Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Paul Simon

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Paul Simon · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Paul Simon's one of the greatest living songwriters. Since
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: debuted with Art Garfunkel in nineteen fifty seven, Paul's written
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: countless songs that are quintessential to the American psyche. This year,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: at eighty one years old, he's released the latest edition
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to his beloved catalog Seven Psalms, to an outpouring of
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: critical acclaim. In twenty twenty one, Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Headlam released the audio original Miracle and Wonder Conversations with
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Paul Simon. It's an intimate look into Simon's songwriting, alongside
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: never before heard live studio versions of hits including The Boxer,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: The Sound of Silence, and of course Graceland. If you
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: haven't listened to Miracle and Wonder, I highly recommend checking
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: it out. It's available on Audible and at Pushkin dot FM.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: This fall, at Pushkin will be releasing an updated version
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of the audiobook with a brand new chapter featuring even
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: more from Malcolm and Paul's newly recorded deep dive into
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Seven Psalms. To celebrate this newest chapter in Paul Simon's
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: sixty five year career and the latest edition to Miracle
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and wonder. On today's episode of Broken Record, Malcolm Gladwell
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: sits back down with Paul to discuss the creation of
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: his newest album. Paul explains why he Field's music reviews
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: are more about the writer than the piece of music
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: being critiqued, and he talks about why many of his
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: lyrics take a more conversational bent. He also recalls how
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: the title for his newest record came to him in
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: a dream after he considered never writing another piece of
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: music again. This is Broken Record liner notes for the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: digital age. I'm justin ritchman. Here's Malcolm Gladwell with Paul Simon.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: So how you been he this album? I was reading
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: through the reviews. I was like, can I find a
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: bad review? I can't find one. This has never happened.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I'm so used to getting bad reviews myself that when
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: someone like you like hit for the cycle on this
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: is like, there's no.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: That's a great I like, I love all baseball metaphors. Well,
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: it's very pleasant to have a hit.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: I don't read reviews, so I didn't read any of them.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you they are one hundred percent. They are rhapsodic.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: You should read them. There's the fantastic. They're like, you know, if.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: I do read them, I will not be happy. The
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: reviews are about the reviewer. Yeah, so number one, you
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: you're getting an insight into somebody's ego, which is sort
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: of private in a way. So I'm not really comfortable
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: with that. Number Two, some people get what I'm doing
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: and other people don't really get one what I'm doing.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: They still, evidently with these reviews, they still like it,
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: maybe even like it a lot, but I don't. They
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: don't go to the reasons that I put there. So, like,
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I'll give you an example of things that I've heard,
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: because I haven't read any He's dealing with his mortality.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: I can understand that somebody would say it's not happens
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: not to be the case. You know, the way that
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: I write, I would say from that they're probably mostly
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: going on the song. Wait. You know the way that
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: I write is it's partly true personally, it's partly like
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: a wish that I have, It's partly other people's lives.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: But it's a it's a character. Even though the character
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: is me, it's not really me. It's a character. So
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: that character is dealing with the issue of Mortality. That's
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: because the way that song was written maybe one of
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: the last or the last song. The reason that it's
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: placed there is because that's a way to conclude the piece.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: So it's appropriate, but it's not consuming my time and thought.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: Of course, it's it's there, of course, but I'm not
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: getting something out that that I have to say. I'm
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: concluding this long piece in such a way that it
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: feels hopefully that it feels satisfying.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Did you right Weight, thinking that it was going to
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: be the final.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I wrote it as the final piece, so I
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: think it was either Weight or Trail of Volcanoes that
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: was the final piece that I wrote. What happened with
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Trailer Volcanos was I had another song and it didn't
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: fit anywhere, and so I said, I have to lose
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: this one. It does It's good. It was a guitar piece.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: It wasn't a written song, but it didn't fit musically anywhere.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: I just couldn't find its place. I was at that
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: point in the construction of the piece or the album
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: where my craftsmanship and my editing is dictating what I'm doing.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: It says to me that is slowing everything down. No
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: matter where you put it, and I'm looking for something
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: to continue the momentum, to get to the final lord
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: and the conclusion. Even though I didn't know what the
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: conclusion was at that point, I understood from years of
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: making records that it wasn't right for the set. So
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I tossed it out and I said, I need a
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: piece that has more of a sense of rhythm than
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: the rest of the album, because the rest of the
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: album is very free rhythmically. There's no drums, there's no bass,
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: but a Trail of Volcanoes comes from a loop a
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: bell of bells, so it's got a real pulse to it.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Even though I don't keep the bells going all the time,
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: I remove them and bring them back. But that served
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: a good purpose for where it was in the album,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: just in terms of of your ear, not in terms
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: of subject matter. So that piece found was placed where
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: it is in the album for those reasons, and the
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: end piece is there also as an end piece. And
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: then from those two decisions, I then wrote wrote the lyrics.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: I didn't know what I was going to write in
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Trail of Volcanoes, which in a way you can tell
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: from from the way it begins. Some of my songs
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: begin very conversationally to me. That's if I had to
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: look at some old song and tell you what was
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: I thinking, even if I couldn't remember it, I would say, oh,
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: I didn't know what I was thinking. So I just
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: began and Trail of Volcanoes. When I was young, I
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: carried my geto. You know, that's a simple sentence. I
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: don't know what the point of I don't know what
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: the point of the piece would be, but I did
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: have the line trail of volcanoes. It was in my notes.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: So that's what that song does. As it happens, it
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: has an appropriate thought for the entire piece. But as
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: far as the ear goes, it's the repetitive rhythm that
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: gives the ear a sense of I don't know, hopefully,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: hopefully it gives it a pleasure after things have been
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: sort of floating and not exactly a rhythmic, but not
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: with a tight rhythm. Here's a loop and weight becomes.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: After these six songs, what subject would I be on?
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: And someone I played it for at that early stage said,
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: heard the first six and I just had the track
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: for the seventh, and said, hearing these first six, I
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: just feel like I really don't want to die, and
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: there was the subject of wait, so anyway back to
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: reviews and critics, that's how that came about. But if
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: you were writing and saying, well, mortality is on his mind,
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: it's not wrong to say that, but it's I'm not
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: interested in as a thought because it's not actually what
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: I was thinking. What I was thinking was sort of
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: mundane compared to the idea of me contemplating my mortality.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: I was constructing a piece.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, go back a little bit. I was curious. The
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: last record you had made prior to this was twenty sixteen,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: So this is the this is the longest break you
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: took between right music, new songs, new songs in your life.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it probably was when I stopped performing and said
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: I'm going to stop, which I think was in twenty eighteen. Yeah.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: One of my thoughts was, well, first of all, I thought,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: this show that I'm doing, I've really taken it as
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: far as I can take it in terms of rethinking
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: songs and arrangements and anything that I did to that
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: show as it then existed, it really would be in
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: the danger zone of being real Coco, you know, just
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: be adding little things. And because I thought it's really
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: right now, So I don't want to continue doing this
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: because I'm not going to get to the nourishment of
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: rethinking songs and arrangements because they're really pretty well thought out.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: And if I don't get that, then i'd I don't
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: like performing because I'm bored. So I thought it's completed.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Its cycle is completed. It's not a bad time to stop.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: And as for writing, if I continued writing from the
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: way that I wrote the last piece of original music,
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: which was A Stranger to Stranger, I would be continuing
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: problem solving in a way that started when I began
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: to write when I was thirteen. So from the age
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: of thirteen, when I wrote my first songs, my songwriting
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: evolved in the way that the way my songwriting evolved.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: So if I think of it as problem solving, I
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: would continue problem solving in the same way. And from that,
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: this is my internal conversation. I said, so I can
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: make an album that's as good as Stranger the Stranger again,
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: and I thought that album was good, but I'm not
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: really enticed to do that, so I'll just not do it.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: I'll just stop, And if I want to find something
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: that's challenging, and that's new for me. The way to
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: do that is to shut everything down and begin again.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: That was my thought. I didn't then start to work
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: on anything because time went by, and then I had
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: this dream that said, oh, you were writing seven psalms
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: or you should be writing seven psalms. So I began,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: you know, whether it was subconsciously or not, I don't
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: know it. But I began to start from scratch again,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: picked up a guitar, and the wrote guitar pieces, and
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: you know, got more thinking about how I played guitar,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: and just I went back to what was the simplest way,
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: and I started to build from there. After about a
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: year of writing guitar pieces, words started to come also
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: from dreams, which is unusual for me. I mean, it's
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: it's happened in the past that I've thought of a
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: line or two, but that's not usually the way I
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: The way I write this was this was unusual.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Do you remember can you even play for me the
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: first little bit of music that got you going on this?
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the first thing that I did was to play that,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: really the first song, that's where I had, and then
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: I began to put Eventually it got into a pattern
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: which was.
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: No.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: The first one was that was the first one. The
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: second pattern that I play is twice, so so the
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: first two patterns are The third pattern was another variation.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: M h.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Those four variations on the on that lick, they were
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: necessitated by the lyrics that I was singing.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Explain what you mean by that.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: The Lord is my engineer, I don't want. The Lord
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: is my engineer, lost, my use and.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: Loss. The earth Lord is the earth ride on.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: So that's why the first is long. The second is
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: did dobby loss of face in the atmosphere, the path
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: I slip and slide on. That's the conclusion of those things.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: So once I had written those words, I said, well,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: the guitar part has to go this way.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see. You begin with the guitar part, write
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: the lyrics and then adapt. Then you start to Then
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: you start and fiddle.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: You write something that's just comes to you for reasons
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: that you can't explain, and you start to think of
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: what you might say over that, and when you find
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: what you want to say, you modify the accompaniment so
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: that it fits. Then it becomes a symmetrical pattern, and
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: that pattern is repeated throughout every time the Lord's section comes,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: that pattern is repeated.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and then come
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: back with more from Malcolm Gladwell and Paul Simon. We're
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: back with more from Malcolm Gladwell and Paul Simon.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Can you give me another example from of the kind
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: of loop between the music and the lyrics that you
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: were working on with it.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The process for me is a thought that comes
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: from someplace that I have I don't know, just one
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: second it's not there, the next second it's there. And
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: with that piece of information, it then gets put into
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: the pile of potentially to be edited that pile and
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: the words start to come and as if it was
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: as if you were sculpting a piece of wood or stone,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: you slice away and chip away to find the right shape.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: And in the case of the Seven Psalms album, because
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: it's really a voice and guitar, even though there are
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: a lot of other instruments augmenting the sound of the guitar,
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: essentially what you're hearing is a voice and a guitar,
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: which means that particular attention has to be paid to
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: what the guitar is playing and the dynamics of the
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: guitar the volume of you know how soft it gets,
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: and because that's an acoustic guitar, just the way you
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: play it automatically has in the nature of it is
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: that some notes are going to be louder than others
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: because of the way the guitar is built and just acoustics.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: So one of the things that happened in Seven Psalms
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: that was different from the other albums is that I
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: really paid a lot of attention to making the notes,
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: the individual notes of a piece be balanced and have
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: a dynamic to them. So if one note stuck out
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: in a way I didn't want, I could lower it
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: in pro tools, or the opposite. If it was too
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: soft and I needed it to punch more, I could
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: raise it it. So one of the things that's unique
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: about Seven Psalms for me is that I'm treating the
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: guitar as an entire orchestra. I use the rhythm of
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: it that's partly drum. There's not drum there, and even
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: when I play that, I'm muting it partly, whereas I'm
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: not muting this. So because it's just a guitar and
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: a voice, I'm paying a lot of attention to what's
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: going on with the guitar. And from that I'm adding
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: these other percussion instruments, mostly bells, but gongs. I can
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: show you there's a bell. I don't know why this
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: is called an elephant bell, but so here it is.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: It's not so much the hit that I'm interested in.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: It's the it's the overtones that are gonna continueing. Has
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: a little pulse, so I would attach that to certain notes.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Where does that sound to use? What's throughout?
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: The rabbit just must probably used one hundred times?
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: And is that it? It's called an elephant bell.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: It's called an elephant is it.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Actually a kind of vintage? It's not new.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know how old it is.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: It's very unusual looking.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: It doesn't look it doesn't look it's probably uh, it's
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: probably Asian.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: It's kind of claws on it.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: It's probably you know, uh, out of the Indonesian world.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Where did you get it?
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Well? I have a lot of different percussion instruments. Some
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: I picked up on the road. Some are given to
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: me by guys in the band because they knew I
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: was interested in percussion, So over the years have collected
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: a lot of it. So the guitar has a has
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: a bell in it, It has a ring in it,
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: and sometimes that attach this spell to it. Very subtly.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: It's not meant to.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: Be, you know, really noticed as much as felt. This
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: bell that I'm holding now is called this is what
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: we call this a spinning bell.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Oh that's lovely.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you can hear it with this microphone,
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: but it goes. That's a different bell use at a
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: different time.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: It's just like a brass.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: A four inches wide and it sort of looks like
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: a pointy hat and it's an eighth of an inch thick,
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: and it's made out of brass, and it has a string.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: And you spin this string around so that when it unwinds,
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: it spins, and as it spins it the sound changes.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: I'll do it again. I don't know whether these microphones
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: are going to be able to pick this up, but
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: that's just one of ten different sounds that I used.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: And for me, if you consider this record to be
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: a spiritually oriented record, the spirituality is mostly expressed in
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: the music, even though the words are on the same subject.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: But the unspoken, the silent conversation, so to speak, well,
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: the conversation without words is the deeper spiritual for me
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: because it's an express it's some expression of something that
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: I hear and feel without words. So, going back to reviews,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: if you're not focused on that aspect, and most reviewers
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: are not going to focus on that because most reviewers
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: are writers, and so they focus on words. Some reviewers
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: or musicians as well, and they hear these other things.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: When I was mixing the record, I played played this
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: for a musician friend of mine who happened to be
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: in another adjacent studio, and he said, I like to
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: listen to it at home, and then when he saw
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: me the next day, he said, I kept thinking to myself,
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: did I just hear I thought I heard a glimmer
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: of and then I wasn't sure. I kept thinking throughout
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: the record, did I just hear that sound that I
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: imagine that's exactly what I wanted? Who is the musician?
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: It was Chris Steely, who was a brilliant mandolin player,
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: and he was hearing one of those percussion notes that whether.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: He was hearing that or it could have been any
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: number of things. Because I viewed there are so many
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: subtle sounds used throughout this piece, so many but the
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: way I was hearing and the way he heard it
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: was as if the sound stretched all the way to
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: a horizon and I could just about make out what
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: the sound was that in the farthest place away. So
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: that that's a very deep, not deep, you know, intellectual
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: expiracy of it. It has a deep visual perspective to sound.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: It goes way back, and it makes the guitar, this
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: simple acoustic guitar sound bigger. Anyway, That's what I'm trying
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: to But.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Wait, Paul, that was a review that you liked. I mean, effectively,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: he was a reviewer and you liked what he had
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: to It's like, conceptually.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because what he said was exactly what I hoped for.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: His interests was really piqued, but he wasn't sure whether
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: his interest was meant to be peaked or whether he
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: imagined it. Well, that's great because now you're really interested.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Did I hear that I loved his question? Did I
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: hear that? Well? Question, the answer is yes, you did.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: And when you become aware that there's an entire conversation
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: going on way in the background that's related to what's
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: going on in the foreground with guitar and voice, then
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: for me as the composer, it's much more interesting. But
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: that doesn't mean that when people listen to this record
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: that they have to be aware of that. Most people,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: they're not supposed to be aware of it. It's just
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: supposed to be pleasurable, just supposed to say, I really
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: like that. Why, I don't know, I just liked it.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: That's fine, that's what. That's how most people hear musicians
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: say what was that sound, because they're trained to do that.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Well, in this case, I was going to talk about
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: the good. Problem is that the lyrics are so good
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: that you get distracted. I listened to it several times. Well,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: one of the times I listened to it the way
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I remember listening to records in the day, when you'd
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: have the lyrics from the album cover and you would
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: read the lyrics as you were hearing them. And you
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: do that, you know, and one of your first year
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: second listeners, just so you can kind of locate everything.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: And I was doing that. I was doing this yesterday,
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: and I was like, you know, it was incredibly important
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: because maybe really focus for a moment on the tree.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: And I was gonna touch with this because I think
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: the writing here is as some of the best you've
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: ever done. It's exquisite. There's a and I say it
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: says now I'm responding as a writer, because I'm a writer.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: There's a little bit. For example, in my professional opinion,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: the line about the cows is as funny a line
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: as you've as you've written.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: I had that line for a long time.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: I heard two cows in a conversation. One called the
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: other one a name in my professional opinion, all cows
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: in the country was spear of the blame. I mean,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: come on, it's like that's in the pantheon of great falls.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: I'm a line.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't know what that pantheon is, but anyway,
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: to me, the funny thing was the two cows in conversation,
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: and that came from a montalk where I lived. There's
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: like a on the road that I drive up to
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: our places. There's a big field and there are cows there,
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: and you know, two cows were like leaning over the
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: leaning over the fence. And so I thought of that
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: line and wrote it down. It wasn't for anything. It
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: was just a line that I saved and put in
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: there my professional opinion. You know, I should say this, really,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: I think the truth is that for people who enjoy
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: enjoyed this record, the enjoyment is not enhanced by me
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: explaining any of this stuff. I don't think it helps.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: It's better left unexplained. If it's your job to understand
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: how records are put together, either you're a writer, or
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: you're a musician, or you're a producer or an engineer,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: well then you're really interested in it. But as a
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: person who's not that and just an average listener, they
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: don't need to know that I put this bill over
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: here for this reason or that. Or it's either an
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: idea that works and people like it and in this
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: case they seem to really like it, or it doesn't work,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: or you know, and people don't. They don't hear it,
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: and they're they're not interested, which is also a fact
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: that that's going on too. There's a lot of people
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: who never heard this, never will and don't care.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we don't want to go back to fecial
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: meaning for a moment, just because that was the when
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: I was kind of fixating on. Can you talk a
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: little bit about how the interaction between the music and
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: the words In that case.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: This is about the structure of the entire piece. The
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: first two songs, The Lord and Love is like a braid.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: They have a certain feel to them, more like ballads
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: and a certain mood. I don't know what you call
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: want to call it, doesn't matter what you want to
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: call it. It has a certain mood. So this again
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: goes to me as an editor of the piece that
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: I'm working on. I think the listener who has heard
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: this first two songs and it's probably about eight or
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: nine minutes worth, they have inferred a certain mood about
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: this piece. But I don't want that to happen, so
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: I purposefully make the third piece to break that inference.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: So instead of having pieces that were.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Which was The Lord or.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: That kind of playing, I'm playing something that's like a
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: kind of an old bluesy Jimmy Reid kind of that's
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: a very different mood.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: You don't stop, don't stop. I'm enjoying myself.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: For the reason I can't remember, you know, the reason
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: I'm not playing more is that, well, I haven't played
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: it in a long time, so I'm sort of going
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: by muscle memory.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The reason when you said that the this isn't
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: really just an album, you confronting your mortality and The
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: reason I agree with that is that that song you're
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: having so much fun. It's like there's there's everything. There's
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: mischief in it, there's a little bit of street sass,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: there's I can see you as a kid on the
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: streets of Queens, like you're both commenting on and kind
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: of mocking a little bit of you know, the popular culture.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It's just like, it's not a song
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: about a guy at the end of his life confronting
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: his mortality. It's about a song about a guy in
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: the middle of everything, like you know, right, fun in.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: That it has fun and it has jokes. Yes, it
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: has good morning, mister indignation. It's so the mood of
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: the first two pieces is changed, or hopefully is changed
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: by the rhythm of this piece and the lyrics which
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: have jokes or humor in them as well as their commentary,
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: and it by the end of the pieces, the piece
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: is summed up with all that really matters is the
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: one who became us, anointed and gamed with his opinion.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: So that brings me back to the theme of where
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: the entire piece is headed. And now I'm set for
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: really the beginning of the album. Your forgiveness. From here on,
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: it's going to be sort of intense and growing. So
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: the first the first two songs introduce you to the
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: mood and the theme. The third song says, don't get
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: too settled into that and think that this is not
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: what people are thinking. This is what I'm thinking as
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: someone who's observing attention span of a listening audience or
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: imagining their attention span and trying to make it as
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: enjoyable as possible by not allowing you to get bored
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: too early.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's very I mean, remembering back to our
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: long conversations two years ago. It's typical of your kind
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of writing and communication style that you'd like to establish
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: something and then say, wait a minute, wait a minute,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: and then the humor often comes in you amending the
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: impression that you've given.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a line someone in one of the reviews,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: someone qullted that lovely line where you said, I'm a
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: man who likes to travel, but maybe not since I lived.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: What's the line?
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's from Darling Lorraine. That's a perfect example of this.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: I think that might have been the first time that
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: I may have used that kind of joke. The line
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: is all my life I've been a wanderer, which I
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: wrote because I just make up things as I'm searching
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: for a melody. I wrote that line and thought, what bullshit,
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: you know, So what it ends up in the song
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: is all my life. I've been a wanderer. Not really,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: I mostly lived in my parents' home. Anyway, Lorraine and
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: I got married, and I love that the subject changes
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: completely one hundred day degrees. He says a line it's
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: just a lie. Then he says, ah, you know that's bullshit.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: Really anyway, back to Lorraine and I. We got married,
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: and that's the way conversations are. We don't just talk
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: on one straight subject. We do this and then there's
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: an interruption and we go over here and we say, oh,
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: that reminds me I have to pick up my clothes
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: at the cleaners, or a funny thing that somebody said.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: It's just the mind changes all the time, and songs
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: can be the same, and when they are it doesn't
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: upset the listener. I don't think.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: We have to pause for another quick break, and then
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: we'll come back with more from Malcolm Gladwell and Paul Simon.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Malcolm Gladwell's conversation with
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Paul Simon.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: My favorite component I don't I guess we don't want
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: to call them songs. I don't know what we call them.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: But Sacred Heart is the one that I was really
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: drawn to. I wanted to talk about that one because
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: it has on just on the writing front. There's that
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: one little bit about when the kids get in the
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: car and they say they would have motored down. I
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: haven't been done here. And then we talked about the
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: boy about he doesn't talk much anymore, just to the
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: voices inside his head. The boy just gazed down at
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: the floor and nodded once or twice at what she said.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: That little section begins with her voice was a blend
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: of regional perfumes. We have no destination. It's another one
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: of those things where I was like, this is as
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: beautiful and perfect a section, lyrical section as you've ever done.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: It's like, thank you.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: It's an entire scene, in a brilliant, moving, powerful scene
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: in four lines.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I could use you as well, my reviewer.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: You can review all my stuff. But I now, I
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: don't know where that came from. Her voice, blend of
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: regional perfume. But it sang perfectly, and it also had
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: a description of when you.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Say you, when you say it, it sang perfectly, what
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: do you mean?
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: It had the right syllables and the right sound to
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: go with the melody that I wanted to sing. I
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: didn't have to push ors fitted in or it was
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: a natural flow of words. But they also were an
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: interesting description that I think would be easily understood. You
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: could imagine what that would be. And it also implies
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: one thing about her as it's very womanly. And the
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: other is that it feels southern too. To me, it's
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: like regional perfume. I don't think of it as New
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: York perfume, you know, I think of it as Southern.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that country Maine is not a perfumed accent.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like it's Texas, which is where it
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: was set. In my mind.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: You wrote that lyric here, yeah, And.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: That's why Edie's voice, which it serves, serves the song
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: in several ways that are powerful. I think first of all,
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: you're not expecting to hear another voice come in on
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: the record. That has only been me and the guitars
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: so far, so it's a surprise and Edie is from Texas,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: and she sings great no matter what she does. She's
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: one of those people that you know, has perfect pitch
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: and sings in tune all the time. It's very end
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: of your But she's also naturally inhabits that character. So
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: to me, she sounds like like that character. And it's
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: really the two of us in a pickup truck, which
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: she drives anyway, so she was the right person to
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: tell that story. And her accent is like that. It
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: is that sort of soft Southern accent. So it's a
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: little play. It's a little play that's going on there
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: with different characters and the sometimes, like when when she's
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: introduced with her lines hurry gets yourself inside the truck
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: to the to the hitchhikers when it's raining, the both
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: of us sing that line. I'm singing harmony to her,
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: but I fade out my voice somewhere in the middle
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: of the first sentence, so it's sort of my voice
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: introduces this character, but it doesn't stay for the convey
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: mention a length of time, which is a lot one
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: line or something. It's not a usual duet form. It's
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: a sound that comes and then disappears. That's like a
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: lot of sounds on this record. They appear and they disappear,
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: and then the listener says, what was that? More hopefully
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: they say that it's meant to be the way we
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: observe and the way we think. We don't think in
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: four bars or eight bars. We think with no bar lines.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: Things come in and they go away. And that's what
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: I was trying to do with the writing, and that
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: song is a good example of me trying to do that.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: You never considered anyone but Eadie for that.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: Oh no, I never thought anybody else would would do that.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: Were you thinking of her even as you first wrote
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: the lyrics.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: I think once I put the other character in there,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: I knew it would be it would be Edie and
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Edie and I. We haven't done it on record, but
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: we've sung a lot in harmony, and like what many
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: years ago, Edie wrote these songs when our kids were little,
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: and she used to take them to the park and
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: the stroller. She would make up songs while they were
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: in the stroller on the swing, and they were great songs,
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: really simple, great, you know the kids could sing along with,
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: but beautiful.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: We did she ever record those?
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: We recorded them, Oh you did. Yeah, so I know
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: that we sing well together. We have a good, very
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: good blend. So Edie was always that character. And then
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: in Wait she also fits that another character. That voice
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: that comes in it was like sort of angelic. And
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: it also fits Edie's voice because it's a voice that
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: can go a lot in a lot of places. Her
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: natural inclination is to be a little bit bluesy, you know,
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: she let her notes sort of fall off, and but
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: in this case she's just singing in this voice that's
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: I don't know who that voice is, you know, I mean,
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: there would be the cliche would be it would be
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: like an angel's voice, you know. I mean, I wouldn't
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: say that, but that's cliche.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Can you play any any bit of the music for
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Sacred Heart?
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: I can play a little bit of the guitar I forgot.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: I forgot some of it. But you know, again, this
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: is of no interest to all but a tiny fortunate people.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: But this interval is an unusual interval in songs. It's
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: for those who are musicians. It's a flat fifth or
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: sharp fourth. That interval. You don't hear it often. The
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: most famous example of it is.
• 43:19
  Speaker 6: Do Marie, do do that that?
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: That's otherwise you don't hear that too often. It's not
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: an easy interval to sing. Naturally, A fifth is natural?
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: Are you going this scarboroughfare? You here fifths all the time?
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Why did you use the unusual one here?
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: Because it's uh, it's unusual and interesting. It's interesting too,
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: it's interesting to the ear.
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: But mm hmm, change of moods the summer stone. You
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: raised the song this guy.
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: Two happless Cittackers wire singly Nuts as we were cruising by.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: Why when I said that was my favorite song, you
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: said that's my favorite song too. Why is it your
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: favorite song?
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Well? I love the duet. I really liked the story.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: I like the way the voices come in and the
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: way they dance with each other. I like that little interval.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: I liked her voice of blend of regional perfumes. I
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: like the way the mist turns from what she says
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: in the beginning, the rain will turn to mist with
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: any luck, and you can find a place to stay.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: That's what she says to the hitchhikers when they get in,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: because she's like, we the drivers of the pickup feel
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: bad that it's pouring rain. But we're really not in
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: the mood for hitchhikers. So it's like we're come on in,
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: but we're not going far. So we're telling you now,
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: it's not a long ride, you know, it's the rain
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: will stop. You can go and find a place to stay.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: At the end of the story, the ringing strings, the
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: thought that God turns music into bliss, we left to
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: pick up in the driveway the moon. The moon appeared
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: as amber and the mist, so that the mist becomes
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: another meaning from the first time it's used. Things like
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: that as a songwriter are satisfying because it came together.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: I'm always trying to make it come together, but doesn't
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: It doesn't happen all the time.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: The emotional range in that song is what I was
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: was what you're alluding to now, is that's what drew me.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: We have the generosity mixed with reluctance, which is a
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: you know, one kind of emotion. We meet these two
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: people and they're broken, these kids, they're like on the
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: ruts there, and then we end on this kind of
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: with the beauty of that image of the mist. I mean,
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: it's like this song in what I was saying, the
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: efficient I mean efficiency is a terrible word to use here,
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: but the idea that in a in that compact segment,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: you can range through these this variety of emotions and
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: make us feel all of those things that you're going.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: Well, you say they're broken, they appear to be broken.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: You know. My boy and may wear refugees of sorts
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: from my hometown. They're all like different there. They would
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: have modis down, modus down, you know, like weeds. So
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: they seem like they're broken. He doesn't talk much anymore,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: just to the voices in his head. But really they're
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: seekers of spiritual bliss. You know, the sacred horror that
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: David played to make his songs of praise. We long
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: to hear those strings that set as hard a blaze.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: They're the enlightened pair. Really, it's an interesting story.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: I thought, Oh, it's it's it's it's gorgeous, it's it's odd.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: It's the one that I mean, it's someone who was
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: raising the church. It's it's the one. It's the song.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: It's the most kind of explicitly biblical. It's a yeah,
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: really you could turn that into a hymn. It could
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: be sung in a church.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: I get a lot of pleasure of somebody. If that
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: was if it did find its way into that environment,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: I'd like.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: That that would give you a lot of pleasure because
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: they would recognize it.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: I like when songs go to different places. I like
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: it when different communities of people hear something that they
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: identify within a song. It means that you can read
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: different things into it, and it's something that as a songwriter,
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: you would hope to achieve that. It's that something would
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: appeal to many, many people on a personal level, and
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: that personal interpretation would be quite different along the spectrum
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: of the of the listeners. That would be a successful song.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: And it happens naturally with every song because as I've said,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: as we said, and when we had our long conversation,
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: one of the things was that I believe that the
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: listener completes the song. They hear it, They take in
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: the meaning on a personal level may not be the
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: meaning that I intended. They even change the words in
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: their mind. When people sometimes repeat the words that there
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: are their favorite words to me of the songs, it's
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: not what I wrote, but it's what they heard. That's
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: what it is. That's what the listener completes the song.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: So if this song was sung in an environment that
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: it was a church environment, it would have a certain
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: a certain kind of meaning. If it was sung in
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: a different place, it would have a different, different meaning.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: That's good. It's good because it does. It does have
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: a choice of meanings.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: Was the production of this record different than previous records?
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: Were you more? Was it more exhaustive?
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: No?
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: No, no, it was the same. It's the same. This
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: was just a different animal, that's all. It's not exhausting anyway.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: It's not exhausting, and I don't get bored with doing
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: things over and over and over again. It's not even
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: the thought that enters my mind this is boring. It's
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: you're searching for something that you can hear, but you haven't.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: I haven't attained yet, so you really get interested in
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: the in the pursuit. It's not boring. It's not exhausting
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: at all. It's I mean, it's really when you're hot
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: on the trail, it's really exhilarating. And it's part of
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: what makes me like to do this and why I've
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: spent my whole life doing it. I really enjoy it,
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: and when I get it right for myself, then I
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: get a little blast of dopamine in my brain and
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: I'm addicted. I want it again.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Paul Simon for taking us behind the making
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: of his newest album, Seven Songs. Be sure to check
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: out the audio original Miracle and Wonder Conversations with Paul
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Simon to hear more about Paul's a brilliant career. You
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: can find it at audible dot com or at pushkin
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: dot fm. And again, we're releasing a new version of
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: that book, along with a brand new chapter about Seven
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Psalms this fall. You can hear Paul's new album Seven Psalms,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: along with all of our favorite songs of his on
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. You can
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: new episodes. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Ben Talliday, Nisha Venkat, Jordan McMillan, and Eric Sandler.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast subscription service that offers bonus content and uninterrupted
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: ad free listening for only four ninety nine a month.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Look for Pushkin plus Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: like the show, remember to share, rate, and review us
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: on your podcast staff. Our the Music exp by Kenny Beats.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond.