Paul Simon, Hyde Park review: Still spellbinding after all these years in last ever UK gig
Paul Simon was 10 minutes late on stage for the final date of his farewell tour. It’s a heartbeat by rock star standards, but long enough to make one wonder what the great musician must have been thinking, seconds before playing one last two-hour show outside North America after six decades on the road.
Of course, we’ll never really know. When Simon announced his Homeward Bound retirement tour in February, he described it as “a little unsettling, a touch exhilarating and something of a relief.”
What the 76-year-old delivered, though, was a sumptuous journey through one of the most varied and innovative outputs in music. We watched on, as Simon both bade his greatest hits farewell and presented them in brilliant Kodachrome.
Because what could have sufficed as a workmanlike amble through a back catalogue stuffed with Grammy-winners instead kept 50,000 fans on the cusp of delighted surprise.
The Boy in the Bubble, You Can Call Me Al and Graceland all landed with hefty, invigorating aplomb, sending the crowd skiffling in Hyde Park’s arid grass.
But more allure lay in less showy numbers: Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War, written at Joan Baez’s house, saw Simon command seven of his dozen-strong band in the round.
Together, they spun a moment of still, cinematic surrealism that proved Simon’s immense skill as a songsmith. And a storyteller, too. The crowd’s hush was noticeable throughout, perhaps because of the listening required by Simon’s mellifluous creations. As the sun set, Simon spoke of a “lost child” song he had finally decided to reclaim. Gradually, unexpected percussion gave way to “When you’re weary”, and a giant sigh emerged from the crowd.
Here Simon was, standing by, not as the song’s claimant but a witness to its final rendition. The shifted arrangement not only cast the song free of the schmaltz it has gained over the past four decades but, niftily, allowed Simon’s 76-year-old register to accommodate that treacherous vocal territory with apparent ease.
Over the course of his career, Simon graduated from Manhattan’s folk clubs to become a musical ethnographer, cherry-picking global sounds to make his trademark sound.
With his swansong, he threw the focus back to his homeland with American Tune – with implicit references to the current president – and left a question mark hanging over it in the process.
Simon was one of a handful of pop giants to announce his retirement earlier this year – weeks after Neil Diamond, sadly afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, and Elton John. It caused some to wonder if 2018 would be the year that the sound of silence smothered the record industry for generations to come.
Closing his second encore with that Simon and Garfunkel classic, Simon suggested not – not because it wasn’t spellbinding, but because a bowing out like this shows how many rich pickings have been left for future greats to grow from.
