Guitar Tricks Insider February/March Digital Edition | Page 36

COVER STORY ACOUSTIC FEATURE PAUL SIMON’S MASTER CLASS By his mid-30s Paul Simon had come to terms with Simon & Garfunkel. “It was really a good run,” he told me in 1976. “We got knocked, but the overwhelming majority of people treated us with great affection. We had far more success than we ever anticipated. If I felt at a certain time that I wasn’t getting enough credit for writing the songs, I don’t feel that way now. In the middle of things you can get competitive or petty. I know there were a lot of demands on me – pressure to put out records, self-induced pressure to write when it was difficult, drug stuff clouding up my brain, tensions between myself and Artie as our careers grew. There were times when it seemed pretty miserable. But looking back on it, it wasn’t miserable at all.” He never had the hair for the sixties. It was too thin and curled a little at the ends when he let it grow past his ears, as seen in the photograph on the cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s sou