"Paul Simon"

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Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 are we rolling? Do we have speed?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we got speed. Sean, were you going to say something? You were holding up a

Speaker 1 thirsty? I got speed. Yeah, well, how can we none of us can enjoy it? You can hear it, so maybe it'll do the same thing as gargle it real quick.

Speaker 2 See, can you gargle right now and say, Welcome to Smartless in a gargle?

Speaker 1 Oh my god, Scotty! All over him.

Speaker 2 Scotty! Scotty, get the towel. Welcome to Smartless.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 2 Wait, Sean's back in LA now?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Since when? Last night. Or yesterday.
Since last night. Pay attention.

Speaker 2 Oh, Sean, I knew it was soon.

Speaker 1 I knew it was soon, but I know. I'm so excited.
Sean, how does it feel?

Speaker 2 Baby angels come back to the nest.

Speaker 1 There's no such thing as baby angels, and then they grow up and get older. Betty's a baby angel.

Speaker 1 A baby angel. Will said to me last week, he goes, you know you're going to get sick.
And I said, what? Yeah, you're going to get sick.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right when you get home, you'll get sick.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, why would you think that? And boy, I don't feel sick, but oh my God. Sean.
My body doesn't know it's not over.

Speaker 2 No. So you're going to probably just power down for about a week?

Speaker 1 No, just a couple of days. Sean, you've been up here.
You have been working at this high level every day, getting yourself up to this thing every day for months and months and months and months.

Speaker 1 Is it possible that

Speaker 1 your body, like, you're right, because you brain, I told myself, I'm not going to get sick. I'm not gonna get sick.
I'm not gonna get sick. Right.

Speaker 1 And then now I'm just like shutting down and my body's like, yeah, I'm shutting down too.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Yeah.
And what about just what about just your instinct to perform and entertain and be charismatic and have presence and whatnot?

Speaker 1 Like why start now?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Do you just sit on the couch and Scotty's like trying to have a conversation and you're just like, no, not until

Speaker 1 no talkie-talkie anymore.

Speaker 1 I saw this interview, all bits aside with Miley Cyrus the other day, and she was talking about how hard it is, how she doesn't like to tour, because she creates this, it's too demanding, it creates this sort of

Speaker 1 bloated ego because she has to get ready to get up, and then her relationship with the audience is being the observed, and then the audience is the observer.

Speaker 1 And what she has to do to create that, she says it pulls her away from herself, her true self, and she becomes something else. And the more she does it,

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm kind of

Speaker 1 Paraphrasing, but it made a lot of sense. And I get that, Sean.
Every night you're up there. Yeah, it was a lot.
But it was very rewarding. I'm sad and glad at the exact same time that it's over.

Speaker 1 I get to see you guys. I'm real excited whether you guys like it or not.

Speaker 2 Well, I hope that you're giving yourself the attaboy that you deserve and feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment. Thanks.
And I mean, the accolades are public, so it's unanimous.

Speaker 2 But also, just sort of privately and internally over there at the show, I'm sure that you were also like Tony Award-level leader and creating a nice environment.

Speaker 2 And you should pat yourself on the back for all that.

Speaker 1 Well, thanks. It was easy.
Everybody was great. Well, here's what Sean said to me the other day,

Speaker 1 which I really related to. And he said, you would love the bits that we do backstage non-stop.
He's like, I do it almost just for that. And I totally get that, Jay.

Speaker 1 You know that feeling of like just being there and fucking around in the bits. We used to have that on a thing that we used to do years ago.
And we've all had it. We've shared it together.

Speaker 1 It's the bits. It's the fucking thing.

Speaker 2 It's the crew you work with and the cast you work with. And then the product you push out to the public that you never meet

Speaker 2 is fantastic, but it is a very intimate process, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I used to do, I would do this bit right before I entered in the show where there's a little platform where the door is, and you have to step up on the platform.

Speaker 1 And I pretended I lost all my faculties like five seconds before I entered. And I took both my hands and lifted one leg onto the platform.
Then the other, then I lifted my arm onto the door handle.

Speaker 1 And then my key was like right there.

Speaker 2 And then you come out,

Speaker 2 give us a bunch.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I tell you what, though, I'm really excited, speaking of bits,

Speaker 1 to get into our guest today because

Speaker 1 he has so many bits to his life that each one of them individually kind of add up to this incredible, each one of them is incredible unto itself.

Speaker 1 And then when you look at it, what he's done in its entirety, it's truly

Speaker 1 it's epic. I don't want to embarrass them.

Speaker 2 All the bits put together, you mean? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I don't want to embarrass him. I have never met him, and I'm in awe of the fact that he's here today.

Speaker 1 He's a musical and an American icon, for lack of a better word. We've listened to, here's one of the most amazing things.
He sold millions and millions, over 100 millions of records

Speaker 1 as a part of a band and the same amount as a solo recording artist for the last 50 years.

Speaker 1 And he's done, he's sung incredible songs that you know that are such a part of your life at different stages

Speaker 1 that are part of your parents' lives. Yeah, you know what, Jason? It's a Paul Frederick Simon.
Yes. No way.
Yes. Are you kidding me? Shit.
There he is. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 2 What are we doing?

Speaker 1 You don't deserve this.

Speaker 2 Good morning.

Speaker 1 Good morning. Good morning.

Speaker 1 Paul, when I was, this is like so stupid, and you get this every day of your life. But when I was a kid, I listened to two albums over and over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 Yours was The Bridge Over Troubled Water was one I memorized, and that's when they had the lyrics on the jacket. And so I memorized all the words to every song, Baby Driver, like all those songs.

Speaker 1 And then and The Nutcracker, but that's neither here nor there. But

Speaker 1 I memorized every single word. I've just been, it's wild to meet somebody.
I've never met you.

Speaker 1 Whereas we talked about this before on the show, where music is actually something that penetrates a person's soul and DNA, and it stays with you forever.

Speaker 1 And you're one of them for me. It's pretty wild.
I know the feeling because we toured with the Everly Brothers once. And I had the same feeling about the Everly Brothers.

Speaker 1 I couldn't believe that the Everly Brothers were actually in our

Speaker 1 show, you know, that

Speaker 1 and they were completely oblivious to how important of figures they were in my life.

Speaker 1 But you know what about music? It's not, it's not, of course, it's true that it penetrates deeply and we all have this powerful,

Speaker 1 powerful memories enhanced by music.

Speaker 1 But isn't it also so that it's like somewhere really at its zenith between like 12 and 16 years old the stuff that you hear then maybe a little earlier even that is what you love for your whole life

Speaker 1 and uh but so i so it must be that there's something really intense

Speaker 1 about our uh

Speaker 1 senses in that age

Speaker 1 you know i guess i guess that's not a revelation i guess that's not a revelation

Speaker 1 well it's not but it but it is, it does, it does seem like those are the years in which you kind of, you open up and you grow up and you, you start to kind of come alive and have a sense of yourself that separate from your identity as a child of your parents.

Speaker 1 You have an identity.

Speaker 1 You start to see the world, I think, through different eyes a little bit, 12 through 16, right? And yeah, so all those things hit. And Sean, I'm with you.
Like I,

Speaker 1 as I was sort of in anticipation of talking to you today, I went back and I've been listening to so much of your music over the last few days. And it once again kind of

Speaker 1 took me back to very vivid places in time,

Speaker 1 riding in the car with my dad,

Speaker 1 you know, just being a kid. And it makes me emotional now even thinking about it because

Speaker 1 I can feel that connection. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that must be to be...

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 for you to say that you had that same feeling with the Everly brothers is amazing.

Speaker 1 I guess the question I have for you is, do you, when people come and say these things to you and talk about the importance or where you fit into their lives, their lives, what kind of,

Speaker 1 what is that relationship like for you? What does that do to you as a person? You know, I don't,

Speaker 1 I understand it, of course, because as I said, I felt it myself. But

Speaker 1 as far as thinking about myself in the way that others think about me, i i don't i don't think that way i don't find it helpful it's a distraction to think oh i

Speaker 1 whatever it's like you were talking about miley cyrus before

Speaker 1 before i revealed myself and uh is that in the show what you were talking about or was that yeah yeah it was yeah yeah

Speaker 1 And she was talking about, you were talking about her thinking about her relationship to the audience.

Speaker 1 I don't think about that because

Speaker 1 I find it a distraction to be in the audience at the same time as I'm on the stage.

Speaker 1 So I think when I'm performing, I'm just interested in listening to what other musicians are playing around me and

Speaker 1 fitting in in the most musical way that gives me the most pleasure and interpreting the songs that I choose to sing for my repertoire in a way that makes them still be

Speaker 1 accurate or relevant to my life because I'm sure

Speaker 1 you'll all understand this. Once you have to say a line many times, and for a singer, if I'm going to sing the sound of silence again,

Speaker 1 I have to have a reason to sing that, or I'm just a Paul Simon cover band. So, you know,

Speaker 1 what's the good of that?

Speaker 2 Does that mean like if you were to perform Sound of Silence, let's say tonight,

Speaker 2 you would look to sort of channel a current feeling that you have or something that you're thinking about in your life currently and apply that to the song and give that the context of the song and the lyrics as you sing it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe if that would work, or it depends, as long as you're concentrating, if I concentrate on the interpretation of the song, the phrasing,

Speaker 1 it's almost, I don't know, you know, I don't want to go into, fall into a cliche, but I am about to. It's almost like a little bit of a Zen exercise.

Speaker 1 You have to find something to concentrate on so that you're not doing it by rote. And that, and then

Speaker 1 it's of no value.

Speaker 1 and i also believe that the audience wants to see you do that yeah they really don't want to see you do the same performance by memory they won't and i i think that they they can sense whether you're doing it

Speaker 1 uh sincerely whatever whatever the sincerity is based on or whether you're doing it they want to see you feel it like they're feeling it yeah you uh and then well i always say this too about song about songs The listener completes the song.

Speaker 1 I write a song, you hear it, you heard the Bridge Over Trouble Water album. And

Speaker 1 what was the song you picked out? You said Baby Driver? Baby Driver. So that's interesting.
So here's a whole album. It was the album of the year and Bridge Over Trouble Water.

Speaker 1 The song was the most popular song in the world that year.

Speaker 1 But what you remembered was Baby Driver, driver which is interesting because when we made the album we weren't thinking that baby driver was i wasn't thinking that baby driver was going to be i did i didn't know what it was what it was going to be i'm not surprised that you picked that or or any other one

Speaker 1 and the same goes if i said

Speaker 1 well what's the lyrics of baby driver well i will i will say that to you what just give me a an example of the lyrics and they call them baby driver

Speaker 1 and I'm gone. Okay, good.
Let's stop. Sorry.

Speaker 1 They don't.

Speaker 1 You have, no, it was a group. I hit the road and I'm gone.
One.

Speaker 1 It was a really good performance.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm going to take from this show, your performance. But what you said, what you said, Sean, was, and they called them baby driver.

Speaker 1 And they called, yeah, and they called her or him or something? They called me baby driver.

Speaker 1 They called me baby driver. But you, But you remember it as, and they called them baby driver.
So, which is just as interesting a line, actually. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sean, you were saying yesterday that you loved, you loved his, the, um, the song Sound of Quiet. And because of that sound, you remember it.

Speaker 1 The sound of

Speaker 1 Sound of Quiet. But by the way, it should be known, I just have to, while we're on the sound of silence, I have to bring this up because it's kind of crazy.
And Jason, you'll remember this, Sean.

Speaker 1 This is news to you.

Speaker 1 Jason and I worked on a project over the course of many years. And we had a moment when we were in the fourth incarnation of this project we were working on.

Speaker 1 We're in the middle of a strike paul, so we're not naming anything.

Speaker 1 And in this project, the camera at various times would push in on me, my character, as I was having these.

Speaker 1 sort of existential moments and of sort of fear and doubt and confusion, whatever. Introspection.
Introspection.

Speaker 1 They'd play Sound of Silence, and it would push in, and they licensed the song for this program and they push in on my face.

Speaker 1 Hello, darkness, my old friend. And it happened about six or seven times during

Speaker 2 the series. It was very expensive.

Speaker 1 I know, it was very expensive.

Speaker 1 My favorite being this one, and it ended up becoming a meme that they did with Ben Affleck for a long time,

Speaker 1 starting like 2016. But there's a great one at one point, all of a sudden you hear the music stirred up, and I say, my character says something, it pushes in on my face, and you hear,

Speaker 1 and you see a mariachi band go behind me with a trumping,

Speaker 1 and I go, oh, it's not us. And then the camera stops pushing in.

Speaker 1 Anyway, just to say that that song had a huge impact. It has had a huge impact on my life.
Hey, Paul,

Speaker 2 on the licensing thing,

Speaker 2 does every single request for licensing for stuff for music, television, commercials, anything, does it get directly to you or does that go to your manager? Does it go to your label?

Speaker 2 I mean, do you have hands-on on who gets it and who doesn't?

Speaker 1 Well, it doesn't anymore because I sold my publishing company

Speaker 1 about

Speaker 1 two years ago. Well, it was a mix, partly good and partly not good.
But before that, when it was up to me,

Speaker 1 kind of,

Speaker 1 sort of went to management and they would filter out some request that's

Speaker 1 totally inappropriate. You know,

Speaker 1 you can pick any kind of inappropriate combination you want. But otherwise...

Speaker 2 Yeah, if it was some sort of a clamp for your nose for getting rid of snoring, they probably wouldn't get you the rest of the sound to silence.

Speaker 1 I would say, yeah, that's right. Well, I would say, just out of curiosity, how much are they?

Speaker 1 Of course, always. Not going to say yet, but just out of curiosity, how much for the nose clamp on sound to silence?

Speaker 2 To the extent you're comfortable, can you elaborate on what the good and what the bad was of selling a catalog at the risk of getting into the weeds?

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 The good part about it is none of my children are interested in running that company or managing that company or, you know, so, and I wouldn't want them to. I can understand.

Speaker 1 It's not of interest to them. So there's no use to leave it to them because they don't want it anyway.
And then they'll just, so that means they'll go and sell it.

Speaker 1 So I'm better off selling it now and giving them the money

Speaker 1 rather than

Speaker 1 holding on to it. That's the good part of it.

Speaker 1 The bad part is you actually sort of lose contact with the thing that's part of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's weird.

Speaker 1 It's a little bit,

Speaker 1 put it this way:

Speaker 1 it's good financially and psychologically, it's a tiny bit of a wound.

Speaker 1 You know, yeah, it's like a divorce, probably, or something.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 And we will be right back.

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Speaker 1 All right, back to the show.

Speaker 1 You know, Paul, I remember that one sketch you did on this one sketch show. It's very, it's very famous now.

Speaker 1 And it has to do with what we're doing to you, which is everybody, you're standing in line to get into like a movie or something. Everybody's coming out.
It's very famous.

Speaker 1 And they

Speaker 1 say something, something like, I'm going to get this wrong, but like, you know, hey, Paul, I played in your band of a lot. Do you remember me? No.

Speaker 1 Hey, Paul, I was like, you know, I was a friend of yours back in high school. Do you remember me? No.
And then somebody, it builds up to the last person going, Paul, I was sitting on a little red

Speaker 1 rug in the middle of Central Park, like about 10,000 feet from you during your live concert. And you're like, Jim, how are you?

Speaker 1 It's so great. That was funny.
And it was such a

Speaker 1 funny.

Speaker 2 Speaking of Central Park, is there any chance that you'll ever play Central Park again?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 There's no chance that I'll, I don't think there's much chance that I'll play again. No.
Because,

Speaker 1 well, I don't.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll just say it and get it over with.

Speaker 1 I lost the hearing in my left ear about a year ago. It's just about one year now.
Oh, I'm sorry. And

Speaker 1 I can't hear when drums and electric guitar are playing.

Speaker 1 I can't sing. with it.
I can't hear my voice

Speaker 1 in the mix. so I can't perform with a band.
I might be able to perform

Speaker 1 this piece that I did, Seven Psalms, which is just acoustic guitar. I'm going to try that next month with two guitarists playing the parts that I wrote

Speaker 1 and see if I, because I think I can handle that much sound, but more than that,

Speaker 1 no, it's blown me out.

Speaker 1 It's a drag. Yeah, I mean i'm sorry it's no that is a drag and i can't but anyway you can't play central park they don't want anybody to play in central park and i think i'm the reason too why

Speaker 1 the concert that i did there in 1991 had

Speaker 1 by the police estimate 750 000 people jesus i think there was just so much damage done to central park from the just people walking over the great lawn that they they've restricted concerts there, and when they do have them, they restrict the size.

Speaker 1 So there won't be any of those events like the Simon and Garfunk. And also, it took up a lot of valuable space from

Speaker 1 drug dealers and

Speaker 1 pimps and stuff.

Speaker 1 They had to move to different areas. Let me just, Paul, I wanted to talk, and then you mentioned

Speaker 1 Seven Psalms, which I just think is pretty remarkable. I just listened to it.
And

Speaker 1 it's hard to, I was like,

Speaker 1 you guys haven't heard it yet.

Speaker 1 I don't think, but it's sort of part song and part album. It's kind of one, and forgive me, Paul, if I'm not doing a good job of describing it.

Speaker 1 It's like one long piece, it seems like, and that starts with these,

Speaker 1 what I think are bells, and then kind of ends with the bells as well. Am I right in that, Paul? Almost.

Speaker 1 It is a long piece. It's a 33-minute piece, and it's meant to be played in its entirety.

Speaker 1 But the sounds that you heard as bells, they do sound something like bells. They're actually an instrument called a cloud bowl

Speaker 1 that was invented by a composer named Harry Parch.

Speaker 1 And Harry Parch is kind of a very interesting cul-de-sac composer.

Speaker 1 He said,

Speaker 1 The division of an octave into 12 notes, you know, if you look at a piano and you start with C and you play to C

Speaker 1 and you include the white and black keys, you have 12 tones in an octave. He said that's a European conception, that an octave is divided into 12 tones.

Speaker 1 It's arbitrary. Actually,

Speaker 1 he thought it was divided into 42 microtones.

Speaker 1 So in order to play the music that he heard, which was divided into these 42 notes in an octave, he had to invent instruments that could play in that small of an interval. Wow.

Speaker 1 And one of the instruments that he invented was this cloud bowl, which was

Speaker 1 picture,

Speaker 1 picture a wine glass that's

Speaker 1 maybe three feet in diameter and another three or four feet high. Wow.

Speaker 1 Hung upside down, and you hit it with a mallet and it produces that tone. That's a, you'll cut all of this out because it's.
No, no, are you kidding? It's only interesting to

Speaker 1 musicians, but it does start, it does start with those.

Speaker 1 If you're using all of those tones that are in the middle, you know, of the chromatic scale, then

Speaker 1 how would that blend in with any chord? It would just sound so dissonant. It does.
If you blend it with.

Speaker 1 with tonal music, it's going to sound dissonant, but it doesn't necessarily have to sound dissonant in a way that is not pleasing.

Speaker 1 For example, if you're playing, whatever, your keyboard or you're composing or you're making something, and in the distance you hear a church bell ringing, and maybe in another further distance you hear a second church bell, the sound of those two bells

Speaker 1 They don't make what you're playing sound less interesting. They probably enhance it.
There's something about that, those overtones

Speaker 1 that we really like. And I think that's maybe what was parched was on to.
But in this piece, Seven Psalms, I use a lot of different bells and percussion instruments

Speaker 1 that are not really in the key,

Speaker 1 but they enhance

Speaker 1 the acoustic guitar. Yeah.
Have you ever heard of the German term Klangfarben music? No, I haven't. What's that mean? mean? It's kind of what we're talking about.
It's an overall term that means,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 it's more color in a song rather than within a chord. It's just for atmospheric kind of feeling.
Well, that term applies to seven psalms. There is a lot of that to create a certain atmosphere.

Speaker 1 And in the same way that I said, oh, the listener completes the song, I believe that when the listener listens to to things,

Speaker 1 if you give them a certain sound and you place it just far enough so that they can just hear it,

Speaker 1 it creates a depth in your hearing. And that depth, just like if you imagine the church bells in the distance,

Speaker 1 There's something about that that opens the, it opens the listener, or maybe I'm just speaking for myself personally, but I think I'm not. I think it's true for a lot lot of people.

Speaker 1 There's something about these distant sounds

Speaker 1 that open us up emotionally.

Speaker 1 And if as a writer, a songwriter, if I can produce sounds that allow the listener to open themselves emotionally, then whatever it is that I have to say lyrically has a chance of being

Speaker 1 really

Speaker 1 meaningful. Of landing.
Yeah. And of really, right.
You sort of like, you've laid the groundwork for them to really absorb the lyrics. It's interesting to hear you talk about it in this way.

Speaker 1 I'm fascinated. And listening to Seven Psalms, it is a really remarkable piece in that I feel like albums are often meant to be heard in their entirety, or at least they used to be.
And this kind of,

Speaker 1 in a lot of ways, forces you to listen to it as one piece because it is kind of one continuous piece that's made up of all these different peaks and valleys.

Speaker 1 And it occurs to me listening to you talk about it and

Speaker 1 talking about people and really how important actually the listener is to you.

Speaker 1 I really believe it now more than ever.

Speaker 1 Has that changed or evolved at all? When you started first making records

Speaker 1 or recording, I mean, before you were recording with, I guess you had been recording with art, but when you were, you recorded a lot of stuff and had some hits on your own under different pseudonyms like Jerry Jerry Landis, I think, was one of the names you used, and you had a bunch of different names.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 when I was a teenager, yeah, but none of that were hits. No, but you had a few charts, but did you appreciate,

Speaker 1 did you always have that approach to this approach to music and it just got more refined? Or when was it that you started to really understand? Or I don't know. Yeah, understand is right.

Speaker 1 When were you cognizant of music? I think what I had naturally, I think, was

Speaker 1 this understanding, but I didn't intellectually think of it.

Speaker 1 So when I was 23 years old and I wrote The Sound of Silence,

Speaker 1 I didn't think anything other than that's probably my best song up till now. You know, I didn't think about anything.

Speaker 1 It's only later, and maybe in the last 15 years or something like that, that I begin to think,

Speaker 1 why do we like this sound?

Speaker 1 What is it about this song that makes me love it and remember it from all the other songs that were happening at the same time when i was you know of that age when it when i was really receptive uh to music and if i were to just throw the question back to you on a comedic level if you're setting up a comedic environment where what you can do is going to achieve what you want, which is to get people to laugh and also to think,

Speaker 1 that's true.

Speaker 1 I'm laughing,

Speaker 1 but I also know that's really true. It's part of my enjoyment is that, well, in order to do that, I mean, you can do it when you're young, you do it naturally.

Speaker 1 And later on, you think, why is that, why is that funny? What do I need to do that?

Speaker 1 And a lot of it has to do, I think, with attention span of the listener or the viewer. So I think a lot about attention span

Speaker 1 because my attention span, well, it is what it is. So at a certain point when I'm writing, I think, oh, I'm tired of this.
It's time for me to change a pattern. Maybe change a rhythmic pattern.

Speaker 1 Maybe change the key that I'm in. Maybe change whatever.
My attention span is saying that I'm bored and I'm about to bail out. That's what I think the listener does all the time.

Speaker 1 You listen to most music or most comedy.

Speaker 1 And if you're not drawn into it, if you're not hooked,

Speaker 1 you're leaving. You're mentally leaving, you know.
And

Speaker 1 with a comic, if they're not funny for a long enough period of time, and that might be a minute and a half, maybe it's five minutes, whatever, you're not, that set is blown.

Speaker 1 You're not going to, you're gone. Same with the song.

Speaker 2 A big component to comedy is surprise and lack of predictability. And

Speaker 1 you do that,

Speaker 2 I would think, without even trying. There's nothing predictable.
There's nothing.

Speaker 2 boring about your music. In fact,

Speaker 2 you're constantly changing your sound and things just become even more sort of sophisticated and layered. And I'm not sure what the right words would be, but it never seemed common.

Speaker 2 I mean, in all the decades you've been making music. And in fact, there was something very, very human and vulnerable and

Speaker 2 connecting to the real. the real deep and small part inside of me always.
And can you attribute that sense of...

Speaker 1 By the way, JB,

Speaker 1 kind of to what you're saying, and maybe you can put this in. Think about all the different types of music, the world music that Paul got into and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 I mean, and all that still spoke to us, even though it was different.

Speaker 1 My response to that is: it's not different.

Speaker 1 They put a name on it and call it world music, but I thought, I don't see why any of this is different from any other piece of popular music that I like. And I thought that way.

Speaker 1 Going back into the Bridge Over Treble Water album, which has a song called El Condor Pasa, which is

Speaker 1 like a 400-year-old Peruvian, well, maybe that's maybe it's two, 300 year old, it's an old Peruvian melody.

Speaker 1 And it's lasted that long. I heard it performed in Paris in 1965 by this folk group.
And I loved it. And I thought, oh, I really love that.
Why not? Why can't I write a lyric to that?

Speaker 1 I'll just get the permission from the people who recorded it and I'll put a lyric onto it. the same which is true with uh

Speaker 1 a mother and child reunion it's not like i said oh i'll i'll do this because it's reggae

Speaker 1 no i just like i i liked that sound it didn't sound incompatible with other music sounds that i liked and if you go i guess i'm in a way by my age i'm privileged in that the music that I listened to, that I fell in love with, which is in the 50s, is really world music.

Speaker 1 I mean, you have, as I said, the Everly brothers, well, that sound is

Speaker 1 Appalachian music. You know, those harmonies, and those harmonies are Celtic, they come from Ireland, they come from England.
That's that sound. Doo-wop comes from gospel quartets.

Speaker 1 Those gospel quartets from the black church. That's another culture.
Elvis Presley is combining country with rhythm and blues.

Speaker 1 Music from Louisiana is being, is syncopated because it's drawing from rhythms that come up from the African diaspora of the drum. It's coming up through the Caribbean, finds its way into Louisiana.

Speaker 1 That mixes with French accordion and fiddle music and becomes Zeita Co.

Speaker 1 All of these were put together. They were all hits in the 50s and they just called it rock and roll.
And I was 13 years old, and I just thought it's all the same music.

Speaker 2 But what do you attribute? Your,

Speaker 2 I mean, your, your taste is not,

Speaker 2 it's not common, you know, like you, you never seem to

Speaker 2 write a common song or put up with something that is easy and commercial. And what do you attribute your taste, your confidence, your sophistication in music?

Speaker 2 Like, did your parents encourage you to like stuff that's uh a little bit more challenging or or or is it just is it just the bands like as you said that you ended up falling in love with as a as a kid and um and then that just uh

Speaker 1 identified and built your taste my father was a musician and i would say he didn't like the music that i liked there was a huge division between the

Speaker 1 his

Speaker 1 generation and mine.

Speaker 1 He loved music from the big band era, and that's what he probably grew up playing. And he wasn't interested at all in rock and roll.

Speaker 1 So, no, he didn't encourage me or give me any of that. Well, I guess he did, but I wasn't interested.
You know, like

Speaker 1 he loved

Speaker 1 classical music. He loved Mahler, you know, and

Speaker 1 I remember him playing as for me, not when I was a kid, but, you know, when I was like already in my 40s or something, maybe your early 50s, he said, said this is what I love this Mahler's fifth

Speaker 1 so I listened to it and I thought it's so

Speaker 1 it's inexplicable why

Speaker 1 people love what they love but I don't love it but he he does and

Speaker 1 so anyway no they didn't have anything to do with it but you said something that was interesting Jason oh boy um uh it well

Speaker 1 we probably marked it because it's career

Speaker 2 we're gonna circle the day it uh I was just basically asking, you know,

Speaker 2 what can you attribute your non-common

Speaker 2 taste to and your confidence in always putting out something that never sounds the same as the last?

Speaker 2 Okay, so

Speaker 1 why, let's go to the confidence thing first, okay? Because I don't have confidence.

Speaker 1 I don't. I don't buy it.

Speaker 1 I think, I quite often think

Speaker 1 this is no good, you know, but then I say to myself, it's uh it's just uh it's just a distraction to think this is no good it's not improving anything

Speaker 1 just go ahead and do what you what you feel you know um and by the way it takes a battle to get rid of that voice that says this is no good that's no good that's no good you know we all have it uh we all have that right yeah yeah so i don't i don't really have i don't really have confidence what i feel is it's like people used to say at a certain period of time when I was writing hits all the time, oh, you have your finger on the pulse.

Speaker 1 And I would think, my finger is out there and the pulse is running under it at the moment.

Speaker 1 But it's gonna, the pulse is gonna leave, but I'm still gonna have, I'm still gonna be exploring with my finger to see where I want to go.

Speaker 1 Sometimes I'm gonna go to a place that's less well known, like South African music, and many, many, many people will say, oh, I love that. And they'll agree with me.

Speaker 1 And then sometimes I'll go to a place like a combination of Latin music and doo-wop, like what I wrote in The Cape Man, which is a Broadway, which is a musical that I wrote for Broadway, which was a gigantic flop, critically, commercially, everything.

Speaker 1 And no,

Speaker 1 nobody was interested in what I was thinking. So really,

Speaker 1 what can you do other than just to go to what you're interested in? Because if you decide you're going to go and see, now I wonder what people are interested in, and I'll go and do that.

Speaker 1 You'll just fail.

Speaker 1 You'll never get it right. And if you do get it right, well, then if you do figure that out, well, then you're not an artist anymore.

Speaker 1 It's hollow. Yeah, it doesn't have any heart.
And if you believe that it's essential to have heart, then you discard that as a choice.

Speaker 1 And if you don't believe in heart and you're just interested in success, well, then you pursue another path

Speaker 1 towards success. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 1 And now, back to the show.

Speaker 2 Did you ever get close to pursuing acting even more than you did? Because you're fantastic at it. You seem very, very comfortable.

Speaker 1 Although I have some skill set in doing comedy, I don't think I could do any other kind of serious acting and play anything other than myself.

Speaker 1 I couldn't submerge myself. Well, that's not surprising to me because you brought up comedy before, and there is a connection there with music and comedy because they're both about rhythm, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. At their core.
And I think that there's, I, you guys feel the same, tell me the same thing. I, you know, over the years, I've met so many bands who are really, really into comedy.

Speaker 1 And I know so many comedians who are really into music. I'm, as you guys know, I'm a music nut.
I am like absolute.

Speaker 1 And I think that that's a natural sort of correlation between the two.

Speaker 1 It is. There's a

Speaker 1 musicians are very funny. Yeah, they can be.

Speaker 1 Musicians really like really like to laugh and some of the funniest people that i know are are are musicians uh and uh you know as funny as any professional comedians so yeah there's a there's a connection there there are many connections between comedy and and music timing attention span

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 pitch you know i mean think of uh

Speaker 1 they used to call him the beast you know who i mean Sam...

Speaker 1 Sam Kinnison? Yeah. Yeah, Sam Kinnison.
Think of his, think of how he made people laugh and the volume level that he was at, that he used as a comedic device.

Speaker 1 And then think of someone like Stephen Wright, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 volume,

Speaker 1 yeah, there are a lot of connections. I mean, I also found.

Speaker 1 a great affinity with painters. Some of my close friends were painters and the way they thought about how they resolved issues on a canvas

Speaker 1 was not very different from the way I thought about resolving questions that were song questions.

Speaker 1 And you know what? I mean,

Speaker 1 Joe Torrey is a friend of mine. Oh, wow.
And so is Bernie Williams.

Speaker 1 These, the way they think about

Speaker 1 baseball and hitting, it wasn't any different from the way you guys are thinking about comedy and I'm thinking about music.

Speaker 1 All of it is connected. Actually, Paul, that's interesting because Bernie Williams is also a guitarist.
Isn't he a musician as well? Yeah, very good guitarist. Good musician.

Speaker 1 You sound like a Yankee fan.

Speaker 2 We won't torture you and talk about this season, but there's always next year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's not bring up the subject this year. Jason, why would you even mention it? He's a huge baseball fan.

Speaker 1 You know, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 Go ahead.

Speaker 2 Go ahead. You talk.
You're the guest.

Speaker 1 I was just going for a second into how much I like baseball and think about baseball. And, you know, how much of my identity has to do with baseball.
Like,

Speaker 1 I play guitar right-handed.

Speaker 1 But I throw and I bat

Speaker 1 left-handed or I kick a football.

Speaker 1 I'm ambidextrous. But

Speaker 1 sometimes if I go to, as an exercise, go to a really, really pleasant memory from childhood, go there, you know, as a meditation. A lot of them are baseball memories.

Speaker 2 And it's always Yankees, never Dodgers?

Speaker 1 No, no, it's no, me playing.

Speaker 1 No, Dodgers, no. I went to a Dodger game once when I was nine.

Speaker 1 My grandparents lived in Brooklyn and they took me to Ebbetts Field, but I wore a mask because I didn't want, I did not want to be associated in any way.

Speaker 1 Wait, can I, Paul, can I read you this quote? Maybe you remember this quote from

Speaker 1 Donald Fagan. Do you know the quote I'm going to say about baseball? No, I don't, but I know I know Donald, but go ahead.

Speaker 1 Apparently, he said that he described you as a certain kind of New York Jew, almost a stereotype, really, to whom music and baseball are very important. I think it has to do with the parents.

Speaker 1 The parents are either immigrants or first-generation Americans who felt like outsiders and assimilation was the key thought.

Speaker 1 They gravitated to black music and baseball looking for an alternative culture. And apparently, upon hearing his description, you said that it isn't far from the truth.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'll stick with that. Is there a question in there? No, no, I was just

Speaker 1 wanted to say that. No, I know.

Speaker 2 Are you a, are you, I would imagine, and I'm sure you're going to say yes just out of politeness, but I would imagine you'd be a pretty big Steely Dan fan.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Steely Dan is a very musical band,

Speaker 1 both of those guys. Well, it's only Donald now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, those are one of my favorites.

Speaker 1 Do you, do you feel like, do you still feel when you get up in the morning or right before you go to bed, or whenever you felt like when you were younger writing songs, do you still feel the same urge and pull?

Speaker 1 Like if something inspires you, do you run and grab your guitar or sit at the piano or something like that to get it out before you forget? Or

Speaker 1 are you just like, you know what I'll get to it when I get to it now

Speaker 1 well now going to seven Psalms that idea came to me in a dream a dream said

Speaker 1 I can't remember whether it said you are working on a piece called seven psalms or you should write a piece called seven psalms

Speaker 1 And it was such a strong dream that I got up and wrote it down.

Speaker 1 I don't usually,

Speaker 1 although I did the other day, actually write something down.

Speaker 1 It's good that I do because otherwise I forget. But just because you wake up from a dream and write something down doesn't mean it's any good.

Speaker 1 In fact, a lot of the stuff that you think of in your dreams is no good at all.

Speaker 1 Especially funny stuff.

Speaker 2 Paul, have you ever been approached or been curious or interested in scoring movies?

Speaker 1 Dude. Yeah, I am.
I was going to get to it. I haven't been approached too often, but yeah, I am.
I like it. I would like the challenge of it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right. Here come a bunch of people.

Speaker 1 Well, Jay, remember he, Jay, remember he wrote. Oh, sorry, I wouldn't get into the movie thing because he worked with, obviously, with Mike Nichols back in the day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Mike asked us to do the, you know, to do the graduate. Yeah.
Well, I was a big fan of Nichols and May. Yeah, for sure.
Were you guys fans of Nichols and May? Oh, of course. Oh, of course.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Massive. You know,

Speaker 1 here's a question for you.

Speaker 1 It's an interesting dividing line. You know, you can find it in music, but you can find it in comedy too.
There are certain comedians

Speaker 1 that you love. It's like

Speaker 1 when I said, are you fans of Nichols and May? You all say, oh, yeah, of course. You know, of course.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that line, I wonder what that line means. Because if I said,

Speaker 1 were you a big fan? Were you all a big fan of Red Skelton?

Speaker 2 Yeah. See, there are different kinds of humor, right? One, yeah, one's reality-based, one's broad, yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's interesting. I never devi I never thought about how you would what the different humor.

Speaker 2 But your humor, you know, when you were talking about how you how you would never want to be a dramatic actor, I was going to say that your humor

Speaker 1 is very

Speaker 1 the ability, but I don't.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but uh, but I'm here to tell you that you're doing it already.

Speaker 2 Your brand of comedy is very reality-based.

Speaker 1 It's very sort of dry.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's dry.

Speaker 2 You're not performing. You're not thrown into the back row.

Speaker 2 You're kind of in it and real and grounded. And that's a certain kind of humor, right? It's Woody Allen humor versus Mel Brooks humor, both great, but completely different.

Speaker 1 And I don't know. Mine would be the first comedic thing that I remember that I fell in love with was Bob and Ray.

Speaker 1 Did you ever hear Bob and Ray?

Speaker 1 No? I've heard of them, but

Speaker 1 I don't know Bob and Ray. Oh, well,

Speaker 1 you should do that because that's like

Speaker 1 me saying did you did you ever hear of

Speaker 1 Louis Armstrong? You know if you're a Miles Davis

Speaker 1 that's the guy who landed on the moon well anyway exactly what I did well Bob and Bob and Ray they were they were very dead pan

Speaker 1 it was

Speaker 1 you're not by the way Paul you're not referring to you're not referring to Bob Ray the former NDP Premier of Ontario right

Speaker 1 an actual guy sorry oh yeah I mixed it up.

Speaker 1 Laura knows who Bob Ray is.

Speaker 1 Laura probably does, yeah.

Speaker 1 No, well, you guys are in for a big, big treat when you rediscover Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. They were incredible.
I heard them on radio.

Speaker 1 I used to hear them in the morning before I was going to school. I guess my mother used to like them.

Speaker 1 But it was the same kind of sort of school, not exactly because they were verbal, all verbal, but it was Jack Benny would be out of that world.

Speaker 1 It was a very dry kind of deadpan humor.

Speaker 2 Which is a very close cousin to dramatic acting, you know, because you're not winking. You're trying to be real.

Speaker 2 You're not being goofy and winking to the audience.

Speaker 1 Nobody hates a wink more than Jason. No one hates a wink.

Speaker 1 You're going to learn that. You're going to get hit for it.

Speaker 1 I think,

Speaker 1 you know, I was having, not to be a name-dropper, but I was having a conversation with Jack Nicholson once. Jesus Christ.
Oh, Paul, it's so tacky. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you my biggest name drop story in a second, but I was having this conversation with Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 1 And what I remember out of it was he said, at this point, I could play anything and get it right. I could play my mother.
and get it right.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's, for great actors, they have an ability ability to become something.

Speaker 1 I don't know how they do it. It seems like magic.
It's like musicians, where you say,

Speaker 1 how'd they do that? Where'd that come from?

Speaker 1 It's really a gift.

Speaker 1 It's a great gift for those, you know.

Speaker 1 What's your biggest name-drop story? My biggest name-drop story is, and

Speaker 1 it's not going to be what you think, because

Speaker 1 I was talking to the Dalai Lama.

Speaker 1 That's not the name drop. Okay.

Speaker 1 That's still pretty big.

Speaker 1 But he said to me, he said, you know, I remember Mao Seitong once said to me, and I said,

Speaker 1 that's the best one.

Speaker 1 I could give you John Lennon, but

Speaker 1 I cannot give you Mao Tongue.

Speaker 1 That's the best one I've ever heard. That's amazing.
That's pretty good.

Speaker 1 Listen, I feel like we could talk to you all day.

Speaker 1 I do want to mention, because I think it's interesting to me, and I don't know if it resonates or if there's any connection here,

Speaker 1 that hearing you talk about music and playing when you were young, and you were saying your dad had no influence, but I know that your dad was, because he was a musician, it sort of laid the groundwork for that to be part of, okay to be part of your life or maybe how you got into it.

Speaker 1 And then now I listen to Seven Psalms and your wife, whom you mentioned, Edie, is also

Speaker 1 participates on Seven Psalms. And I'm like, you've had a lifetime of making music and being around people who are family and people whom you've known forever.

Speaker 1 And what a great,

Speaker 1 again, I don't know if there's much of a question there, but does that resonate at all with you?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it's a great privilege to make music with people whose music you respect.

Speaker 1 I'm married to a really, really great songwriter and singer, Edie Brickel, and

Speaker 1 she sings two duets with me on

Speaker 1 the seven Psalms.

Speaker 1 But again, you know, to go back to like these choices about

Speaker 1 where, you know, why would how did you think of doing

Speaker 1 this thing or that unusual thing? It's about musicians. Like

Speaker 1 it was strange for a little bit to be playing with musicians from South Africa, but it was just a little while, and then everything became just about the music. And then

Speaker 1 everything blended in, and the differences evaporated for the moment. They never really completely go away.
But yeah, it's a cliche, but music is the universal language. It's true.

Speaker 1 Paul Simon, my gosh, I could listen to you.

Speaker 2 Such an honor for you to

Speaker 2 take some time to talk to us. It's such a a pleasure to meet you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 I enjoyed it too. Okay.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Paul. All right, guys.
Thank you, Paul. What a pleasure.
Thanks, Paul. Thank you, Paul.
Have a great rest of your day. Thank you, you as well.

Speaker 1 So, you guys are cool with me bringing Paul Simon on?

Speaker 2 Do we owe you any money for that?

Speaker 1 I mean, what the hell?

Speaker 1 I mean, I used to, you know, the la la la goosh. Is that the boxer? Is that that song? Yeah, I think so.
I think that's right. I used to run around as a kid.
By the way, I love the la la la.

Speaker 1 Right? Yeah. La la la la la la.

Speaker 1 La la la.

Speaker 1 I used to pretend like I was doing those sounds myself for my hands. Sure.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? With your hands?

Speaker 1 All alone in the backyard. Oh, the sweet baby angel in the baby angel backyard.

Speaker 1 I wanted to recite the lyrics to baby driver on his way out, but I forgot.

Speaker 2 I mean, they're so.

Speaker 1 Did you know? Do you remember the lyrics to Daddy Driver? Yeah, I guess you do.

Speaker 1 all I know is it was really fast.

Speaker 2 Will

Speaker 2 can I how do you is it through Lauren that you know Paul?

Speaker 1 How do you know? No, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know him at all through Lauren. And I just I

Speaker 1 mean they're very good friends, but I just we just reached out and you know it's one of those kind of a long shot and you just hope. Right.
that he responds. That's so crazy.

Speaker 1 You know, he's kind of like the, you know, one of those icons where when he came onto the show just now, and you're looking at him, you're like, wow, all those songs came out of his head. Yeah, dude.

Speaker 1 So nuts. Dude, I was going through, like I said, I was going through it and I kept going, like, oh, yeah, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, Bridge Mother Trevor Water.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, Sound of Silence.

Speaker 1 And like, all the stuff he did.

Speaker 1 You know, he had, he had number one. Homeward Bound.
Remember Homeward Bound? Homeward Bound. Number one albums as albums as both a band and a solo artist, and number one

Speaker 1 singles as a band and a solo artist. Do you know how fucking rare that is? I know it's so rare.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, you know, and Frannie, 16 years old, she's listening to all. She's discovering all, hey, have you heard this song? Have you heard that?

Speaker 1 I'm like, oh my God. Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Remember all this stuff? Oh my God.
Dude, so it brings me back to when I was a kid. I know.
That's exactly. I love him.
I love that you got him, Will. It was so cool.

Speaker 1 I could have asked him, like, you know, so many questions. I didn't want to bore him.

Speaker 1 You know, you always find yourself, at least I find myself, when somebody like that comes on, like him or Paul McCartney or something, you want to ask him all the fan questions, but you don't want to be a jerk about it.

Speaker 1 So it's like, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I found myself like, like, Jay, you did too. Like, you're like, not really a question, but I just want to say.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Hey, I like you. Yeah, I like the way you did that.
It was so

Speaker 1 I felt.

Speaker 1 And you know what it made me think about?

Speaker 1 This is on what he was saying about.

Speaker 1 It's kind of off topic on this, but he was thinking about the Jack Nicholson thing and Jack Nicholson saying, and by the way, obviously I think Jack Nicholson, one of the greatest actors ever, certainly film actors,

Speaker 1 amazing, a massive fan. And

Speaker 1 he was saying that he could play his mother at this point. He could do anything.
And I thought, yeah, and you know what part of it is?

Speaker 1 It's kind of like what Paul was saying about the music lays the groundwork so that the lyrics could then land. You buy that credibility.

Speaker 1 And I think Jack Nicholson has bought so much credibility over the years culturally so we know who he is.

Speaker 1 So if an alien came down from outer space, they might not appreciate him playing his mother or doing something insane the way that we would go, yeah, but it's Jack Nicholson playing this because we have a built-in thing where

Speaker 1 he's laid 50 years of work on he's built so much bank with his audience. Yeah, he's done interesting.
He's 50 ways to leave his lover. Yeah, you know, one way to leave your lover is just go, bye.

Speaker 1 Bye.

Speaker 1 Bye.

Speaker 1 That was a left hook bye.

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