Honestly, if you ask someone to name the "brain" behind the most famous folk duo in history, they don't say "the guy from Simon and Garfunkel." They say Paul Simon. But there is this weird, lingering myth that the duo’s split was just a simple case of two guys outgrowing each other. It wasn't. It was messy, it was petty, and it was fueled by a level of creative obsession that most of us would find exhausting.
Paul Simon is currently 84 years old, and as of 2026, he’s still making headlines with his "A Quiet Celebration" tour. But to understand why he’s still selling out theaters in London and Prague, you have to look at the friction that started back in a Queens elementary school in 1953.
The Secret Betrayal of 1957
Most people think the drama started with Bridge Over Troubled Water. Nope. It started when they were teenagers calling themselves Tom & Jerry.
They had a minor hit with "Hey Schoolgirl," but while they were still a duo, Simon went behind Art’s back and recorded a solo track under the name "True Taylor." Artie found out by seeing the record in a store. He felt betrayed. That tiny crack in 1957 never truly healed; it just got papered over by decades of multi-platinum success.
You’ve gotta realize: Paul was the one writing every single note. He was the one telling the drummers what to play and the bassists where to land. Artie was the "voice," the ethereal tenor that made the songs float, but Paul was the engine. That creates a specific kind of resentment. Paul felt like he was doing all the heavy lifting, while Artie felt like he was being treated as a session singer in his own band.
Why Simon and Garfunkel Actually Collapsed
By 1969, the tension was basically radioactive. The breaking point wasn't even about music—it was about movies.
Art Garfunkel got cast in Catch-22 and headed off to Mexico for months. Simon was left in New York, expected to just sit around and "be the songwriter" until Artie deigned to return.
"Artie said, 'I'll do movies for six months, you write the songs, and then I'll come back and we'll do the album,'" Simon recalled in a recent documentary. His response? "Actually, no."
He wasn't going to be a ghostwriter for a partner who wasn't there. When Bridge Over Troubled Water was finally finished, they didn't even have a conversation about breaking up. They just stopped. They were done.
The "Fine" Voice vs. The "Good" Voice
There’s a heartbreaking detail Paul shared about his mother. She once told him, "You have a good voice, Paul, but Arthur has a fine voice." Imagine being the guy who writes "The Sound of Silence" and "The Boxer," only to be told by your own mom that your buddy is the "real" singer. That kind of Freudian trauma doesn't just go away. It drives a man to prove he can do it alone.
The Graceland "Boycott" and 1980s Chaos
If the 70s were about Paul finding his solo footing with hits like "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," the 80s were about him almost losing everything.
By 1984, he was considered "washed up." His album Hearts and Bones had flopped. He was going through a brutal divorce from Carrie Fisher. Then, he heard a cassette of South African mbaqanga music.
He didn't just listen to it; he obsessed over it. He flew to Johannesburg in 1985, defying a United Nations cultural boycott against the apartheid regime.
People were furious. Artists like Jerry Dammers and Billy Bragg slammed him. The UN actually put him on a blacklist for a while. They said he was "appropriating" the music or, worse, legitimizing a racist government.
But Simon’s perspective was different. He paid the South African musicians—guys like Ray Phiri and Ladysmith Black Mambazo—triple the union rate. He gave them songwriting credits and royalties, which was unheard of at the time. He argued that bringing Black South African musicians to the global stage was a more powerful protest than just staying home.
Whether he was a "cultural colonizer" or a "bridge-builder" is still debated in musicology circles today, but you can't deny the result: Graceland sold 16 million copies and saved his career.
How He Actually Writes (It's Not How You Think)
Most songwriters start with a "message" or a lyric. Paul Simon starts with a noise.
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He’s famously said that he starts by playing the guitar and just making sounds—"oohs" and "aahs." He waits for the music to tell him what the words should be. It's a "zigzag" process.
Take "The Boxer." That "lie-la-lie" chorus? That wasn't supposed to be the lyric. It was a placeholder because he couldn't find the right words. But it felt right, so he kept it.
The Ear Goes to the Irritant
Simon has a rule: "The ear goes to the irritant." If a part of a song is annoying him, he doesn't try to "fix" it by adding more. He just cuts it. He’s a minimalist. He believes if you're struggling to fix a verse for weeks, the problem isn't the verse—it's the premise of the whole song.
Paul Simon in 2026: The Final Movement?
Now, we’re seeing a very different version of the man. During the recording of his 2023 masterpiece Seven Psalms, Simon lost almost all hearing in his left ear.
For a guy whose entire life is built on the precise placement of sound, that’s a death sentence. Or it should have been.
Instead, he partnered with the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss. They built him a custom stage setup for his 2026 tour with "moving monitors" that basically surround him in a bubble of sound so he can actually hear his own voice over the instruments.
It’s intimate. It’s quiet. He’s playing Seven Psalms—a 33-minute continuous piece about mortality and God—followed by reworked versions of the classics. He isn't trying to hit the high notes from 1968 anymore. He’s leaned into the "changing perspective of aging," as he calls it.
What You Can Learn from Simon’s Career
If you’re a creator, Simon’s trajectory offers some pretty blunt lessons.
- Don't wait for permission. If he had waited for the UN’s blessing or his record label's approval, Graceland would never have happened.
- Protect your process. He stopped being a "folk singer" the second it felt like a cage. He moved into reggae, jazz, and world music because that’s where his curiosity went.
- Acknowledge the friction. He and Artie don't get along. They probably never will. And that’s okay. Some of the greatest art in history came from two people who couldn't stand to be in the same room for more than twenty minutes.
If you want to dive deeper into his current work, listen to Seven Psalms with headphones on. It’s not "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and it’s not meant to be. It’s the sound of a man who has finally stopped trying to prove his mother wrong and started just listening to the silence.
Check out the official tour dates for "A Quiet Celebration" if you're in Europe this spring; the London shows at the Royal Albert Hall are likely to be the last time he performs at that scale.