Music is and always has been political. So it’s about time we’re going to deal with a song where this was a huge deal. In hindsight Paul Simon’s album “Graceland” turned out to bring much-needed attention to African talent. But the decision to work around the cultural boycott, put into place due to the country’s Apartheid regime, was very controversial at the time.
The bass-solo in “You Can Call Me Al”, short as it is, certainly is one of the most iconic ones in pop history. Simon had taken extra care with all the bass lines on “Graceland” at the time. But with this solo, even though it’s not that long, they went another mile:
What we hear is actually double of what was originally recorded, with the second half being the palindromic result of playing the recording backwards. Genius. And so good, that I can even live with finding out that what I thought to know about the solo (embodying the notion that it was recorded in a telephone booth in the streets of Johannesburg due to conflicting schedules) turns out to be an urban myth…
Despite the controversies, Graceland would become Simon’s most successful solo studio-album and that it came at a bit of a low point in his life, with his relationships to both parter-in-crime Art Garfunkel and partner-in-life Carrie Fisher having deteriorated, fits the song just well, seeing how it tells the story of a mid-life crisis in general and his journey to South Africa in particular.
Paul Simon is the guy on the left.