SIDE A
1. The Boy In The Bubble – 4:00
2. Graceland – 4:52
3. I Know What I Know – 3:14
4. Gumboots – 2:45
5. Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes – 5:51
6. You Can Call Me Al – 4:41
SIDE B
7. Under African Skies – 3:37
8. Homeless – 3:49
9. Crazy Love, Vol. II – 4:20
10. That Was Your Mother – 2:53
11. All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints – 3:26
It goes without saying that Paul Simon is a 20th century music icon. He is one of the legendary songwriters of any time, pretty much New York City’s all time poet laureate. This reputation was built through the remarkable, raw, realistic but quirky snapshots of NYC life, and universal human experience, he developed throughout the 60s as one half of Simon and Garfunkel. Across five short years and four iconic albums (plus a less legendary first effort), the folk rock duo established themselves as one of popular music’s all time most sacred and revered acts.
From 1970 onwards, Paul Simon was a prolific solo artist, with album after album and hit after hit. Though I am a fully dedicated connoisseur of the four great Simon and Garfunkel albums and aware of the solo classics, I will admit that as his quieter acoustic folksier style is on the fringe of my symphonic and progressive tendencies, I have not delved as deep as I perhaps should into his solo career. Graceland is the one major exception, as I think it is for a great many people. It is by far his most famous and commercially successful album, and a completely unique left-field outlier in his discography. It was the result of a whole bunch of disparate elements and influences coming together at a particular point in history and creating a document that, musically and culturally, is a perfect snapshot of its time yet somehow also completely timeless.
Many times on this blog, already in the limited albums covered and no doubt many times to come, I focus on an album having a particular importance to it beyond merely sounding awesome because of its uniqueness and/or unlikely circumstances. This album qualifies on this front as much as any of all time. What other albums combines mint 80s new wave pop rock with mbaqanga, isicathamiya and zydeco? That is of course a rhetorical question, involving words that few could be expected to know. Indeed, they are three words, three interesting sounding genres of music, that I would absolutely never have heard of or have even the slightest understanding and experience of if not for this one album. Mbaqanqa and Isicathamiya are contemporary 20th century Black South African music styles with Zulu roots. Mbaqanqa is an often guitar and percussion heavy, up-tempo, happy sounding street music. In the grandest tradition of all street music, it is simple and communal, based around the same few major chords and regularly played and sung in large groups in the black Johannesburg township of Soweto. Isicathamiya is one of multiple Zulu-originating genres which can be equated to acapella. The cultural tradition of unaccompanied singing, often in captivating styles and with vocal techniques unique to the culture and people music, is huge among the black South African poor. Isicathamiya focuses particularly on soft and sweet melodies and the delicate harmonies.
Both these beautiful forms of African music first found widespread international recognition from their prominent part on Graceland. Simon also added elements of Zydeco into the mix. This is a Louisianan creole music, where native and French influences combine with traditional southern blues to create an up-tempo dance R&B based heavily around the accordion. More than just making a quintessential pop album with some vague esoteric influences, this album goes further and qualifies as one of western pop music’s all time great cross-genre experiments, bringing obscure styles to a major audience like arguably no-one has done before or since. The combination with Simon’s personal sensibilities was perfect. He has always been capable of many fun and inspiring major key melodies, which sit perfectly on top of such up-tempo and thoroughly happy sounding foreign influences. Simon’s occasional melodic and particularly lyrical propensity for occasional melancholy serves as a counterpoint that adds a soulful depth to the otherwise bouncy material. Unlikely and unconvincing so its backers as the project was, the end result of all this was always going to achieve both massive critical and commercial success. It is a pristine, energetic, thumping album, full of utterly new, challenging, interesting but wonderfully pop-fitting upbeat sounds. Graceland is in equal measure fun peak party 80s pop and innovative one-of-a-kind touchstone of cross-cultural experimentation.
How so many fortuitous happenings led to something as remarkable as Graceland, is well known and better covered elsewhere. In basic terms, the early to mid-80s lead-up period had been one of great turmoil for Paul Simon. A young prodigy who in many ways had only experienced love and success, he admitted to being broken by the simultaneous personal and professional blows of his divorce from Carrie Fisher and apparent fading from musical relevance. His three 70s solo albums had all been critically and commercially successful and each contained classic and well-known songs, such as Mother and Child Reunion, Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard, Kodachrome and 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. But his two most recent efforts had not reached the same heights. 1980’s One Trick Pony received mixed reviews while 1983’s Hearts and Bones, though perhaps misunderstood and underrated, was a major commercial failure, the first decisive flop one of Simon’s career.
Floating somewhat in the breeze, the directionless Simon was composing sporadically and collaborating as a producer with other artists. One of these was Heidi Berg, a young up and coming New York singer-songwriter who came into Simon’s circle through his friend Lorne Michaels, whose TV house band she had been a part of. Berg had discovered and been inspired by Mbaqanga music and upon giving Simon a tape of songs to help direct his production focus, he was immediately as taken. Through his industry contacts, Simon was able to not only identify the musicians on the tape, most notably including the Isicathamiya vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, but arrange to travel to South Africa to record with them. Suddenly, in these totally new and infections sounds, Simon had finally found the new direction he was looking for a new burst of energy. Ruthless though one must be in such an industry by necessity, it is worth reflecting on poor Berg, who it appears felt understandably betrayed by Simon taking this project on board for his own rather higher profile work. They fell out and I can speak of little else about her ongoing story, as she lacks that most fundamental of minimum hallmarks of recognition, the Wikipedia page.
Further controversy surrounded the album’s production and release. South Africa was of course, entirely globally blacklisted at the time, with the western world maintaining a mass economic and cultural boycott over the apartheid regime. To travel into South Africa and happily and openly record there was heavily criticised, as was Simon’s collaboration with Linda Ronstadt who, apparently politically naively, had performed recently for big money at the luxury whites only Sun City resort. There was also legal battles over plagiarism and appropriate writing credits in the months following Graceland’s release (and it must be said, apparent success), primarily with Mexican-American band Los Lobos over their contributions to the album-closing jam. It’s an album full of drama to such an extent that it adds to the mythology. So many controversies certainly must make any discerning individual sit and ponder. No parties are ever entirely innocent and Simon clearly approached making this album the one he wanted with ruthless guile. But by all accounts, as far as the South Africa problem is concerned, he did so also with great sincerity and openness. Simon always spoke, logically enough to me, of simply appreciating and wanting to engage with and promote the music he heard, regardless of political context. He spoke against the regime and government and employed only black musicians who he paid handsomely. He also flew them to America to give them further opportunity to record and perform with him. The success of Graceland brought the music and humanity of a series of great musicians and their culture and struggles to a wider audience.
As varied and consistently excellent as the album is, I have always and generally still find the opening two tracks the best, perhaps because of my invariable whiteness. Though bringing a different kind of energy, they are both broadly western based pop songs. A big part of their greatness, and a huge reason I love the album as a while, comes from the astonishing fretless bass work from South African bass maestro Bakithi Kumalo. The opening bars of The Boy In The Bubble will forever constitute one of my all time favourite album openings. A beguiling timeless accordion riff is the first sound, no doubt born of the Zydeco influence, before a rather more dating, but even more awesome, monstrous thumping reverberating drum pounds in four times. Then the band come in, immediately establishing this album’s unique sound, mostly reverb-laden 80s pop, but with subtle rhythmic twists, busy percussion, and Kumalo’s warbling bass. The title track Graceland is the closest thing to Simon’s traditional folk leanings, driven by a lovely and folksy, albeit particularly up-tempo, galloping guitar strum from another South African virtuoso, guitarist Ray Phiri. The track’s cryptic but enthralling and wordy lyric is typical Simon and sets the tone for the album. The album is titled Graceland, suggesting that the most central and powerful theme of the album is the title metaphor of a journey to the home of Elvis as cathartic spiritual pilgrimage, representing spiritual rebirth and regeneration in Simon’s life.
The next two tracks are the most exemplifying representations of pure Mbaqanga on the album. I Know What I Know is a fun guitar workout and features some vibrant tribal falsetto from the South African backing singers, juxtaposing with Simon’s very chic, though sarcastic, New York City lyric. Gumboots dates right back to the very first tape given to Simon by Heidi Berg. It was the track which immediately enamoured him and he sort to re-record it largely as is, but with the quality his resources could ensure and with his vocals layered over the top.
Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes is the other monumental highlight. It opens with the first of the album’s two remarkable long form Isicathamiya acappella sequences written by Ladysmith Black Mambazo leader Joseph Shabalala, over which Simon himself slides in tenderly. After this vocal intro the track proper takes over and it is probably the album’s quintessential track that best summarises its sound. It is an upbeat slightly jazzy pop song, but every element of it is infused with South African spirit. Ladsmith Black Mambazo provide rich backing vocals, there is a raucous horn section adding further rich textures and Ray Phiri’s spindly guitar figures occur throughout. It is elevated to another level by Kumalo’s bass work, the absolute peak of his consistently superb contribution. My CD version’s bonus tracks include a demo version consisting of just Simon’s vocal and Kumalo’s bass part and it is a remarkable thing, converting me fully to this album maybe more than any of the actual released songs.
Side two opens with the iconic hit single You Can Call Me Al of which little needs to be said. It is a sensational fun time, a quintessential party track everybody loves, with a vintage playful punny Simon lyric and delirious horns. The brief forwards-backwards two-measure bass solo is of course an inevitable highlight for me. The fourth and final of the album’s true masterpieces is Under African Skies. Like the opening two tracks, it is a more conventional pop track for the most part, but still features the core South African backing band that recorded so much of the album and made it sound so good in Phiri, Kumalo and drummer Isaac Mtshali. Phiri’s crisp almost Byrds-like intro riff and dexterous work throughout ties the track together, while Kumalo lets loose in the chorus. The tender verse is rendered even more gorgeous by the floating almost heavenly sounding contribution of Linda Ronstadt, while it is one of a handful of tracks to feature in demand session guitarist Adrian Belew, at the time fresh off his name-making work with King Crimson’s 80s version.
Because of the consistent magnificence of everything up to this rate, I often perceive this run towards the end as a slightly meandering fade-away, but that is not really fair. Homeless is the second Isicathamiya showcase. It is a wholly acapella track where Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo interplay in magical fashion. Crazy Love Vol. II is another in the Under African Skies mould, with a dynamic new-wavey pop sound alternating between disciplined verse and triumphant chorus, all dominated by Phiri’s guitar. The final two tracks are probably, narrowly, the weakest on the album. That Was Your Mother is the only complete Zydeco track, with the backing music performed by Louisiana Zydeco band Good Rockin’ Dopsie and the Twisters. Although it is clearly a vibrant and infectiously happy style of music, the relentless and march-like peppiness is fun but not quite as dynamic or tender as most of the album. Similarly, the album closer All Around The World or The Myth Of Fingerprints, is rather an outlier, with Los Lobos bringing a rougher harder edged and somewhat dated 80s sound to a fairly standard pop rock jam.
The full experience from start to finish flows perfectly though. By the end there is a distinct and perfectly balanced sense, even listening now 35 years later, that you’ve heard something completely new and unlike anything else out there, but which in no way compromises on its pop credentials.
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