{"id":71,"date":"2010-04-01T00:11:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T07:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/troubadour.lanexa.net\/?page_id=71"},"modified":"2024-03-25T13:44:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T20:44:47","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/","title":{"rendered":"Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Revisiting Paul Simon\u2019s \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d: A Dialogue with Ted Burke and Barry Alfonso<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last year marked the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the release of Paul Simon\u2019s There Goes Rhymin\u2019<\/em> Simon<\/em>, a mostly good-humored LP that contrasted with the often-melancholy tone of the singer-songwriter\u2019s earlier work with Art Garfunkel. The exception to Rhymin\u2019 Simon\u2019s<\/em> sunniness was \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d an elegy for lost dreams set to a Bach chorale that overshadowed everything else on the album. I can remember the impact of the song on me as a teenager. And I remember also the reaction I had to reading a review of Rhymin\u2019 Simon<\/em> that appeared in the July 12, 1973 edition of the San Diego Reader<\/em>, written by a cogent, sharp-elbowed critic named Ted Burke. Burke dismissed much of the album as \u201cdiffuse, distracted,\u201d the work of an artist \u201cmumbling to himself.\u201d Ouch! However, Ted pronounced \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d brilliant\u2014and it was and still is. Remarkably, it has endured in popularity and significance, transcending its immediate relevance to the loss of 1960s\u2019 idealism to be revived again and again to mark the national heartaches of the moment. Simon went on to write other outstanding songs, of course \u2013 and both of us went on to become friends at college and remain enduring partners in aesthetic crime ever since. Recently, we got together at a coffee spot on 30th<\/sup> Street in South Park to trade thoughts about \u201cAmerican Tune,\u201d Paul Simon, and related matters in true rock critic codger fashion, still contentious after all these years\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry Alfonso:<\/strong> When I read your Rhymin\u2019 Simon<\/em> review, Ted, I took criticism of Paul Simon very personally. I was like those intensely loyal Taylor Swift fans are today. I identified with his work, maybe a little too much. I wonder what your attitude about that album is now. Looking back over what you wrote 50 years later, do you think this is still a fair review?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted Burke:<\/strong> There\u2019s nothing like 20\/20 hindsight, which means I would have written a less severe review. In the \u201970s I had the unfortunate habit of reviewing albums by favorite artists that didn\u2019t rise to my standard as a personal betrayal, a conscious act of bad faith. Over time, post review, I had to admit that all of Simon\u2019s skills as a songwriter were present throughout the disc, although I think that my original opinion was on target, that it was an honest attempt in song to venture beyond the elegantly constructed tunes regarding loneliness and encroaching despair. Lyrically, the stuff that was at the expressive heart of Simon\u2019s oeuvre<\/em> was weak tea for the most part. I think it\u2019s the honest effort of a gifted writer trying new things, new voices.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> You had some good things to say about his song \u201cKodachrome\u201d in there. Do you like the line, \u201cEverything looks worse and black and white?\u201d He\u2019s right about that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> It\u2019s a great song and one that works in that it\u2019s an effectively whimsical reminiscence of his days in high school. In a way you can say that it\u2019s one of the first times Simon has expressed disappointment with the adulthood he\u2019s grown into. The line that \u201ceverything looks better in black and white\u201d is revealing in that the tune uses a Kodachrome camera as a device through which to wax poetic about a simpler time, with the suggestion that his picture taking captures a world he knows is disappearing with time and maturity. \u201cEverything looks better in black and white\u201d comes across as a sigh, a soft admission that despite glaring color of the pictures he snapped of the things he remembers, his thinking about them is literally black and white; life was fun and simple and full of adventure and then suddenly it became hard, full of jobs, families, debt, responsibilities, and the pains of aging. Simon does the cool trick of slipping in a subtle admission, a confession maybe, that the way his narrator is regarding his past is idyllic and untrustworthy, even to himself. This foreshadows what I consider Rhymin Simon\u2019<\/em>s best song a masterpiece, I think, which is \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I first heard the song, I thought the melody was gorgeous, moody, and reflective in elegant movements that were unusual even in Simon\u2019s strongest songwriting. He was a superb creator of folk-informed melodic structures, and he was quite good at incorporating different music styles seamlessly: New Orleans sounds, reggae, a whole slew of Latin influences. Think what you will of the cultural styles he borrowed from; he used them wonderfully. But \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d had a more architectural structure; it was subtler and had a haunting emotional power to it. It fit the lyrics, which themselves were something different for Simon, a deeper dive into a theme.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Did you know at the time that it was a Bach chorale? It wasn\u2019t the first time that lyrics were set to this piece of music. In 1948, Tom Glazer used it as the setting for \u201cBecause All Men Are Brothers,\u201d a workers\u2019 anthem later recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary. It is stirring in a different way than \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> I never realized that Simon had borrowed the music from Bach until I heard it on the classical station we play inside the bookstore where I work. That was a small but important revelation, and I could very well imagine how Bach\u2019s doleful composition might have inspired Simon to write the lyrics in the tone and gravity he did. It might well have been the thing that gave him the stimulation to express some long-gestating notions that he until then couldn\u2019t quite find the rhyme or reason for. This is rare and the melody inspired the tone of the lyrics, which was a mixture of nostalgia, disappointment, and melancholy, but it was always sort of softly played, and everything was still hopeful. You know, kind of like \u201cI wanna go where all the good people go to sleep and wake up tomorrow, because tomorrow is another day.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

His genius as a lyricist is heard in the unexpected and amazing leaps in the narrative line. In \u201cAmerican Tune,\u201d this happens after the narrator fatalistically ruminates over living in a world that has lost its promise and purpose, where he goes on to the middle portion, where he dreams that he\u2019s flying and down below him is the Statue of Liberty. I found myself beginning to have a visceral response to those lines, making me reflect upon my own sense of the inability of us to do better. We know better, but we do not do better. And yet this still goes on. And we have the money, we have the technology, we have the means to make this all better for everybody. But we don\u2019t. Everything is piecemeal, everything is spare change, everything is compromised. What you have in terms of gathering your own strength is remembering your disappointments and trying to remember your dreams. And the dreams say you push out, you know, some faith that something better will come. I mean, for me, that was like thinking of Sam Cooke’s \u201cA Change Is Gonna Come.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Cooke song, the singer speaks of brutality, hardships, and repression, a seemingly systematic discrimination intended to confine black Americans to the margins of society. But the song is about a tradition of faith, powered by the gospel of uplift that comes from the African American Church. The singer admits the hardship inflicted upon Black Americans and yet declares that he knows that things will change, that the Promised Land Dr. King spoke of exists in the hearts of all Americans, and that black Americans will have a seat at the big table. There\u2019s a strong faith that this America does exist, or that it can still come into being if the lot of us put our shoulders to the wheel and move the country in the direction it needs to travel. It\u2019s a prayer, really, for our country to transcend its worst traits and embrace a brotherhood and sisterhood of citizens that\u2019s stronger for its diversity. Sam Cook\u2019s performance lays out the tragedy of the black experience evocatively and yet is optimistic, hopeful in ways only the oppressed can be in times when faith is all there is to get you through the day and the days ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican Tune\u201d as well talks about life in a country where the promises of freedom, opportunity, and a harmonious life are severely lacking. But Simon\u2019s song is downbeat, sad, and bitter and melancholic in the face of the chance that the America we\u2019ve dreamed of living in is gone forever or that it never existed at all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think the song works because of its brevity. I think it works because of the melody. I like the fact that he manages to step away from this position of a poet and developed another voice like somebody\u2019s talking, you know, in words, which are festooned with literary analogies. I really don\u2019t like most of the work he did with Simon and Garfunkel. His songs back then seemed to say, \u201cThis is what I think poetry sounds like.\u201d I\u2019m thinking of \u201cApril, Come She Will\u201d: \u201cI heard cathedral bells tripping down the alleyways\u201d or \u201cThe Sounds of Silence\u201d: \u201cthe words of the prophets are written on the subway walls\u2026\u201d You know, I was gonna bring something up about the movie we walked out of years ago\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Yeah, it was from The English Patient<\/em>: \u201cThe heart is the organ of fire.\u201d You reacted to a spring in the theater seat that had stabbed you in the butt!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One thing that still strikes me about \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d is that it is an elegy for something that is gone. And I can\u2019t think of any hit song from the rock era that expressed something like that. The closest thing I came up with, one that is very different but linked with the same era, is \u201cAbraham, Martin and John,\u201d which has a little hope in it. But the last verse of that makes you want to cry because it adds Robert Kennedy to the list. It\u2019s a public elegy for something that\u2019s been lost and that\u2019s what \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d is. It\u2019s almost unprecedented that something like that would get the exposure that it did. Can you think of something comparable?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> I would say that would be \u201cAmerican Pie.\u201d That song is a little more ambiguous, but yes, I see the comparison. What those two songs [\u201cAbraham, Martin and John\u201d and \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d] have in common is the purposeful name dropping, actual names and obvious references to historical analogues. That\u2019s why I like Simon\u2019s song. I think he transcends them all because he\u2019s speaking generally. I think he\u2019s speaking across generations, whereas \u201cAbraham, Martin and John\u201d has lost much of its power of expressing a collective desire to make a better world. Message<\/em> songs that invoke specific names and events don\u2019t often occur to listeners when they regard the music of Dylan or Phil Ochs; specificity isn\u2019t an element that travels much beyond the history books, but it\u2019s the more generalized work, the lyrics leaning toward more poetic and elusive atmosphere are the ones that are remembered. Dylan famously accused Phil Ochs of just being a journalist, not a songwriter at the time when Ochs was still writing protest songs and Dylan started his experiments with surrealistic scenarios. Dylan was being a jerk, I guess, but he was right in the sense that audiences seeking something to listen to and help them create a sense of themselves in the world desire poetry, not editorials. It might sound cynical, but Dion\u2019s song is nearly nostalgia, an Edenic daydream, right up there with \u201cGet Together\u201d by the Youngbloods.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> As I recall, \u201cAbraham, Martin and John\u201d meant a lot to people at the time. Listening to it was participating in an act of public mourning. I don\u2019t know precisely what Simon\u2019s motives were, but I suspect that it came out of his experience with the McGovern for president campaign. We saw Richard Nixon, the embodiment of all these terrible things, being reelected in the landslide. And Simon got back together with Garfunkel, whom he had rather bitterly broken up with to do a benefit for McGovern. He was all in for McGovern and watched him get wiped out in November of \u201972. 1973 really felt like that was the end of the \u201960s. And so \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d came out in May of \u201973 and it sounded like an elegy for everything that went before. I think that Simon had a stake in it personally. When I hear him singing about the dreams being shattered and driven to their knees, he\u2019s not just talking about the workaday world, he\u2019s talking about these bigger things that Americans just didn\u2019t seem to live up to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The thing that gets me and got me wanting to talk to you about \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d is how it keeps being revived, because it always seems relevant to certain moments of national disappointment and tragedy. It was written in reaction to specific events, yet it keeps being recorded and people keep getting meaning out of it. It\u2019s 50 years later, and it\u2019s like time hasn\u2019t moved on. All the things that he\u2019s addressing in that song are still relevant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> A real generation spans 30 years, the years from youth to adulthood and between the time that young people who become adults. they have families and eventually become grandparents. Generations that came after the Boomers, you and I had our own sense of disparity between the promises of hard work and advancement and the collectively felt experience. We look for heroes to help us come to terms with that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When you\u2019re a hero, you\u2019re supposed to become the person everybody thinks you should be. I remember A.J. Weberman, the self-described \u201cDylanologist\u201d who would go through Bob Dylan\u2019s garbage and claimed that he had created a new science or sociology, all of which was based on his conviction that Bob Dylan wasn\u2019t just a songwriter and poet but also a seer, a philosopher and prophet of things to come. I remember reading, with interest, a self-published squib he produced where there was a lot of tea leaf reading and how particular lines of Dylan songs forecast grave, epochal disruptions. The obsession with Dylan, the cottage industry of producing books about Dylan, biographies, interpretations, and all these other gratuitous additions to the prose committed to that, that this songwriter was disrespectful to the artist himself, because Dylan wanted to be left alone\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> How would this relate to Paul Simon? It\u2019s interesting; Simon is not somebody where people go through his garbage for clues about how he thinks. He came out of a somewhat of a workaday, songwriting world. He\u2019d been a momentary teenage rock star with \u201cHey Schoolgirl.\u201d He was friends with Carole King and could have been a Brill Building tunesmith. Then, he went to went to England and became a folk singer. But he\u2019s not a Bob Dylan-like figure. He is not regarded as a cultural leader in that respect. So, would it take someone like that to produce a song like \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d? I mean, isn\u2019t it interesting that Simon would be the one to write a song like that? Simon is not the kind of person that people were always over-analyzing and going through his trash for clues about how he lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> The difference is that Paul Simon is a professional songwriter. He sits down and he has a topic and he\u2019s going to write about it. And he\u2019s going to write a melody, he\u2019s going to write lyrics, and I\u2019m sure he\u2019s also somebody who looks at what he\u2019s written and edits things out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Well, here\u2019s something else, too. In a way \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d relates to the other songs on There Goes Rhymin\u2019 Simon,<\/em> the ones that you don\u2019t care for. Simon might be saying, \u201cWhy am I writing all these lightweight songs about looking back at high school and here\u2019s a lullaby for my young son and all these other light, fluffy songs? It\u2019s because \u2018American Tune\u2019 is so heavy and it\u2019s so much a meditation how things are now that I\u2019ve got to write these other light songs to be alive and to be in this world.\u201d The comparative lack of lyrical depth in songs like \u201cWas a Sunny Day\u201d or \u201cSt. Judy\u2019s Comet\u201d is a reaction to the depressing spirit of the times, just as\u2014in a different way\u2014\u201cAmerican Tune\u201d is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> Simon was also under pressure to produce a hit album.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> His first post-Garfunkel solo album was successful but not a huge hit. [It reached Number 32 on the Billboard Album Chart.]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> I think his solo career is nearly flawless in terms of albums. And in terms of Rhymin\u2019 Simon<\/em>, of the albums he\u2019s put out that I\u2019ve listened to, it\u2019s the one I care for the least.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> In a way, \u201cLoves Me Like a Rock\u201d fuses the lighter sensibility of the album with Simon\u2019s more thoughtful side. In it, Simon is saying, \u201cIf I was the president \/ The minute the Congress called my name\/ I\u2019d say, \u2018now who you were fooling?\u2019 \/ I got the presidential seal\u2026,\u2019\u201d in other words, fuck off and get out of my face. It\u2019s Richard Nixon razzing his enemies and the American people set to a gospel tune. He\u2019s talking about the current situation with Nixon and the Watergate investigations, and he’s sort of riffing on the mood of the moment. It\u2019s a fusion of the two sensibilities in an odd way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> Well, the thing I also liked about Simon was his ability to look at his own image as a sad man just out of a relationship or overwhelmed with tragic nostalgia. Or he\u2019s writing about something more ethereal. And you know, he does something like \u201c50 Ways to Leave your Lover,\u201d which just starts off like another sad Paul Simon song. And then, he says, \u201cget on the bus, Gus….\u201d That\u2019s a nice touch that indicates he is self-aware of his image as a writer of melancholic songs. He\u2019s a man who notices when there\u2019s too much air in his tires.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Yeah, I think he generally shows a lot of good taste, sometimes maybe too much good taste, but I would agree.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> I thought Graceland<\/em> was Simon\u2019s best record. It probably is one of the masterpieces of its time. \u201cThe Boy in the Bubble\u201d has one of my favorite lines of all time\u2014after all these surreal imageries and all these references to technology and media and the Age of Miracle and Wonder, he says, \u201cThis is the long distance call.\u201d Yeah, it\u2019s such a throwaway line, but it\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> No, it\u2019s great. He could go widescreen when he wanted to, quite successfully. So, ultimately, what do you think people still get from \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d when they hear it now?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> I think people are nostalgic. And there\u2019s always this useful past that they long for. I think most people I know\u2014eventually everybody talks about the old days and just things just aren\u2019t the way they used to be, or the way they should be.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> \u2026 \u201cand everything looks worse in black and white.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> What do people still relate to in \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d? I remember having conversations, many of them, with my friends and classmates in the late sixties and seventies that, as high schoolers, our generation was smarter, more enlightened, that we were hopeful and had a moral compass that would change the culture, end racism and war, and undo the evils of capitalism. I remember reading The Greening of America <\/em>by Charles Reich, wherein a lapsed academic prophesied an Eden on Earth because the younger generation would make the world irrefutably fairer and better in every regard. It was a real head trip and likely made some of the crowd I ran with a might smug and maybe even a bit delusional about what they thought they deserved. I had heady expectations, and there were no shortage of writers, activists, and media sorts reinforcing the idea that the Youthquake, as many called it, would tip the scales toward Heaven. And we were enlightened by many different sources: the hippies, early formations of New Age ideas, civil rights, politics, religious ideas because we\u2019re an enlightened species, but also an awful lot of us at the time were in school and had a lot of leisure time; we didn\u2019t have a lot of adult responsibilities. I\u2019m speaking for many of us, not all of us, but the magazines reinforced that we can just keep doing all this stuff. We can just do it ad infinitum; this will never end and we\u2019ll just get better and better, but it never did, because we became adults. People started having children, so they had to get jobs and pay mortgages. They had to pay income taxes and they had to accept that. I think a lot of people miss the days when they didn\u2019t have many responsibilities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> You think all of that is in \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> It\u2019s implied. Simon\u2019s narrator in the tune has equal measures of ennui, depression, melancholy, and disappointment. This works as a soliloquy of someone in the second half of life. It\u2019s poetic, reflective, and woeful, a recollection of experiences that have brought us no closer to Heaven. We kind of see that in more recent history with the Slacker attitude or in the glorified hype about \u201cSilent quitting,\u201d of doing only the bare minimum required at a job because it\u2019s a deadening, heartless routine. It\u2019s interesting to contrast this with \u201cA Change Is Gonna Come,\u201d where the singer and the audience share the hard and bitter history of oppression, violence, and discrimination as Black Americans, yet they still get out of bed with the conviction that despite it all they will work even harder for the better world they believe in. The sad fact of the matter is that the generation Simon sings of in \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d sounds like they miss the days when their job wasn\u2019t to pay the rent. They, we, didn\u2019t expect to be breadwinners and now we\u2019re saddled with all this stuff. Well, what have we become? Have you become your parents? Yeah, you\u2019re supposed to be the adult now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Maybe that is the true source of weariness and resignation in \u201cAmerican Tune,\u201d the realization that it is time to grow up!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that sometime recently Simon rewrote some of the key lines in \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d to reflect a wider historical understanding. He changed \u201cWe come on a ship they call the Mayflower \/ we come on a ship that sailed the moon\u201d to \u201cWe didn\u2019t come here on the Mayflower \/ We came on a ship in a blood red moon.\u201d Rhiannon Giddens sang those new lyrics at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival with Simon backing her up on guitar. This reference to the horrors of slavery and the middle passage changes the whole meaning of the song. Was the poison in the American apple from the very beginning? It\u2019s not that the apple went rotten. The poison was in there all along.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> It\u2019s probably the one time I can think of where a revision helps the song in terms of making it even more timeless.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Yeah, because the song could always be accused of\u2014well, this is the evil of the privileged life. They are the regrets of people that he met at the McGovern cocktail party. Rich liberal angst.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> Yeah, your memories, your own nostalgia, your despair, your anger over the way things turned out are products of a privileged set of expectations. As opposed to the \u201cblood red moon\u201d line, which I think just broadens the spectrum.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a neat resolution to what Simon is dealing with in \u201cAmerican Tune.\u201d Earlier, you talked about how the song is capacious enough to hold your own interpretations of its imagery. There is the image of the Statue of Liberty, smiling at you as you\u2019re sailing away to sea. What does that really mean? It\u2019s in a dream. And it\u2019s very ambiguous. You can read a lot into that. Does it mean that you\u2019re protected? Does that mean she\u2019s waving bye-bye, and her protection has been lifted? It\u2019s not clear what that means.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> Yeah. I like the mystery, the unexplained intrusion of the dream into this dour ode. Although it defies sequential logic, the stanza intensifies the felt melancholy and avoids the overly dramatic. Simon\u2014artist and craftsman that he is\u2014knew when to leave it alone and allow the words to resonate as they would.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Speaking of being hip, Paul Simon was never considered the hippest songwriter. And yet a song like \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d can endure and be meaningful to people for 50 years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> His best work, the major portion of his output, began with the release of Simon and Garfunkel\u2019s Bookends<\/em> album. Simon developed his ear for speech and stopped straining to be poetic and ceased his attempts to make big statements about the human condition. His best songs resonate because Simon wrote credibly, in clear and freshly uncluttered language. You can note his increasing sense of irony, of taking himself less seriously, in expressing relatable experiences in concise, coherent, and pithy ways that were filled with all kinds of melodic hooks, segues, and choruses. Whatever one has to say about Simon, his songs have stood the test of time. I think he\u2019s good because the songs are good. Once he got out of the Simon and Garfunkel cage, as he was starting work on Bookends<\/em>, he attained the particular genius we know him for.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> He would say that a lot of those songs on side two (\u201cFakin\u2019 It,\u201d \u201cHazy Shade of Winter,\u201d and \u201cAt the Zoo\u201d) were failed singles. He was not particularly proud of those songs and wouldn\u2019t perform them live. That was his take on it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> The album had some psychedelic Sergeant Pepper<\/em>-ish stuff for certain elements of the crowd, but besides that I thought it was a very strong album. In the song \u201cAmerica,\u201d it\u2019s become clich\u00e9 \u201cto look for America.\u201d But I thought the song was just beautifully constructed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> The language is very visual, like a movie: \u201cand the moon rose over an open field.\u201d It just sounds good. It\u2019s a wonderful use of words.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> \u201cIt took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.\u201d That\u2019s a line you remember, just a nice use of the place name. And when he does get to his confession, it doesn\u2019t it doesn\u2019t ring false.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> The imagery in \u201cAmerica\u201d reminds me of \u201cAmerican Tune.\u201d I mean, the narrator of the song wakes up on the bus and he says, \u201cI\u2019m lost.\u201d He says it to his girlfriend who\u2019s asleep. And then he just looks at all the mass of the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. It\u2019s some of the same feeling you get in \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d of just being lost and overwhelmed and not knowing who you are or where you are. It\u2019s like David Byrne saying in \u201cOnce in a Lifetime,\u201d \u201cMy God, what have I done?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> Yeah, maybe it\u2019s just the discovery of suddenly feeling very small. And maybe, in \u201cAmerican Tune,\u201d somebody is talking about that in a disembodied voice, expressing a collective memory where everybody has the same expectations and assumptions that didn\u2019t pan out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> The last lines of the song are: \u201cTomorrow\u2019s going to be another working day\/ And I\u2019m trying to get some rest.\u201d You could say that you\u2019re trying to get some rest at least in the hope of getting up tomorrow and making things different. I don\u2019t see a lot of obvious hope in it. But you are carrying on. What\u2019s that Samuel Beckett line? \u201cI can\u2019t go on. I\u2019ll go on.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> Yeah. What are you doing? I\u2019m doing the thing I can\u2019t do. Yeah. I can\u2019t face another day. Yeah, what time is it? I gotta get going!<\/em> I mean, it\u2019s that kind of thing. You know, I had to revise what I felt at the end of the song. It\u2019s a vague sense of hope. Yeah, tomorrow\u2019s another working day. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Any final wrap-up thoughts about \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> I think \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d is a masterpiece by not trying to be a masterpiece. I think it works better than, say, \u201cA Day in the Life.\u201d I think it works better than that as a work of art. It\u2019s something that is sophisticated and subtle, with interesting progressions that come from a Bach chorale. It\u2019s poetic without seeming like it\u2019s trying. It\u2019s professionalism in the best sense. It sounds like a song that Simon cared about. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a wasted word in there. There\u2019s not a gratuitous line. There\u2019s not a bad image. I think it\u2019s very spare without seeming chintzy. I think it\u2019s poetic without seeming arch. I think it\u2019s transcendent of the conceits of its own time. And it doesn\u2019t drown in its own despair.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> I agree. There\u2019s a clear-eyed facing up to reality that\u2019s brave in a way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> It\u2019s a song by or about somebody who is resilient. But being resilient doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019re thriving. It just means that you\u2019re able to get up and continue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Well, you know that there\u2019s a new set of facts on the table. And you need to find a new way to engage reality. As the song says, \u201cI\u2019ve certainly been misused.\u201d It\u2019s talking about your bigger involvement in society and, yes, you\u2019re going to keep living. And, yes, you\u2019re going to rest your bones and work. But as far as how you participate in the bigger world, you’re going to draw back a bit; there\u2019s a line that\u2019s been crossed and you\u2019re not going to do that anymore. It seems that America has faced this again and again since \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d was first released. Maybe that\u2019s why the song has never gone away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> And the mystery is, is that line going to be crossed? Are you going to be the one to cross it? Or is it going to be for someone other than me, really? Have you done things in this life that will create another way of approaching life situations as they present themselves? A different way of thinking? I think in a lot of ways we have. I think that despite what I\u2019ve said that we have made progress in various fields and parts of the population that have benefited over the last 50-60 years from legislation and activism. But how does that continue from here?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/strong> Well, that\u2019s another discussion.\u00a0 And tomorrow\u2019s gonna be another working day, right?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ted:<\/strong> So I hear\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revisiting Paul Simon\u2019s \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d: A Dialogue with Ted Burke and Barry Alfonso \u00a0 \u00a0 Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the release of Paul Simon\u2019s There Goes Rhymin\u2019 Simon, a mostly good-humored LP that contrasted with the often-melancholy tone of the singer-songwriter\u2019s earlier work with Art Garfunkel. The exception to Rhymin\u2019 Simon\u2019s sunniness was \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d an elegy for lost dreams set to a Bach chorale that overshadowed everything else on the album. I can remember the impact of the song on me as a teenager. And I remember also the reaction I had to reading a review of Rhymin\u2019 Simon that appeared in the July 12, 1973 edition of the San Diego Reader, written by a cogent, sharp-elbowed critic named Ted Burke. Burke dismissed much of the album as \u201cdiffuse, distracted,\u201d the work of an artist \u201cmumbling to himself.\u201d Ouch! However, Ted pronounced \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d brilliant\u2014and it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":17742,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-71","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25879,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71\/revisions\/25879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}