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The Story Of Graceland As Told By Paul Simon
Simon, Paul
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The "Graceland" story is a very interesting story
In that it's a very good example of how a collaboration works
Even when you're not aware of it occurring
The track is one of the early tracks
Because I only did five tracks in South Africa
On the sessions that I did with Forere
Who is the accordion player
Plays on "Boy in the Bubble"
We did a few other tracks
One of the tracks, I said
"You know, I like only the drums on this track
I don't really want anything else
I don't want the accordion or bass
I just want the drums"
And the drums were...
Something like a kind of a traveling rhythm
In country music
I'm a big Sun Records fan
Early 50's, mid-50's Sun Records
You hear that drum beat a lot
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Like a fast, Johnny Cash type of rhythm
And somewhere later in the week of recording
When I had, you know put together a rhythm section of Ray Phiri
And Bakithi Kumalo and Isaac Mtshali as the rhythm section
I said to Ray one day, "I like this drum pattern
Take a listen to it and see if it does anything for you
You know it sounds kind of like a country thing to me"
So he starts to play his version of American country, Ray
He was in the key of E, and then he was playing, you know
Of course he's playing electric
But he'd be up over here, you know, like
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And then the drums are going
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Oh, then he went
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Which is a relative minor chord to that key
I said, "Hey, that's interesting that you played a minor chord"
Because all the music that I'd been recording with
In South Africa, with the exception of the Sotho music
It was all three-chord major chords
And there was never a minor chord
There were times when I'd ask Black Mambazo to sing a minor chord
They couldn't sing a minor chord
They just didn't hear it
So he put in this minor chord, and I said
"That's interesting, why'd you do that?"
He said, "I was just imitating the way you write"
I said, "Well, play this lick over it"
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In an overdub
And he did, and it was a really nice, really nice mix
And Bakithi was playing
The track has a beautiful emptiness to it
I think that's part of what makes me think that it's
Something like Sun Records
You know, when it was just a few instruments and
Nothing really much except slap-back echo and a song
There's also another connection, musically, that's in there, and that is
There's a pedal steel guitar in there
Which is a, of course, a, you know, like a country instrument
But it's also a West African instrument, and the guy who played it, his name was Demola Adepoju
He played with King Sunny Ade's band
You know, I wanted to hear what that lick sounded like
Seemed like it would be a very good pedal steel lick
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And it was a great pedal steel lick, but it was also a great Ray Phiri performance
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To me, what's interesting is that Ray reaches into his memory
For some kind of approximation of what he thinks of as American country
And Bakithi plays straight ahead to the African groove
And so, the two, you know, the two musics find a commonality
And the lyric expresses that
Don and Phil Everly came in and sang
I always heard that songs as a perfect Everly Brothers song
Poor boys and pilgrims with families
And we are going to Graceland
I was down in South Africa in, I think, February
Maybe early March, and I think I didn't go down to Memphis until maybe May
Brought it home, and I was trying to write to it
I would, you know, sing these lines about Graceland
Graceland, of course I wanted to get rid of the Graceland part because
I mean, what's Graceland got to do with South Africa or anything like that
So that's gotta go
It's just a question of what I'm going to replace it with
But then I couldn't replace it with anything
I was always singing that
And finally I said, "I don't know, well maybe I'm supposed to go to Graceland"
I've never been, maybe I'm supposed to go on a trip and see what I'm writing about. So I did
And and then I began to describe the trip
The Mississippi Delta
'Cause I was driving up from Louisiana
Where I cut the Zydeco track on "Graceland"
I was driving from Highway 61
You know, I'm just writing about what the countryside looked like
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
Memphis, Tennessee
I'm going to Graceland
And finally got there to, you know, to Graceland
And just, you know, made a tour through Graceland
But what's interesting about all of this is that
The part of me that had "Graceland" in my head
I think subconsciously was reacting to what I first heard in the drums
Which was a kind of Sun Records country-blues amalgam
And what Ray was doing was mixing up his aural recollections of
What American country was, and what kind of chord changes I played
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And so the whole song really is just one sound evoking a response
And that eventually became a lyric that evoked instead of being specifically
About a South African subject or even a political subject
It became a traveling song, that had to do with the original sound
Which was the drums, and and and Sun Records and Graceland
That's really the secret of world music, is people are able to listen to each other
And make associations, and play their own music
That sounds like it fits into, into another culture
And that's how, that's how it worked, and that's how it worked then
The story of Graceland
Ooh, ooh, ooh
In Graceland, in Graceland, in Graceland
I'm going to Graceland
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