RCM: What did Waronker say?SB: He said, “Stay a little longer. I know he’s a weird guy but just hang in there. He’s got some great ideas. It’ll get better – you just have to wait him out. He’s not an easy guy, I know.” So we stayed in there and it was just more of the same. We were booked for three days, but after the first day we said, “Okay, we’re done. There’s no way we’re coming back to this bullshit!”
And again, Lenny reached out to us and said, “Look, we really want you to do this – this is going to be a really important record for Paul.” And we’re like, “No fucking way! This guy’s a fucking idiot! He doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t know what the fuck he wants. The guy is crazy.” It was such an uncomfortable environment. And I remember Lenny saying, “Come on, it’s for the family. You got to do it for the family!”
RCM: What did he mean by “the family?”
SB: Y’know, the Warner Bros. family. So how fucking stupid were we, going back in for the second day for just more of the same bullshit. At that point it’s just a standoff. Paul has no fucking ideas, we hate him, and feel like we’re being forced to be there against our will. We’re just standing there thinking, “What in the world are we doing here?”
There’s this uncomfortable silence and then Dave starts playing what would become The Myth of Fingerprints, because it was a song we were preparing for our next record. We’d been waiting around for two days for Paul to come up with something, but he had nothing. So to have something to do, we just started playing what we thought was our song, when Paul suddenly says, “Hey, that’s cool. What is that?” And we said, “Oh, it’s a song we’ve been working on.” He goes, “Hey, can we do that?” and we just thought, “Yeah — if it will get us out of this fucking studio!” So we started playing it and captured a take of it and finally escaped and thought, “Thank god this is over with!”
RCM: But you were never credited on the album, right?
SB: It was six months later the record comes out and we said, “Oh, look at this: words and music by Paul Simon.” We thought, “Well, obviously that’s a mistake.” So we called up Lenny and the record company people that we had for Paul and asked them to fix the mistake.
RCM: What was their response?
SB: Silence, silence, silence. We’re asking and asking, then finally six months later we hear from Paul and he says, “Sue me. See what happens.” That’s a direct quote, so that gives you an indication of what kind of guy he is.
― Elvis Telecom, Friday, 10 April 2015 07:27 (eleven years ago)