paul simon playboy interview

paul simon – 1984 playboy interview small black beetles: the overkill
then, I felt the song was too impersonal, it wasn't growing.
The repetition of the thought was boring to me: the idea
that we're really all the same people - "engines in the front
and jacks in the back." So I wrote, "I once had a car / That
was more like a home / I lived in it, loved in it / Polished its
chrome." Actually, I was thinking of my first car, a 1958 red
Impala. Triple carburetor. A fast car.
Playboy: So you returned, as usual, to the personal.
Simon: Yeah. The car burned down eventually. It caught
fire at the corner of Artie's block in Queens, as a matter of
fact. And then I ended the song with "It some of my homes
had been more like my car / I probably wouldn't have
traveled this far." I find, basically, that's it's hard to stay
away from domestic themes.
Playboy: For all the personal themes in your songs, you've
rarely written about your son, Harper. Why not?
Simon: I tried to, but I was just too overwhelmed with
love to write. I couldn't think of anything to write other than
"You totally amaze and mesmerize me, I'm so in love with
you I can't contain myself." And that just didn't seem like a
healthy song to write, you know?
Playboy: What about writing songs about broader issues?
Simon: Well, I don't find it very comfortable to address
those issues head on. One of the only times I did it was
in He Was My Brother, which was about Andrew Goodman,
a college classmate who was killed in Mississippi during
the civil rights movement. But usually, I address those
issues obliquely.
Playboy: You've never written songs in the Blowin in the
Wind tradition, have you?
Simon: Well, I have. There's a song I wrote for this album
and then threw out called Citizen of the Planet. It was a
direct statement about nuclear disarmament. Too direct
for me. It goes : "I am a citizen of the planet. I was born
here. I'm going to die here. I am entitled by my birth to the
treasures of the earth. No one should be denied these. No
one should be denied." I'd like to give it to some
page 21