Paul Simon: From Simon and Garfunkel to His Solo Career

When Paul Simon’s induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame came in 1982, it was a full circle moment for the Newark, New Jersey-born artist who grew up in New York City’s Forest Hills, in Queens. It was there that Simon, at just 15, teamed up with schoolmate Art Garfunkel to form a group they called Tom & Jerry, scoring their first hit a year later with “Hey, Schoolgirl,” which they got to play on American Bandstand in 1957.

“It was a teenage dream,” Simon told Howard Stern of the honor — and the thrill of seeing big-name artists around the set that day. “I looked at Jerry Lee Lewis and I thought, ‘This guy is really scary, and he is not from my neighborhood."

The duo went on to secure a record deal in 1963, releasing Wednesday Morning, 3 AM the following year. Its acoustic “The Sounds of Silence,” a track Simon just so happened to start writing the same month John F. Kennedy was assassinated, caught the ears of many with its ominous “Hello darkness, my old friend” opening line, but it wasn’t until 1966 when a producer cut an alternative version of it featuring electric guitars and a rhythm section that it reached No. 1 in 1966.

Homeward Bound

Simon, who’d headed to England in 1964 and had been performing on his own, came back to the States with girlfriend Kathy Chitty upon the success of the remix, but the couple split as Simon and Garfunkel worked to release 1966’s The Sound of Silence album, which featured the title track as its anchor, among other well-received songs such as “I Am a Rock.” Chitty would be name-checked, though, in the LP’s “Kathy’s Song,” as well as on “America,” a standout track on the duo’s 1968 album, Bookends, which was the follow-up to their successful sophomore release, 1966’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

Simon and his childhood pal enjoyed great success throughout their five studio albums, winning multiple Grammys for The Graduate’s “Mrs. Robinson” along the way, but their 1970 masterpiece, Bridge Over Troubled Water, would prove to be their last. Citing an uneven balance of power between him and his musical partner, Simon notes in the March 2024 MGM+ documentary In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon that “I was writing all of the songs and basically running the sessions” while Garfunkel, he felt, was coasting and becoming too focused on his acting career.

“We were really best friends up until Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Simon notes. “[After that], it didn’t have the harmony of the friendship… that was broken.” Other tracks on their revered Grammy-winning Album of the Year, though, pointed to Simon’s future success as a solo artist, as it found him exploring and experimenting with multicultural influences, including African rhythms, elements of the Brazilian bossa nova and flourishes of Andean mountain music.

Flying Solo

The artist’s early solo efforts included 1972’s Paul Simon, which featured “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” and 1973’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, which produced hits such as “Kodachrome,” “Something So Right” and “Loves Me Like a Rock.” His 1975 release, Still Crazy After All These Years, earned him another Album of the Year win at the Grammys. Its popular “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” was inspired by his 1975 divorce to first wife Peggy Harper, whom he wed in 1969 and had son Harper Simon, now 51, with in 1972.

A reunion with Garfunkel came in the early 80s, along with their historic concert in Manhattan’s Central Park. The event was attended by more than 500,000 fans and led to a brief tour for the duo before familiar frictions drove them apart once again.

The artist had similar conflicted feelings about his on-and-off relationship with his second wife, Carrie Fisher. The two had started dating in the late 70s and survived years of breakups before tying the knot in 1983, though they divorced just a year later.

“We partly [got married] to save the relationship.… It was a relationship based on a great conversation. It probably should have stayed a conversation,” Fisher told The Washington Post in 1987, though the two continued to date for roughly six years after legally ending their marriage.

“There is nobody else like Carrie. She’s got one of the fastest, funniest minds I know. She is absolutely unique,” Simon once told People about their bond.

Amazing Graceland

When Simon struck again in 1986 with yet another Grammy-winning album of the year — Graceland — his relationship with Fisher even snuck into some songs. “‘Graceland’ has part of us in it,” Fisher told Rolling Stone in 2016, adding, “I do like the songs he wrote about our relationship. Even when he’s insulting me, I like it very much. If you’re gonna be insulted, that’s the way to go.”

Beyond his musings about his former wife on the title track, Simon scored big with songs like “You Can Call Me Al” and “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” which featured South African vocal harmony group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The album sold more than 16 million copies worldwide, though he did face some backlash for traveling to and working on it in South Africa during an apartheid-era cultural boycott. He also faced criticism of cultural appropriation.

“I felt open to the discussion,” Simon told Vice of the controversies. “I would say sorry if I was wrong, if I made a mistake. But if you tell me, ‘You took our culture,’ I would say, ‘It looks like it’s still there. Where did I take it? What did you lose?… Here’s what my friend Wynton Marsalis told me, which his father told him: Music is not a competition. It’s an idea.’ So you can’t steal someone’s idea, it’s out there.”

And as the 2012 documentary Under African Skies covers, Simon — upon an invitation from the South African Musicians Alliance — became the first American artist to perform in post-apartheid South Africa in 1992, two years after Nelson Mandela was freed.

As Graceland was first taking off internationally in 1986, Simon was also getting to work on a philanthropic project called the Children’s Health Fund, which he co-founded in 1987 with his partner, Dr. Irwin Redlener. The organization funds mobile medical vans that offer health care to struggling kids in America’s urban and rural locations. “I am inured to the surprise that most people don’t care about poor children,” Simon told The New York Times about his determination to start the charitable network and to help as many young lives as possible.

After releasing 1990’s The Rhythm of the Saints, an album recorded in and inspired by some time he spent in Brazil, Simon returned to Central Park in 1991 for a spectacular solo concert that drew an audience of 750,000. “[Video star] Chevy Chase even joined him for a rendition of ‘You Can Call Me Al’ before Simon closed the show with ‘The Sounds of Silence.’ The crowd, needless to say, was anything but,” Entertainment Weekly reported of the event.

She Loves Me Like a Rock

Singer Edie Brickell (of the New Bohemians) became Simon’s third wife in 1992, and the couple share three children: Adrian, 31, Lulu, 29, and Gabriel, 26. His song “Dazzling Blue” was penned in her honor. “That’s Edie’s favorite color, blue. That’s really our story, Edie and I,” he told Rolling Stone. The tune appears on his 2011 album So Beautiful or So What, which was followed by 2016’s Stranger to Stranger and 2018’s In the Blue Light, on which he reimagines 10 songs from his career through a jazz lens with some help along the way from guest musician, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

Simon, who set out on what he then called a farewell tour in 2018, released his latest album, the thoughtful and introspective Seven Psalms, in 2023. It’s a fully acoustic record and meant to be listened to as a whole, he’s noted of the project that he completed in a cabin studio at his and Brickell’s Texas home. And he may not be done recording just yet, either.

“I just started to write recently,” Simon told CBS News last year, adding, “I’ve written two songs. As long as I can write and sing, I’ll make records, even if it’s just for myself.”

A frightening battle with near-total hearing loss in his left ear couldn’t stop him, either. “[My hearing’s] come back to enough of a degree that I’m comfortable singing and playing guitar and playing a few other instruments,” Simon said during a March 2024 promotional appearance for his MGM+ documentary. “That’s good. I can hear my voice the way I want it in the context of the music.”

Not Slip Slidin’ Away

Looking back, his career has earned him 12 Grammys, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, as well as inductions into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as both a duo with Garfunkel in 1990 and as a solo artist in 2001. In 2007, he was the first artist ever to be awarded the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

“Few songwriters have had a broader influence or contributed more to song genres than Paul Simon,” Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said at the time, praising “the depth, range and sheer beauty of his music, as well as its ability to bridge peoples and cultures.”

As for stressing over his legacy? “Not important,” the artist, now 82, told CBS News. “[How] I feel about the music is like, if it lives, it deserves it.” The one thing he’s sure of, though, is that his songs will live forever in his own heart and mind.

“What I’ve learned is that when you find a thing that produces a feeling of peace or joy, try and hold onto it. It’s like bliss. And that’s music for me,” he shares in In Restless Dreams

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