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Paul Simon - Crazy Love, Vol. II

Paul Simon - Crazy Love, Vol. II Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Graceland
Released: 1986

Crazy Love, Vol. II Lyrics

Fat Charlie the Archangel
Sloped into the room
He said I have no opinion about this
And I have no opinion about that

Sad as a lonely little wrinkled balloon
He said well I don't claim to be happy about this, boys
And I don't seem to be happy about that

I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love

I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of this crazy love

She says she knows about jokes
This time the joke is on me
Well, I have no opinion about that
And I have no opinion about me

Somebody could walk into this room
And say your life is on fire
It's all over the evening news
All about the fire in your life
On the evening news

I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love

Fat Charlie the Archangel
Files for divorce
He says well this will eat up a year of my life
And then there's all that weight to be lost
She says the joke is on me
I say the joke is on her
I said I have no opinion about that
Well, we'll just have to wait and confer

I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love

I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of this crazy love

Writer/s: SIMON, PAUL
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Crazy Love, Vol. II

Paul Simon started recording this song when he went to South Africa in 1985. He had been listening to a bootleg tape of music from the country, and wanted those sounds for his Graceland album. He recorded with dozens of musicians in his 17 days there, and he had a great experience with members of a popular South African group called Stimela - drummer Isaac Mtshali and guitarist Ray Phiri. When Simon returned to America, Mtshali and Phiri joined him for more recording sessions (this time at The Hit Factory studios) and a Saturday Night Live appearance. Bits of the South African sessions were edited together with the New York recordings to complete the track. Simon says that the song ended up sounding more like the music of Malawi and Zimbabwe, rather than South Africa.

Paul Simon isn't big on political lyrics, so despite the myriad political issues he saw in South Africa, he wrote lyrics for the Graceland tracks that told little stories (this one about a love gone bad), and more importantly, matched the music. This wasn't easy, and Simon became frustrated when he couldn't get the lyrics to fit. The breakthrough came when he listened to the tracks again. In the Under African Skies documentary, he said, "I realized that the guitar part was playing a different symmetry than I assumed, and the bass was doing something that was much more important, and I might be better off following what the bass was doing. I started thinking about the lyrics and what effect that would have on storytelling, and I began to raise the bar on my own writing."

As Simon explained in an interview with SongTalk magazine, there are two reasons for the "Vol. II" in the title. One is that Simon wanted to differentiate his "Crazy Love" from the Van Morrison song of the same name. The other is that he is talking about a love that has started and stopped more than once.

The same guy who played the pennywhistle on "You Can Call Me Al" played soprano saxophone on this song. His name is Morris Goldberg, and he's a white South African who had moved to New York.

The opening line mentions Fat Charlie the Archangel. This character came completely out of nowhere. Says Simon: "It doesn't represent anyone."

In the US, this was released as the B-side to "The Boy in the Bubble." In the UK, it was the B-side to "Graceland." Neither single charted.

Paul Simon - Graceland

Paul Simon - Graceland Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Graceland
Released: 1986

Graceland Lyrics

The Mississippi Delta was shining
Like a National guitar
I am following the river
Down the highway
Through the cradle of the civil war
I'm going to Graceland
Graceland
In Memphis Tennessee
I'm going to Graceland
Poor boys and pilgrims with families
And we are going to Graceland
My traveling companion is nine years old
He is the child of my first marriage
But I've reason to believe
We both will be received
In Graceland

She comes back to tell me she's gone
As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead
And she said losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow

I'm going to Graceland
Memphis Tennessee
I'm going to Graceland
Poor boys and pilgrims with families
And we are going to Graceland

And my traveling companions
Are ghosts and empty sockets
I'm looking at ghosts and empties
But I've reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland

There is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I'm falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Oh, so this is what she means
She means we're bouncing into Graceland
And I see losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow

In Graceland, in Graceland
I'm going to Graceland
For reasons I cannot explain
There's some part of me wants to see
Graceland
And I may be obliged to defend
Every love, every ending
Or maybe there's no obligations now
Maybe I've a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland

Writer/s: SIMON, PAUL
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Graceland

Graceland is the mansion in Memphis, Tennessee where Elvis Presley lived; it is where Elvis is buried, and it is now a museum and popular tourist attraction. Paul Simon started calling his song "Graceland" after he came up with the track, which reminded him of the Sun Records sound where Elvis recorded.

Simon says this song is an example of "how a collaboration works even when you're not aware of it occurring." He traveled to South Africa in February 1985 and recorded with a variety of local musicians. One of these sessions was with an accordion player named Forere Motloheloa, who played on the song "The Boy in the Bubble." These sessions produced a drum sound that Simon liked, which he described in the 2012 Graceland reissue: "The drums were kind of a traveling rhythm in country music - I'm a big Sun Records fan, and early-'50s, mid-'50s Sun Records you hear that beat a lot, like a fast, Johnny Cash type of rhythm."

Simon put together a rhythm section comprised of three African musicians: guitarist Ray Phiri, fretless bass player Baghiti Khumalo, and drummer Isaac Mtshali. Simon played the drums for Phiri, and asked him to play something over it. Phiri started to play his version of American Country on electric guitar, which were chords not frequently used in African music: minor chords. When Simon asked him why he played that, Phiri responded, "I was just imitating the way you write."

Simon asked him to overdub it with a lick, and along with Khumalo and Mtshali, they came up with the basic track. Said Simon, "The track has a beautiful emptiness to it. That's what made me think of Sun Records when it was nothing but slapback echo and the song."

With Phiri playing his approximation of Amercian country, and Baghiti playing a straight ahead African groove on bass, Simon felt there was a commonality in the music, and he wrote a lyric to express that.

At first, Simon considered the word "Graceland" a placeholder title until he could come up with something better - maybe something that had to do with Africa. After a while, he realized the title wasn't going away, and he got comfortable with it. Said Simon: "I couldn't replace it. I thought, Maybe I'm supposed to go to Graceland. Maybe I'm supposed to go on a trip and see what I'm writing about, and I did."

Simon describes that trip in the song; he drove to Graceland from Louisiana on Route 61, and the lyrics were his thoughts of the countryside: "The Mississippi Delta is shining like a national guitar." When he finally got to Graceland, he took the famous tour.

This is the title track of Simon's most successful album, selling over 15 million copies and winning a Grammy for Album of the Year. It is an album focusing mostly on African music, but it also explores other forms of non-mainstream music, like Zydeco. Simon considers this song to be less African-sounding than most of the other African-based tracks. The single also won Simon his third Record of the Year award - he previously won for "Mrs. Robinson" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

Paul Simon's visit to South Africa was no easy task, as many nations were boycotting the country because of their racist apartheid policy. However, the United Nations Anti-Apartheid Committee supported his efforts since he only recorded with black South African musicians and did not collaborate with the government in any way. This didn't appease some critics, who felt that violating sanctions undermined efforts to effect change in the country, no matter his artistic intentions. Ultimately, the Graceland project helped raise awareness to the apartheid struggle and expose many South African musicians to a global audience. The sanctions were put in place mainly to prevent entertainers from performing lucrative gigs at the Sun City resort, and Simon did nothing to support the corrupt government there.

Regarding the lyrics, "There's a girl in New York City who calls herself the human trampoline," Simon explained to SongTalk magazine: "That line came to me when I was walking past the Museum of Natural History. For no reason I can think of. It's not related to anybody. Or anything. It just struck me as funny. Although that's an image that people remember, they talk about that line. But really, what interested me was the next line, because I was using the word 'Graceland' but it wasn't in the chorus. I was bringing 'Graceland' back into a verse. Which is one of the things I learned from African music: the recapitulation of themes can come in different places."

Explaining the World Music component of this song in the album reissue, Simon explained: "The part of me that had 'Graceland' in my head I think was subconsciously reacting to what I first heard in the drums, which was some kind of Sun Records/country/blues amalgam. What Ray was doing was mixing up his aural recollections of what American country was and what kind of chord changes I played. So the whole song really is one sound evoking a response, and that eventually became a lyric that instead of being about a South African subject or a political subject, it became a traveling song. That's really the secret of World Music is that people are able to listen to each other, made associations, and play their own music that sounds like it fits into another culture."

Several months after the initial recording sessions, Nigerian pedal steel guitarist Demola Adepoju was added to the track. This added a sound familiar to both American and African music, as the pedal steel guitar is a popular instrument in West Africa.

This song has stood the test of time, but when it was released as a single, it only charted at #82 in the US and didn't crack the charts in the UK. It didn't fit neatly into any radio formats like "You Can Call Me Al," so it lacked hit potential. It did find an audience as part of the album, which went to #1 in the UK and stayed on the charts for nearly two years. In America, the album peaked at #3 but stayed on the chart for 97 weeks.

According to an article in the London Times, part of this song is an account of Paul Simon's marriage breakup with his first wife Peggy Harper. The nine-year-old "traveling companion" he refers to is their son Harper, who three years later, at the age of 12, accompanied his father on the Graceland tour. Harper Simon, born in 1972, developed into a singer-songwriter. He teamed up with his stepmother Edie Brickell for the 2008 album Heavy Circles, and a year later released his first solo album, which is called Harper Simon.

Don and Phil Everly of the Everly Brother sang backup on this track. Paul Simon and his musical partner Art Garfunkel idolized the Everlys and recorded their song "Bye Bye Love" for their Bridge Over Troubled Water album. Simon said he heard "Graceland" as "a perfect Everly Brothers song."

In a 1993 interview on Larry King Live, Simon said this was his favorite song.

The B-side of the single was "Hearts And Bones," which can be found on the album of the same name, released three years prior to Graceland.

Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al

Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Graceland
Released: 1986

You Can Call Me Al Lyrics

A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
Bonedigger Bonedigger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly Beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know I don't find this stuff amusing anymore

If you'll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You Can Call Me Al

A man walks down the street
He says why am I short of attention
Got a short little span of attention
And wo my nights are so long
Where's my wife and family
What if I die here
Who'll be my role-model
Now that my role-model is
Gone Gone
He ducked back down the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
All along along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations

If you'll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You can call me Al
Call me Al

A man walks down the street
It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the Third World
Maybe it's his first time around
He doesn't speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound
The sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterlings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

If you'll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You can call me Al
Call me Al

Writer/s: SIMON, PAUL
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

You Can Call Me Al Song Chart

Simon started recorded this song in South Africa, where he worked with local musicians and experimented with their sounds. He recorded with many different musicians while he was there, and he loved the work of the guys from a local group called Stimela, whose guitarist Ray Phiri came up with the riff for this song during one of their jam sessions. These recordings were edited together in New York by Simon's producer Roy Halee - a monumental task in the age of analog recording, since in South Africa, they rolled a lot of tape that Halee had to sort out with a series of splices.

The lyrics contain some intricate wordplay that Simon wrote very carefully around the track, and the character in the song symbolic of his South Africa experience. At the time, South Africa was divided by Apartheid, a policy that separated blacks and whites, and a cultural boycott was in place (check out the Songfacts on "Sun City"). Simon defied this boycott and went anyway, taking a lot of heat for his actions - even though his intentions were good, many black leaders in South Africa felt that any violation of the boycott hindered their cause. Because of the boycott, music from the area was secluded, and when Simon released Graceland, he brought the music of the country to the world. In the documentary Under African Skies, Simon explained: "'You Can Call Me Al' is really the story of somebody like me, who goes to Africa with no idea and ends up having an extraordinary spiritual experience."

This song is about a self-obsessed person becoming aware of his surroundings. In a 1990 interview with SongTalk magazine, Simon explained: "'You Can Call Me Al' starts off very easily with sort of a joke: 'Why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?' Very easy words. Then it has a chorus that you can't understand. What is he talking about, you can call me Betty, and Betty, you can call me Al? You don't know what I'm talking about. But I don't think it's bothersome. You don't know what I'm talking about but neither do I. At that point.
The second verse is really a recapitulation: A man walks down the street, he says... another thing.
And by the time you get to the third verse, and people have been into the song long enough, now you can start to throw abstract images. Because there's been a structure, and those abstract images, they will come down and fall into one of the slots that the mind has already made up about the structure of the song.
So now you have this guy who's no longer thinking about the mundane thoughts, about whether he's getting too fat, whether he needs a photo opportunity, or whether he's afraid of the dogs in the moonlight and the graveyard."

So where did "Al" and "Betty" in this song come from? That stems from a 1970 party that Simon hosted with his wife, Peggy Harper. Simon's friend, the composer Stanley Silverman, brought along another composer named Pierre Boulez, and when he made his exit, Boulez called Simon "Al" and his wife "Betty." Boulez was French, and he wasn't being rude - it was just his interpretation of what he heard - Paul=Al Peggy=Betty.

Silverman's son is Ben Silverman, a television mogul who was executive producer of the American version of The Office. In 2011, Ben commissioned a work composed by his dad called "Les Folies d'Al," which includes variations of "You Can Call Me Al" and is a send-up of the incident.

This was the first single off Graceland, which won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 1988. It was Simon's first hit since 1980, when "Late In The Evening" went to #6 in the US.

The best we can tell, this is by far the biggest hit containing a penny whistle solo. It was played by Jy Morr (Morris) Goldberg, a white South African who was living in New York.

Simon arranged for some of the musicians who played on this song, including guitarist Ray Phiri, bass player Bakithi Kumalo and drummer Isaac Mtshali, to came to America, where they worked on some other tracks for the album and backed Simon when he appeared on Saturday Night Live, where he performed this song on May 10, 1986, a few months before the album was released. These musicians later accompanied Simon on his worldwide tour for Graceland.

The video featured Chevy Chase lip-synching the vocals while Simon pretended to play various instruments. Most videos at the time were "Performance Videos," meaning the bands would pretend to be playing the song. This video did a great job mocking them. The clip was also notable for its simplicity - it was shot in a small, unadorned room using a single camera.

When they recorded the tracks for this song in South Africa, Simon and his producers were sure they had a hit with this song. Even though the Graceland album did very well, this song was a slow starter. The single did well in the UK, where it made #4 in September 1986, but in America, it stalled at #44 in October. After the album and video gained momentum, the song was reissued with more promotion in March 1987, and this time it went to #23 in the US. It was Simon's last Top 40 hit in America.

Al Gore used this while he was running for Vice President in 1992. Simon has played at various Democratic fund raisers.

This echoes a line from the folk song, "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime," about a guy who has fallen on hard times:
Say, don't you remember?
They called me Al
It was Al all the time.

Say, don't you remember?
I'm your pal.
Brother, can you spare a dime? (thanks, Andy - Los Angeles, CA)

The University of Florida band plays the tune to "You Can Call Me Al" at every basketball game and has done so for a number of years. It serves at an unofficial theme for the basketball team. The student section at the O'Connell Center (where the basketball team plays) is called the Rowdy Reptiles and while the song plays students sing along with "Da da da da, da da da da..." waving their hands with the music. (thanks to Gator fan and alumnus Sarah Burchfield)