Homeward Bound
The Life of Paul Simon
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A revelatory account of the life of beloved American music icon, Paul Simon, by the bestselling rock biographer Peter Ames Carlin
To have been alive during the last sixty years is to have lived with the music of Paul Simon. The boy from Queens scored his first hit record in 1957, just months after Elvis Presley ignited the rock era. As the songwriting half of Simon & Garfunkel, his work helped define the youth movement of the '60s. On his own in the '70s, Simon made radio-dominating hits. He kicked off the '80s by reuniting with Garfunkel to perform for half a million New Yorkers in Central Park. Five years later, Simon’s album “Graceland” sold millions and spurred an international political controversy. And it doesn’t stop there.
The grandchild of Jewish emigrants from Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian empire, the 75-year-old singer-songwriter has not only sold more than 100 million records, won 15 Grammy awards and been installed into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame twice, but has also animated the meaning—and flexibility—of personal and cultural identity in a rapidly shrinking world.
Simon has also lived one of the most vibrant lives of modern times; a story replete with tales of Carrie Fisher, Leonard Bernstein, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Shelley Duvall, Nelson Mandela, drugs, depression, marriage, divorce, and more. A life story with the scope and power of an epic novel, Carlin’s Homeward Bound is the first major biography of one of the most influential popular artists in American history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As Carlin (Bruce) points out in this often tuneless critical biography, Paul Simon has been chasing his musical muse since his childhood, when he first heard the Crows' "Gee" on the radio. Drawing on a wealth of research as well as interviews with some of Simon's friends and fellow musicians, Carlin nimbly chronicles Simon's life and music. The saga starts with Simon's youth, which might have foreshadowed Simon's lifelong curmudgeonly personality "There was a sadness about the boy from the beginning" and childhood, in which he took on his father's willfulness and sarcastic nature. He and Art Garfunkel formed the duo Tom and Jerry. Following their ascent to the musical stratosphere as Simon & Garfunkel in the late 1960s, their relationship became contentious, but his solo career was mostly successful. Carlin provides colorful details of the events surrounding the recordings of many of Simon's albums, such 1973's There Goes Rhymin' Simon, which he recorded in the famed Muscle Shoals studio where so many of his favorite soul songs had been recorded. The book is lackluster, painting a portrait of Simon with which fans are already familiar: a creative genius whose reticence is often mistaken for misanthropy, whose gleeful humor is often mistaken for sarcasm, and whose desire to discover the perfect lyric or chord or hook is insatiable.
