(Credits: Far Out / Harry Chase, Los Angeles Times)
When thinking about the traits of a world-famous artist, being humble or shy isn’t typically one that comes to mind. We imagine them as praise-hungry beasts skulking the world for validation, or, once that comes in abundance, batting their devotees away with cool thank yous or a callous, ‘I know’. But even music’s biggest celebrities are people under it all, burdened by the humanity of insecurity and a good dose of pride, or, in Paul Simon’s case, embarrassment even.
But it must get weird. So often, even after years and years of working away in the shadows, success comes in a sudden boom, bringing a million voices racing towards a person or a collection of people. Simon and Garfunkel were just two kids from Queens working on their musical projects when their big break happened pretty much by accident. They were releasing songs, but it wasn’t until some producer remixed ‘Sound Of Silence’ and started playing that version on the radio that things truly took off. Suddenly, everyone wanted a piece of them as suddenly they were one of folk’s major players.
Obviously, it’s a dream come true for two musicians who have dreamed of being exactly that. But when it all comes at once, and when the noise of all the new praise can be deafening, the real people under it all can get overwhelmed.
For Simon, especially, it was all very strange. After trying and failing to make things happen for a long time, the band’s new onslaught of praise was a trip for his ego. While some would wind up with a big head, he seemed desperate to bat it away, refusing or being unable to accept all these new compliments.
“For the first few years, it was just praise,” he said. But it felt like that’s all it was. He felt like no one truly knew them as he added, “It took two or three years for people to realise that we weren’t strange creatures that emerged from England but just two guys from Queens who used to sing rock ‘n’ roll. And maybe we weren’t real folkies at all! Maybe we weren’t even hippies!”
To process his complex feelings about it all, Simon turned to his music. On their final album, the duo purged many demons, including this one: ‘The Boxer’ sees the singer dealing with the oddness of new success and the isolation of being turned into a hero but almost forgotten as a person.
“I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told / I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles / Such are promises,” the song begins with Simon cutting himself down to merely a boy in the grand, using the tradition of storytelling folk to make his point.
But as the song goes on, this tale of loneliness and attempts for success finds an apt conclusion given that the group were splitting; “In the clearing stands a boxer / And a fighter by his trade / And he carries the reminders / Of every glove that laid him down / Or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame / “I am leaving, I am leaving”, but the fighter still remains,” he sings. In this case, the gloves and cuts are the industry, the broken-down boxer is him.
“I think the song was about me: everybody’s beating me up, and I’m telling you now I’m going to go away if you don’t stop,” Simon said of the track, capturing a man buckling under the pressure of notoriety and blocking the deafening compliments that had begun to feel like bruises.
Related Topics
Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter