September 1, 2025 • 16 mins
Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam sit down with Paul Simon for an extended conversation about Paul’s career. Together they listen to music, discuss songwriting, tell stories, and Simon performs a live version of “Slip Slidin’ Away.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You know, listen to this story. This is quite amazing.
I took a trip on the Amazon and we stopped
in this village. It didn't even have any roads, and
there's a girl who was sitting in there and she's
practicing a nylon string guitar. So I listened for a
while and then we say to her and I say,
(00:22):
I know a South American song, and I play Dude.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Dud.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Dude, and she says, I know an American song. I say,
really yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
She goes, what are the odds? What did you say
to her?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
There was nothing to say. What am I going to say?
I wrote that song in the middle of the Amazon.
It's so completely out of the realm of posibility.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
That's Paul Simon talking to me and my friend and
colleague Bruce Hedlam, a moment I never believed could happen.
Months before, I met Paul Simon for the first time
in a little Italian restaurant in Manhattan. He arrived early,
no entourage, no publicist. He was wearing a Yankees cap
in jeans. In person, he's unassuming, direct, funny in a
(01:33):
slightly wry New York kind of way, youthful. It was
hard to remember that he had his first hit before
I was born. I'll admit I was starstruck. I've been
a fan all my life. The very first pop music
I ever remember hearing was Simon and Garfuncle. It was
nineteen seventy. I was seven. My family had just moved
(01:54):
to Canada from England. We had a record player, but
no records. My mother went to the public libry and
checked out two albums, a Peter Paul and Mary record
that I've largely forgotten and Bridge over Troubled Water, which
I've never forgotten. And now, fifty years later, here he
was having lunch with me. I asked him, what do
(02:16):
you think of sitting down and having an extended conversation
about your career?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
You know what I'm gonna stand, I'm going to stand up.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
He liked the idea.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
I think this is.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Going to be a no podcast, But let's just check
the two guitars.
Speaker 5 (02:39):
Against the chill for sound.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
How would you describe the difference in the sounds to
two guitars?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
How would you?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I'm not the guy to ask. I enlisted my oldest friend,
Bruce Hadlam to help with the interviewing, because Bruce knows
a lot more about music than I do. And because
way back when I was seven and I first listened
to Bridge over Troubled Water, I listened to it with Bruce.
It seemed like the best of karma to invite him along.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
What do I think? I think? I think the first one.
I think, the second one is the Martin, and the
first one is your favorite guitar is a Gurian.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
Yeah, and you which one?
Speaker 7 (03:21):
You're like?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
One or two?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I prefer too.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
That's interesting, It's funny. On everything you played, I preferred
this until you until you did the finger picking, and
then I actually preferred the Martin and the finger picking.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
So there were three of us, Me, Bruce, Paul, Well
you know.
Speaker 8 (03:39):
What, Well, who would take on one? And then well,
who would take on the other?
Speaker 6 (03:42):
Okay, we'll see.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
We met nine times. First in Hawaii, way up in
the mountains, in a tiny little studio in what used
to be the fruit seller of a ramshackle house perched
on the side of a mountain.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Look around this whole place, You'll just everything you see
is like an odd sound. Even that little box was
a cahone.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
There was a pitbull who greeted us enthusiastically each morning.
The rumor was that Mick Fleetwood had recorded there once
Will I Be Loved? Can we play a little bit of.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
Gis?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Then after a break of a few months, we met
again in a cottage in Paul Simon's backyard, joined by
his engineer, Andy.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Smith, Simon and Garfunk Coal League kind of.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
We'd listen to music and Paul would play and tell stories.
Each conversation lasted four sometimes five hours.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Do they all this is a really good one. Shake
it very gently, just to create a cloud.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Simon turned out to have far more energy than either
Bruce or I.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I have no anxiety about running out of ideas.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
You don't have that at all.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
No, I think another idea, you want another idea? Okay,
here's another. Here's another idea.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
I'm reminded of the line from the poet Delmore Schwartz,
who once drove cross country with his friend William Phillips.
William drove until I was exhausted. Then I drove.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I never had a problem with phrasing, because there's always
like a metronome clicking in my head, and I know
where it is, and my body usually moves to it.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Paul talked until we were exhausted. Then we talked, isn't
I feel like that's your musical sensibility? Is honesty with
an undercurrent of am I being ridiculous?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Or no, that's true.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
What follows is not a biography. It's not an a
through z account of Paul Simon's life. There are at
least two very good biographies of Simon out there that
will do that for you. This is a musical biography,
discussion of his songwriting, his craft, an examination of the
sources of his extraordinary creativity.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
How do you get there? How do you make yourself
feel that chemical high that you feel when you make
something that you like.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
In our time with him, Paul talked about doo wop
and Queen's and his dad and a million other things.
What he thinks of all the different cover versions of
his songs, specifically Harytha Franklin.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Name that felt to me like wasn't even my song?
Like I gave it up for adoption?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Or something about the countless people he's collaborated with over
the years. Our Garfuncle, of course, his childhood friend and
his recording engineer, Roy Halley, who has worked with him
almost from the beginning.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
With Paul it's creativity adding colors where appropriate. I don't
go crazy, but if I come up with a really
nice color, he'll nine out of ten times love it.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
The first part of this book is an argument about
what makes Paul Simon special. When we call someone like
him a musical genius, what does that mean? Can we
be more specific about how experience and culture and talent
and family combine to make music that endures.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
A big part of my thinking is trial and error.
It's all trial and error, and there's no reason to
be upset about the errors.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Then in the middle comes the story of Graceland. Maybe
Simon's greatest accomplishment.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Part of the reason that I was able to write
songs that were not overtly political was that the sound
of what was going on was joyful.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Could that album be made today? I'm not sure. We
prefer our artists these days to stay in their own
cultural lane, but Simon didn't, which is a good part
of what makes him such a fascinating figure. Look at
what he produced.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I knew that I had to go to South Africa
to get it right. I learned early on that you
can't ask musicians to write in somebody else's handwriting.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
The final part of the book is about later Paul Simon,
the work he did in his fifties, sixties, and seventies,
when most musicians of his stature have resigned themselves to
leaning on their old hits. He kept going, why how.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
There are times when you say, oh, don't change, I'm
happy here, stay right here, and I'm having a good time.
Let's just stay right here. But it's like I'm off. Nope,
I'm gone to the next part.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Throughout the book, you'll hear from other musicians who have
played with Simon over the years, or just love his music. Hello,
Malcolm Renee Fleming, Roseanne Cash, Herbie Hancock, sting.
Speaker 9 (08:59):
My dear walking off to find America. You know that's
redolent of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer or Kerouax picturesque
American novels.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
And then we have something special, a piece of music
Paul was working on while we were talking to him
for this book, a piece called the Seven Psalms, something
as personal as anything Simon has ever made. But most
(09:34):
of what follows is just Paul Simon.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Missus Robinson wasn't really folky either. Missus Robinson is a
little snatch of blues.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Singing, talking, arguing, teaching.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That's a lick that's not too different from See the
Girl with the Damon Ring.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
At the end of it recession, he would always ask
should we meet again? And we would say yes. Over
the course of these long sessions, we had the experience
of sitting just a few feet from a maestro. If
you've been a fan of his music as I have,
I think by the end of this book you'll see
him in a new light. But where you haven't given
(10:20):
us your feelings on these two guitars with respect to
this song, Well, I know that.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
This guitar's records better. You know.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, if you know very little about him, well.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
You're in for treating.
Speaker 8 (10:44):
Slip sliding away, slip slide in a.
Speaker 10 (10:51):
Way you know, the nery destination, the more your slip
sliding away.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, I know, man, he came from my hometown. You're
his passion funds.
Speaker 11 (11:14):
One with like a thorny crown, he said, the Lord,
I live in fear.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
My love for you over power, and I am afraid
that I will disappear.
Speaker 8 (11:36):
Slip sliding way, slip sliding way, you know, the near
your destination, the more your slip sliding way, and I.
Speaker 11 (11:55):
Know one morning.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Became my wife. These are the very words she uses
to describe her life.
Speaker 12 (12:10):
She said, a good day, well, it ain't got no ray,
she said of bad days when I lie in.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
The bed and I think of things that might have.
Speaker 8 (12:24):
Been slip sliding, slip slide in wed the near destination,
the more oil slip sliding week.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And I know father had son. He longed to tell
him all the reasons for the things he's done.
Speaker 11 (13:02):
He come a long.
Speaker 13 (13:03):
Way just to explain, kissed his boys, He left sleeping
in there, and.
Speaker 11 (13:14):
He turned around and he headed home again.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
He slip sliding.
Speaker 7 (13:24):
Sliding away.
Speaker 11 (13:46):
For God on and nose.
Speaker 8 (13:50):
God makes his flying, They informed, the Eastern soun available
to the mortal man.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
We'll welcome jobs COLLECTI case.
Speaker 8 (14:10):
Believe we're gliding down the highway. In fact, where slip
sliding away, slip sliding.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Away, sliding away, slip sliding away, sliding away.
Speaker 12 (14:54):
M M.
Speaker 14 (14:59):
Holding hello, no no, no, no, no, no, oh no, whoa.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
That's any question.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
That's a pretty good line.
Speaker 11 (15:43):
Like what you hear.
Speaker 9 (15:44):
With a Pushkin Plus subscription, you can access the entirety
of Miracle and Wonder conversations with Paul Simon until October
thirty first, and after that there'll be a new audiobook
from Pushkin waiting for you for the next sixty days,
starting on the first of each month and running until
the end of the next month.
Speaker 11 (16:00):
Pushkin Plus subscribers can get free access to an audiobook,
plus add free access to all Pushkin podcasts, exclusive subscriber
only bonus episodes, early listening and full binges to some
of our top podcasts. Sign up on the Pushkin Plus
audiobook show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
slash plus
You know, listen to this story. This is quite amazing.
I took a trip on the Amazon and we stopped
in this village. It didn't even have any roads, and
there's a girl who was sitting in there and she's
practicing a nylon string guitar. So I listened for a
while and then we say to her and I say,
(00:22):
I know a South American song, and I play Dude.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Dud.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Dude, and she says, I know an American song. I say,
really yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
She goes, what are the odds? What did you say
to her?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
There was nothing to say. What am I going to say?
I wrote that song in the middle of the Amazon.
It's so completely out of the realm of posibility.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
That's Paul Simon talking to me and my friend and
colleague Bruce Hedlam, a moment I never believed could happen.
Months before, I met Paul Simon for the first time
in a little Italian restaurant in Manhattan. He arrived early,
no entourage, no publicist. He was wearing a Yankees cap
in jeans. In person, he's unassuming, direct, funny in a
(01:33):
slightly wry New York kind of way, youthful. It was
hard to remember that he had his first hit before
I was born. I'll admit I was starstruck. I've been
a fan all my life. The very first pop music
I ever remember hearing was Simon and Garfuncle. It was
nineteen seventy. I was seven. My family had just moved
(01:54):
to Canada from England. We had a record player, but
no records. My mother went to the public libry and
checked out two albums, a Peter Paul and Mary record
that I've largely forgotten and Bridge over Troubled Water, which
I've never forgotten. And now, fifty years later, here he
was having lunch with me. I asked him, what do
(02:16):
you think of sitting down and having an extended conversation
about your career?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
You know what I'm gonna stand, I'm going to stand up.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
He liked the idea.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
I think this is.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Going to be a no podcast, But let's just check
the two guitars.
Speaker 5 (02:39):
Against the chill for sound.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
How would you describe the difference in the sounds to
two guitars?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
How would you?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I'm not the guy to ask. I enlisted my oldest friend,
Bruce Hadlam to help with the interviewing, because Bruce knows
a lot more about music than I do. And because
way back when I was seven and I first listened
to Bridge over Troubled Water, I listened to it with Bruce.
It seemed like the best of karma to invite him along.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
What do I think? I think? I think the first one.
I think, the second one is the Martin, and the
first one is your favorite guitar is a Gurian.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
Yeah, and you which one?
Speaker 7 (03:21):
You're like?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
One or two?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I prefer too.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
That's interesting, It's funny. On everything you played, I preferred
this until you until you did the finger picking, and
then I actually preferred the Martin and the finger picking.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
So there were three of us, Me, Bruce, Paul, Well
you know.
Speaker 8 (03:39):
What, Well, who would take on one? And then well,
who would take on the other?
Speaker 6 (03:42):
Okay, we'll see.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
We met nine times. First in Hawaii, way up in
the mountains, in a tiny little studio in what used
to be the fruit seller of a ramshackle house perched
on the side of a mountain.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Look around this whole place, You'll just everything you see
is like an odd sound. Even that little box was
a cahone.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
There was a pitbull who greeted us enthusiastically each morning.
The rumor was that Mick Fleetwood had recorded there once
Will I Be Loved? Can we play a little bit of.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
Gis?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Then after a break of a few months, we met
again in a cottage in Paul Simon's backyard, joined by
his engineer, Andy.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Smith, Simon and Garfunk Coal League kind of.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
We'd listen to music and Paul would play and tell stories.
Each conversation lasted four sometimes five hours.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Do they all this is a really good one. Shake
it very gently, just to create a cloud.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Simon turned out to have far more energy than either
Bruce or I.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I have no anxiety about running out of ideas.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
You don't have that at all.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
No, I think another idea, you want another idea? Okay,
here's another. Here's another idea.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
I'm reminded of the line from the poet Delmore Schwartz,
who once drove cross country with his friend William Phillips.
William drove until I was exhausted. Then I drove.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I never had a problem with phrasing, because there's always
like a metronome clicking in my head, and I know
where it is, and my body usually moves to it.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Paul talked until we were exhausted. Then we talked, isn't
I feel like that's your musical sensibility? Is honesty with
an undercurrent of am I being ridiculous?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Or no, that's true.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
What follows is not a biography. It's not an a
through z account of Paul Simon's life. There are at
least two very good biographies of Simon out there that
will do that for you. This is a musical biography,
discussion of his songwriting, his craft, an examination of the
sources of his extraordinary creativity.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
How do you get there? How do you make yourself
feel that chemical high that you feel when you make
something that you like.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
In our time with him, Paul talked about doo wop
and Queen's and his dad and a million other things.
What he thinks of all the different cover versions of
his songs, specifically Harytha Franklin.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Name that felt to me like wasn't even my song?
Like I gave it up for adoption?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Or something about the countless people he's collaborated with over
the years. Our Garfuncle, of course, his childhood friend and
his recording engineer, Roy Halley, who has worked with him
almost from the beginning.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
With Paul it's creativity adding colors where appropriate. I don't
go crazy, but if I come up with a really
nice color, he'll nine out of ten times love it.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
The first part of this book is an argument about
what makes Paul Simon special. When we call someone like
him a musical genius, what does that mean? Can we
be more specific about how experience and culture and talent
and family combine to make music that endures.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
A big part of my thinking is trial and error.
It's all trial and error, and there's no reason to
be upset about the errors.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Then in the middle comes the story of Graceland. Maybe
Simon's greatest accomplishment.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Part of the reason that I was able to write
songs that were not overtly political was that the sound
of what was going on was joyful.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Could that album be made today? I'm not sure. We
prefer our artists these days to stay in their own
cultural lane, but Simon didn't, which is a good part
of what makes him such a fascinating figure. Look at
what he produced.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I knew that I had to go to South Africa
to get it right. I learned early on that you
can't ask musicians to write in somebody else's handwriting.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
The final part of the book is about later Paul Simon,
the work he did in his fifties, sixties, and seventies,
when most musicians of his stature have resigned themselves to
leaning on their old hits. He kept going, why how.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
There are times when you say, oh, don't change, I'm
happy here, stay right here, and I'm having a good time.
Let's just stay right here. But it's like I'm off. Nope,
I'm gone to the next part.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Throughout the book, you'll hear from other musicians who have
played with Simon over the years, or just love his music. Hello,
Malcolm Renee Fleming, Roseanne Cash, Herbie Hancock, sting.
Speaker 9 (08:59):
My dear walking off to find America. You know that's
redolent of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer or Kerouax picturesque
American novels.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
And then we have something special, a piece of music
Paul was working on while we were talking to him
for this book, a piece called the Seven Psalms, something
as personal as anything Simon has ever made. But most
(09:34):
of what follows is just Paul Simon.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Missus Robinson wasn't really folky either. Missus Robinson is a
little snatch of blues.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Singing, talking, arguing, teaching.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That's a lick that's not too different from See the
Girl with the Damon Ring.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
At the end of it recession, he would always ask
should we meet again? And we would say yes. Over
the course of these long sessions, we had the experience
of sitting just a few feet from a maestro. If
you've been a fan of his music as I have,
I think by the end of this book you'll see
him in a new light. But where you haven't given
(10:20):
us your feelings on these two guitars with respect to
this song, Well, I know that.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
This guitar's records better. You know.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, if you know very little about him, well.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
You're in for treating.
Speaker 8 (10:44):
Slip sliding away, slip slide in a.
Speaker 10 (10:51):
Way you know, the nery destination, the more your slip
sliding away.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, I know, man, he came from my hometown. You're
his passion funds.
Speaker 11 (11:14):
One with like a thorny crown, he said, the Lord,
I live in fear.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
My love for you over power, and I am afraid
that I will disappear.
Speaker 8 (11:36):
Slip sliding way, slip sliding way, you know, the near
your destination, the more your slip sliding way, and I.
Speaker 11 (11:55):
Know one morning.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Became my wife. These are the very words she uses
to describe her life.
Speaker 12 (12:10):
She said, a good day, well, it ain't got no ray,
she said of bad days when I lie in.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
The bed and I think of things that might have.
Speaker 8 (12:24):
Been slip sliding, slip slide in wed the near destination,
the more oil slip sliding week.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And I know father had son. He longed to tell
him all the reasons for the things he's done.
Speaker 11 (13:02):
He come a long.
Speaker 13 (13:03):
Way just to explain, kissed his boys, He left sleeping
in there, and.
Speaker 11 (13:14):
He turned around and he headed home again.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
He slip sliding.
Speaker 7 (13:24):
Sliding away.
Speaker 11 (13:46):
For God on and nose.
Speaker 8 (13:50):
God makes his flying, They informed, the Eastern soun available
to the mortal man.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
We'll welcome jobs COLLECTI case.
Speaker 8 (14:10):
Believe we're gliding down the highway. In fact, where slip
sliding away, slip sliding.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Away, sliding away, slip sliding away, sliding away.
Speaker 12 (14:54):
M M.
Speaker 14 (14:59):
Holding hello, no no, no, no, no, no, oh no, whoa.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
That's any question.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
That's a pretty good line.
Speaker 11 (15:43):
Like what you hear.
Speaker 9 (15:44):
With a Pushkin Plus subscription, you can access the entirety
of Miracle and Wonder conversations with Paul Simon until October
thirty first, and after that there'll be a new audiobook
from Pushkin waiting for you for the next sixty days,
starting on the first of each month and running until
the end of the next month.
Speaker 11 (16:00):
Pushkin Plus subscribers can get free access to an audiobook,
plus add free access to all Pushkin podcasts, exclusive subscriber
only bonus episodes, early listening and full binges to some
of our top podcasts. Sign up on the Pushkin Plus
audiobook show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
slash plus
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