Paying Paul

SIMON SAID A new generation is waking up to the songwriting legend.

Photograph: Mark Seliger

To those of a certain age, Paul Simon’s name can read as shorthand for white-bread, over-the-hill culture. You may recall a tape of Graceland on heavy rotation in Mom’s minivan, or your parents’ frequent screenings of The Graduate, woven inextricably with Simon’s melancholy ballads. In light of these associations, it’s fitting that holders of a Visa Signature luxury card got first crack at tickets to “Love in Hard Times: The Music of Paul Simon,” a month of retrospective shows at BAM beginning Tuesday 1. Even avowed Simon fan David Byrne, who will perform at the series, admits, “There are certain people who just think he’s not cool.”

But look past your preconceptions and you’ll see signs of Simon’s image undergoing a much-deserved overhaul. For instance, you’d be hard-pressed to find a review of Vampire Weekend, this season’s most buzzed-about indie-rock outfit, that doesn’t namecheck Graceland, Simon’s 1986 landmark,as a point of reference. Meanwhile, covers of Simon songs by the hip dance-rock act Hot Chip, indie songsmiths Julie Doiron and Jens Lekman, and critically acclaimed avant-pop group Grizzly Bear have been making the rounds.

This kind of attention is long overdue: Despite being a boomer icon, Simon is also a moody maverick. He’s built a half-century-plus career on wry, literate and at times uncomfortably dark insight (witness classics ranging from “The Sounds of Silence” to “Slip Slidin’ Away”), innovative musical fusions (including 2006’s compelling Brian Eno collaboration, Surprise, as well as more well-known efforts like The Rhythm of the Saints) and hooky yet stubbornly eccentric songcraft (e.g., “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” and “You Can Call Me Al”)—exactly the qualities that draw many listeners to indie rock. At the BAM shows, Simon will survey his solo career in three themed programs: “Songs from The Capeman” (revisiting the grittily poignant tunes from Simon’s widely panned 1998 Broadway musical), “Under African Skies” and “American Tunes,” each of which runs for a week and features a remarkable supporting cast offering their own interpretations of the songwriter’s works. On hand will be longtime associates such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento, as well as first-time collaborators including Byrne and the aforementioned Grizzly Bear. The cachet of these latter two artists could help “Love in Hard Times,” which certainly indulges in plenty of nostalgia, double as a ripe occasion for young listeners to get acquainted with the depth of Simon’s oeuvre.

While Byrne’s art-punk credentials would appear antithetical to Simon’s image, the pair have actually shared not only high-profile collaborators—Eno and Philip Glass, to name two—but also a penchant for exploring Latin and African music. The 55-year-old ex–Talking Head isn’t shy about praising his elder. “A couple of years ago I put some songs from his record You’re the One up on my online-radio playlist, and I got flak for it!” recalls Byrne. “But I thought it was just great writing, and musically it didn’t fit in anywhere.”

Ezra Koenig, 23, frontman of Vampire Weekend—who won’t be appearing at BAM—is justifiably weary of the Graceland comparisons. But he’s nevertheless just as quick to come to Simon’s defense. “The idea of listening to music that a lot of suburban yuppies listened to in 1986 may not be appealing,” he concedes. “But the lyrics [on Graceland] are totally surreal. It’s not like Paul Simon just grabbed some African beats and kept on writing ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ ”

For Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear—whom Simon recruited after Canadian songstress Feist tipped him off to the band’s ingeniously retooled version of Graceland’s title track—Simon conjures more intimate associations. “Graceland was on in my house all the time when I was a kid,” recalls the 25-year-old singer-guitarist. “But I reconnected with it recently, when my father was dying of cancer, and my stepmother and him had this very tender relationship. Something about the broken-marriage factor of [the title track] was very touching to me.”

Neither Rossen nor Koenig seems particularly perturbed by the notion of Simon’s mass appeal, and Byrne concurs. “There was a period where he might have been one of the people to rebel against because he was so successful and musically slick,” the singer notes. “But he manages to keep pushing himself into places where he’s not completely comfortable, where he has to write in a different kind of way. A lot of people from his generation just don’t do that.”