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Paul Simon  By  cover art

Paul Simon

By: Robert Hilburn
Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
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Publisher's summary

A publishing event from music legend Paul Simon: an intimate, candid, and definitive biography written with Simon's participation - but without editorial control - by acclaimed biographer and music writer Robert Hilburn.

Through such hits as "The Sound of Silence", "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Still Crazy After All These Years", and "Graceland", Paul Simon has spoken to us in songs for a half-century about alienation, doubt, resilience, and empathy in ways that have established him as one of the most honored and beloved songwriters in American pop music history. His music has gone beyond the sales charts into our cultural consciousness. He was the first songwriter awarded the Gershwin Prize by the Library of Congress and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice) and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Deeply private, Simon has said he will not write an autobiography and has refused to talk to previous biographers. But he not only opened up to acclaimed biographer Robert Hilburn for what has amounted to more than 100 hours, he also urged those around him to speak. Independently, Hilburn also interviewed others who have been important in Simon's life, including his first two wives, Peggy Harper and Carrie Fisher, as well as, for the first time, people close to Kathy Chitty, his long-reclusive first muse.

The result is a deeply human account of the challenges and sacrifices of a life in music at the highest level, including the courage to leave Simon and Garfunkel at the peak of the duo's popularity to pursue more fully his expanding artistic goals. Hilburn documents Simon's search for artistry and his constant struggle to protect that artistry against distractions - fame, marriage, divorce, drugs, record company interference, rejection, and insecurity - that have derailed so many great pop figures.

Paul Simon: The Life is an intimate and inspiring narrative that helps us finally understand Paul Simon the person and the artist, including new and absorbing insights into his most enduring songs. Exploring his successes and failures onstage and off, the book combines the scholarship, passion, and storytelling grace of biography at its best.

©2018 Robert Hilburn (P)2018 Simon & Schuster

Critic reviews

"Using a conversational tone throughout, Boutsikaris delivers the song lyrics as if they were works of poetry, giving listeners a new perspective on them." (AudioFile)

What listeners say about Paul Simon

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Missed opportunity

Overall, I enjoyed learning more about Paul. I am a big fan of his. And, the narrator did a good job reading the material. Where the big fail is here, is the lost opportunity to embrace audio as a story-telling platform. Every time I heard the narrator read lyrics referred to in the story, I felt a snippet of the actual song, (with Paul, or in some cases, Art or another vocalist) should have been played instead. This is especially frustrating when the narrator talks about the music, and the music isn't presented. Fortunately I know all the references and could sing them in my head. But audiobooks shouldn't be just a person reading a story, especially a story about about music, since music is also a widely recorded medium.

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31 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Paul Simon the music

This book is mistitled. It is not about Paul Simon's life (including friendships and other personal relationships) in any but a superficial fashion. If what you're looking for is a well-researched, detailed chronology of the evolution of Simon's music, this is the book for you.

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27 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Still Crazy

The first time I heard Simon and Garfunkel was the song “The Sound of Silence” and something pulled at my heart then. As a 12-year-old, I didn’t really understand it, but it moved me. “And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls” pushed me. It made me think. Then there was the Boxer, “Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregard the rest.” I took a trip with them to look for America and learned about Kodachrome’s nice bright colors. I remember feeling upset about their breakup, almost as much as when the Beatles did so. Paul Simon wrote about almost every subject that you can think of from love to the most mundane and yet, there was always something else below the surface. Their singing of “Silent Night” with the background of a news report was so simple and yet so moving. And, he kept on going. “Still Crazy After All These Years” became almost an anthem among my dorm buddies. And, we learned that there were 50 ways to leave your lover, which is something I never needed. He branched out into so many different styles and kept growing in his music. This book is not just a biography. It’s an investigation into what made a great songwriter and musician tick. It’s based on extensive interviews with Paul Simon, in itself an accomplishment since Paul Simon was so very private. Hilburn also interviewed everyone who was close to him including his wife Carrie Fisher shortly before her death. It shows a commitment to music that was primary and a competitiveness accompanied by a lack of self-confidence. He was sensitive about his height, just over 5 feet, his thinning hair, and often worried that he could not keep up the creativity to stay relevant. He was not very good with people, though at times he could also be very generous. His relationship with Art Garfunkel, on again and off again, was, at least as portrayed in this book, was due to his own insecurity, critical spirit, and inability to forget slights, but also Art’s mercurial personality and inability to stay focused. And, Simon didn’t want to be tied down, to have to compromise. The book takes us right up to Simon’s “retirement” and last tour in 2018, though he promised to keep writing songs. If you liked (like) Paul Simon or Simon and Garfunkel, this is a must-read. It gives a greater understanding of Simon and of the meaning and source of his songs. Many of his song lyrics are included in their entirety, there are some additional verses that were not in the first recording of a couple of songs. A superb work. 

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A must for fans of Paul Simon

I've had a subscription to the LA Times most of my adult life. Robert Hilburn was the rock music critic for the Times for 35 of those years. His biography, Paul Simon: The Life, is a loving and unblinking portrait of one of the greatest songwriters of my generation. In his book about Simon's life devoted to writing songs and making music, Hilburn describes Paul Simon's struggles to balance professional life with a stable and happy personal one. He details Simon's close but antagonistic relationship with Art Garfunkel, finally ending in an irreparable split. But the best parts of the book are about Simon's creative process in songwriting. These passages are deeply personal and wonderfully insightful. Simon's struggle to always improve through learning from and collaborating with other musicians sets an example for any striving novice. As a 50-plus year fan of Simon's music, Paul Simon: The Life was a sublime read (or listen) and deeply affecting. Kudos to the narrator, Dennis Boutsikaris.

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9 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • JC
  • 05-18-18

Great!

Bob Hilburn brings insights into Pail Simon like nobody else can. His access and long history covering music is invaluable.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Boring...

Very boring. They glossed over key points or events in his life, and spend TONS of time on giving us names of every single band member he ever shook hands with.
Not enough time spent on his relationship with ex wife Carrie Fisher, or even his lifelong relationship with Art Garfunkel.
I was quite disappointed and barely finished it. Plus it seems as if he is almost always in a sullen mood. Kinda brought me down at times.

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5 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Still Hazy After All These Years

I held off reading biographies of Paul Simon until the heralded publication of this one by Robert Hillburn, which promised to be the one that, given extensive access to Simon himself for the first time, would present a balanced view of the great singer songwriter. This is The Life after all, not a life. I'm a huge fan -- I perform his songs. I didn't want a character assassination of one of my heroes, every prior biography determined to prove that Paul is the world's biggest jerk.

So I'm terribly disappointed in the result. It's not bad -- most people will probably enjoy it. But even though Hillburn was given ultimate control of the output, it's hard to imagine Simon, who comes off as controlling even if not the world's biggest jerk, didn't somehow guide him to a desired result by focusing on the songwriting, recasting controversies as misunderstandings, even avoiding events like his highly publicized 2014 arrest.

There is a case to be made (as Hillburn does) that Simon has been so invested in his art since his teenage years that he often comes off as distant, distracted, controlling, but is really just consumed by his work. But it just cannot be the case that everyone else was wrong about him in every imaginable instance, giving me a sense that this is an unbalanced portrait, albeit in a different direction that usual.

What Hillburn does best in this book is hardly praiseworthy. In a space which is not short but certainly not overlong, only one question is fully and adequately answered: What is Paul Simon's place in the pantheon of songwriters? We already knew the answer -- top five all-time. The only real addition to the Simon canon are detailed explanations of where some of his famous lyrics came from and what they mean, explained by Simon himself.

And even that is marred by flaws: the publication in full of the lyrics to many songs (do we really need every word of Wrist Band?), factual errors like calling Woody Allen a Bronx native (he's Brooklyn born and bred), or saying that the lost verse of The Boxer was added later and that its famous booming drum was recorded inside an elevator shaft. The author's laziness shows at every turn, and that is the problem with this book, regardless of how you feel about the substance.

There is so much more I have to say about this, but it wouldn't be helpful here. If you're interested, my full review is at Good Reads in all its gory detail. The bottom line here: if like me you've been waiting for a balanced look at Paul Simon's life and career, you're nor going to get it. If you just want the overall story, you'll probably like this well enough.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Not so good

Actually I was dissapointed with the story and the narrator troubled me to spesally when reading Simons lyricsb

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Enjoyable Listen

I am sure that you aren't looking at this book unless you are a S&G fan, and I bought it for the same reason. I enjoyed it most in unexpected ways, however, as Simon's description of the work that went into writing some of his songs had me going back to listen to them again with a new perspective. Much of his newer stuff has had little interest for me, as it lacks the hooks found in his earlier stuff. After hearing about his thought process, I found the songs much more interesting. Highly recommended biography.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great story of Paul Simon's journey through life.

I really loved it.
It was a great story of Paul Simon's journey through life.
This minimum number of words for my review is dumb.

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3 people found this helpful