As Paul Simon slip slides away, having contributed to the official bio "The Life," issued a weird new album covering old obscure songs, and taken his last tour, we look back at what Art Garfunkel considered his best song: "Kathy's Song."
You've heard it sung in every park in the summer, strummed and bleated by some guy or girl trying to get some attention. It's almost a rite of passage to sit in some smelly coffee house, cross-legged, a candle nearby, and put on a glum face as, with closed eyes, the first words come out: "I hear the drizzle of the rain..."
Most people listening, wish for the sound of silence. But "Kathy's Song" remains, ahead of "Wild World" and "Fire and Rain," the best number to say: "I'm here, I'm emotional, I'm serious about my singing and my art, and most of all, I really want to get laid."
If you do have talent, like Sarah Jarosz, you can hook people with this familiar song into listening to your own originals, and you can end up with a Grammy or two!
The song is a traditional ode, a classic love ballad professing eternal devotion. It's a love that will last. The reality is that both Paul Simon and Kathy Chiddy had much longer relationships with others. Paul would get married three times (Kathy was not one of the wives). Kathy has been in a relationship with somebody else for 40 years.
Paul was so nuts for her, that ala “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” who put HIS girlfriend Suze Rotolo on an album cover, he chose to add her to the front of the “Paul Simon Songbook.” How idyllic.
The truth seems to be rather mundane. The puppy love was there for a while, but, let’s quote another Simon, this one named Carly:
She said, "I know he'll never leave me
I never felt it deep inside like this before"
It was good to see her, believe me
But I couldn't stand to hear this anymore
Kathy probably did say something like that to her friends. She just couldn't express it as brilliantly as Paul Simon. Paul's poetic take, soaring into the regions of myth, make it tough for people to accept the truth: undying love and almost painfully intense devotion sometimes aren't enough. Love affairs can be hot and then cool. Those looking for for "the story behind the song" don't want to know that an artist's poetic song isn't totally based in reality. The Paul and Kathy relationship was no different than a million college romances or even high school romances where the couple vowed to be together forever, and sealed it with a kiss tasting of Burger King fries.
The many biographers of Paul Simon have been unable to get anything fantastic out of Paul about Kathy, and Kathy, perhaps bewildered by all the attention to what was just a first love that didn't last, figures that it's better to say nothing than to shrug, "Hey, I've been with another guy for 40 years." In "Paul Simon: The Life," the author merely writes: “Kathy first heard it on a tape Simon made of the song in New York. Garfunkel would refer to “Kathy’s Song” decades later as his favorite Paul Simon composition.” Ah. Thanks. This is the definitive biography, folks.
In 1963, 18 year-old Kathy was a folk fan and got a dream job selling tickets at the Railway Inn folk club, in Brentwood, Essex. She saw Paul there, but it was the following year that the shy girl, no groupie, got introduced to him by a mutual friend. As he would later do with his first wife Peggy ("Peg" in the song lyrics) and with Carrie Fisher (the two "one and one-half wandering Jews" of "Hearts and Bones") Paul found a muse in Kathy, and name-checked her in title of one song, and in the lyric of another. "Kathy's Song" was on the solo album he made in England. He sang it well, but eventually, like "Bridge Over Troubled Water," he gave it to Artie as a solo.
Nobody can touch Garfunkel on “Kathy’s Song,” since his synagogue-trained voice, so often called “angelic,” conjures up the images of spirituality in Paul's lyric.
On this blog of less renown, the choice of singer is, of course, a woman. Since both "Wide World" and "Fire and Rain" more obviously are songs by men sung to women, "Kathy's Song," despite the title, is the best choice for women because there's actually no gender in the lyrics:
And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you
And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I
It's interesting that women could sing those lines at all. About men? Really? Those ripe, almost 18th century lyrics of almost-religious devotion???
You can't imagine Edie Brickell singing that to Paul Simon. Yoko singing it to John. Linda to Paul. Sally Field to Burt Reynolds. Goldie Hawn to Bill Hudson. Tammy Wynette to George Jones. Nancy Sinatra to Lee Hazlewood. No woman would sing “there but for the grace of you go I" to a guy. Think about Sonny singing “the only truth I know is you" to Cher. Yeah. But not Cher singing that to Sonny!
Women who sing the song either just like the song and WISH they could find a guy for whom the lyrics would have some meaning, OR...having had their fill of guys in puffy shirts tied with string instead of buttons, who ask them to get into bondage games, they've gone to the other side, and are singing this song to another woman.
Sarah Jarosz, recorded “Kathy’s Song” as part of a 5-track EP, “Live at the Troubadour” on August 9, 2012. It was released (today we say “dropped”) the following year. Her supporting musicians on the album are Alex Hargreaves and Nathaniel Smith. The Troubadour, which hosted such legends as Phil Ochs and Joni Mitchell, remains an important credit for any folksinger to have.
The Texas-born folkie and Americana/roots singer issued two studio albums before this live one, and two studio albums since. The first, “Song Up in Her Head” (2009) was #1 on the Roots chart, and a cut from it was Grammy nominated for “Best Country Instrumental Performance.” And guess what, her latest, “Undercurrent,” also hit #1 on the Roots chart and was Top 10 on the Folk chart as well. All her albums are on the Sugar Hill label.
“Undercurrent” also won her the “Best Folk Album” Grammy, and the cut “House of Mercy” got her a “Best American Roots Performance” Grammy. You didn’t know that, because the Grammy show isn't about "diversity," it's about Beyonce and Jay-Z, and it's about rappers, and it's about prap -- the pop tarts who rap-sing their lyrics, like CardiB and Taylor "Look What You Made Me Do" Swift. The diversity of classical, jazz, roots and country aren't celebrated on the Grammy broadcast and awards in these and other categories are barely even mentioned.
Who is considered a sensitive singer-songwriter these days? Sam Smith? Darwin was wrong. And nothing by Sheeran, Adele, Taylor, Sam, or Kanye, Beyonce or Jay-Z will ever be as good as...
KATHY'S SONG - listen or download, no dodgy websites re-directing you, no ego Passwords, no Paypal tip nagging
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