(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 17 December 2025 19:00, UK
The version of rock and roll that we know today tends to look a lot different to Paul Simon.
He is one of the finest songwriters of his generation, but he always felt like he was put on the side compared to the other icons, like Elton John or Billy Joel, and while he was still capable of writing better songs than most, he felt that the biggest stars weren’t exactly the kind of people who needed to be role models for the next generation of musicians.
Then again, it’s not like Simon was exactly a saint or anything. Without getting into any of his personal hangups, the behaviour that he had with Art Garfunkel during their time together wasn’t exactly the healthiest band dynamic, but when they finally decided to call it a day, Simon did get to blossom a bit more than usual. A duo is always a tricky project to manage, but with the wind at his back, he could do anything he wanted.
And that does mean everything. Although no one in their right mind would picture Simon as the kind of person who would make a Southern African beat into a song or talk about his enduring passion for genres like jazz, his catalogue is all over the map. Many of his greatest songs are usually dictated by the rhythm behind everything, and when you listen to any of his albums, there are always subtle variations that show that he’s always aware of what the next phase of his artistry is supposed to be.
Then again, he would have been nowhere without the glory days of rock and roll. The Everly Brothers are half the reason why he had a career in the first place, and without the writings of Bob Dylan, there’s a good chance that he wouldn’t have had a shot to begin with. But despite Elvis Presley being one of the first major rock and roll forces to grace the stage, Simon wasn’t looking at him as the same kind of demigod that most other people thought of when they saw him strut his stuff.
He was a fantastic showman, but Simon felt that no one needed to follow his lead of becoming a musical burnout, saying, “You can see people who pay an enormous price for fame when they’re young, and they burn up. My generation had an incredible role model not to follow, and that was Elvis Presley. You may have wanted to be Elvis Presley, but you don’t want to die at age 42, looking like he looked.”
And without paying any disrespect, there’s a lot of truth to what Simon is saying there. Presley is one of the finest rock and roll artists to ever live, and his performances were second to none throughout every phase of his career, but if you were to take a documentary-like deep-dive into his later years, he ended up committing every single mistake you could imagine, be it shoddy management, not taking care of himself and getting loaded on God knows how many drugs.
But if you really think about it, the only reason why those are cliches is that Presley did all of them first. He was the original rock and roll casualty, and while he may not have been at the top of his game towards the end of his life by any stretch, he was still a fantastic performer when he was playing his Vegas residencies.
No matter how many performances Presley gave, though, Simon was more interested in the other side of show business. He was coming from the perspective of artists being able to follow their bliss, but when looking at Presley, he only saw people who were willing to do anything to keep the audience clapping.
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