{"id":744168,"date":"2026-08-20T15:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T15:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/744168\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T15:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T15:34:09","slug":"it-was-a-damn-unicorn-the-pioneering-divisive-power-of-paul-simons-graceland-at-40-paul-simon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/744168\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It was a damn unicorn\u2019: the pioneering, divisive power of Paul Simon\u2019s Graceland at 40 | Paul Simon"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was the summer of 1984 and things weren\u2019t going well for Paul Simon<\/a>. The year prior, a blockbuster Simon and Garfunkel<\/a> tour ended in bickering. Meanwhile, even though the 1980 single Late in the Evening reached the US Top 10, Simon\u2019s last two albums had not sold very well, and his marriage to Carrie Fisher was starting to unravel. In the midst of all that the 43-year-old folk icon was steadily working on building a beach home out on the far end of Long Island.<\/p>\n

Many of Simon\u2019s pilgrimages from Manhattan out to Montauk were soundtracked by a bootleg tape of accordion-heavy mbaqanga, a South African music style with jazz rhythms and bright guitar chords, he had received from a friend. It was on those drives that the seeds of Graceland, the crown jewel of Simon\u2019s discography, were planted. \u201cMany of us, in that day and age, found a moment of self-reflection \u2013 of being able to go deep inside ourselves \u2013 when we were in the car on these road trips,\u201d said Ashley Kahn, whose new book, Days of Miracle and Wonder<\/a>, follows the gestation process of Graceland. \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t the radio, it was cassettes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forty years on, Graceland remains the most nimble, ecstatic album that Simon\u2019s hands have touched. It\u2019s constructed around contributions from South African musicians whose \u201ctownship jive\u201d reminded Simon of the early rock and doowop records he heard as a kid in Queens. There\u2019s musical detours of all kinds \u2013 a trip to Louisiana inspired Simon to record with zydeco group Rockin\u2019 Dopsie and the Zydeco Twisters, while the song All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints features Los Lobos\u2019 fusion of norte\u00f1o and rock. Simon is at his best when among resonant rhythms from Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Inspired by the bootleg, Simon booked jam sessions in Johannesburg with different bands \u2013 General MD Shirinda and the Gaza Sisters, Tao Ea Matsekha, the Boyoyo Boys \u2013 where he developed melodies and scribbled down lyrics as engineer Roy Halee tracked the group\u2019s grooves. Some of the songs that ended up on Graceland were assembled on top of these groups\u2019 already-finished songs, such as Gumboots, a thrilling pop confection that Simon initially heard as an instrumental on that tape. For Simon, whose process often started with an acoustic guitar, it was a profound shift in how he approached his craft. \u201cHe\u2019s finding a way of building from the rhythm up; that, for him, was profoundly new,\u201d said Kahn, who compared Simon\u2019s then-newfound process with hip-hop: \u201cStart with the beat and match the words to the beat.\u201d<\/p>\n

In these February 1985 sessions, Simon had found a surge of inspiration, but the harsh realities of South African apartheid loomed outside the studio doors. After dark, the Black musicians weren\u2019t allowed on the streets of Johannesburg, nor were they allowed to use public transportation. As a result, a day of recording would reach an \u201cuncomfortable time when the players couldn\u2019t concentrate until they knew there might be a car to take them home\u201d, Simon told Rolling Stone in 1986<\/a>. In a foreshadowing of the backlash Graceland would go on to receive, the manager of the Soul Brothers told Simon he believed recording in South Africa constituted a violation of the United Nations\u2019 1980 boycott, which was passed to prevent the South African government from using culture as propaganda for apartheid.<\/p>\n

Kahn believes that Simon had the musicians\u2019 labor rights in mind. \u201cHe wanted to have them participate, he wanted them to be credited and he wanted them to be compensated,\u201d said Kahn, emphatically noting that Simon paid the South African musicians triple the daily rate of musicians in American unions. \u201cDid he do it perfectly? No. But there wasn\u2019t a set formula of how to approach this.\u201d Simon has still faced backlash over the years about Graceland\u2019s songwriting credits from several musicians who appeared on the album, including Los Lobos, Rockin\u2019 Dopsie and the Zydeco Twisters, and even guitarist Ray Phiri, who helped construct the album\u2019s title track. Against charges of cultural appropriation, Graceland advocates have suggested that Simon\u2019s work in South Africa helped bring these bands, such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who round out the starry-eyed Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, to a larger audience.<\/p>\n

Paul Simon with author Ashley Khan in 1988. Photograph: Courtesy of Ashley Khan<\/p>\n

Before the first sessions at Ovation Studios in Johannesburg, Simon spoke with calypso legend Harry Belafonte, who had suggested that he reach out to the African National Congress. Believing that the power of art trumped laws, Simon resisted Belafonte\u2019s recommendation. Months after the release of Graceland, the UN\u2019s special committee against apartheid censured Simon and planned to add him to the list of performers who violated the boycott. \u201cThey were looking for a coordinated message, coordinated push, hence the issue with the boycott,\u201d Kahn added. The UN\u2019s decision was reversed months later when Simon wrote a letter to the committee noting that he had understood the ban focused on performing, not recording, and he had no intentions of performing in South Africa.<\/p>\n

A career-long tug-of-war between Simon\u2019s cerebral and conversational language courses through Graceland. He eschewed overt anti-apartheid protest songs, but the anxieties of his experience in South Africa seep into Homeless and The Boy in the Bubble, which opens on an image of \u201cthe soldiers by the side of the road\u201d while the interplay between famo-style accordion and bass suggests something threatening up ahead. But Simon\u2019s qualms and anxieties \u2013 his failed marriage, his feelings about being washed up, his anxieties related to the information age \u2013 are what he fleshes out on Graceland, often through dizzying images (\u201clasers in the jungle\u201d) or larger-then-life characters (\u201cFat Charlie the Archangel\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the images that always comes to me is Paul in a room with a rubber ball \u2013 bouncing it, bouncing it, bouncing it \u2013 to get into a Zen-like state where lyrics start to come,\u201d Kahn said. \u201cHe\u2019s already thinking about songwriting. The lyrics are there. He just needs to silence all the other shit that\u2019s in one\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graceland\u2019s steady stream of longing, sometimes offered through simple lines such as \u201cYou don\u2019t feel you could love me but I feel you could,\u201d contained unexpected emotional wallops. On the album\u2019s very best songs, there\u2019s an impressionistic flow of feeling in Simon\u2019s lyrics. Nowhere is that clearer than in the title track, where the word Graceland had initially been written down as a placeholder. It eventually evolved into a figurative destination for Simon as he tried to mend his broken heart after his marriage to Fisher. \u201cIf I miss in the direction of head, I risk being obscure or pretentious,\u201d Simon said in 1986<\/a>. \u201cIf I miss in the direction of heart, I risk being sentimental. I dread both. I dance in the penumbra. That\u2019s the thrill. When it\u2019s right, I can feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Simon with Miriam Makeba and Ladysmith Black Mambazo during the African Graceland tour in 1987. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Many revisions and additions happened stateside, including the guitar-synth textures from Adrian Belew and Steve Gadd\u2019s AMS reverb-drenched drums on All Around the World. For another set of sessions, including the one in which they rerecorded You Can Call Me Al, Simon flew Phiri, Bakithi Kumalo \u2013 whose restless fretless bass is now synonymous with the Graceland album \u2013 and drummer Isaac Mtshali to New York, where Simon also shared his progress with David Byrne, Cyndi Lauper and Philip Glass. He would turn on a tape of an instrument track, get close to their ears and sing the melodies or lyrics he\u2019d crafted. \u201cThe fact that Paul was open to sharing the process with a lot of people goes to show a certain strength, as well as an openness to saying, \u2018I could be wrong,\u2019 or, \u2018I could be better,\u2019\u201d Kahn says.<\/p>\n

Graceland\u2019s influence as a genre-defying, cross-pollinated album has spread far and wide, informing brilliant artists such as Vampire Weekend<\/a> and Lorde<\/a>, plus with one particular viral parody<\/a> of Simon\u2019s approach. For almost as long as the album has been in stores, a healthy dose of criticism has followed: two decades before he would produce for Beyonc\u00e9 and Eminem, a young Mark Batson asked Simon<\/a> how he could justify \u201ctaking over this music\u201d, before discussing how Black art has been \u201cstolen\u201d by white artists time and time again during a Q&A at Howard University. It\u2019s a testament to the life-affirming melodies and jubilant grooves of Graceland that it hasn\u2019t been consigned to the dust bin of history of an embarrassment \u2013 and that these conversations endure. \u201cAll these questions about appropriation, about systemic racist, about the entitled versus the non-entitled \u2013 that\u2019s never going away,\u201d Kahn says. \u201cWhat Graceland did was show us a way to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine when Graceland arrived in stores towards the end of August 1986 that it wasn\u2019t an overnight sensation. Support from music critics, performances on Saturday Night Live and eventually Grammy wins helped it find an audience. (It entered the Billboard 200 album chart at No 94 in September 1986, before eventually peaking at No 3 next April, just over a month after the Grammys ceremony.) The final piece of the puzzle was pop radio programmers, who didn\u2019t understand the stylistic jumps taking place across Graceland. The spring after the album\u2019s release, radio honchos latched onto its lead single, You Can Call Me Al, with its attempts to find salvation in the \u201cangels in the architectures\u201d. It was a classic case of better late than never: \u201cIt was a damn unicorn,\u201d Kahn says. \u201cIn the zoo of music, they had no idea which cage to put it in.\u201d<\/p>\n