Yeah, and if there’s even a shred of truth to this Simon story the Lobos is telling about the Graceland sessions, then Paul really is the world’s greatest dong. But first, the happy good times: David Byrne joined Paul Simon for one night of his month-long BAM residency last week. The video has surfaced, and as promised, we are sharing. So without further ado, here’s David (although you can call him Al, RIMSHOT):
Next up is “I Know What I Know” which clearly Byrne was born to perform.
Sounds so good, it’s almost like David wrote it! Which is an even less funny joke than it first appeared to be when you hear Los Lobos lay bare the sordid details of their days in the studio with Paul during the Graceland sessions. That Paul stole from many of the African musicians who worked on the album — and later gave them songwriting credits — is well known; that he stole “Myth Of The Fingerprints” from Los Lobos, not so much. Here LL’s Steve Berlin shares his side of the story with Jambase:
JAMBASE: Speaking of doing a lot of different records and working with a lot of amazing songwriters, I own a ton of the records that you’ve done over the years. One, in particular, I’d like to ask you about is Paul Simon’s Graceland. I obsessed over that thing when I was young. Do you have any recollections of working on it?
STEVE BERLIN: Oh, I have plenty of recollections of working on that one. I don’t know if you heard the stories, but it was not a pleasant deal for us. I mean he [Simon] quite literally — and in no way do I exaggerate when I say — he stole the songs from us….
And you know, going into it, I had an enormous amount of respect for the guy. The early records were amazing, I loved his solo records, and I truly thought he was one of the greatest gifts to American music that there was.
At the time, we were high on the musical food chain. Paul had just come off One Trick Pony and was kind of floundering. People forget, before Graceland, he was viewed as a colossal failure. He was low. So when we were approached to do it, I was a way bigger fan than anybody else in the band. We got approached by Lenny Waronker and Mo Ostin who ran our record company [Warner Bros.], and this is the way these guys would talk — “It would mean a lot to the family if you guys would do this for us.” And we thought, “Ok well, it’s for the family, so we’ll do it.” It sounds so unbelievably naïve and ridiculous that that would be enough of a reason to go to the studio with him.
We go into the studio, and he had quite literally nothing. I mean, he had no ideas, no concepts, and said, “Well, let’s just jam.” We said, “We don’t really do that.” … Not by accident, not even at soundcheck. We would always just play a song.
… Paul was a very strange guy. Paul’s engineer was even stranger than Paul, and he just seemed to have no clue — no focus, no design, no real nothing. He had just done a few of the African songs that hadn’t become songs yet. Those were literally jams. Or what the world came to know and I don’t think really got exposed enough, is that those are actually songs by a lot of those artists that he just approved of. So that’s kind of what he was doing. It was very patrician, material sort of viewpoint. Like, because I’m gonna put my stamp on it, they’re now my songs. But that’s literally how he approached this stuff.
I remember he played me the one he did by John Hart, and I know John Hart, the last song on the record. He goes, “Yeah, I did this in Louisiana with this zy decko guy.” And he kept saying it over and over. And I remember having to tell him, “Paul, it’s pronounced zydeco. It’s not zy decko, it’s zydeco.” I mean that’s how incredibly dilettante he was about this stuff. The guy was clueless.
It was ridiculous. I think David starts playing “The Myth of the Fingerprints,” or whatever he ended up calling it. That was one of our songs. That year, that was a song we started working on By Light of The Moon. So that was like an existing Lobos sketch of an idea that we had already started doing. I don’t think there were any recordings of it, but we had messed around with it. We knew we were gonna do it. It was gonna turn into a song. Paul goes, “Hey, what’s that?” We start playing what we have of it, and it is exactly what you hear on the record. So we’re like, “Oh, ok. We’ll share this song.”
JAMBASE: Good way to get out of the studio, though…
STEVE BERLIN: Yeah. But it was very clear to us, at the moment, we’re thinking he’s doing one of our songs. It would be like if he did “Will the Wolf Survive?” Literally. A few months later, the record comes out and says “Words and Music by Paul Simon.” We were like, “What the fuck is this?”
We tried calling him, and we can’t find him. Weeks go by and our managers can’t find him. We finally track him down and ask him about our song, and he goes, “Sue me. See what happens.”
JAMBASE: What?! Come on…
STEVE BERLIN: That’s what he said. He said, “You don’t like it? Sue me. You’ll see what happens.” We were floored. We had no idea. The record comes out, and he’s a big hit. Retroactively, he had to give songwriting credit to all the African guys he stole from that were working on it and everyone seemed to forget. But that’s the kind of person he is. He’s the world’s biggest prick, basically.
So we go back to Lenny and say, “Hey listen, you stuck us in the studio with this fucking idiot for two days. We tried to get out of it, you made us stay in there, and then he steals our song?! What the hell?!” And Lenny’s always a politician. He made us forget about it long enough that it went away. But to this day, I do not believe we have gotten paid for it. We certainly didn’t get songwriting credit for it. And it remains an enormous bone that sticks in our craw. Had he even given us a millionth of what the song and the record became, I think we would have been – if nothing else – much richer, but much happier about the whole thing.
JAMBASE: Have you guys seen him since then?
STEVE BERLIN: No. Never run into him. I’ll tell you, if the guys ever did run into him, I wouldn’t want to be him, that’s for sure.
He goes on to talk some more fightin’ words and then adds, among other things, “That’s our version of it. I’d love to hear Paul’s version of it.” Yeah, we’d love to hear Paul’s version of it, too. Paul?
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gotta go with the Los Lobos version. ask anyone (besides Lorne Michaels) who has ever dealt with Simon: he IS a notorious prick
wow…as a huge fan of Lobos and a friend of the band, Steve is not one to make stories up, or fictionalize the truth. Steve speaks his mind and is a brilliant musician, along with the rest of the guys…why has this story just come out? Check out our exclusive interview, http://www.indieoma.com, we did with Steve last year…Lobos por vida…
“…and if there’s even a shred of truth to this Simon story the Lobos is telling about the Graceland session…”
Do your research, Stereogum. This is a very well covered story. How can you not have heard about this before? The stories surrounding the making of Graceland (and subsequent release) are appalling.
i didn’t know about that los lobos thing, and i’m a graceland junkie. i think the african musicians thing is well known, as the piece mentions, but the lobos portion is actually news. well, news to me and so i’m guessing most that aren’t as big of freaks as me. and it hurts me, because i just want to love graceland. dammit.
You can still love Graceland, buddy. You don’t have to like the person or even the process. But rip-off artists are artists, too. It’s about the product. Paul Simon could be a Nazi or a Lakers fan or a guy who plagarized a band that had a decent run of albums for ten years, but “Graceland” is transcendental, baby, and rightfully is held in higher esteem than anything Los Lobos have been able to put their name on.
The response, from an interview Simon did (http://thedreamerofmusic.com/EXPLAINS/EXPLAINS.htm):
?This Los Lobos thing has come up before, so I wanted to talk to you direct. They said all this stuff to Songtalk magazine in the States, and I’ve replied to it all in an interview that hasn’t run yet, but its all there. There was a bad atmosphere at those sessions (with Los Lobos on Graceland) from the start; I don’t know what it is with them. The whole deal for them working on Graceland was all worked out beforehand between Los Lobos and Lenny Warnoker (Managing Director at Warners USA) and there were no complaints at the time. It was made clear from the outset that we didn’t have a song. There was no song. It was being written from scratch. I was – and still am – a fan of the band. What I really love is the accordion sound. So we started jamming in the rehearsal room and nothing was really coming together, and so I said do you have any ideas we can work on. What I wanted for the Graceland track was like a generic Los Lobos dikka-de-dikka guitar sound. And so we came up with something around a riff. They never once said that this guitar line is one of ours and we don’t want you to have it. So we worked on recording this track for about three days, which is a long time to work on one track. I had to teach David Hildegger how to sing this song! And then David Hildegger came up to me and said “we’re not happy with this track. We wanna do a ballard”. But I couldn’t have that. At that time it was the last track of the whole album – eventually we did one more – and I just said at this stage I don’t care whether the album comes out without Los Lobos on it. I was getting really tired of it – I don’t want to get into a public slanging match over this, but this thing keeps coming up.
“So we finished the recordings. And three months passed, and there was no mention of “joint writing”. The album came out and we heard nothing. Then six months passed and Graceland had become a hit and the first thing I heard about the problem was when my manager got a lawyer’s letter. I was shocked. They sent this thing to my manager, not me. If there was a problem they could have contacted me direct, they’ve got my home number, we talked a lot. If you ask me it was a lawyer’s idea. You know, “the records a hit, and there’s $100,000 in it”. They had nine months from the recordings to talk to me about all this, but I heard nothing. And its still not sorted out because they still keep bringing it up – I heard they’d done this interview for you. I don’t want to get into a public slanging match with them, because I really like their music.”
Thanks BG. It’s good to hear Paul’s side. I know it’s all sort of old (the Jambase interview is a few years old), but still … 20 years later and Los Lobos sure hold a grudge. I’m a big fan of Graceland and hope to see Paul at BAM next week, but the more I read about the making of the album the more it seems like credit wasn’t given where it was due? (“Crazy Love Vol. II” was obviously stolen from Vampire Weekend.)
Steve Berlin here -Wow- thats the first time I’ve seen Pauls response and theres so much there that is not at all what happened. First off- I didn’t bring any of this up recently- it came out of an interview I did for the release of our last record about 2 years ago, so I’m hardly stirring things up- it just seems like a lot of people have spread it around recently, and I’m happy gets a proper airing. His story really breaks down when he whines about Davids singing- remember they were instrumental jams so nobody was singing anything, nor were we expected to. What happened is exactly as I told it- Paul had nothing idea-wise, and after 2 miserable days of truly pointless jamming we started playing a Lobos track we had rehearsed briefly and had intended to prepare for our next record. Paul said :What’s that? excitedly and we replied it was a track we had begun to put together- he says great lets do that, and it comes together in about 90 minutes. We thought we were clear as can be that it was one of our songs that we were playing- god knows it wasnt one of Pauls BECAUSE HE DIDNT HAVE ANY, EVER during the 48 hours we spent with him. As far as getting Dave to sing – that is a complete hallucination. Were were just making music- Paul told us he likes to take the tracks to his place in the Hamptons and throw a tennis ball at the wall while he comes up with rhymes- it was on 60 Minutes back then and I believe it shows him working on our song. We never thought that we were going to sing on it- we were just happy to be away from him and Roy the engineer. Then as far as the aftermath of the release- we thought it was an honest mistake and went in search of him or his representatives to square things. Months go by, the world is totally enraptured by the concept and the sound and our piddly comlaints are off the radar. We tried for months to find someone to get to Paul and register our complaint and the next thing we hear back which I have always thought came directly from Paul to Linda Clark, our manager at that time is this sentence-:You wanna sue me? Just try it ,, see what happens to you.” We didnt know what to do but we didnt want to slug it out in court, and Lenny said if we stopped whining about it he would make it all better. Basically we then got strung along till we went in to make La Bamba and then it fell off our active radar as all his other stuff began happening, I also wryly note Pauls line about hearing nothing for months after it came out- we were calling everyone we knew trying to get it worked out before more copies got sold, and then we heard he had to re do the cover to give the African players their proper credit, so that made us even more furious. And this day I dont think we ever got a penny for the 2 days work, so the moral here is always have a legal agreement before you start collaborating, especially with known assholes.
@BG – Eh, “David Hildegger”? Not sure how reputable your source is dude. That’s David Hidalgo.
yeah BG, I higly doubt anyone has to teach David how to sing or play…Jez…
If Paul Simon actually said all that, then he is an even bigger jackass than Berlin says he is. Even if what Simon says is true, he still should have given Los Lobos joint credit. He didn’t need their permission.
Paul’s version sounds sketchy. Either way he should’ve given them the courtesy of a credit if he admittedly stole a song from them. Whether they were going to use it in the future or not isn’t the point, it was still a song they were working on that he co-opted.
My gosh, Byrne sounds amazing with those songs. That’s seriously what I want playing in heaven.
I agree with you , wilceaux and Stephen B. Even if it happened exactly as Paul says, he’s totally abnormal for acting like it wasn’t a collaboration at all. I mean, obviously, it was. Normal people realize this instantly. Guess he really is a prick.
David Hidalgo’s name isn’t the only one spelled wrong in that excerpt – so is Lenny Waronker’s, the head of WB. If you go to that link, the introductory paragraph is written in somewhat broken english. To give them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps Simon’s comments were from an audio interview and they transcribed parts incorrectly? Or you can go with the cyncical view and say it’s made up. The quotes don’t appear anywhere else on the internet.
I’m a fan of Los Lobos and of Paul Simon and I find the story depressing, to say the least. It reminds me of another issue I haven’t heard too many people talking about – Bob Dylan’s Modern Times CD where he takes sole writing credit for a number of blues songs that he merely added a new lyric or two to. I think they’re both similar situations.
Actually, it’s a way worse story than even Steve Berlin realizes. If you look at the liner notes, the first person Paul Crime On mentions is Heidi Berg. Paul was a mentor and unofficial producer at the suggestion of Lorne Michaels with a young singer-songwriter named Heidi Berg. She was band leader and guitarist for Lornes ill-fated “The New Show”. She discovered a tape of South African Accordion music called Gumboots Accordion Jive Hits. She had been listening to it for months and in one of her weekly sessions with the Apalling one, she said she wanted her album to have some of the same accordion feel as this weird tape. She was Norwegian and played accordion too. Small told her to let him borrow the tape and he’d give her his opinion. She lent him the tape and he disappeared. Did not return her calls…was incommunicado. Then after a few weeks she gets an invite from Simeon’s office to come hear him do a set of his hits in a one man show in Saratoga. She goes to the show and goes backstage afterwards. He’s all sweetness and light. She casually asks him about the tape. He says that he bought all the rghts to the tape and he’s going to Africa to record with the band. She’s floored. She expresses her outrage and hurt. He says, “well, you were free to go to africa too.” She says “I did’nt think you were my competitor”. He says “You try to compete with me little girl, and I’ll cut you down where you stand”. He recorded his record and actually used THE EXACT TRACKS FROM THE GUMBOOTS TAPE for several songs…You Can Call Me Al was lifted straight from the original Gumboots tape. Of course it says words and music by Paul Simon. As far as we know, he’s never given Heidi Berg a dime. He sent her a gold record, and then a platinum record and credited her as “a friend who gave me a tape”…..if there is a hell, he’ll rot in it for eternity. Hey Paul, what goes around comes around. The whole world is watching….
Hi,
I came across this while looking up some info on Graceland.
Frankly, this shows a bit of ignorance about legal songwriting credit on the part of the saxaphone player from Los Lobos. I think it’s also important to note that he’s the only member of the band that’s been putting this story around. (I can’t seem to find any complaints from Hidalgo, for instance).
The lyrics are very clearly Paul Simon’s. I don’t think you’ll hear any complaints from Los Lobos about this aspect of it.
Music writing credits are where it starts to get sketchy legally, and also where many people are prone to make assumptions about what’s theirs and not theirs. You can’t copyright a chord progression, or a “feel” on a song. What goes down as “the music” in copyrighting a song is the melody. It’s what, for instance, made Aretha Franklin credit Robertson for writing “The Weight” even though her version sounds nothing like his. A much better explanation of this appears on http://theband.hiof.no/ regarding “The Weight,” another song where someone has kicked up a fuss about not getting songwriting credit. And I think you’ll find that the song has a melody line very similar to other things Simon has written and does not really sound like other things Los Lobos has written.
It’s pretty clear we won’t ever really know the whole story, but I find it hard to believe that the machine shut them *all* up about it for years, especially after Los Lobos was big enough to make it on a different label if Warner dropped them, so I’m inclined to believe that the Wolves have no legal recourse in the matter. And most likely, if Paul Simon ever really did say ‘see what happens,’ that’s what he meant. Simon’s case would have held up in court.
In short, Berlin’s most likely telling the truth, but that doesn’t make Paul Simon a prick for not giving them musical credit. It just means he’s not legally obligated to give them credit or money. Some musicians are much more willing to give other people songwriting credit on a whim (see Mark Knopfler’s collaboration with Emmylou Harris)
Their real beef ought to be with the label, who did not pay them for playing, basically, as as studio musicians.
-Jon
Hi
I just want to add some things
a) The reply by Paul Simon is correct – it comes from a spanish website. So please do not blame non native speakers about some errors. They had to write it down from a soundfile. (Andy – if something is not on the internet it does not mean that it does not exist…millions of books and papers are not on the internet)
b) Steve Berlins reply: What makes me stuck: David Hidalgo got vocal credits on that song, so why does he say now:remember they were instrumental jams so nobody was singing anything?
Steve, if this was 2 years ago or not – the recording was in 1985, so bringin up the story in 2006 is somehow RECENTLY compared to the 21 years gap.
About what happened in the studio: I never read that you really said to Paul Simon: Oh this is one of our own songs for our next album. You just said: “a track we had begun to put together” and “We thought we were clear as can be that it was one of our songs that we were playing”.
The important word in that sentence is: THOUGHT. Didn’t you ever think that Paul Simon could think that your band had just been jamming around for HIM in the studio? I have the feeling that this all came out of a big failure of communication.
Anyway. Steve – I still never could read anywhere WHAT EXACTLY did Los Lobos now contribute to this song? Was it the melody? Was it the rhythm? Or was it a guitar riff? A chord progression?
The next thing Steve THOUGHT: “…which I have always thought came directly from Paul to Linda Clark, our manager at that time is this sentence-:You wanna sue me? Just try it ,, see what happens to you.”…”
You seem to imply that you were wrong all the time? Well: I must have read a hundred interviews with Paul, talked to him in person, and knew x people who have talked to Paul Simon – but these are simple not the words Paul Simon is using. He is very friendly, a nice person, and chooses his words very very carefully before saying anything. You even did not talk to him in person, you just heard something someone else said. Maybe you better ask Lind Clark what was said, and who said it – before telling in interviews: Paul Simon said this:
THOUGHT…THOUGHT…THOUGHT…but never asked in 23 years what was really going on. Thats not nice.
c) People here which really admire the Graceland album now seem to think: “Hey, Paul Simon has stolen all these wonderful songs”
THIS IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE.
All real hits from this album are written by Paul Simon!
You can call me Al: Words and Music by Paul Simon
Graceland: Words and Music by Paul Simon
Diamonds: Words and Music by Paul Simon (Lyrics beginning in AFRICAN language by Joseph Shabalala)
The boy in the bubble: Words by Paul Simon, Music by Paul Simon and Forere Motloheloa
Under African Skies: Words and Music by Paul Simon
These are the legendary songs. If you delete the song ‘All around the world’ from this album, nobody will ask a second about it. So why should Paul Simon give hundred thousands of $$$ to this band for a simple chord progression or whatever it was, for a 2nd class song from the album? When he even does not have to do that?
I doubt the authenticity of much of this. One simple example “You Can Call Me Al was lifted straight from the original Gumboots tape.” That is absolute rubbish. Paul Simon is a good man who has raised many millions of dollars for poor children. He was Musicares Careperson of the Year a few years ago.
This isn’t a new story, Simon himself suggests as much in saying ‘this keeps coming up.’ I remembering reading about it first in a Magazine called Musician, there was an article about Los Lobos and the edition, I think, had Robert Cray on the cover? That was back in the 80s, I’m pretty sure it was the same year that Graceland came out.
Even taking the most generous interpretation of Simon’s story there should have been a co-credit, he says ‘we’ came up with this thing, not ‘I.’ Music credits aren’t that much of a grey area. If you work with someone else to come up with the music, you’ve worked with someone else and Simon doesn’t claim otherwise.
David Byrne is incapable of writing anything on his own worth listening to for even a minute, I mean it’s pretty hard to go from the majestic works of the Talking Heads to being so irrelevant as to not sell out a show in the former Eastern Bloc…Ask David Byrne, he knows how to do it. Christ, he couldn’t throw a rock into the rock ocean anymore, and yet he still thinks he’s a relevant voice in music, yea, you and David Lee Roth, but even he woke the f__k up…Let’s face it Davie, you aren’t s__t without the Talking Heads, but even they can brag about the Tom Tom Club, which I’m guessing has had one single outsell all your crappy albums put together…
Man, that’s harsh. Byrne did a lot of great solo work when he was with the Talking Heads, and then afterwards went on to put out great solo records. No, no hits. So what? Fuck hits. Most great artists have maybe ten years of hits in them, and that’s only if they connect with popular fads at the time. Yet they still can put out interesting, provocative stuff — like, say, most of 1997′s “Feelings” — regardless of the popular interest.
FACT 1: It was me who gave Heidi Berg the tape of Gumboots Accordion Jive Hits. She never expressed any interest in ever doing anything with it. It sat in her car glove compartment for well over a year gathering dust. I know – I fished it out.
FACT 2: There is nothing on the tape that even remotely sounds like “You Can Call me Al.”
FACT 3: No tracks are “directly lifted.” It’s impossible. The cassette tape was very poorly produced in Jo’burg (only 260 copies were made) and amounts to little more than hiss and badly-micced instruments.
Burgundyblue is remembering wrong or lying, or a Paul Simon plant.
Heidi Berg was working with Simon for a year. It’s a matter of record.
Heidi Berg was a renowned jingle singer and writer and musician. Also a guitar, piano, violin and accordion player and has played accordion on numerous tracks of her own.
Heidi Berg is credited by Simon on the record for lending him the tape.
He bought the masters.
Many tracks were directly lifted, he used the ACTUAL TRACKS FROM THE MASTERS. Ask the members of the group. its a matter of historical fact.
The tape is in NO WAY “little more than Hiss”.
It is the entire core basis of why Simon sent Hilton Rosenberg to Africa to buy the rights. Then Simon went to Africa. All based on the tape that Heidi was asking Paul, as her PRODUCER, to listen to and give her some reaction and direction on. Because she had been listening to it in her car for many months.
Burgundyblue knows nothing. Another leech or parasite who thrives of the talent of artists.
I guess Simon sent Heidi Berg a Gold and a Platinum record because the tape meant nothing. I guess he credits her first on the record for no reason at all other than lending him a tape filled with hiss.
Keep believing the corporate line. Vietnam was on dominoe to communism taking over the world…. Oswald acted alone….. Cigarettes are refreshing and healthy… we are the only planet with life on it….