Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Life by Robert Hilburn Paul Simon: The Life. For more than fifty years, Paul Simon has spoken to us in songs about alienation, doubt, resilience, and empathy in ways that have established him as one of the most beloved artists in American pop music history. Songs like “The Sound of Silence,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Still Crazy After All These Years,” and “Graceland” have moved beyond the sales charts and into our cultural consciousness. But Simon is a deeply private person who has resisted speaking to us outside of his music. He has said he will not write an autobiography or memoir, and he has refused to talk to previous biographers. Finally, Simon has opened up—for more than one hundred hours of interviews—to Robert Hilburn, whose biography of was named by Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times as one of her ten favorite books of 2013. The result is a landmark book that will take its place as the defining biography of one of America’s greatest artists. It begins in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, where, raised by a bandleader father and schoolteacher mother, Simon grew up with the twin passions of baseball and music. The latter took over at age twelve when he and schoolboy chum Art Garfunkel became infatuated with the alluring harmonies of doo-wop. Together, they became international icons, and then Simon went on to even greater artistic heights on his own. But beneath the surface of his storied five-decade career is a roller coaster of tumultuous personal and professional ups and downs. From his remarkable early success with Garfunkel to their painfully acrimonious split; from his massive early hits as a solo artist to the wrenching commercial failures of One- Trick Pony and ; from the historic comeback success of Graceland and to the star-crossed foray into theater with and a late-career creative resurgence—his is a musical life unlike any other. Over the past three years, Hilburn has conducted in-depth interviews with scores of Paul Simon’s friends, family, colleagues, and others—including ex-wives and Peggy Harper, who spoke for the first time—and even penetrated the inner circle of Simon’s long-reclusive muse, Kathy Chitty. The result is a deeply human account of the challenges and sacrifices of a life in music at the highest level. In the process, 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 is an intimate and inspiring narrative that helps us finally understand Paul Simon the person and the artist. “With train-wreck moments and tender interludes alike, it delivers a sharply detailed Kodachrome of a brilliant musician” (Kirkus Reviews). :ﻣﺰﯾﺪ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻤﻌﻠﻮﻣﺎت ﺣﻮل اﻟﻜﺘﺎب اﻟﺼﻮﺗﻲ .رﻗﻢ: ISBN 9781508259930 ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻹﺻﺪار: 2018-05-08 اﻟﻤﺪة اﻟﺰﻣﻨﯿﺔ: 12ﺳﺎﻋﺔ 20دﻗﯿﻘﺔ Simon & Schuster Audio :دار اﻟﻨﺸﺮ .ﻣﺰﯾﺪ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻤﻌﻠﻮﻣﺎت ﺣﻮل ھﺬا اﻟﻜﺘﺎب اﻹﻟﻜﺘﺮوﻧﻲ .رﻗﻢ: ISBN 9781471174193 ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻹﺻﺪار: Simon & Schuster UK 08-11-2018 :دار اﻟﻨﺸﺮ Paul Simon : The Life. Acclaimed music writer Robert Hilburn’s “epic” and “definitive” ( ) biography of music icon Paul Simon, written with Simon’s full participation—but without his editorial control—that “reminds us how titanic this musician is” ( The Washington Post ). For more than fifty years, Paul Simon has spoken to us in songs about alienation, doubt, resilience, and empathy in ways that have established him as one of the most beloved artists in American pop music history. Songs like “The Sound of Silence,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Still Crazy After All These Years,” and “Graceland” have moved beyond the sales charts and into our cultural consciousness. But Simon is a deeply private person who has said he will not write an autobiography or talk to biographers. Finally, however, he has opened up for Robert Hilburn—for more than one hundred hours of interviews—in this “brilliant and entertaining portrait of Simon that will likely be the definitive biography” ( Publishers Weekly , starred review). Over the course of three years, Hilburn conducted in-depth interviews with scores of Paul Simon’s friends, family, colleagues, and others— including ex-wives Carrie Fisher and Peggy Harper, who spoke for the first time—and even penetrated the inner circle of Simon’s long-reclusive muse, Kathy Chitty. The result is a deeply human account of the challenges and sacrifices of a life in music at the highest level. In the process, 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. “As engaging as a lively American tune” ( People ), Paul Simon is a “straight-shooting tour de force…that does thorough justice to this American prophet and pop star” ( USA TODAY , four out of four stars). “Read it if you like Simon; read it if you want to discover how talent unfolds itself” (Stephen King). Отзывы - Написать отзыв. LibraryThing Review. This is an interesting look at the life and songs of Paul Simon. I loved his music when I was in high school. Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Sound of Silence, and then later works, Still Crazy After . Читать весь отзыв. LibraryThing Review. A musical genius; difficult relationships with Art, with former wives, producers and with his own depressive and obsessive tendencies. Good to read while listening to his music on Spotify! Читать весь отзыв. Inside Paul Simon’s Definitive New Biography. The new book 'Paul Simon: The Life' offers unprecedented access into the private life of the singer-songwriter. Paul Simon has never had much use for drugs beyond a brief flirtation with LSD in the 1960s. But in early 1998 when his Broadway musical The Capeman closed after a mere six-week run, he turned to a powerful South American hallucinogenic, ayahuasca, to numb the pain. He’d first encountered it nearly a decade earlier when he went to South America to record The Rhythm of the Saints , but it had never been quite so useful to him. He’d dumped millions of his own dollars into the musical only to see critics tear it to shreds. He needed an escape. “The feeling was almost indescribable,” Simon told biographer Robert Hilburn. “You couldn’t imagine feeling any better, and the afterglow would last for days. It also enabled me to hear new sounds in my head, which led to me being able to write songs much faster than before.” Related. Paul Simon Plots Final Leg of Farewell Tour. Related. 4 Ways Venue Owners Can Connect With Audiences During the Pandemic. How Guns N' Roses Formed. Simon had rarely talked about his ayahuasca use before sitting down with Hilburn, and it was just one of many revelatory things he told the veteran Los Angeles Times writer during their extensive interviews for the upcoming book Paul Simon: The Life. All in all, they spoke for more than 100 hours across the course of a year. Hilburn also interviewed numerous friends and associates of Simon, including the late Carrie Fisher, Lorne Michaels, Steve Martin, his wife , childhood best friend Bobby Susser, his brother Eddie Simon and many, many others. It’s the first time Simon has ever cooperated on a book about his life. “He’s very private,” says Hilburn. “So there were a lot of areas to explore.” Hilburn, 78, first remembers hearing Simon’s music around the time he began freelancing for the Los Angeles Times in 1966, though they didn’t actually meet until the singer’s first solo tour took him the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1973. “He wasn’t like a lot of other people I interviewed at the time,” says Hilburn. “He was very articulate. He wasn’t very chummy, but he wasn’t nervous talking about his creative process. He was very forthcoming.” Their paths crossed many other times over the next few decades, most notably in 1987 when Hilburn was the only U.S. journalist who accompanied him to Zimbabwe on the Graceland tour. “We had a bit of a relationship,” says Hilburn. “But we weren’t friends by any means. It was professional.” Hilburn retired from the L.A. Times in 2005 and turned his attention to writing books. “I said to myself, ‘Who is going to be important 50 years from now?'” he says. “My list only had seven people on it.” The first one was Johnny Cash, which lead to Hilburn’s book 2013 book Johnny Cash: The Life . The next name on his list was Paul Simon, though he got cold feet when he learned that Peter Ames Carlin was working on his own Simon biography. He mulled it over for several months and eventually reached out to Jeff Kramer, Simon’s manager. “I said to him, ‘Are you cooperating with this other writer?'” says Hilburn. “He said, ‘No, we’re not. Not at all.’ And I said, ‘Would you consider talking to me if I did a biography?’ He said, ‘Let’s discuss that.'” (It should be noted that Peter Ames Carlin’s 2016 book Homeward Life: The Life of Paul Simon is absolutely excellent.) Simon agreed to meet up with Hilburn in 2014 while he was visiting California. They threw the idea of a book around for about four hours, but Simon was noncommittal. “He said to me, ‘Why do I need a biography?'” recalls Hilburn. “‘My life doesn’t matter. It’s the songs that matter.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s the creative process. Paul, it’s fascinating. People would like to know about it. It ought to be part of your legacy and your history.'” After a few tense weeks, Simon phoned him and up and agreed to cooperate. “He still had a certain reluctance,” says Hilburn. “But I think vaguely he saw that there is a certain value in having a serious book about him.” They agreed to meet once a month and talk for five hours over the course of the next year. Hilburn figured that 60 hours of discussion would give him all he needed, but progress was frustratingly slow at first. Simon was in the middle of recording and was much more interested in that than talking about events from his past. “I’d ask him about an incident in his life,” says Hilburn. “He’d just say, ‘Oh, that’s not important. Let’s talk about my new music.'” Realizing Simon would be unable to focus on anything but the album until it was done, Hilburn put the interview sessions on hold and began tracking down other subjects. Simon had reached out to many of them to say they could talk, making the process much easier. They included Simon’s first wife, Peggy Harper; Simon and Garfunkel manager Mort Lewis (who passed away in 2016); his longtime producer Roy Halee; and Carrie Fisher, Simon’s second wife. “A coupe of months before Carrie died I visited her at her house in Beverly Hills,” says Hilburn. “She was just fabulous and such a funny woman. She was seductive in a nice way. They weren’t right for each other, but they just kept coming back to one another.” Unsurprisingly, Fisher was an open book when it came to their brief marriage. “It would usually be me who would get back to him,” she said, “but he finally said we just couldn’t see each other anymore, which meant I couldn’t keep trying to get back into his life. I felt terrible that I had never been able to give him the peace that he wanted.” Art Garfunkel proved to be a much more difficult get. The two old friends are no longer on speaking terms and Garfunkel wasn’t psyched about the idea of reliving their tortured history. Initially he told Hilburn that he didn’t want to talk because he was working on his own book and his publisher didn’t want him contributing to a competing project, but later he said that he’d talk for a Simon and Garfunkel book, but not a Paul Simon one. “The impression I got was that he didn’t want to do anything that would help Paul,” says Hilburn. “I said to him, ‘Look, I will treat you with the equal respect that I give Paul. I’m not taking sides.'” Garfunkel wouldn’t relent despite Hilburn’s two-year attempt to change his mind. “Finally he wrote me a letter,” says the author. “It basically said, ‘Please don’t contact me anymore. I just don’t want to do it.'” Simon has said virtually nothing about his falling out with Garfunkel following their aborted 2010 reunion tour, which was called off due to Art Garfunkel’s severe vocal problems. Their final gig took place at Jazz Fest in New Orleans. Garfunkel struggled to hit his notes throughout the entire set. Simon told Hilburn that Garfunkel was less than forthright about the extent of his vocal issues, which cost them nearly 1 million dollars in cancellation fees. “He could have said that he couldn’t do this after New Orleans,” Simon told Hilburn, “but he didn’t. There was all this denial. He let us all down. I was tired of all the drama. I didn’t feel I could trust him anymore.” Hilburn covers the 1970 breakup with Garfunkel in extensive detail, and the author has his own theory as to why it happened. “Like so many of those 1960s guys, he would have just started recycling himself if he had stayed with Garfunkel,” he says. “He was able to move in new directions without him. If they would have stayed together, Garfunkel would have been a ball and chain around his leg. He couldn’t have moved that way.” When Hilburn finished his reporting and Simon finished Stranger to Stranger, they sat down for another long series of interviews. This time, Simon was ready to really dive into his past. “I sensed that he wanted to tell certain things,” says Hilburn. “He became as eloquent talking about his life as he was about his music.” One of the few episodes he wouldn’t discuss was the evening in April of 2014 when he and Brickell were arrested at their home in New Canaan, Connecticut for disorderly conduct after a physical altercation where someone at the house called 911. “He said to me, ‘I’m not going to talk about it,'” says Hilburn. “I said, ‘Paul, if you don’t talk about it, every time people think of your marriage they will think of that night.’ He said, ‘Well, so be it.’ He’s very into protecting his family.” Near the end of the process, Hilburn took a deep breath and let Simon read a draft. It was a risky move. Simon didn’t have the ability to alter a word, but he could stop cooperating, tell everyone else in his life to cease all communication with Hilburn and revoke his agreement to let him quote his song lyrics at length. But Hilburn felt that if Simon saw the book wasn’t a hit job he might relax and let his guard down even more for the final round of interviews. “It really made him relax,” says Hilburn. “He started talking much freer after that and saying, ‘I should tell you more about this and there’s more to that story.’ It was prefect, though I was very tense the night before.” Now that the book is done, Hilburn plans on writing another one about someone on his list of seven artists that he feels will still be revered in 50 years. “It’ll be about someone significant,” he says. “But I can’t tell you who.” Paul Simon : The Life. 'There's no tougher a mind, no more tender a voice than Paul Simon, and there's no better man than Robert Hilburn to decipher the hardwiring of this hyperintellect. great songs can never be fully explained, but the great man on his way to find those songs surely can.' --Bono. 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, survival, and faith in ways that have established him as one of the most honoured and beloved songwriters in American pop music history. Yet Simon has refused to talk to potential biographers and urged those close to him to also remain silent. But Simon not only agreed to talk to biographer Robert Hilburn for what has amounted to more than sixty hours, he also encouraged his family and friends to sit down for in-depth interviews. Paul Simon is a revealing account of the challenges and sacrifices of artistry at the highest level . He has also lived a roller-coaster life of extreme ups and downs. We not only learn Paul's unrelenting drive to achieve artistry, but also the subsequent struggles to protect that artistry against distractions - fame, wealth, marriage, divorce, drugs, complacency, public rejection, self-doubt - that have frequently derailed pop stars and each of which he encountered. From dominating the charts with Art Garfunkel and a successful reinvention as a solo artist, to his multiple marriages and highly publicized second divorce from Carrie Fisher , this book covers all aspects of this American icon . 'When it comes to writing songs, no one does it better than Paul Simon. Robert Hilburn's is a wise and winning account of our most nimble, nuanced, and numinous poet-musician.' --Paul Muldoon. 'A tantalizing look into the mind and writing process of the man who is arguably the finest craftsman of the American popular song since the Gershwin brothers, this book will delight any Paul Simon fan or student of popular culture.' --Linda Ronstadt. Book Review – PAUL SIMON: THE LIFE by ROBERT HILBURN. Throughout his long career Paul Simon, who is now embarking on his Farewell Tour, has been known as a perfectionist who demands high standards from the musicians he works with, not always in the most tactful ways. He has also acknowledged that his single-minded dedication to his musical career has taken its toll on his friendships, relationships and his three marriages. As becomes obvious in Robert Hilburn’s compulsively readable authorized biography, Simon really does live and breathe his work. Over a sixty year career he has turned out a steady stream of albums of such consistently high quality and diversity that it is almost tempting to take his talents for granted. But one thing that the book makes clear is that Simon has always been a hard worker, and his odd combination of a competitive ego and relentless self-doubt are what drives him. As he tells Hilburn “When people asked me if the competitiveness is because I’m short, I’d say, ‘No.’ Simply wanting to make the best music can make you competitive. You have no idea how competitive John Lennon was around Paul McCartney… I almost couldn’t breathe, they were so competitive, and that’s what made them so great. They wouldn’t settle for just good. That was me, too.” Simon’s parents, Lou and Belle. Simon hasn’t cooperated with biographers in the past. For this book he gave Hilburn over 100 hours of interview time and gave his blessing to those close to him to also talk to Hilburn, who was the music critic for The Los Angeles Times for decades and who wrote one of the best music business biographies — Johnny Cash: The Life in 2013. Hilburn isn’t a flashy writer, but he is just as passionate about the song writing process as Simon is and is respectful of the hard work a musician has to go through to make great music. Simon’s father, Lou, was a hardworking bandleader in New York under the stage name, Lee Simms. He taught Simon that musical talent has to be “handled with respect” and nursed by steady craftsmanship. Simon now says that his father was never quick to give him compliments on his work and could be very blunt in his criticisms, a quality he says he himself has. Simon famously met his singing partner, the angelic-voiced Art Garfunkel, in Grade Six in Queens. Garfunkel, who did not talk to Hilburn is the ghost that haunts the book. Their famous break-ups and reunions and their petty rivalries and jealousies are given lots of attention and neither artist comes out looking good. They both seem to be champion-level grudge holders. Paul and Art when they were billed as Tom and Jerry. Paul was a consummate songwriter and Art was a brilliant interpreter of those songs, and this kindled tensions and jealousy. “Art knew he had a wonderful voice, but he also knew he was dependent on Paul for songs, which meant that Paul had all the power” Hilburn says of their first break-up, during their teen years as Tom and Jerry. “Art realized he would always be in danger of being tossed aside.” Simon worked in the music business from the start singing demos and writing songs in the fading days of Tin Pan Ally. He also took advantage of his father’s no-nonsense approach to his career. “In the 1950s and 1960s, it was a common practice for publishers to pressure budding artists into giving up half their future songwriting royalties, or else no deal,” says Hilburn. “Even and Lennon-McCartney started their careers with the old-fashioned publishing deals, thus surrendering their publishing royalties. Simon was one of the first songwriters to recognize he could publish his own songs and save, literally, a fortune… Over the course of his career, that simple but significant move would earn him tens of millions of dollars. By maintaining ownership, he also controlled use of his songs in commercials and films.” In the mid-sixties, in the heyday of Simon and Garfunkel, the duo’s image was somewhat artsy and Simon’s songs were often called poetic, but Simon was more level-headed. “I always work on the music first because I like to think that I’m stronger in words, they come easier,” he said in 1968. “But I’m not a poet. I’ve tried poetry, but it has nothing to do with my songs. And I resent all the press-agentry. The lyrics of pop songs are so banal that if you show a spark of intelligence, they call you a poet…The people who call you a poet are people who never read poetry.” Simon is open throughout the book on his ongoing depression and periods of feelings of inadequacy. He seems to be mostly abstemious around drugs and alcohol, unlike his second wife Carrie Fisher. His one major foray into drugs was with the South American hallucinogenic ayahuasca, which he began using during one of his few public flops, the short-lived Capeman Broadway show. He says it made him feel joyful until he decided that he was becoming too dependant on it and quit. Hilburn did interview Peggy Harper and Carrie Fisher, Simon’s first and second wives, but his current wife, singer Edie Brickell chose not to participate. There is also one incident that Simon preferred not to talk about — an evening in 2015 when the police were called to Simon and Brickell’s home on a domestic dispute. Considering the circumstances Simon’s reticence is understandable. Hilburn makes good use of the lyrics to Simon’s songs (many of which are quoted in full) to round out the complex picture and Simon’s themes of loneliness, the search for happiness and the joys of life. As Hilburn says, Simon has gone through many musical periods in his career, any decade of which would be enough to put him in the top ranks of American music writers and performers. This biography will certainly stand as the definitive chronicle. Paul Simon: The Life by Robert Hilburn, Simon and Schuster 439 pp.