Bob Dylan Deeply Hurt Paul Simon With His Drunken Antics
People have often made comparisons between Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, and Simon doesn’t necessarily welcome this. He wanted to be seen as a musician in his own right, but he also had been hurt by the way Dylan had treated him. Simon & Garfunkel were playing a show that Dylan attended. Dylan laughed and talked throughout the performance, which Simon said was particularly hurtful coming from someone he admired.
Paul Simon said he doesn’t like being compared to Bob Dylan
Simon was an early fan of Dylan, and he said that he took inspiration from him. Still, he didn’t want to be compared to Dylan, particularly as his career progressed.
“I usually come in second to (to Dylan), and I don’t like coming in second,” he told Rolling Stone (via The Guardian). “In the beginning, when we were first signed to Columbia, I really admired Dylan’s work. ‘The Sound of Silence’ wouldn’t have been written if it weren’t for Dylan. But I left that feeling around The Graduate and ‘Mrs. Robinson.’ They weren’t folky any more.”
Still, when discussing his music, Simon tended to compare himself to Dylan.
“One of my deficiencies is my voice sounds sincere,” he said. “I’ve tried to sound ironic. I don’t. I can’t. Dylan, everything he sings has two meanings. He’s telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time. I sound sincere every time.”
Bob Dylan laughed all throughout Paul Simon’s set
Comparisons to Dylan may have been particularly grating to Simon after a 1964 show at Gerde’s Folk City in New York. Simon & Garfunkel were playing when Dylan and writer Robert Shelton came in. They sat at the bar and drank throughout the performance.
“At the bar, Bob and I had been doing quite a bit of drinking and we had an advanced case of giggles over nothing,” Shelton wrote in his book No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan. “We weren’t laughing at the performance, though Simon perhaps thought we were.”
Simon wasn’t angry at Dylan, but he said that his behavior stung.
“I wasn’t furious,” he said, per the book Paul Simon: The Life by Robert Hilburn. “But I was hurt. Here was someone laughing during my performance — especially someone I admired.”
The two artists toured together in the 1990s
Despite this, Simon and Dylan toured together in 1999. Per Rolling Stone, they alternated as headliners and played a mini-set together.
“After Simon’s hour and a half, Dylan ambled out and joined him for a wild mini-set that was half-historic, half-train wreck,” the magazine reported. “The odd couple began with a loose tag team of ‘The Sound of Silence,’ with Dylan decidedly not mimicking Art Garfunkel’s choirboy majesty. Then, our greatest living songwriters teamed up on covers — Johnny Cash’s ‘I Walk the Line’ and Bill Monroe’s ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ — before taking on a misguided but endearing reggae-tinted ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.’“
