Paul Simon: “I hope to do a full concert again”

In 2018 Paul Simon he said enough with touring, but not with playing concerts. About ten days ago, for example, he performed at New York for charity by playing a handful of acoustic songs. In a recent interview with the British newspaper The Guardian he expressed his greatest wish: “I hope to be able to do a complete concert. I’m optimistic. Six months ago I was pessimistic.”

The almost 83-year-old American musician was forced to make the decision to stop touring six years ago due to the almost complete loss of hearing in his left ear, which made it particularly difficult, if not impossible, for him to play live.

Speaking to the Guardian, Simon clarified that his 2018 announcement was never intended to mark the end of his career. “I never said I would retire. I said I would stop, and I did. I thought with that band we had developed the repertoire we were doing as much as possible. It was nice, but I wanted to find out what happens when you stop. Then I had a dream and everything came back to a new version of reality.”

That dream led to the creation of his most recent album, “Seven Psalms” (read the review here) of 2023. It was during this period that the hearing health of Paul Simon it has gotten significantly worse. “It was scary, frustrating. You reject it and then you get overwhelmed by this change in your life because a disability comes in. But even though it wasn’t pleasant anymore, I started thinking that I needed to absorb new information about the piece. I started focusing on the sounds , not those of computers or synthesizers, but of acoustic instruments used in unusual ways.”

Now Paul Simon not only is he thinking about performing more and more, but he has also written two completely new songs, and he explains. “One of them, a duet with Edie, is unlike anything I’ve ever written. I might just throw it out into the air, see where it goes. I’m interested in relearning how to write songs, like I did in England , and to develop new acoustic sounds. Maybe I’m a bit of a lone wolf in this sense. But I’m quite interested in the conclusion of where my thinking about music ends up.”