You Can Call Me Ray or You Can Call Me
The songwriter explains the new methods used to write this and the others songs on "Graceland."
If you lot'll exist my bodyguard
I can exist your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty, when you lot call me,
You tin can call me Al
Telephone call me Al
From Paul Simon's landmark Graceland, "Yous Can Call Me Al" is quintessential Simon. It's whimsical, rhythmically infectious, poetic and conversational, all before it expands into a whole other realm.
The famously funny nonetheless enigmatic chorus, Simon said, came from a funny memory of going to a party at the New York apartment of Pierre Boulez, the conductor-composer. Simon and his first married woman Peggy arrived, meeting their host at the door, who evidently had no clue who they were. Boulez introduced them to his guests every bit "Al and Betty."
It was the first single from Graceland, and became a hit, launched by the famous music video with Chevy Chase.
All the songs for Graceland, unlike his previous work written with vocalism and guitar, were written to tracks he and his friend, the producer-engineer Roy Halee, recorded in Africa. Simon brought those recordings back to his New York City home, where he allowed the free energy of the music to inspire the lyrics and melodies.
It was completed at the Striking Manufacturing plant in New York with Roy Halee in Apr of 1986. Rob Mounsey, who played synth, too arranged and conducted the nine-piece horn section (five trumpets, 2 trombones, baritone and bass saxophones).
There's a delightful bass break by Bakithi Kumalo, which was not part of the original arrangement, but suggested by Paul when learning that information technology was the bassist's altogether. Bakithi improvised the fast fretless interruption, which Roy sonically doctored in New York; he used the first half of the phrase, then reversed information technology for the 2nd half, creating a musical palindrome.
Jazz musician Morris Goldberg played the other solo on the song on a penny whistle.
Simon wrote the song using a new arroyo to lyrics, which combined colloquial speech with abstruse, "enriched" language.
The lyrics shift from the ordinary language of the first poesy to a third verse imbued with enriched imagery, the "angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity…" That progression is not random. Naught Simon does is random. Which is not to say he calculates his lyrics; he doesn't. As he said during our first of many conversations back in 1988, "I'm more interested in what I detect than what I invent."
Asked what the stardom was between discovery and invention, he said, "You just have no thought that that's a thought that you had; it surprises you; it tin make me laugh or brand me emotional. When it happens and I'm the audition and I react, I take organized religion in that considering I'm already reacting. I don't have to question it. I've already been the audience."
"But if I brand it up," he continued, "knowing where it'due south going, information technology'due south not every bit much fun. It may be only as good, but it's more fun to discover information technology."
To go to the right place to allow that discovery to occur, he'd mind to the music while tossing a baseball against the wall, and catching information technology. Asked what effect that had on this song, he gave the following answer, which leads into his explanation of discovering what became "You Can Telephone call Me Al."
PAUL SIMON: The act of throwing a ball and catching a ball is so natural and calming. It'south like a Zen practise, really. It's a very pleasant feeling if you like playing brawl, and while you practise information technology, your mind kind of wanders, and that's really what you desire to happen. You want your mind to wander and to choice upward words and phrases, and fool around with them and drop them.
Because as presently as your heed knows that information technology's on, and it'due south supposed to produce some lines, either it doesn't or it produces things that are very predictable.
And that's why I say I'thou not interested in writing something that I idea about; I'm interested in discovering where my mind wants to go or what object information technology wants to pick upwardly.
[The mind] e'er picks upwardly on something truthful. You'll find out much more about what you're thinking that way than y'all will if you're determined to say something. What you're determined to say is filled with all your rationalizations and your defenses, and all of that what you want to say to the world. As opposed to what you're thinking.
And equally a lyricist, my job is to find out what it is that I'm thinking. Even if it'due south something that I don't want to exist thinking.
I was trying to larn how to be able to write colloquial speech and then intersperse it with enriched linguistic communication, and then go back to vernacular. So the thing would keep smoothly, and then some prototype would come out that was interesting, then it would go back to this very smooth conversational matter. That was a technique that I was learning.
It didn't have anything to do with logic or annihilation; I don't know where it came from. But on Hearts and Bones, there's more of that. "["Rene & Georgette] Magritte" has more than of that. "Hearts and Bones" is more of that.
"A Train in the Distance" is in itself that kind of spoken communication: "Everybody loves the sound of a railroad train in the distance; everybody thinks it's truthful." That is imagery, and that's the title.
And so past the fourth dimension I got to Graceland, I was trying to let that kind of enriched language flow naturally in the form of it, and then that you wouldn't really notice it equally much.
I recall in Hearts and Bones, y'all could feel it was coming. Whereas in Graceland, I tried to do it where you wouldn't notice information technology, where you sort of passed the line then information technology was over. To allow the words tumble this fashion and that way, and sometimes I'd increment the rhythm of the words and then that they would come by you and then when a phrase was sort of different and came past yous so quickly that all y'all could get was the feeling.
So I started to try and piece of work with more than feelings around with words because the audio of the record was so proficient, you could move feelings.
"You Can Telephone call Me Al" starts very ordinary, almost like a joke; like the structure of a joke cliché; "There'southward a rabbi, a minister and a priest…." "2 Jews walk into a bar…" "A man walks downward the street…" That'south what I was doing there.
Because how you begin a song is one of the hardest things. The showtime line of a vocal is very hard. I always take this image in my mind of a road that goes similar this: [motions with hands to signify a route that starts narrow and gets wider every bit it opens out], then that the implication is that the directions are pointing outward.]
It'due south like a baseball diamond; in that location's more than and more space out here as opposed to similar [motions an inverted road growing more narrow], because if it'southward like this at this signal in the song, you're out of options.
So you want to have that first line that has a lot of options to get you lot going. And the other thing that I try to remember, especially if a song is long, is: You accept plenty of time. You don't have to kill them; you don't accept to grab them by the throat with the commencement line
In fact, y'all take to wait for the audience. They're going to sit, go settled in their seat. Their concentration is non even in that location. Y'all have to be a skilful host to people's attention span. You're non going to come in at that place and work existent hard right away. Besides many things are coming; the music is coming, the rhythm is coming; all kinds of information that the brain is sorting out
So give them piece of cake words and like shooting fish in a barrel thoughts and let it movement along, and allow the mind get into the groove of it. Especially if it's a rhythm tune.
And at a sure betoken, when the brain is loping along easily, then you come up with the showtime kind of thought or image that's different. Because information technology's entertaining at that point. Otherwise people haven't settled in yet.
So "You Can Call Me Al" is an case of that kind of writing. It starts off very easily with sort of a joke: "Why am I soft in the middle when the remainder of my life is so hard?" It's a joke, with very like shooting fish in a barrel words.
Then it has a chorus that you lot can't understand what is he talking about – "You can telephone call me Betty, and Betty, y'all can call Me Al." You don't know what I'grand talking nearly, but I don't think it's bothersome. You don't know what I'thousand talking about, but neither practice I, at that point.
The second verse is really a recapitulation of the first: A man walks down the street he says… some other thing. And by the time you get to the tertiary verse, and people have been into the vocal long enough, at present you lot can start to throw abstract images. Because there'south been a structure, and those abstract images, they will just come downwardly and autumn into one of the slots that the mind has already made up almost the structure of the song.
The guy in the tertiary poetry thinks, "Peradventure information technology'southward the third earth, possibly information technology's his first time around…" I thought it was interesting to combine what was on my mind with that music. I thought it would be interesting to an African audience, if they could get to the point of hearing it. And they did, once the anthology became a big hitting.
And then at present you accept this guy who's no longer thinking about the mundane thoughts, nigh whether he's getting too fatty, whether he needs a photo opportunity or whether he'southward afraid of the dogs in the moonlight and the graveyard, and he's off in: "Heed to the sound, expect what's going on… at that place's cattle and scatterlings…And these sounds are very fantastic. And look at the buildings – there's angels in the compages.
And that's the stop of the song. Information technology goes "phooomp," and that's the stop.
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"Y'all Tin Call Me Al" credits.
- Paul Simon—lead vocals, six-string electric bass, background vocals
- Ray Phiri—guitar
- Adrian Belew—guitar synthesizer
- Bakithi Kumalo—bass
- Isaac Mtshali—drums
- Ralph MacDonald—percussion
- James Guyatt—percussion
- Rob Mounsey—synthesizer, horn organization (uncredited on anthology)
- Ronnie Cuber—bass and baritone saxophone
- Jon Faddis—trumpet
- Randy Brecker—trumpet
- Lew Soloff—trumpet
- Alan Rubin—trumpet
- Dave Bargeron—trombone
- Kim Allan Cissel—trombone
- Morris Goldberg—penny whistle
- Ladysmith Black Mambazo—groundwork vocals (uncredited)
You Can Phone call Me Al
By Paul Simon
1. A man walks down the street
He says, "Why am I soft in the eye, now?
Why am I soft in the middle?
The rest of my life is and then hard
I demand a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end upward a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard"
Bonedigger, Bonedigger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far abroad from my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly, Beerbelly
Get these mutts abroad from me
Y'all know, I don't detect this stuff amusing anymore
If you'll be my bodyguard
I tin can be your long lost pal
I tin phone call yous Betty
And Betty, when you lot phone call me, yous tin call me Al
2. A man walks down the street
He says, "Why am I short of attention?
Got a short little span of attention
And, whoa, my nights are so long
Where'south 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 dorsum downwardly the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
All along, forth
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations
3. A human walks downwardly the street
Information technology's a street in a foreign globe
Perchance it's the third earth
Perchance it's his offset time effectually
Doesn't speak the linguistic communication
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound, the sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says, "Amen and Hallelujah!"
If you lot'll exist my babysitter
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty, when you call me, you can call me Al
Source: https://americansongwriter.com/you-can-call-me-al-paul-simon-behind-the-song/
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