Paul Simon Talks About Art Garfunkel | Letterman

my first guest has written and performed some of the best american songs of the last 20 or so years he's also moved into other fields we'll talk about that with him tonight we're very delighted to have him as a guest on our program please welcome paul simon very exciting uh to meet you and thank you very much for coming you just got back from traveling with uh your partner uh that's right we did we began to do some concerts the first group of concerts since we played in the park and uh we began in japan where we've never performed we were always very popular and we started in japan and now we're going to go and do some uh in europe how long was the period of time where you were performing as a solo person and working movies do anything you want paul what's the matter with the chair uh it was just a strange angle to look at okay yeah much much more comfortable let's move the desk now shall we let's just move furniture paul simon and i will move furniture for an hour um so you worked uh uh by yourself for a period of time and roughly 10 or 11 years uh yeah after the first after the breakup yeah yeah yeah if i if i if i look like i'm dozing it's because i i lived through that already because you lived through no i i what i mean is like do we have to go through the history do we can do virtually anything you want to do let's talk about something else what would you what would you like to talk about oh i see [Laughter] maybe we should go through the history no now wait a minute we'll be all right here we got um how about this one did art garfunkel ever get on your nerves oh he always gets how i mean i shouldn't say always but periodically we get on each other's nerves when i say periodically i mean if we're together then every day probably like if it's like any other relationship there are bound to be things that would no it has it has a it has a flow to it and in a performance situation uh if you don't experience nerves in like the typical butterflies in your stomach type of uh nervousness it comes out in some way and it just uh you you know you get you get i guess you get on each other's nerves because your nerves are heightened because you're gonna you're gonna go in out and perform in front of uh did you guys fight or bicker or uh well you know i've known art since uh since i'm 10 years old so uh our i think we've developed our own style of disagreement you know it's a very subtle way of of irritating the other person i must also add that we that we laugh a lot you know and it's it's a lot it's uh it's it's a very very long relationship it's the longest relationship that i have in my life i don't know if you if you still know anyone that you know sincere um not no you're right really odd it's really odd to know somebody from that for that long yeah so uh it's generally it's generally good and it's fun and he's uh he's a he's a very unusual guy he always was even when he was 10. he was you know the first time i first time i really met him he was in uh this candy store which we used to go to after we would get out of school and i came and he was this kid and he was he was shaking boxes of uh good and plenty and then finally and i was watching him you know because i was going in to buy my captain marvel comic and he was shaking these boxes of good and plenty and finally the owner of the store kicked him out said he had to get out and i said to the guy why did you why did you kick him out and he said he comes in here all the time and he shakes these boxes to see which has the most good and plenty and that's the one he buys you know yeah this is now when we played japan now he was now here skipping 30 28 years later we played japan and this is art's second trip to japan it was my second trip as well i had performed there in 1974. but art was there uh three years ago he took a steamer and he landed in uh nagoya and he walked across japan he didn't tell anybody i mean he just he walked for three weeks in japan just that can be done obviously just well he did it yeah definitely but i mean but i mean there's it's it's not like in europe where you you you vaguely can approximate the language you know even if you're not familiar with uh you can find some language but in japan you you know there's no lane and he did it he's just a he's a very unusual guy who sings very well as a matter of fact yeah walking across japan is i don't know anyone who's done that no yeah um this uh your music has uh become uh it's everywhere omnipresent and then and it's in elevators how do you react when you hear it in an elevator and it's done by the milwaukee strings or somebody what i like it in the elevator i really do i'm not being facetious i like to hear it there the most fun of hearing your music is when you're walking down the street and you hear somebody hum it walking in the opposite direction yeah that's a tremendous thrill it's it's actually a privilege you know to be to be in a position where people like what you do and accept what you do to to that degree it's it's pre it's a privilege does it all feel that way i want to know if there's a burden with that i mean do you feel like an overwhelming responsibility if somebody comes up and says uh bridge over troubled waters changed my life and i'm moving in or something like that [Music] i think that there's a there's a pressure when i write that that has made it more difficult to write in in recent years because of uh the fact that because some of my earlier work and even my mid mid work was so so successful if i do work now that is uh of equal quality or even superior uh when it's not as successful it's confusing and it takes a while for even for me to sort it out case in point is i wrote uh and performed and starred in a movie called one trick pony and uh i derived tremendous satisfaction from writing the screenplay to this and writing the music to it and performing in it and the movie came out and it got uh some good reviews and some bad reviews let me at this point let me interrupt so you can complete this when we come back which we will do in a minute or two with paul simon folks and before we uh departed for several weeks there you were talking about uh when uh one trick they're tremendous the world's most dangerous band so the movie came out and it was something you spent a great deal of time writing producing and uh doing the music for and so on oh one trick pony yeah well my point was uh that was a long race we had hot soup brought in during that break my point about that was that uh sometimes an artist does a piece of work and the work is makes you stretch as an artist which you you you must do and uh the work might not be uh a popular success in in the case of one trick pony it was not the popular success that i had been accustomed to up until that point came out and uh some favorable reviews some negative reviews and had a run of maybe uh three weeks or a month and then it went away and uh for a long time i felt very very guilty about it very bad as if i as if i had done something wrong you know is there a sense of embarrassment almost do you think what what have i done here to myself not to myself i felt that i had let a lot of people down because in my mind i i was so accustomed to doing you know doing my work and having it be uh not only uh accepted critically but also uh to be accepted uh in a in a popular sense in a a in a commercial sense that when it didn't happen i thought i must have made some terrible error what could i what could i have done what happened was that i had tried to stretch and i during the process of the work i was very happy as happy as i as i ever get when i'm when i'm working which is probably the happiest i ever am is when i'm in the midst of of writing and uh and so the the the process of the work was uh very enriching for me and the after effect of it produced the opposite effect so i i guess my point was uh if i can think back to what the question was before the break was uh how do i feel about these uh songs being so uh so well accepted i have a mixed feeling about that because some of the work that i do that i love and that i feel is superior is not the most popular uh work that i do and uh you have to separate a popular artist a serious popular artist has to separate the quality work that you know you've achieved from the acceptance or relative rejection anyway yeah that's that was my that was my point about that uh let me ask you you mentioned um we talked about your touring japan and so forth and uh you mentioned your concert in the park a half a million people they said roughly uh or more and at one point someone jumped up on the stage uh and and moved towards you uh even without that occurrence is it's got to be terribly frightening especially in the heart of new york city these people did not pay to get in they certainly were not frisked and come to think of it as just like our audience does do you ever worry for your own safety on stage or is that an element you don't consider no i consider it i consider it i always considered it and of course uh after john lennon's murder uh the ones uh you have a heightened uh heightened awareness of it my reaction when the that the guy came up on stage was uh i said oh he's he's messed up the song that's what's happened it's a new song i thought oh it's hard enough to for anybody to grasp a new song uh especially if i'm just singing it with a guitar and uh now this guy's coming he's messed up the song and my my reaction was not at the time one of fear and either was a arts reaction he was sitting on the stage although it's very possible that no he must have couldn't possibly have wanted to uh i think what happened was that when we used to perform together uh people would come up on stage all the time but they were always bringing flowers or things it was really a different time and we didn't have a sense of fear you thought people could be a little bit crazy but but generally crazy in a benign way and as it happens this this guy was also i think just uh stoned and he he kept saying paul i got it he was gonna talk to you i gotta talk to you yeah he wasn't he wasn't threatening although it might have looked that way did you know um john lennon know him well work with him uh no i i knew him i i knew him but i didn't know him i didn't know him very well uh i knew him i knew him and uh uh ayoko a little bit uh my my little well i shouldn't say that absolutely i have to i'm editing myself as i go along uh yeah we we uh we met uh i i was about to say something uh go ahead and say it no i the reason i can't say it is uh the reason i can't i can't stop it [Music] oh yeah okay yeah all right that makes sense it's not it's not anything negative as you as you as you can see uh yeah i'll tell you uh uh a lenin anecdote want to lend an anecdote sure uh we were talking about uh partnerships you know he this was maybe 1970 or something like that and i was having a dinner with him and yoko as a matter of fact and so we talked about how did you know get into early how did you do your partnership had did i do my partnership and he said uh his partnership started he uh he heard from a friend he had a band in liverpool and he heard from a friend that there was this other guy that had another band in liverpool and the other guy of course is uh paul mccartney and he he heard that this band was as good as john's band so john went over to look at this band to see you know just what you know to assess the danger level you know came over he looked at the guy said oh this guy is very good he said he's he's really good he said i better get him in my band he said wait a minute can i control him yeah i think so he said and i always could because i was two years older he said and then we got to a certain point and the age didn't matter and we couldn't and i presume that's when they broke up yeah now artie is one month younger than i am so i pretty much have him on [Laughter] uh what do we do here you wanna do we have time for another song okay [Applause] maybe we should be singing a song together oh no no what do you think not a good idea not a good idea not even if it would ensure world peace [Applause] that's funny because you know you say that actually i'm working on a song i wasn't planning on doing this i'm working on a song for the nuclear disarmament uh movement and now i feel like a jerk for not singing along well nobody knows the song because i haven't played it yet i was wondering why somebody laughed at nuclear disarmament moving out suddenly i thought wait a minute maybe that's not hip anymore i'm working on a pro pro fascist song it's very i feel like that's very hip now like a guy who works on whatever is happening right at the moment i work i work on it

Channel: Letterman

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Keywords: letterman, david letterman, dave letterman, interview, letterman interview, letterman official, letterman late show, letterman late night, late night

Id: TQ1vk-RDc9A

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 01 2022