Paul Simon's final London bow was a masterclass in musical genius

I was standing outside the Palladium on Monday night when a tout approached me without the usual “buy or sell” shtick and asked a simple question: “Want one for Bob Dylan?” I directed him to the enormous pictures of Paul Simon, accompanied by the words ‘Paul’ and ‘Simon’ that adorned the venue and suggested it might be helpful for business if he knew which artist he was attempting to flog tickets for.

Perhaps the mistake was understandable. Both men are tiny 84-year-old Jews who came through the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s and continue to tour long after the majority of their contemporaries have exited the stage in one sense of another. They can also lay claim to being the two greatest American songwriters in the history of popular music. Simon might not be able to write Visions of Johanna, but Dylan probably couldn’t pen You Can Call Me Al. Or, as Rio Ferdinand once observed about another couple of greats, “People try to make comparisons… Just enjoy ‘em, man.”

Simon was in town as part of his “Quiet Celebration” world tour, surely his last such jaunt around the globe. The expectation was that his 2018 tour would be the end, a feeling only exacerbated by health problems in more recent years that have left the man almost completely deaf in one ear. But, like the titular boxer described in the final verse of a masterpiece he saved for the encore, “the fighter still remains”. That particular line, inevitably, got the biggest cheer of the night.

The concert began with a performance of Seven Psalms in its entirety, Simon’s most recent album and one that was designed to be heard as an uninterrupted whole. The voice isn’t quite what it once was, and the album is no Graceland, but Monet’s eyesight affected his later work, and most would still be grateful to be in his presence. For most of that first 33 minutes, the overwhelming sensation is that it’s the actual Paul Simon. There. Right in front of us.

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After the interval, we’d become acclimatised to being in his presence, and, with the help of an extraordinary band, he treated us to a selection of tunes from the greatest of American songbooks. The hearing issues make comparisons with Beethoven seem almost too obvious, but it feels undeniable that this is an artist of genuine genius whose music will be enjoyed for as long as there are people and they have ears. These songs are canonical standards passed down between generations, and he is a modern Mozart. Salieri would have been equally baffled by the fact that God chooses to speak through this diminutive Jew.

Take the second song of that second half, Slip Slidin’ Away, in which each verse feels like a John Cheever short story:

“And I know a woman

Became a wife

These are the very words she uses to describe her life.

She said, “A good day

“Ain’t got no rain.”

She said, ‘A bad day’s when I lie in bed

And think of things that might have been.”

Perhaps because of the standard of the melodies, Simon is an underrated lyricist whose imagery ranges from restless dreams to national guitars. Such was the ease with which he could write masterpieces during his imperial phase that the above lines come from a new song included on a greatest hits compilation, traditionally a dumping ground for tunes not quite good enough for a proper studio album.

Darren Richman

Almost to underline how easy Simon once found writing pop music, the story he told about penning Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War simply involved seeing a photograph in an art book with that caption and thinking it would make a good song title. The good song, one senses, has always been the easy part for him.

At the outset, Simon promised to “play the hits” in the second half, and that’s precisely what he did, treating us to versions of Graceland, Homeward Bound, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard and 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. At the night’s conclusion, the band left the stage, and he stood alone in the centre of the stage with just an acoustic guitar to perform a transcendent version of The Sound of Silence. It felt apposite, as it is hard to imagine we will see him again on these shores. The rest may very well be silence and “people writing songs that voices never share”, but what a privilege it was to be in a room with this undeniable titan performing some of the best ones of the last century.