The Paul Simon Companion: Four Decades of Commentary

by Stacey Luftig

Among the most popular and gifted of current singer-songwriters, Paul Simon stands out for the diversity of his talent and of his music. In the tradition of the Companion Series titles that have preceeded it, The Paul Simon Companion collects interviews, reviews, articles, and essays on the artist and his music. The result is a biography in documents that chronicles Simons arrival on the music scene as one half of the Simon and Garfunkle duo, through his phenomenal success as a solo performer, and up to his modern experimentation with world music Paul Simon's first Broadway musical, The Cape Man, is opening this fall. Continuing interest in Simon's music in Adult-Contemporary Radio One of the most successful songwriters of our timeStacy Luftig is a New York based writer. Her lyrics have been performed both off and on Broadway.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography

276 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Marilla Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, yeah, this one was actually worth reading. There's no "new" material in this book—it's a compilation of existing interviews and reviews—but I really learned something from it.

I knew this already but this drove the point home: Garfunkel and Simon interview very well. They're intelligent, well-rounded guys with something worthwhile to say. They've both been in the industry so long, so it was interesting to see their perspectives on contribution, collaboration, how a record should be laid out, ordering tracks, the writing vs. recording process, etc. They talk less about the content of songs and more about the creation of them, and I greatly appreciate that.

[Crumpet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this. From the reviews here I was expecting it to be lacklustre, but it gave a really good insight into Paul Simon’s process and growth as a songwriter.

[Kimb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of articles. It's far more interesting an informative than the other two biographies I read on Simon and Garfunkel, and has the benefit of being their actual words. Magazine articles are also often unnecessarily long, overwrought and don't always hold up well. So reading an entire book of them is rather tedious.

[J Crossley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a biography of Paul Simon.