Paul Simon's Timeless Tune
On January 19, 1977, the night before Jimmy Carter took the oath of office, thus becoming America’s 39th President, a strictly A-list pre-inaugural gala was held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Among the performers rocking the house were the “alpha and omega” of world-class musical talent: Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon. For her part, Franklin tore the house down with her megawatt version of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Although Berlin wrote the song way back in 1918, it wasn’t heard in public until Kate Smith sang it on her number One most popular radio show on November 10, 1938. Aretha’s Franklin’s version had the pre-inaugural crowd jumping and stomping and sweating.
By comparison, Paul Simon’s choice was a much quieter, more thoughtful, pensive - even prophetic - piece musically based on one of the greatest masterpieces of Baroque music: J.S. Bach’s sacred oratorio St. Matthews Passion (part 1, numbers 21 and 23, and part 2, number 54). Simon simply called it American Tune. It began with the words:
Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused.
Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home
So far away from home
The song, originally released in November 1973, has been a personal favorite of both Paul Simon and his vast fan base ever since. Rolling Stone has rated it as high as #262 on its list of “The 500 greatest songs of all time.” (Somewhat ironically, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” came in at #1.) Upon his induction to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, Simon chose to sing American Tune.
In the song’s second verse, Simon amps up the feeling of civic dislocation and anomie - something which was and is as telling in 1977 as in 2022:
I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
Oh, but it's all right, it's all right
For we've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong
I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
Oh, but it's all right, it's all right
For we've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong
The song’s bridge conveys a dream of death and of the Statue of Liberty “sailing away to sea.”
And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me, smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above, my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying
In addition to Simon’s impeccable, pristine guitar playing, there is his voice . . . soft, semi-mournful and melancholic. During the many years of their partnership, it was Art Garfunkel whose voice received the greatest plaudits: often referred to as heavenly, crystal clear, and otherworldly. And yet, Paul Simon was as vocally adept as his high school friend and long-time partner.
I well remember watching “Rhymin’ Simon’s” performance the night before Carter’s inauguration; tears began welling up in my eyes as the full impact of the song was nearing its muted crescendo. “Where,” I wondered” would Simon’s mythic “flight” be taking us? Would it be a chimera . . . something to be hoped or wished for but in fact be illusory or impossible to achieve, or a catastrophic crash-landing? There are songs which resonate powerfully when first we hear them, yet continue to expand with meaning and poignance through the passing years. Few songs do this with the pointed poetics of this song. It was stunning back in 1973, magnificently poignant in 1979, breathtakingly prophet in 2011, and still speaking to this American moment in 2022 better than just about any other song ever written.
Simon’s third verse puts a capstone on what, for Americans, has always been, historic reality: tomorrow.
We come on the ship they call The Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune
Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest
At the time this song was included on Simon’s 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, he and Art Garfunkel had already broken up the act . . . although they would occasionally sing together at mass outdoor concerts over the years. On September 19, 1981, they reunited for what would become the historic “Concert in Central Park,” at which they sang American Tune as a duo. In his introduction, Garfunkel admitted that he truly regretted not having sung this song until this moment for indeed, “it is one of my very favorites . . . I truly love it.”
Much of the power of “American Tune” is in Paul Simon’s voice. It does not ring with the loud anger that runs through our time. It is mournful, as if unspooling in the candlelight of a day’s end, in the place where a person’s battles give pause until dawn. The song is searing in its tenderness, poetic in its indictment. It is political without being so. And its voices sound like truck drivers or factory workers, men and women who hustle for their daily bread while the world above them, the one of bankers and politicians, spins on indifferently.
Throughout its history, America has refracted its patriotism and its protest in music, including “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the African American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit,” Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Neil Young’s album “Living With War.”
In their new book, “Songs of America,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw write that American history “is a story of promises made and broken, of reform and reaction — a story fundamentally shaped by the perennial struggle between what Abraham Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’ and our worst impulses… Through all the years of strife, we’ve been shaped not only by our words and our deeds but by our music, by the lyrics and the instrumentals that have carried us through dark days and enabled us to celebrate bright ones.”
In American Tune, Paul Simon is tired but resilient. The American dream comes with both disappointment and loss. Each generation endures its sins and crises; its diminishment and cruel realizations. It is the job, though, despite the clamor and politics, that waits at first light with the hope of reward and the fear of resignation.
American Tune is the masterwork of a modern prophet . . . one who believes that regardless of the crises and fears of today . . . there will yet be another and brighter tomorrow.
Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone