Exploring the Enduring Legacy: The Music Journey of Paul Simon Despite Unexpected Challenges

Paul Simon

Paul Simon after having watched In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, I must say, I left feeling all a bit groovy. To consider as much about the singer-songwriter’s now as it does his then, the show is an unashamed paean to rhapsodic musical genius, and is at its best looking back over the material. Across its 3 ½ hours, Gibney leans a little too heavily into Simon today , but this is a worthwhile exercise in celebrating this defining talent, a man who, to use a phrase from one of his more famous songs, went looking for America, and had America, and indeed the rest .
I think the phrase went looking for America, and had America, and indeed the rest of the world, find him.

What did you watch?

I watched the first part of the MGM+ presentation named “Paul Simon: Homeward Bound.”

What is it about?

“Verse one,” as it’s labeled, of this two-part MGM+ presentation features Simon working on his 20th and final album, “Seven Psalms,” dealing not just with the help of hearing injury but the damage to his voice caused by it . He lives quietly in Texas with his wife, singer Edie Brickell.(Simon met both Brickell and last wife Carrie Fisher on “Saturday Night Live,” and producer Lorne Michaels is one of the luminaries also participating in the tribute.)
Gibney revisits Simon’s past in Queens, New York, focusing on his partnership with Simon and the success of “The Sound of Silence” as well as the musical’s use in Simon’s graduate career. Simon, who had gone to law school for a brief period and despised it, remembers, “I told myself, ‘My life is forever different.’” In the intervening years, he dropped out of law school and joined Garfunkel in building and breaking their philosophic and theological skills in the 1960s.
Simon paints a picture of what was an uneven partnership despite extraordinary success, with Simon writing the songs while Garfunkel took off to become an actor . Those tensions and more are explored while producing “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” a vocal showcase for Garfunkel. Finally, those involved couldn’t undo the rift, even as recently as September come back together after that kickoff reunion 35 years ago for a historic concert in Central Park that drew in reportedly around 750,000 people.
Moreover, because the documentary’s canvas is so wide, Gibney is able to lavishly credit engineer Roy Halee, who obviously did a lot more than push record on those giant S&G albums. This is something that Simon, in his more questionable productions, would be less likely to do .
South Africa and the mbaqanga sound would come next, and the equally controversial Graceland. With “In Restless Dreams” , several of Simon’s songs should be ringing through people’s heads but this excellent documentary ably illustrates not just his musical genius, but his droll New York humour that enlivened many an episode of Saturday Night Live and the few movies he made.
New “In Restless Dreams” is overdoing it a bit trying to balance interviewing Simon about his creative process with trying to get him to reminisce still further, 60 years after the album Wednesday Morning 3 A.M. put him on this path to immortality.
Where it came from, the music Simon produced – with Garfunkel and without him – it all makes for a documentary that will have anyone weaned on those songs feeling groovy again. “Music comes out of you from where you don’t know,” Simon says.