Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 427] Paul Simon’s Graceland: The Story Behind the Music and Controversy with Kalvin Schmidt-Rimpler Dinh

Transcript

[EP 427] Paul Simon’s Graceland: The Story Behind the Music and Controversy with Kalvin Schmidt-Rimpler Dinh · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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  Speaker 1: Kumalo asked if he could contribute an idea to the song.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Then Roy Harley had, in response to that, decided to
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  Speaker 1: play and then reverse. And that's the iconic break in
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  Speaker 1: the middle where it plays one line and then plays
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: it backwards. And then Bakitipu Kumalo had to figure out
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  Speaker 1: how to do that live or how to achieve a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: similar effect live. He says he went looking for pedals
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to see if anyone had pedals that could do that.
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  Speaker 1: And they couldn't, so he just tried to do it.
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  Speaker 1: by hand, basically, and plays it one way and then
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  Speaker 1: plays it back the other way. We're totally booked. Rock
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  Speaker 1: and roll! Well, I think I'll leave you to your reading.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Little hand says it's time to rock and roll. Rock
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  Speaker 1: and roll! We are totally booked.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Booked on Rock, conversations with authors, musicians, insiders,
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  Speaker 2: revealing the stories behind classic rock's greatest songs, albums, and artists.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Eric Senech. Before we get started, make sure you
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  Speaker 2: music delivered straight to your inbox. Just head to BookedOnRock.com
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: and sign up today. Now, on to our guest, Calvin
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  Speaker 2: Schmidt Rimpler-Dinn. He is the author of Paul Simon's Graceland,
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  Speaker 2: a new book part of Bloomsbury Publishing's 33 and a
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  Speaker 2: third series, specifically focusing on canonical album-length works of African music.
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  Speaker 2: The book explores the landmark 1986 album's extraordinary blend of
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  Speaker 2: South African musical traditions and American influences. He also examines
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  Speaker 2: the controversies surrounding Simon's collaborations during apartheid and how Graceland
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  Speaker 2: became a fascinating intersection of music, politics, race, and cultural exchange.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the podcast, Calvin.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: The story of Graceland begins when singer-songwriter Heidi Berg gave
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Paul Simon a cassette of South African accordion music. What
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  Speaker 2: captivated him about that recording?
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  Speaker 1: There were a few things that sort of came together
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  Speaker 1: that made that cassette captivating. On the one hand, the
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  Speaker 1: music itself reminded Simon of a certain era of rock,
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  Speaker 1: kind of 50s era, the kind of structure of the
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  Speaker 1: harmonies and... the kind of simplicity of the harmonic structures
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  Speaker 1: reminded Simon of a certain era of rock music that
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  Speaker 1: was important to him and to his formation. But also,
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  Speaker 1: Simon was going through a bit of a crisis at
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  Speaker 1: this point in time. He was processing his divorce from
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  Speaker 1: Carrie Fisher. He was at a moment in his career
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  Speaker 1: where he was sort of aging He had been popular
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  Speaker 1: and in the limelight for two decades. And that's kind
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  Speaker 1: of the longest stretch anyone in a kind of position
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  Speaker 1: of superstardom can enjoy. So he was at a moment
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  Speaker 1: in his life where he was experiencing a kind of
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  Speaker 1: months-long depression and something about this music, which in his
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  Speaker 1: words was very kind of up and very kind of
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  Speaker 1: happy and Something about that captivated him, and he spent
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  Speaker 1: months listening to this cassette, apparently, in his car as
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  Speaker 1: he was processing these other things that were happening in
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  Speaker 1: his life.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he really was struggling personally and creatively, and this
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  Speaker 2: was a reinvention for him. Really, it turned into one
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  Speaker 2: of the biggest reinventions of his career. He recorded in
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  Speaker 2: South Africa during the anti-apartheid cultural boycott. Talk about why
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  Speaker 2: he believed working with black South African musicians was different
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  Speaker 2: from performing at the controversial Sun City Resort.
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  Speaker 1: One of the controversies surrounding the album was whether he
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  Speaker 1: had violated the cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa. So
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  Speaker 1: there was this international boycott of South Africa at the time.
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  Speaker 1: It was designed to isolate specifically white South Africans from
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  Speaker 1: the kind of international networks of, well, from its international relations,
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  Speaker 1: shall we say. And Paul Simon, initially when he got
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  Speaker 1: the cassette, didn't know that it was South African. So
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  Speaker 1: his experience of listening to the cassette and the kind
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  Speaker 1: of joy and inspiration and love that he felt for
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  Speaker 1: the music was just to do with this experience, with
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  Speaker 1: this object that he was listening to do, listening to.
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  Speaker 1: And I think it's because, as he tells the story anyways,
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  Speaker 1: the cassette sort of didn't have very much detail or
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  Speaker 1: information on it. And I think it was just accordion
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  Speaker 1: jive hits volume two. And he didn't know where the
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  Speaker 1: word jive came from. So he's just sort of had
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  Speaker 1: a vague sense of, I like this music. It sounds
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  Speaker 1: kind of foreign and familiar to me. And I'm kind
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  Speaker 1: of fascinated by it. Eventually, he decides, OK, I want
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  Speaker 1: to find out where this is from. I want to
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  Speaker 1: collaborate with these musicians. He finds out they're South African,
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  Speaker 1: they're Black South African. This raises questions about Will, can
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  Speaker 1: he go and collaborate with these musicians without violating the
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  Speaker 1: spirit of the boycott? And his, the conclusion that he
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  Speaker 1: comes to is that he can because the boycott is
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  Speaker 1: designed to isolate white South Africans from cultural, international culture, basically.
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  Speaker 1: And an important venue for that is something like Sun City,
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  Speaker 1: which is this sort of venue that's outside of South
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  Speaker 1: Africa proper. It's like a kind of holiday resort. But
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  Speaker 1: it's kind of controlled by South Africa and it's in
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  Speaker 1: a nominal sort of independent homeland that is not really
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  Speaker 1: that independent. And there was a number of American and
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  Speaker 1: international celebrities across the world who've played in Sun City
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  Speaker 1: for white South African audiences. This is kind of a
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  Speaker 1: technical way of getting around the boycott. And this sort
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  Speaker 1: of was not at all the plan. His plan was
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  Speaker 1: to go to Johannesburg to work with black South African
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  Speaker 1: musicians who worked in townships. Yeah, his reasoning was that's
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  Speaker 1: not what the boycott was designed for. And in fact,
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  Speaker 1: when the boycott was designed, people hadn't considered the question
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  Speaker 1: of what it would mean to work with Black South
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  Speaker 1: African musicians. So that was his kind of reasoning for
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  Speaker 1: why this was a different venture and that this would
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  Speaker 1: be a way as well of facilitating a multicultural collaboration,
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  Speaker 1: a platform for These relatively unknown musicians, certainly outside of
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  Speaker 1: South Africa, very unknown musicians, except for kind of African
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  Speaker 1: music aficionados outside of South Africa. There was also a
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  Speaker 1: process by which he kind of reached out to contacts
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  Speaker 1: in South Africa to see if these musicians would want
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  Speaker 1: to work with him. And broadly speaking, there was a
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  Speaker 1: positive reception. So for him, the question of the agency
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  Speaker 1: of these musicians was accounted for, you know. He asked, basically,
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  Speaker 1: and they wanted to work with him. So that's why
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  Speaker 1: it was different for him.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they helped to shape the music. Let's talk about that.
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  Speaker 2: He arrives at Ovation Studios in Johannesburg without finished songs,
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  Speaker 2: which is important to note. How did guitarist Ray Fury,
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  Speaker 2: bassist Bakhtiti Kumolo, and drummer Isaac Michali help shape the music?
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  Speaker 1: This is a really important aspect of what you just mentioned,
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  Speaker 1: which is the kind of shift for and reinvention for
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  Speaker 1: Paul Simon. Instead of writing lyrics first and then finding
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  Speaker 1: a kind of harmonic and melodic structure that will work
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  Speaker 1: with that, as he had done previously, although he had
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  Speaker 1: not exclusively done that previously, but that was one sort
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  Speaker 1: of main way of working for him. He opted to
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  Speaker 1: go without any concrete ideas necessarily, and he wanted to
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  Speaker 1: develop a set of sketches. The reasoning for that was
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  Speaker 1: partially because these were musical traditions that he was not
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  Speaker 1: an expert in by any means. And so he wanted
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  Speaker 1: to work improvisationally and figure out from there how he
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  Speaker 1: could shape his own musical sensibilities around those of his collaborators.
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  Speaker 1: And he wanted to foreground, you know, the sound of
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  Speaker 1: these different musicians and these different kind of popular South
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  Speaker 1: African music traditions from the 50s and 70s, sort of
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  Speaker 1: from the 50s to the 70s, sort of the broad
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  Speaker 1: scale of the styles that he was listening to. And
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  Speaker 1: he wanted to work with those sounds and to foreground
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  Speaker 1: them and to preserve those qualities first and then figure
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  Speaker 1: out how he could meet them through his own sensibilities.
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  Speaker 1: The sessions were done in this way where he sort
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  Speaker 1: of tried to cultivate sort of playfulness and improvisation and
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  Speaker 1: asked people to kind of experiment and then when he
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  Speaker 1: heard an idea that he liked he would then sort
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  Speaker 1: of hone in on that and ask them ask his
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  Speaker 1: collaborators to develop this or that and move with this
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  Speaker 1: idea move with that idea which was a learning experience
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  Speaker 1: for him as well as his collaborators but sort of
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  Speaker 1: broadly speaking the accounts of that two-week period when he
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  Speaker 1: went to Johannesburg in 1985 was that it was a
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  Speaker 1: positive experience although it's worth noting that initially also a
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  Speaker 1: charged one because of the fact that Paul Simon comes
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  Speaker 1: in as an American superstar with his team or with
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  Speaker 1: some people anyways who are white and then he's working
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  Speaker 1: with black South African musicians in a segregated environment where
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  Speaker 1: these black South African musicians would initially be very careful
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  Speaker 1: to refer to you know the white people in the
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  Speaker 1: studio as sir, and to be, you know, defer to
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  Speaker 1: these honorifics, these like hierarchical ways of organizing social life.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it took a while for the atmosphere to
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  Speaker 1: loosen up. From the get-go, there's this, the politics of
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  Speaker 1: apartheid is pressing its way into the musical collaboration.
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  Speaker 2: Let's get to the songs, The Boy in the Bubble.
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  Speaker 2: mixes an upbeat accordion groove with this unsettling images of
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  Speaker 2: medical experiments, violence, technology. What was Paul trying to capture
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  Speaker 2: about the modern world in 1986?
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  Speaker 1: Well, there's an asterisk at the start, I guess, to
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  Speaker 1: the question, which is Paul Simon's way of writing lyrics
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  Speaker 1: was also improvisational. He kind of was inspired by... we
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  Speaker 1: might say like kind of stream of consciousness style people.
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  Speaker 1: The Beats, New American Poetry, also a generation of kind
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  Speaker 1: of American kind of folk musicians who were reading like
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  Speaker 1: French symbolist poets and stuff like that, like Rambo or something.
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  Speaker 1: And so he says that he writes from the subconscious,
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  Speaker 1: or he doesn't consciously set out to write about certain themes.
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  Speaker 1: but just sort of writes things down as they come
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  Speaker 1: to his mind and he's sort of exploring his own feelings.
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  Speaker 1: From that, then he sort of will reshape the lyrics
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  Speaker 1: and try to make them work for the song, etc.
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  Speaker 1: And think about maybe the meaning in a more reflective
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  Speaker 1: way and also figuring out if it fits the kind
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  Speaker 1: of meter or whatever. I say all that as just
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  Speaker 1: a little asterisk because that means that the question of
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  Speaker 1: intention is sort of consciously being suspended for him. He's saying,
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  Speaker 1: I'm acting as this kind of semi-conscious semi-subconscious writer and
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  Speaker 1: I'm letting my feelings my unconscious experience of the world
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  Speaker 1: come out through the lyrics and I think that's important
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  Speaker 1: for the framing generally just because that's important for his
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  Speaker 1: style is very poetic and abstract and works with a
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  Speaker 1: lot of juxtaposition and kind of chains of meaning that
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  Speaker 1: sort of jump around but also for this particular song
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  Speaker 1: the opening song it's filled with all of these like
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  Speaker 1: super different images. You know, there's, as you already mentioned,
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  Speaker 1: the boy in the bubble, which sort of derives from
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  Speaker 1: a television show called The Bubble Boy, I believe, that
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  Speaker 1: then itself is based on the lives of two immunocompromised
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  Speaker 1: boys who have to live in like a complex containment
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  Speaker 1: system because their immune systems basically would respond to sort
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  Speaker 1: of ordinary illness in a way that would mean that
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  Speaker 1: they would just die. and then there's other images in
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  Speaker 1: the song, like the baby with the baboon heart, which
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  Speaker 1: is about a medical case of a heart transplant from
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  Speaker 1: a baboon to a young child, and that is this
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  Speaker 1: kind of miraculous medical technology, but it also fails, and
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  Speaker 1: There's like lots of images like this, right, where it's
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  Speaker 1: like lasers in the jungle, the baby with the baboon heart,
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  Speaker 1: the bomb in the baby carriage. And then also like
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  Speaker 1: jump starts and jump shots. And it's a lot of
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  Speaker 1: language that you get the impression that it's like newspaper
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  Speaker 1: articles and TV shows and information. Yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It's like flashing at you.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's like the precursor to what we have now,
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  Speaker 1: which is kind of the more extreme version of sort
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  Speaker 1: of YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and like all of
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  Speaker 1: these different kind of social media networks that are constantly
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  Speaker 1: feeding us images. It's the sort of precursor to that,
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  Speaker 1: which is sort of television and also MTV is coming up,
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  Speaker 1: but also newspapers and radio. This is a long story,
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  Speaker 1: I guess. This is the story about the modern world
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  Speaker 1: and kind of the distribution of information. It's miracle and wonder,
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  Speaker 1: but it's also awe and anxiety. It's like, wow, we
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  Speaker 1: live in this world. There's so many other worlds. And
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  Speaker 1: that creates these sort of strange experiences of feeling both
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  Speaker 1: connected and isolated. I'm in my bubble, but I'm also
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  Speaker 1: connected to the rest of the world.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Graceland, the title track, interesting. It combines American country influences
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  Speaker 2: with South African guitar playing, while its lyrics describe a
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: journey toward healing. Talk about how those different elements all
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: came together.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting one. The liner notes describe, as
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  Speaker 1: in the liner notes by Paul Simon, describe the song
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  Speaker 1: as almost country. And I guess that's sort of the
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  Speaker 1: kind of the gambit of it is that it sounds
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  Speaker 1: kind of like country. It sounds a bit like kind
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: of rockabilly or something like that. And you've got also,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: you know, Ray Fieri's playing a chord sequence that is
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: not common to South African tangent music, but it's him
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  Speaker 1: interpreting the music that Paul Simon's trying to play and
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  Speaker 1: the musical tradition that he's coming from. So it sounds familiar,
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  Speaker 1: but it also, there's something about it that sounds slightly
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  Speaker 1: different as well. Yeah, there's a lot, there's so much
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: you could say about that. There's a lot going on there.
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  Speaker 1: It's partially itself about the history of American popular music.
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  Speaker 1: There's lots of references to kind of classic kind of
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: folk and rock and blues.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Well, in the obvious being Elvis, right?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: In the obvious being Elvis.
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  Speaker 2: He made a trip to Graceland.
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  Speaker 1: The word Graceland came to Paul Simon as part of his, like,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying words, I'm just saying what's coming to
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: my mind. And initially he wanted to get rid of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the word Graceland because he thought that it was sort
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: of misplaced within his language. an album that came from
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: kind of South Africa, an encounter with South African music.
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  Speaker 1: But for some reason he couldn't really let go. It
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: was sort of stuck with him. And so he decided, okay, well,
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to now go to Graceland because I've never
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: been before. And I need, I should, if I'm going
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: to write a song called Graceland, maybe I should go there,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: go to the, you know, the Elvis mansion, which at
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: this point is like an established kind of site for,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: for rock pilgrimages. And yeah, It's an important site. It's
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: got this almost holy quality to it, which Paul Simon's
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: playing with. It's called Graceland. But basically he goes and
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: then he actually makes peace with the fact that the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: song doesn't really have anything or doesn't have that much
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: to do with the Graceland mansion in any specific sense.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Because then he decides that the word Graceland is actually
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: going to be about, have something to do with trying
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: to achieve or find a state of grace in your
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: own life. and out in the world. So he's pushing
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: it into metaphorical terrains, or he's drawing out the kind
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: of metaphorical possibilities of the name Graceland and its histories.
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  Speaker 1: And of course, you know, there's the history of well-established
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: history of Elvis having sort of appropriated Black American musical traditions.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: And there's a lingering question somewhere in the background, maybe
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: about whether Paul Simon's relationship to these black South African
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: traditions is an echo of that in some way. And
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  Speaker 1: I don't say that to sort of simplistically suggest some
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: kind of easy vilification. It's just a question, I think,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: about the dynamics of, you know, playing music with others
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and living in a world that's unequal. And what does
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: it mean to engage with one another in an unequal world?
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: The track Gumboots grew directly from the accordion music that
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: first inspired Paul. While I know what I know, pairs
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: New York humor with South African musicians. Again, that mix,
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: that interesting mix. What makes those unlikely combinations work so well?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, it's, I guess, just the fact
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: that these are great musicians working with each other. Throughout
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Paul Simon's career, he's proven very, very good at choosing
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the best kind of collaborators. It's testament to the fact
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: that he clearly knows a something really important about music,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: about the creators of music, and about finding those collaborations
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and working together and so on. There's lots of stuff
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: one can get into about why do these unusual pairings work.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: One has to do with surprise, I guess. You know,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: that innovation is oftentimes just finding an unlikely connection that works,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and through experimentation you find some kind of contrast that's satisfying.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: And then... On the other hand, it's also to do
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: with the complicated histories of those things that he's mixing
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: as well, right? So as mentioned, the history of rock
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: in America is tied up with the history of the
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: blues and race and so on. You can trace parts
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: of that history back to, you know, Central and West
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  Speaker 1: African musical traditions as well as kind of European Christian traditions.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: And then the South African, I spent a bit of
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: time in the book talking about how all of the
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: township music, all of the popular music that's heard on
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the album that comes from South Africa is itself very,
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  Speaker 1: very mixed and has this history of deriving from kind
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: of Christian like hymnody traditions that are come about through
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  Speaker 1: kind of colonial expansion, but then also kind of American
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  Speaker 1: minstrel traditions and the kind of Jubilee spirituals and all
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the kind of American musical culture is being exported as
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: well to South Africa and then reinterpreted in South Africa
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  Speaker 1: at the least since the 19th century. So all of
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  Speaker 1: these kind of musical traditions that we're hearing on the
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: album and that Paul Simon was captivated by are already
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  Speaker 1: the product of these cross-cultural dialogues. that emerged through the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: kind of history of European colonial expansion and migration and
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: so on. So maybe the music works together because he's
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: finding these tenuous connections, as he calls, well, sort of
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: long tenuous connections between, you know, an accordion heard in
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: the American South and an accordion heard in Lesotho.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Diamonds on the soles of her shoes. That starts off
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: with that beautiful vocal harmonies. And that features Ladysmith Black Mambazo,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: led by Joseph Shabalala. Talk about how Paul built a
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: song around those extraordinary vocal harmonies.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: When Paul Simon decides to go to South Africa, he
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: collects a bunch of different tapes from sort of around
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the original one that he sort of started with. And
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: then he finds himself listening to ladies with black mambazo
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: who are really important. Scafemia, like a cappella group. This
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: is sort of comes out of a traditional Zulu kind
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of choral singing in South Africa. They're very, very popular
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: amongst like black South African audiences, but not at all
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: popular outside of that framework. He's just captivated by this music.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: He spends a lot of time listening. He's a little
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: bit kind of anxious as well about wanting to reach
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: out because he's not sure how he can fit in
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: because it's very close kind of harmony, very precise. And
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: so he just spends a lot of time listening to them.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: And then at Ovation Studios in Johannesburg, apparently someone invites
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Joseph Shabalala to one of the final sessions just as
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: a guest. And they then, Paul Simon, Joseph Shabbalala, they
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: then speak to each other. And Paul Simon decides to
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: suggest a collaboration. And he suggests it kind of tentatively.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: He says, hey, I'm going to propose this to you.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'll send you something. You can take it or
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: leave it, basically. And Shabbalala is really, he was receptive
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: to the idea. He likes the idea. They embrace it.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And Shabbalala will later talk about the fact that this
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: is the first time he's ever hugged a white man
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: in his life. Oh, sorry, no, I'm thinking of homeless
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: right now. We're talking about Diamonds on the Soles of
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Our Shoes. But nonetheless, there is also this important aspect to... Yeah,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the introduction of Diamonds on the Soles of Our Shoes
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: is similar. They're kind of going back and forth. And yeah,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: it's interesting because they don't necessarily... line up in an
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: exact way. So Paul Simon's not, he doesn't learn like
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the exact intricacies of their choral kind of tradition. And
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: they don't exactly kind of mirror his style or the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: way he kind of writes in a sort of zany
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: way about New York life or whatever. And that's, I think,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: part of what makes it interesting as well. I mean,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I go into more detail about this in the book
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: about questions of translation and the themes that, you know,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Laysmith Rombazzo or kind of addressing in Zulu and the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: things that he's talking about in English or they overlap,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: but they're also slightly different. And that's also kind of interesting.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's the sort of trying to find some
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: kind of middle ground, trying to understand each other, but
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: also being a bit different. And that's maybe a part
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: of also what makes the music work.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Calvin Schmidt-Rimperdin, the author of Paul Simon's Graceland. It's a
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: new book, part of Bloomsbury Publishing's 33 and a Third series.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: specifically focusing on canonical album length works from or of
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: African music. And that was one of five singles off
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: of this album and interesting choices of singles. And they
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: all did very well, but none better than you can
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: call me out, which is the album's biggest hit lyrics,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: explore aging insecurity and identity. How much of Paul's own
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: life was reflected in that song? I think you answered
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: that up top. He was going through a, difficult time personally.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the first line is like a man
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: walks into the street and asks himself, why am I
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: soft in the middle? Why is life so hard? So
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: there's this, if you know a little bit about the, when,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: what Paul Simon was doing when he wrote this, this album,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: it's tempting to think this is, you know, this is
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: about him. This is about this kind of feeling some
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: kind of softness, some kind of vulnerability and feeling kind
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: of ground down by the you know, whatever's going on
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: in his life. But it's important, of course, to also
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: say his language is more generic than that. So it's
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: about also being able to read your own experiences into
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the song, right? It's like open for other people to
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: actively interpret as well. But yeah, there's elements of his
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: own life that are peppered throughout the album, mentions to
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: like references to divorce. I don't think, and you can
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: call me out, but there's aspects of his life that
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: come in. For example, later on, There's references to kind
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: of a man walking down the street in a world
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that he's unfamiliar with. It might be the third world.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: And then there's references to things that would evoke South Africa,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: like Scatterlings and Orphanages, which is Scatterlings is like a
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: reference to a kind of very popular or important popular
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: South African album. So this is references to maybe his
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: own journey to Johannesburg and finding something rejuvenating about that experience.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit tricky because the way in which
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the lyrics work is this kind of trope of the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: kind of westerner traveling to a quote-unquote third world country
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: and finding spiritual rejuvenation in that space. The degree to
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: which that's sort of ironic or tongue-in-cheek is unclear, but
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: that's sort of typical of him as well is that
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: you've got these sort of lots of questions about like,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: is this ironic? Is this sort of, uh, is he,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: is he knowingly playing into these tropes or is he
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: kind of naively restating these, these like tropes of being like, oh,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: I just went to a poor country and found spiritual
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: rejuvenation there or something like that.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Well, he also has a sense of humor.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: For the longest time, I wondered what the reference to
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: the name Al was, but he was at a party
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: with Carrie and it was what a French composer that
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: called him Al and called Carrie Betty.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Turned that into a joke. Yeah.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly what the details are, but yeah,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: it has something to do with a party and some
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: kind of, um, misunderstanding and then a playful, like, you know,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you can, you know, you can call me out. Um,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: which is, yeah, it's part of it. There's like, there is,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: there's always a kind of irony, uh, a lot of
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: jokes in the work as well.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: He's funny. I mean, he was on Saturday night live,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: thus the connection to Chevy chase for the video. Which
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: is hilarious.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Well, he's got that kind of self-deprecating humor, right? That
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: runs throughout later on in Crazy Love, the song I'm
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: jumping at here slightly. But, you know, there's a reference
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: to an archangel called Fat Charlie who's filing for divorce.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: And it's like, that sounds like it's about you. And
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: it's funny to be called an archangel and Fat Charlie.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like, that's the... his self-deprecating kind of
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: humor coming through.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: The bass break on the song is iconic. It's one
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: of the best parts of the song. That came from
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Bakiti Kumalo. That came partly because of the engineer, right?
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Roy Haley reversed the tape?
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Yes. So the way it worked was this particular session
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: actually fell on Bakiti Kumalo's birthday. And Kumalo asked if
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: he could... basically contribute a an idea to the song
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and he came up with an idea that then Roy
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Harley had sort of in response to that decided to
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: play and then reverse um and that's the iconic sort
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: of yeah break in the middle where it sort of
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: plays one line and then plays it backwards and then
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: sort of had to figure out how to do that
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: live or how to achieve a similar effect live And
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: at that time, I think there were no, I think
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: he describes, he says he went looking for pedals to
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: see if anyone had pedals that could do that and
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: they couldn't. So he just tried to do it, you know,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: by hand basically and plays it one way and then
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: plays it back the other way. I think it's important
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to acknowledge Roy Halley's contribution there as well. Or that's
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: an instance where you can remember, where we can remember
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: that the engineer is also doing a lot of work
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: here because not just is he making this decision to
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: reverse the line, but he's also making decisions creative decisions
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: about how to balance tone and volume and how, you know,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: where to put the bass, for instance, thereby, you know,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: creating a different, like making the bass have a different
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: kind of role in driving the music, driving the feeling
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: of the music, et cetera. It's something that Paul Simon acknowledges.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And also, Bakit Kamala also talks about how a lot
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: of his sound is also thanks to these kind of
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: engineering decisions.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Sure. Often overlooked. The engineers, absolutely. And again, going back
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: to the collaborative effort. You can call me Al. to
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: this day. Still sounds great. Love the song. However, my
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: personal pick, the sleeper pick from the album is Under
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: African Skies. It's an absolutely beautiful song. Gets better with age.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: And it features Linda Ronstadt, who had previously performed at
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Sun City, despite the cultural boycott. Why did Paul involve
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: her despite that?
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Potential controversy well paul's position is on that specific note
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: is that uh her performance at sun city was a
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: mistake basically that her politics that she was that her
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: that she had progressive politics that she was anti-apartheid and
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: that she hadn't basically been as careful as she maybe
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: should have been and before deciding to perform at sun
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: city But otherwise, he thought that he chose her as
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the collaborator on that song. And again, that song is
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: an interesting one in terms of how it draws together
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: different references to Christianity and possibly South Africa or maybe
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: sort of Africa more generally.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: And.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: kind of American history of kind of American colonial expansion.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: And there's all these sort of layered sort of references
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: that are drawing connections between American history and African history
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and layering that through kind of ideas about redemption and
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Christian kind of revelation and so on.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: Homeless, co-written by Joseph Shabalala, while Crazy Love Volume 2 features...
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Ray Fieri's band Stimela, I think it's pronounced. So what
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: do these songs reveal about that creative contribution that came
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: from these collaborators?
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Well, they're slightly different in that, I guess, well, they
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: raised maybe some of the more uncomfortable questions about the
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: album insofar as, as we've said, you know, it's collaborative.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: That was the intention. It has this kind of multicultural
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: collaborative ethos behind it. The musical contributions on these songs,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: as well as more broadly across the album, are obviously different.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: you know, the product of many different excellent creative people
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: working together. How exactly the formal accreditation works is sort
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: of open for some scrutiny there, because broadly speaking, Paul
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Simon is the one who comes away with most of the,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: you know, if you read through the credits, he sort
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: of is everywhere and he comes away and he's got
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the copyright and he's got all these things. And there
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: is some acknowledgement of the work with others, the contributions
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: of others, and they're sort of acknowledged to varying degrees.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Some people get co-writing credits, others don't. And that becomes
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: a source of tension later about the album, is whether
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: or not the way in which the accreditation worked and
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the royalties and so on, whether that properly acknowledged the
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: degree of collaboration that was going on. And this is, again,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: something I get into in the book. There's a lot
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: of different things to consider here. It's partially to do
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: with the decisions that Paul Simon's making. It's partially to
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: do with industry standards and legal conventions and lots of
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: different stuff. And everyone can make their own mind about
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: where they fall on this debate. But it raises these
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: questions because, as you say, we've got Stimela here and
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: we've also got... For That Was Your Mother, we've got
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Rock and Doopsie and The Twisters. And that one particularly
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: is actually... interesting because Doopsie kind of made a complaint
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: or a claim that he wasn't didn't receive the right
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: writing credits and that was rejected by Paul Simon's lawyers
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: and if you look into his kind of Doopsie's catalogue
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: you will find a song that has the same kind
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: of an older song that has the same harmonic structure
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: and the melody is almost exactly the melody that Paul
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Simon ends up singing so yeah there's a There's some
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: kind of complicated questions there.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: And that's extremely important. If people aren't familiar with how
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: all that works, it's publishing. There's a lot of money
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: that's at stake there. And for a lot of these musicians,
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: they need that money. It's not like they're living large.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, they need that publishing money. And that's where
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: it becomes very contentious. But that also happened with Los Lobos, right?
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: On the track All Around the World or The Myth
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: of Fingerprints.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Let's get to that one. Because they later disputed the
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: songwriting credit. Ray Fury also expressed frustration over royalties. So
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: what did your research reveal about how fairly Paul treated
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: his collaborators?
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: This is, you know, for everyone to decide for themselves.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: And I hope that in the book I offer all
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of the different positions on this. But my personal sense
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: is that there were things that were really good. There
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: were things about the payment structures that were progressive relative
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to the industry standards at the time. However, relative to
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: the full kind of multicultural ethos of the album, I
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: think more could have been done in terms of the
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: royalties and accreditation for the different collaborators. So, for instance,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: with the Los Lobos dispute, they claim that the materials
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: that they provided for that song they had been working
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: on before and therefore should kind of share kind of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: writing credits on the song. And the rebuttal that comes
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: from Paul Simon is that for the song you need
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: to have, for it to have writing credits, you need
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: to have a song and a melody. Sorry, you need
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: to have lyrics and a melody, which is not what
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: they provided. And this then gets you into complicated terrain.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: More broad, this is just about Graceland. This is about
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: how the music industry works in general, which is what
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: kinds of creative contributions are protected under copyright law and
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: which ones are not. And there's a contradiction inherent sort
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: of almost in what he's already saying, because on the
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: one hand, if he's asking these musicians to get into
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the studio and to play around with ideas, i.e. to
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: spontaneously compose, and then he wants to also say that
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: in order to have copyright, you need to have words
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and a melody. If you only needed words and melody,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: why did he ask for them to play around in
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the studio in the first place? Or why did he
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: solicit their participation in the first place? So I think
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: there's a kind of contradiction there. And this is, again,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: I would emphasize, this is not unique to Paul Simon.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: This is a broader feature of how the music industry
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: creates a hierarchy of what kinds of contributions are protected
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: under law and which ones are not.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Just covered a book on James Brown's drummer, Clyde Stubblefield,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: and he didn't get any credit. And he created a
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: lot of those iconic beats that the songs were built around,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: but he didn't. So it's a very interesting conversation. I
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: had maybe a year, maybe longer, a great book that
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: was written all about this issue, the copyright law. And
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: it can get pretty complicated.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: There's a lot at stake when it comes to the money.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: By most accounts... Paul Simon's engagement with his collaborators as
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: one that was marked by a genuine attempt to be fair.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Whether he fell short, or I sort of suggest that
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: there are ways, there are important ways in which he
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: does fall short, that they partially have to do with
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: broader structures, that they partially have to do with his
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: own interpretation of what's going on. And that's okay. Again,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying this to simplistically vilify him or to
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: single him out as this unique exploiter, but also maybe to,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, people are owed to their complexity
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: as well. And there's our ways in which, you know,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: he may have fallen short of his own ideals for
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: this particular album, which was about collaboration, was about kind
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: of production across cultural difference and so on. That didn't,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: that wasn't reflected in how the exact arrangements worked. But
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: at the same time, it's also important to acknowledge, you know,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: acknowledge the ways in which it was important for like
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: really generative for many of his collaborators as well. I mean,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: ladies have their own bars, they'll come out winning multiple
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Grammys afterwards, it kind of launches their career. And Stimella
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: does experience a lot of success coming out of this
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: collaboration as well. So it's a complicated picture, you know,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: and it's not perfect.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: A lot more to read on that and the songs.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: So much more in this book, Paul Simon's Graceland, part
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: of Bloomsbury Publishing's series 33 and a third. It's out now.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: You can find it wherever books are sold. Look for
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: it at your nearest independent bookstore. Go to bookdownrock.com to
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: look for your nearest store. And Calvin, can people find
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: you online?
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: I keep a kind of low profile, but yeah, I mean,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I have a, I've like, I'm on Instagram so people
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: can join me there, but, um, also, yeah, I think, um,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: in my UCL emails still up, um, as well, if
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: people have questions.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Well, I really appreciate you coming on to talk about
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: this album. It's one of my all-time favorites. It's gotten
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: better with, with age for me and came along at
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: a time when I was starting to fall in love
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: with music. And so it's one of my favorite albums.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: that I go to so often. And after reading the
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: book now, you get even more of a deeper appreciation
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: for the music and the story behind all these songs.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: So thank you so much. Great book.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Thanks for your time. That's it. It's
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: in the books.