When Paul Simon announced that his current tour will be his farewell, the Simon & Garfunkel song he borrowed as the name of his final run, “Homeward Bound,” seemed almost too sad, too poignant, too on the nose: “Tonight I’ll sing my songs again, I’ll play the game and pretend,” the final verse of that number begins, before its protagonist reaches the refrain, “Homeward bound, I wish I was.”
So it was a joy to find that the 76-year-old singer-songwriter doesn’t really seem to be any hurry to hide away from the world quite yet, as evidenced by the strength of his voice and performance and obvious pleasure to be playing for a sold-out Hollywood Bowl, or the lighthearted way he addressed the fact of the matter early in a show that packed 26 songs from across his career into two hours on stage.
After opening with “America,” one of six songs in the set from his classic collaboration with Art Garfunkel in the ’60s, and “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover,” a mid-’70s solo hit, Simon paused to acknowledge the loud cheers and applause.
“The thing about the farewell is, well, I’ve changed my mind,” he said, surely shocking many in that brief moment. “What it is is not so much of a final tour, it’s that I like raising the ticket prices –
“No, I’m serious about it,” he continued, laughter rising from the crowd. “The way I see it is aside from the word ‘final.’ I don’t know really what to make of the decision. I just find it interesting to put some kind of casing around this career and look at it that way.
“I don’t intend to stop writing music or playing,” Simon said.
And with that semi-cryptic remark, he got back to the business of entertaining all of these people who’ve followed his career from the folk scenes of New York City and London to the singer-songwriter era of the ’70s to the restless creativity that found him exploring the sounds of Africa and Brazil in the ’80s and back to classic songwriting on albums as recent as his last two solid releases, “So Beautiful Or So What” and “Stranger To Stranger.”
In many ways the structure of the show felt similar to his last stop at the Hollywood Bowl just two years ago, relying heavily on the South African and New Orleans vibes of “Graceland” and samba grooves of “The Rhythm of the Saints” more than any other single album. “Graceland” came up first in the show with songs such as “The Boy In The Bubble” and “That Was Your Mother” getting many in the audience up and dancing, and demonstrating once again the great strength of Simon’s band.
Longtime guitarist Mark Stewart and bassist Bakithi Kumalo, who played on the “Graceland” album, were back to fill their roles. Guitarist Vincent Nguini, who played on “Rhythm of the Saints” and had been with Simon ever since, died in December, but his replacement, Biodun Kuti, fit seamlessly into the intertwined grooves of “Rhythm” tracks such as “Spirit Voices” and “The Obvious Child,” the latter, with its Brazilian percussion and dancing guitars, one of the standouts of the night.
But the greatest instrument of the evening had to be Simon’s voice, still strong and clear on almost any melody he sang, which shone sharpest on the earlier songs, from “Mother and Child Reunion” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” played seamlessly back-to-back early in the show, to such classics as “Mrs. Robinson” and “The Boxer” performed in separate encores near the end of the night.
New to the band on this tour, which started three shows earlier in Vancouver B.C. a week ago, was the yMusic chamber ensemble, a sextet of violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet and trumpet, which played on many of the songs, and added backing vocals on the biggest numbers, but got a mid-show spotlight for perhaps the biggest change and boldest move Simon incorporated into the tour.
With the rest of the band off stage, and the sextet seated in chairs around him, he sang a pair of songs to their beautiful accompaniment, the wonderfully titled “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War” – Simon explained the title, which involved a book on the surrealist artist he found at Joan Baez’s house once day – and “Can’t Run But.” Neither left him or his voice anywhere to hide, and both were movingly beautiful, standouts of performance and ambition.
The main set – which included newer songs such as “Dazzling Blue” and “Wristband,” keeping it from being purely a night of nostalgia – wrapped up with a “Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes” and “You Can Call Me Al,” two irresistible songs that had anyone who wasn’t already on their feet up dancing and moving.
Three encores followed, filling in a few gaps in his catalog with numbers such as “Kodachrome” from the early ’70s, and “Homeward Bound,” which served as a bookend, if you will to the opener “America,” that first song the story of a young man heading out to find something true, the latter his desire to return to the home of his heart.
The final encore saw Simon alone on stage in a spotlight, accompanying himself on a pair of songs, the final one, as often he’s done, “Sounds Of Silence,” a beautiful, emotional ending to a concert, though maybe not a career.
“I leave you with a final thought: We aren’t mountains, so we’ll meet again,” Simon said after a full two minutes of applause, and with that opaque comment, he left the stage.
Paul Simon
When: Tuesday, May 22
Where: Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles
Next: Simon plays the Bowl again on Wednesday, May 23, and Monday, May 28. Limited tickets, $39.50-$250 are available for the Monday show through ticketmaster.com. .
