Homeward Bound (14 page)

“Ooh! Sorry, Nigel, I lost my head, played a Bob Dylan song!”

He got back into it, strumming another few chords before cutting it off again.

“Aw, I don't like that one anyway. Let me think…”

Next came “Man of Constant Sorrow,” delivered in a variation of Dylan's parched prairie voice, the
I
s coming out like
Aaaahhhhh
s, and then more joking, which turned out to be a central part of Paul's act that evening. Did anyone want to hear his new poem? “Oh, yes, let's have your poem!” a woman shouted back, so he took a dramatic moment to compose himself. Then:

My name is Fred. I sleep in a bed.

I used to have to sleep in a cot but when my mommy saw how big I got

She knew I couldn't possibly fall on my head. So now I sleep in a bed.

That bit of nonsense earned great cheers, which Paul acknowledged with a shrug: “A little existentialism with your folk music.” Then came a kid's song or two, then a request for an original—“One of your new songs, Paul!”—and then the opening guitar figure to “The Sound of Silence” brought all the tittering to an abrupt halt. He sang quietly at first, then with gathering intensity, biting down so hard on the final verse that it took a moment for the crowd to start what became a loud, sustained ovation.

So it went whenever Paul stepped up to a microphone that winter, starting in Brentwood and then moving to the other suburban clubs, and then into the London clubs, the permanent fixtures such as the Troubadour and Les Cousins, where he could sign up for a floor spot, a two- or three-song mini-set delivered from wherever you were standing. He'd perform the same blend of traditionals, kids' songs, a Dylan cover or two—they were basically required from all but the most hidebound folk musicians at that time—gospel songs favored by the civil rights movement, and then these stunning bolts from the blue: “Sound of Silence,” “He Was My Brother,” “Bleecker Street,” the just-composed “Leaves That Are Green,” and a growing list of others that would silence the crowd and pin them to their chairs, breathless. The music was accompanied by a comedy shtick lampooning intellectuals, folkies, mainstream showbiz, and, increasingly, Bob Dylan, whose overwhelming authority among the folk music circles had clearly become an aggravation to Paul.

He sounded talented, thrilled, and a little bit terrified. Could he really remake himself into a folk performer? Each night marked another step in his transformation, a herky-jerky combination of showbiz gags, folk traditionals, satirical bits about existentialism and psychology, kids' songs—“A Dog Named Blue” and “Bingo” were favorites—deliberately bad poetry, and then, like a gem tumbling from the sky, one of his own songs. Maybe a brief introduction, a spare guitar figure, a series of chords, then melody flowing across perfectly measured lines about isolation, love, or mortality. When it was over, the applause came with new intensity. Other guitarists and songwriters caught each other's eyes and shook their heads.
The fucking guy knows what he's doing!
Always neatly trimmed in his black corduroys and black sweaters, with that fast-talking, blurt-it-all-out manner of speaking, Paul had a way of filling up every room he entered, despite his size. The poetry-reading urban rustics around London took notice. They mentioned his name, wondered if you'd heard him, suggested that you make a point of doing so, because he could really play guitar and had these songs that were nothing like Dylan's, but still so stunning. He had his own thing, did Paul Simon. He was worth knowing.

Paul made friends with other folk musicians and became particularly chummy with Martin Carthy, the influential guitarist who had urged McCausland to hire him. Paul got a few bookings, five-pound-a-nighters that kept him busy and spread his name that much farther. And then there was Kathy. He'd spotted her the moment he walked into the Railway Tavern and made for the stairs to the club room. She was new in the area, a friend of a friend of McCausland and Rugg's who had volunteered to help out at the Brentwood. Kathy Chitty came from a small village in Wales, and though she'd had courage enough to leave her family home and travel alone to London when she was barely twenty, she was also shy, with a soft pair of eyes behind dark brunette bangs. When McCausland brought Paul to the club, he said hello to her and smiled. She smiled back, and it didn't take much time for Paul to ask her out and then fall in love.

They struck some as a curious pair, given Paul's bluff American charisma and the Welsh girl's near-invisible public demeanor. Many of the friends who grew used to seeing her with Paul rack their brains to recall if they ever heard her utter a word in their presence. But Kathy's timorous facade hid a rugged soul. The Welsh winters were raw and long; the mountainous terrain there offered little but physical labor, much of it in the calamitous mines crawling into the earth's crust. Death was not a stranger in Wales. But there were also the lush green hills and jagged mountains, the rock-strewn coastline and the bittersweet, poetic hearts all that roughness nurtured. If Paul could be tough and gloomy, if he could rage at the world and at himself, if he could reach out and all but consume her with his need, Kathy understood. She could gird his spirit in the morning and draw him back to earth in the evening. A mother, a confessor, a lover, a mirror, a muse—Kathy was everything Paul could possibly need. He could look her in the eye—she was close to him in size—and when he spoke to her, his entire being seemed to soften. “I stand alone without beliefs,” he would soon sing of her. “The only truth I know is you.”

*   *   *

Then Paul's time ran out, and he had to go back to New York, back to everything he had been so happy to escape just a few weeks earlier. So much had happened since then. He'd glimpsed a life that had nearly nothing to do with everything he'd known growing up in New York, an existence free of expectation. But once he stepped through his parents' door, once he found himself not quite fighting off sleep in those downtown Brooklyn classrooms, England might as well have been a dream. He was back in his childhood bedroom, walking the same old streets, trudging back into those soporific law books, and then to the dusty old Edward B. Marks offices to bear the aggravation of selling other people's songs. Still, at least that job came with a few advantages—particularly now that he had a new crop of songs and a renewed partnership with Artie.

They were getting serious about their music again, continuing their Washington Square Park busking and open mic rounds, and also knuckling the Midtown office doors in search of a recording contract. But that process had become no easier than it had been nearly a decade earlier. An unknown pair of folksingers would never get through the doors Paul had come to know so well as an emissary for the Marks corporation. It was hard to resist the temptation to pitch one of his own songs along with the others, but Marks had so many songwriters on its staff that it had had to construct a strict intra-office law to make sure that kind of thing didn't happen. One slip, and you were finished. Then again, this was showbiz, and as Paul had been taught so many years ago, if you had an advantage to work you used it.

It didn't take long: a couple of weeks, maybe a month. Holding a sheaf of songs for Columbia Records, Paul was ushered into the office of A&R executive/producer Tom Wilson, a statuesque black man with stylish clothes and an air of sophistication that drew as much from the jazz-and-poetry underground as from the lecture halls of Harvard, from which he had graduated with honors in 1954. When Columbia's preeminent talent scout John Hammond needed a staff producer who could understand and nurture his latest discovery, he had paired Wilson with Bob Dylan, with terrific results. Just a few albums later, the impact of their collaboration had altered the course of folk music and was still radiating outward. Now seen as a kingmaker among folk producers, Wilson set out to create the Pilgrims, a pop-folk vocal trio that could serve as an African American answer to Peter, Paul, and Mary.
*
By early 1964 he had found his three singers, recorded a handful of songs, and was looking for the right song to make the group's debut single when Paul came knocking with the entries from Edward B. Marks. Wilson passed on all of them and was about to dismiss him when Paul offered something else. He was a songwriter, too, he said, and had just written a song that might be a better fit. Did the producer have time to hear it? Wilson shrugged. Sure, why not.

When Paul got a verse or two into “The Sound of Silence” Wilson started nodding his head. When it was done, he positively beamed. Yes, that
did
sound like the right kind of song. Why didn't Paul go make a demo recording and bring it back so Wilson could play it for the others? Paul hopped the D train for Greenwich Village and tracked down his new friend Jim McGuinn (who later changed his first name to Roger), a guitarist and singer who was one of the more experienced young musicians on the scene, to help oversee the recording session. When it was done, he brought the disc back to Wilson, who once again declared himself impressed. In fact, “The Sound of Silence” would be the perfect single for the Pilgrims. Once again, though, Paul had another idea. He'd formed a singing duo with a friend from Columbia University, and they'd worked out a great duo arrangement for the song. Could they at least sing it for him together before Wilson gave it to the other band? Wilson said sure, and when Paul came back with Artie a day or two later, Wilson had to hear them sing it together only once. He booked time in the Columbia Records studio, asked a young staff engineer named Roy Halee to roll the tape, and watched from the control room while Paul and Artie harmonized their way through “The Sound of Silence,” “He Was My Brother,” “Bleecker Street,” and one or two others. Not long after that they were offered a recording contract with Columbia Records.

That was the end of law school. Studying music industry law, as it turned out, had not only failed to deepen Paul's interest in the legal world, but crystallized exactly why he didn't want to be there in the first place. “I thought, this is completely backwards,” he said. “I want to be a musician who
hires
these lawyers. So I'm quitting.” The elders at Edward B. Marks didn't give him the opportunity to quit. Once they learned that their song plugger Jerry Landis had pitched and sold his own tune during a work trip to Columbia Records, they fired him on the spot.

And with that, Jerry Landis, the walking vision of Paul's pop music fantasies, breathed his last. Or so Paul thought.

 

CHAPTER 8

THE VOICE OF THE NOW

Now Columbia Records recording artists, Paul and Artie made their presence known in Greenwich Village. Hanging in the clubs, taking measure of the other musicians and songwriters, mentioning their new deal, and shaking hands all around. When they saw expert banjo player and multi-instrumentalist Barry Kornfeld play a set at the Gaslight Club one night, Paul had a flash: he'd seen that goatee and those horn-rimmed specs before. During his freshman year at Queens College, when Kornfeld was finishing his degree at the school, Paul saw him with a guitar case on the subway platform near campus and struck up a conversation. The train arrived in short order, and they'd never spoken again, but when Kornfeld finished playing that night in early 1964, Paul reminded him of their earlier meeting and this time they had a much longer talk.

Kornfeld was only four years older than Paul and Artie, but he had been playing folk music in Greenwich Village for more than ten years, all the way back to the early 1950s, when the entire scene amounted to Sunday afternoon jam sessions in a corner of Washington Square Park and smaller gatherings at the one or two Village lofts whose musician residents invited friends over to sing and play. Kornfeld was then best known for his work with Rev. Gary Davis, accompanying the great bluesman on banjo and guitar while also serving as a conduit between the older blind musician and his growing fan base among young folkies. Along with playing solo shows and in various folk groups, Kornfeld also did session work, so he was all ears when Paul told him about the album he and Artie were about to start recording. Both Paul and Artie had been impressed by his show, Paul said. Would Kornfeld like to do some playing at their sessions in the Columbia Studios? Kornfeld was happy to do it. He didn't care if the duo's scrabble was hard enough for Village idealogues, for one thing, and he had a union card, and enough experience to know that Columbia Records would pay its session musicians union scale. So just say where and when.

Paul started bringing his guitar to Kornfeld's apartment at 190 Waverly Place to rehearse, and they soon became friends. There was so much music to talk about, and Kornfeld couldn't help but be impressed by his new chum, not just by the quality of Paul's songs and his guitar playing, but also by his gleeful tales of the many hours he'd spent learning the tricks of the recording studio. They'd talk for hours, passing a joint and digging deep into music and literature, politics and the folk music history. And Paul was funny—not just witty but deeply and endearingly silly, quick to crack a joke, quicker to burst out laughing. Kornfeld's building was a hub for Village musicians and writers—his neighbors included Dave Van Ronk, the soft-spoken army veteran Tom Paxton, and the Irish Native American singer-songwriter Pat Sky, and most of them would stop by and end up hanging out to jam with Kornfeld and his friend.

Still seeing the world at least partly through Jerry Landis's eyes, one day Paul came to Kornfeld with a proposition. The Village was overstuffed with songwriters, but hardly any of them knew how to publish their songs. At the same time, the cigar smokers in Midtown were eager to find folklike songs to appeal to the new market. He and Kornfeld should launch their own folk-centric publishing company. They'd be equal partners, with Paul providing the business expertise and Kornfeld bringing in the songwriters and matching the company's songs, including Paul's of course, to other performers in Greenwich Village and beyond. Kornfeld saw the logic of it immediately. They called the company Eclectic Music, and registered its address as Kornfeld's apartment on Waverly Place. The first song on their roster was the still-unrecorded “Sound of Silence.”