to write some guitar music for a theatrical piece films. Um, if somebody came to me with an idea, I would. I might be very excited by it. But really, what I think about naturally is writing songs and making records, and I'm really content to not do anything other than that because I'm still learning about that. So I think it's getting better. And as the work sort of the work getting better is a is a manifestation of me understanding things that I've been working on from you know, a long time, some things like you know, decades and decades some So I don't have a specific example. I'm just thinking about how you you, over decades learn a sense of what words to stay away from, what we're to go to, how rhythm could be used, how melody you just learn you know from your craft, uh interest you say, what words to stay away from that in different circumstances you would want to stay away from certain certain love words. A lawyer, No, I never. I went to law school for a year. But that was a complete that was a complete misunderstanding of who I was by me, where'd you go law? One year? It was so boring. I wasn't interested in I had no reason to be. This is my idea. No. No. What happened was a bunch of my friends in college, we're going to take the law boards, so I so they said you should take them. So I was an English major, but I said, okay, I'll take him. And I took him and I scored very high on them, so, you know, at twenty years old or whatever, you know, I said, I don't know, maybe I'm supposed to be a lawyer or something. I mean, if I scored so high on me, so I don't know, you know. So I went and you know, did a year of in Brooklyn. I made the record I had made that record would already by that anyway, exactly Columbia deal. Yeah. So we had made this Wednesday morning, three am, and the acoustic version of the Sound of Silence in nineteen sixty four, you know. Um, so I was at school then, and then I probably wrote it. You know, I don't remember when I wrote it, by a year or two before we recorded it, you know. So anyway, I was just one of those you know, I could have wasted it on a lot of worse things than that, I suppose, but I was going to England and every break I had I was going to and I had my friends there and my girlfriend there and uh and then uh and the first semester at school, I got bees and I wasn't showing up or doing anything. And I said, this is you know, I don't know, it's ridiculous. The next semester, I got all d's, you know, and I said, you know, I mean, the truth is, I just don't want to be this, you know, I don't want to be here, so I'm I'm leaving. You know. It's not like I said, Oh now, I'm I've got to really dig in if I don't want to get a d I just said, I'm just totally indifferent. I'm just in over the wrong place. And I went and I moved to England. And there's your girlfriend, that the one who you're married, No Kathy, who has of of you know, the songs about her. You've got a whole list of questions, these questions that you're interested in, the questions that you think people will be interested in. I get a list of questions that I have a producer, right, and some volume of them. I used that I write a lot of my own questions because the basic principle is I want people to describe for me, and whether it's you, whether it's Obama, it doesn't matter who is everybody. I wanted them to describe, how is it felt to be you? Really, that's the basic premise of the show. What about if somebody doesn't want to describe that they're free to do with whatever they please. Maybe they don't even want to describe that to themselves. To themselves, well, maybe sometimes it's a way of thinking about life, is what you're saying. Some people come in here and after about twenty minutes they begin to have a conversation that I think that they wanted to have. My next question for you is what did your parents think when you were so young? Did your parents have any kind of opinion about your career at that age? You were sixteen years old when you want American bands down? Oh, I don't think that anybody thought of it as a career. I think I thought they were, you know, be I made a record, The record got played on the radio, it was, you know, kind of a hit. We went on television. What do you think about that? They were happy? You know, my father was a professional bass player and he was used to be on some television shows that you know, like UM, the the Arthur Godfrey Show. He was in that band, and Jackie Gleason he was on that band. So I mean, it wasn't that it was added a question that you would ever see somebody on television because like we'd you know, when we're kids would let's see it, let's see if we see dad, you know, when they showed the band. But so, you know, it was like it's not exactly a show business family, but it's not exactly civilian either. You know, he was he was a good musician. I'm sure he didn't think that the piece of work that we did was very good, but he was happy that it was to change what his opinion about my work. Yeah, of course I wonder what that was like for him. Well, you know, it's a very very interesting question and one that I think about a lot. But I do really do think that it's like one of those questions that even though there's nothing in in the response that would be hurtful or anything, it's just one of those things where like it's sort of my life, you know, like it's not it's very entertaining I know for people, but why should I do that? And not the kind of thing you want to talk about? Yeah, I don't think so how he felt about, you know me, obviously, it was like it is a very interesting subject and a complex and a complex subject, you know, and I think about it a lot because, as you can imagine, it would be provoke all kinds of all kinds of response responses and parent child relationships. But everything happens to everybody, you know. It's not like there is anything of mine that is that different from anybody else's experiences that I should, you know, bequeath it that much more time. You know, it's something, Yeah, there was something up, something was off, you know, but that's crazy about him. I'm sure he was crazy about me. And uh and if there was a complication in it, then okay, it's like what what you know as opposed to let me figure out what that complication was and let's talk about it. That's that's so, so let's go on. You know, another subject I wanted you. I don't mean to be rude. Do you want to ask me another question about that? Or the only reason I asked is because I mean, for me, my dad died when I was twenty five years old, and he never got to see any of what I did. And I'm always interested in people's relationships with their parents in terms of just how how it may or may not affect what you do. You know, how man, you know, just anecdotally, I noticed that people whose childhood's are more troubled than mine was but you know, I had had some kind of hardships, usually money issues or something like that, or family or broken you know, divorce or you know that there's more interest in the subject than I naturally feel about it, having grown up with just my younger brother and a peaceful, loving, uh family. I mean, I can't say that I really wanted to get out of there, you know, but for what purpose? She just you know, I was ready. Yeah, I was free, you know, I just want to be free. Is a picture of my my son Adrian that that I love. He's sitting He's sitting in a snowsuit. He looks like he's maybe a year old, sitting in the snow in Central Park, and the look of exasperation on his face is so profound that I know, it's like he was already whoever he was, and he just you know, said, oh man, do I have to go through this whole thing to get up to you know? He was that guy already. And whoever I was, they people weren't prepared for for what it is that I was in the world that I came from. Nobody nobody said, well, will you make your living as an artist? Like that wasn't a possibility. Certainly you can make your living as a rock and roll artist. And I mean forget about like the greatest songwriters or something like that, just even a songwriter. You know, like you're gonna like be a songwriter. Or It's like so nobody was saying anything particular, like wow, you're really gifted. You should you know, do this study that. You know, it was like great, My father's thing was great. You know you can do this. You know, it's better than waiting on tables. You know, it's so being you know, be a musician, but don't be a musician for your whole career. But I was already long gone into that. M Paul Simon's career in music has made an indelible mark. Simon and Garfunkel won the Grammy for Lifetime Achievement, and Simon himself belongs to an elite club of musicians inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. Other members include Michael Jackson, Blue Read, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon. Take a listen to our archives where I speak with another musician with a long and storied career, Radio Heads frontman Tom York. You've been with those guys for how long? And now we started when were six Radiohead, so that's quite long. What do you attribute that to? Persistence? My great diplomatic skills. Note more at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. As the story goes, Paul Simon met Art Garth Uncle during a sixth grade production of Alice in Wonderland. Four years later, they signed with a label under the pseudonym Tom and Jerry, and their song Hey Schoolgirl reached the Billboard Charts. Today, Paul Simon has twelve Grammys, and in two thousand seven, he became the first recipient of the Library of Congress' Is Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Paul never stops working on his music, and he brought a c D of some of his latest songs to our interview. I guess it's an album, you know, I don't even know what it is anymore, because I'm working on a group of songs and I've been working on him for a long time. And uh, and I'm also working on different sounds. And you know, as you combine things from different places and you find a way of expressing yourself by doing that. There's something calming about that. It's good and it sort of spills you into the rest of your life. You start the problem solve in the same way he starts. To just have a certain connection that you that you sense and you believe in it, and you go at least you go with it. And if I have to break down what my instincts are cerebraly and tell you why, I can, you know, but it's not really necessary for me to get in the way of whatever the flow is going is going to give me. And then, you know, after I've reached a certain amount of songs, I cut it off and say, okay, that's this group. Let's now I'll take a look and see is that is that something? You know? What is it? I've just finished it? What is it now? You know? Because it's not It's not this same process as like a movie company says, here, I want to make a movie. You know, here's here's what it is, here's the and here's the budget, and when you finish it will judge it, you know. But in the context that you're making it is that is a certain context. I'm not doing that. I'm just finishing a bunch of songs and then saying what does that mean? And my, I guess my, you know, my first real question is it's like, what does that mean to somebody else who's listening to it? Do you have a producer? No? No, No. All the albums you've made over the many, many years, how many of them? What percentage would you say you had a producer? It doesn't matter. They weren't really they weren't, you know. They they helped me. And well, look, there can be a producer who says, let's pick the songs and then you you know, you go, we'll get the musicians and we'll do it like this. And the artist says, okay, well I do that. I make up the songs, I make up the sounds. What I need to work with it and in a collaboration is a great engineer, and I am working with one. You do it all in the same studio. I do it up in a little studio in my house. There. Well, no if as if there are big, bigger things like drums or something like that, I might not do it. That might do it in the studio, but I have to record a drums there too. Well. The other day we we went up to this church and in Hartford and we recorded a big pipe organ to put on one of the tracks. That's interesting anyway. You know, you would know what I was talking about if you had heard any of this, and your reaction to it was, Oh, I like that. I'd like to hear it again. That's entertaining. I like it, you know, because most music that you hear that's new. It's like, you know, Steve Barton's got a great joke and he says, uh, I'd like to play a new song for you now. He said. You know, if you're like me, when an artist says they'd like to play a new song, I always think, please, don't you know. And it's very hard to get anybody to really like something that you're doing that's new, h or to like anything really. I did SNL once and Lauren had me tip McCartney and hand him a lot of money at the opening and say only the old stuff. Paul plays only the old stuff, and I slip him up a twenty dollar pillar or something. But you're right, no one wants to hear the new stuff unless it's really good. It's it's it's that people people who have been have heard enough stuff that isn't good that they now are weary. You know, when people were really interested in songs and stuff like if you go to the sixties or that and to that period of you know, people were really interested to see if what was your new song? They didn't dread it. They dread it. Now because people don't have any particularly great ideas with their new song, better off going to a new artist. Get you listen to music now? All the time you devour? I want to devour. Would you listen to a lot of music? What purpose beyond pleasure? Beyond consuming it? Like everybody else does? What? What? What? What's music in your life? Wait? What purpose beyond pleasure? But you need a purpose? You don't need You don't. You don't listen to things to find out what people are doing in popular music. I'm just curious. No, I don't much listen to popular music. You just you just ask me if I listen to music, what kind of music? All kinds? Everything? You know, old music, new, new classical music, music from different composers, odd composers, gospel music, country music, jazz. Depend. If I'm driving in the car, I have this like some Vibrus stations programmed and like what are they? Well, fifties Sinatra, Willie have the Sinatra channel, Willie's place, Uh, Elvis Presley, which is a very disappointing channel. Uh and uh. I think B B BB King's Bluesville and one other. It might be an another jazz. The sources that are that I am drawing from are far enough a field. I think that you you don't think to yourself, you know, I'm I'm listening to this in the context of my music. For example, there's a composer named Harry Partch, and he's dead now. He died in the seventies. He was he um. He was born in the West Coast in the report of twentieth century. Anyway, Harry Partch's belief was that that an octave is not divided into twelve notes like you see on a piano. If you go from sea to see, including black he's and white keys, it's twelve notes. He said, that's a false division of the way music occurs. Really, an octave has about forty three distinct notes, and in order for him to compose this microtonal music, he had to build instruments that played microtonally. Anyway, this composer, his instruments were out at Montclair State UH in New Jersey, and and I made contact. One of the guys in my band knew UH the guy who was curating those instruments, and he played Harry parts music because his name was Dean Drummond. He he died about a year and a half ago. But anyway, I got into this thought that this song that I wrote would be very good in a context of this microL micro tonality. So I went out there and recorded it and put the song down. And you know, so I can't say that I'm listening to find out something. I'm not listening and saying what are you doing? Oh m, let's see, Oh that's that's hipper than I am, or that's not as hip as I am. Or I'm listening to things that are sounds and or thoughts that that I'm interested in. You know. So that's one track on this I mean the other tracks have all other other reasons. And then you know, for for happening like rhythmically or sonically. And then there's also the whole question of sound, what sounds are pleasing? How often to change a sound so that the mind is really being entertained in a way it likes the use of all of that if he if My feeling is, if you do it properly, Ah, anybody or many people who listen to it will find pleasure from it because it's ah, there's some there. It professes to have a truth to it. In other words, I do believe that, uh, there are forty three tones, because if you hear people singing acapella, you'd say, oh, that's attitude or that's that, or they're terrible. But no, I mean it's the human voice going down. These are all these different pitches between this note and this note and the guy's right. There are all those pitches. It's only that we divided it in that particular way that makes us think that's flat or that's sharp. So, I mean, that's a very you know, and not only is an interesting musical thought, it's just an interesting thought period when you write music. Over the years, you had a partner, You've had some ad hoc collaborations with people, like you did some performance thing either a tour with him. But but I'm assuming that you haven't done a lot of that. Have you have? You had a lot of opportunities to do that, and it's not that interesting to you or when when it comes sting? How does that happen? Well, it sting. You know. That's a performance collaboration that happened because we were both singing at a at a fundraising event. We both were supposed to sing at a fundraising event, you know, just the acoustic guitar, and so we said, okay, let's do it together and we'll sing two duets, you know, let's pick the songs. So that's how that happened. But otherwise I do lots of I just gotta I just gotta contacted by Aaron all who's my friend who said let's do something, you know. I mean, I'm definitely gonna do something with Aaron Nelle. I just did something with Dion. It's really good too. It's really good, you know. I mean it's interesting. So, I mean, these are various things that I think, you know, that I that I think of. And the fact that it's not the mainstream, well it's I don't know, it's it's neither here nor there. I mean, it's it, you know. I hate to say it is what it is, but it is what it is. That that's that's what I do with my time and my thoughts I'm not making a making any case for it. The only case I can make for that is if I what I do is entertaining, and then you know, and I'd say, okay, so I'm you know. The way I'm thinking is is good at the time that you collaborated with garf uncle, would you write songs and you and he would in your head and he was in the music d n A wise when you were writing the music. I'm assuming so when you were together, and and and if and the follow up to that is what do you find that now? Sometimes you write songs and you and that comes as in an old habit that you come in for you, not even necessarily him as somebody else. The songs come to your head sometimes that you write music seems to be passing through you like waves, you know. And when when that happens to your sit there and go, well that would I would need someone else to do that with me? No, no more, no, not anymore? Something else? I mean? Well, first of all, uh, to go all the way back to the times that I sang with Artie, since we started singing together, it was kind of natural for me too, and what I wrote for the two of us to sing it. I didn't spend any time thinking about what I should do that's going to be good for the two you know, singable for the two of us. What I was writing was singable for the two of about, and it probably didn't separate until I wrote Bridge over Trouble Water, which you know. When I wrote that, I said, well, already should sing that, you know. Not it shouldn't be two two voices. Already should sing that, you know. But otherwise I really didn't spend a lot of time thinking about who, you know who. I just sort of just keep writing the songs. They're mostly about, mostly about my life. You know, I'm not writing for somebody. I'm not writing somebody else. I'm not writing for somebody else. You don't want to talk about your life, but your life's in the music. Yeah, to the degree to which I would talk about you know, I'm not pretending that I'm that I'm a cipher, you know, I mean you could, you know, you can and for lots about who I am in my life from the information that's available. But that's you know, I wish it. I wish it wasn't wish it. It's weird times. We live in that way. Yeah, you know, without getting into any of that you know kind of stuff. Mean in my own life, it's like I just can't believe. Yeah, it's it's like there's people there while you and I are sleeping, there's people doing push ups in the garage, and they wake up and they want to kill you. They just want to, They want to just you know, they construct you. And it's a it's a really big distraction if you're trying to work on some problem that you really can't quite grasp anyway, which is what's always going on with me and the music and the writing. It's like, I'm just I can't quite grasp that problem. And then you keep pushing. And when you do, if you do it right, then you get Then you solve the problem. Great, Now what's the next problem? Remember, And I'll never forget, you know, I certainly have had my public relations and reversals, and what I feelized this is I don't want you to love me or hate me. Now I get up there. I do what I do. If you like it, great, if you don't like it, But I don't do the sales, the salesmanship anymore at all. Just done to it. Well, of course, not because it's it really takes a lot of energy and thought to do that. And if you're spending your energy and thought on that, then you're not spending it on what you're interested in, which which is what, however you think about about acting and movies and that. And that's why they came to you in the first place, because they liked what you did. So now they're going to distract you with something and you won't be able to do what you did as well, and then they'll say, oh, he doesn't do it as well. So for the job for the for the artist is to say, you know, I can't pay too much attention to you, or I can't get this done. You know, at a certain point, Okay, you know, how's the business changed. That's a common question which we're just gonna say. But in a certain sense, you know, there's this it's not like this is a it's not a very profitable business. Ah, it's been like that. It's been like that for a long time, you know, for with the exception of a couple of acts at the at the top, and the records don't sell anywhere near what they did. But it's a long change that's coming. And I assume that the eventually the digital world will start to pay musicians the way they used to pay them. Right now, it's not you can't really make you can't really make a great, great living at it. But um, having said that, for me, since I'm not in the position of needing to make a living, fortunately you know, I'm grateful for that, I can spend time thinking about this, which is either an indulgence on my part or is worthwhile investigation, depending upon how people listen to it and what they say afterwards. If they say great, then okay. Some people sold their songwriting uh royalties of their rights over the years. I mean, the Beatles themselves sold that a lot of that and uh and then got it back. But and you didn't. Was there ever a time when people just came to you and try trying to wrestle from you? Here they tried to tempt you to buy because you I mean, I'm saying this and hopefully a flattering, flattering way, because your music is so enduring and so you know, truth and beauty and abundance and it's going to play forever, and you wonder are they gonna do people come to you and just try to make you some insane offered to kind of run off with your song rights. Um no, no, no, yeah, they're been offers to buy and that's not a I don't see that. I don't see that I would want to sell that, And of course not if you don't. Ah, how wonderful for you that you didn't control. I'm lucky that I Yeah, well, I grew up in the record business here in New York, so you know, I knew about having your own publishing company, which was nothing. All you have to do was file up, you know, some papers with Albany, and you were a company, and you could publish your own songs. Nobody was selling songs the way publishers used to, so nobody was entitled to any of it. So you start your own publishing company and I did, and you know, luckily I started with the sound of Silence. And uh so, yeah, that's what's what's your question. At a different time, you see the way that the business is now and how tough it is to sell recordings and to make a living quote unquote, to make a good living in this business, and people maybe they thought that that would never evolve that way, and for whatever reason, they sold their music rights and they made a lot of money. What was a lot of money back then. I'm sure that they felt that they were doing the right thing. And nearly everybody and I know that did that regretted that. I mean, they always the rights to your intellectual property as king, and you want to hold on to that. I think it's so how fortunate for you that you were able to do that. Well, you know, it's got to be a very difficult thing for somebody to sell the thing that they made, you know, even even if they're really well compensated, just still, you know, you're still it's not you don't have any distance from that product. It's your it's your work, it's it's you, you know, so you're selling. You're selling. It's got to be some level of discomfort with that, you know, even if you say, look, hey, i'll take that, I'll take this this level of discomfort for this much money, you know. Okay, well, okay, yeah, maybe let's take a quick quick Uh can we have the music? What are we playing? Have you been told? But I don't know, I don't know if just what we want to do with this, because nobody's ever heard this. Are you are you comfortable with us playing the up of the video. I have to think about that for a minute. I was just going to play it for you. At this point in our interview, Paul Simon plays me a new song, Insomnia acts Lullaby. Well, I'm afraid to ask you any questions now as we come to the end of our time together. But are you insomni active? Trouble sleeping on? You're a good sleeper if you are, let sleep because I have terrible insomnia and it rules my life. I mean, like Understone, you're a good sleeper. Um, well when I have a lot of nightmares. Well you open that door? Now what what? What? What? What do you think that's about? No, I didn't any door. I'm just telling me. Okay, I'm sorry. You're you're right, Yeah, No, we were just having a casual conversation about sleep. What's gonna happen to this music? You're gonna release this? You don't know? Yeah you are? Oh sure, as soon as I finish put it out and see see what I said, and then I'll probably gonna play it live. You know. It's tough to play some of the stuff like but well figuring out and I like my band that you know, it's the band that that was on tour with Sting and I like to you know, that's my band. I like to go out and play and you still play new music and not, you know, I want to play. I don't know. If I find I'd like to play some smaller theaters. Now, I like that sound the best of the you know, I think three thousand seeds, four thousand seed, four thousand, that that size has the best sound. By the way, I did hear forty two notes inside of each lot, at least forty Yeah, those were the instruments that I heard something coming. Yeah. Different, Yeah, I know it is different. But when you record, are of spaces the turn you want or that's irrelevant the environment. No, it's not well on the studio if you're I mean, studios are disappearing. But the thing that you always looked for in the studios had it it sound and what was a lucky studio for you? Um there are lots of them in New York, I mean, but they've mostly closed. What was to be a lot used to be a lot, well A and R. It was a studio that existed for a long time, has been closed forever. There's no more Columbia Studios. Here. Ah, there's no the hit factory has gone. Um, it's only you know, there's um, there's avatar. That's that's a good place has a good that has a good studio and anyway, uh yeah, room there are rooms that are you know, really good rooms. And and in in the history of recording that really used to be the case. Like I mean, I went to Muscle shoals Alabamatory Courts because that that place had those guys, and that place had a sound. He just turned on the switch and there it was, you know, it was just you know, it was magic. And then that's not the way music is made today. I don't think. I don't know. I really don't know how it's not. I don't think that's the way music is made. Who would you love to go into a studio with and make a record with? Um just one example. There's just too many examples, is what it is. Um. The way I make music is is is not in collaboration with somebody, And maybe that would work. I don't think so. Though you know, Edie and I have written some songs together, but and we're pretty close, and it's uh, it's hard to get the balance right when you're you know, collaborating on writing if you're if you're just used to writing your own songs. So there's nobody. So there's the people that I like want to work with. Are are you know, maybe somebody who's like a specifically great at playing a pipe organ in a in a big cathedral, you know, because like I did that. It wasn't a cathedral, was big church, So I need that player. Then there's uh, oh, there's just uh there's a drummers, really great jazz drummer, Jack did John Nette and he's playing on one of the one of the tracks, and Bobby McFerrin is singing on in fact, that track that you just listened to. There's just a lot of people who are doing sounds and playing stuff that I that I like to work with, and I do so maybe maybe more often than you might think, it's people ask you to be on their record or even just participating. It goes on a bit. One of the most vivid memories I have because I've collected your music. I have everything downloaded him and you name it and listen to your music all the time. My daughter is nineteen years old and she's flipped out for your music. She just loves you and loves your music and plays it all the time. When the SNLT came, it's you alone, message to myself. That's it right there. And we talked about some all times drunk, Still crazy to all, Still crazy after all. I started crying, my woman, I were crying because it was so beautiful. I'm not the child o man tends to socialize. I seem to lean on old familiar ways and I ain't no fool ful love songs that whisper in my ears. Still crazy after all these years, Still crazy after all. My thanks to the great Paul Simon. This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing