Look up little boy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Little boy may refer to:

• Little Boy, the codename of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
• Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, a book about Japanese postwar culture
• Helen Littleboy, documentary director
• Little Boy, a character from the manga Spriggan
• "Little Boy" a 1964 single by The Crystals

See also[link]

• Little Boy Lost (disambiguation)
• Little Boy Blue (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Little Boy (atomic bomb)
A post-war "Little Boy" model
Type	Nuclear weapon
Place of origin	United States
Specifications
Weight	9,700 pounds (4,400 kg)[1]
Length	120 inches (3.0 m)[1]
Diameter	28 inches (710 mm)[1]
Blast yield	13–18 kt (54–75 TJ)

"Little Boy" was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets of the 393rd Bombardment Squadron, Heavy, of the United States Army Air Forces.^[2] It was the first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon. The second, the "Fat Man", was dropped three days later on Nagasaki.^[3]

The weapon was developed by the Manhattan Project during World War II. It derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium 235. The Hiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test, and the first uranium-based detonation. Approximately 600 to 860 milligrams of matter in the bomb was converted into the active energy of heat and radiation (see mass-energy equivalence for detail). It exploded with an energy between 13 and 18 kilotons of TNT (54 and 75 TJ) (estimates vary). It has been estimated that 130,000 to 150,000 people had died as a result of its use by the end of December 1945.^[4] Its design was not tested in advance, unlike the more complex plutonium bomb (Fat Man). The available supply of enriched uranium was very small at that time, and it was felt that the simple design of a uranium "gun" type bomb was so sure to work that there was no need to test it at full scale.

Naming[link]

The names for all three atomic bomb design projects during WW II ("Fat Man", "Thin Man", and "Little Boy") were allegedly created by Robert Serber, a former student of Los Alamos director Robert Oppenheimer who worked on the project, according to Serber. According to his later memoirs, he chose them based on their design shapes; the "Thin Man" would be a very long device, and the name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel and series of movies by the same name; the "Fat Man" bomb would be round and fat and was named after Sidney Greenstreet's "Kasper Gutman" character in The Maltese Falcon. "Little Boy" would come last and be named only to contrast to the "Thin Man" bomb.^[5] The original "Thin Man" had been expected to be as long as 17 feet, but when it was discovered that U-235 would require a slower projectile speed than first measurements had indicated, it was realized that the gun-design could be shortened to 6 feet, and this design was named "Little Boy" in contrast.^[6] However, in his memoirs, Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Group said the code names were part of an Air Force cover story. According to Tibbets, Project Silverplate, the Air Force program to modify the B-29 to carry atomic bombs, was given the cover story of modifying the B-29 into a passenger plane. One plane was allegedly for the use of Winston Churchill, 'the fat man', and the other for Franklin Roosevelt, 'the thin man.'^[7]

Basic weapon design[link]

The "gun" assembly method. When the hollow uranium projectile was driven onto the target cylinder, a nuclear explosion resulted.

The Mk I "Little Boy" was 120 inches (300 cm) in length, 28 inches (71 cm) in diameter and weighed approximately 9,700 pounds (4,400 kg).^[1] The design used the gun method to explosively force a hollow sub-critical mass of uranium-235 and a solid target cylinder together into a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. This was accomplished by shooting one piece of the uranium onto the other by means of chemical explosives. It contained 64 kg (140 lb) of uranium, of which less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission, and of this mass only 0.6 g (0.021 oz) was transformed into a different type of energy (initially kinetic energy, then heat and light).^[8][9]

No full test of a gun-type nuclear weapon had occurred before the "Little Boy" device was dropped over Hiroshima. The only test explosion of a nuclear weapon concept had been of an implosion-type device employing plutonium as its fissionable material, and took place on July 16, 1945 at the Trinity test. There were several reasons for not testing a "Little Boy" type of device. Primarily, there was little uranium-235 as compared with the relatively large amount of plutonium which, it was expected, could be produced by the Hanford reactors. Additionally, the weapon design was simple enough that it was only deemed necessary to do laboratory tests with the gun-type assembly (known during the war as "tickling the dragon's tail"). Unlike the implosion design, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the gun-type design was considered almost certain to work.

Although occasionally used in later experimental devices, the gun design was only used once as a weapon because of the danger of accidental detonation. Little Boy's design is considered unsafe when compared to modern nuclear weapons, which incorporate safety features to endure various accident scenarios. The objective of Little Boy was to create a weapon that was absolutely guaranteed to work. Consequently, Little Boy incorporated only basic safety mechanisms, thus an accidental detonation could easily occur during one or more of the following scenarios:

• A crash could drive the hollow "bullet" onto the "target" cylinder resulting in a massive release of radiation, or possibly nuclear detonation.
• An electrical short circuit of some sort.
• The danger of a misfire was greater over water. If the force of a crash did not trigger the bomb, water leakage into the system could short it out, possibly leading to detonation. The British Red Beard nuclear weapon also suffered from this design flaw.
• Furthermore if immersed in water, the uranium halves were subject to a moderator-effect of the liquid.
• Fire.
• Lightning strike.

Assembly details[link]

The exact specifications of the "Little Boy" bomb remain classified because they could be used today to create a viable nuclear weapon. Even so, many sources have speculated as to the design, relying on limited photographic evidence, interviews with former Manhattan Project personnel, and have pieced together information from declassified sources to reconstruct its internal dimensions.

According to the website Nuclear Weapon Archive,^[10][11] inside the weapon, the uranium-235 material was divided into two parts, following the gun principle: the "projectile" and the "target". The projectile was a hollow cylinder with 60% of the total mass (38.5 kg/85 lb). It consisted of a stack of 9 uranium rings, each 6.25-inch-diameter (159 mm) with a 4-inch-diameter (100 mm) bore of a total length of 7 inches (180 mm), pressed together into the front end of a thin-walled projectile 16.25 inches (413 mm) long. Filling in the remainder of the space behind these rings in the projectile was a tungsten carbide disc with a steel back. At detonation, the projectile slug was pushed 42 inches (1,100 mm) along the 72-inch-long (1,800 mm), 6.5-inch (170 mm) smooth-bore gun barrel. The slug "insert" was a 4-inch-diameter (100 mm) cylinder, 7-inch (180 mm) in length with a 1-inch-diameter (25 mm) axial hole. The slug comprised 40% of the total fissile mass (25.6 kg/56 lb). The insert was a stack of 6 washer-like uranium discs somewhat thicker than the projectile rings that were slid over a 1-inch-diameter (25 mm) rod. This rod then extended forward through the tungsten carbide tamper plug, impact-absorbing anvil, and nose plug backstop eventually protruding out the front of the bomb casing. This entire target assembly was secured at both ends with locknuts.

When the hollow-front projectile reached the target and slid over the target insert, the assembled super-critical mass of uranium would be completely surrounded by a tamper and neutron reflector of tungsten carbide and steel, both materials having a combined mass of 2,300 kg (5,100 lb).^[12] Neutron generators at the base of the projectile would be activated by the impact.

The "L-11" combat Little Boy and the assembled projectile containing the U-235 rings were delivered to Tinian Island on July 26, 1945, by the USS Indianapolis. The six target rings arrived July 28 and 29 on three aircraft. Because the Enola Gay weaponeer "Deak" Parsons was concerned about the possibility of an accidental detonation he did not load the four cordite powder bags into the gun breech until the aircraft was on its mission flight. Before climbing to altitude on approach to the target, Parsons' assistant, Morris R. Jeppson, removed three safety plugs between the electrical connectors of the internal battery and the firing mechanism.^[13]

Counter-intuitive design[link]

For the first fifty years after 1945, every published description and drawing of the Little Boy mechanism assumed that a small, solid projectile was fired into the center of a larger target.^[11] However, critical mass considerations^{[citation needed]} dictated that in Little Boy the larger, hollow piece would be the projectile. The assembled fissile core had more than two critical masses of U-235. This required one of the two pieces to have more than one critical mass. A hole in the center of the larger mass dispersed the mass and increased the surface area, allowing more fission neutrons to escape, thus preventing a premature chain reaction.

It was also important for the larger piece to have minimal contact with the neutron-reflecting tungsten carbide tamper until detonation, thus only the projectile's back end was in contact with tungsten carbide (see drawing above). The rest of the tungsten carbide surrounded the sub-critical mass target cylinder (called the "insert" by designers) with air space between it and the insert. This arrangement packs the maximum amount of fissile material into a gun-assembly design.^[14]

Development of the bomb[link]

Uranium for "Little Boy" was enriched in calutrons (one of these under construction is shown) and by gaseous diffusion at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The "Little Boy" bomb was constructed through the Manhattan Project during World War II. Because enriched uranium was known to be fissionable, it was the first approach to bomb development pursued. The vast majority of the work in constructing "Little Boy" came in the form of the isotope enrichment of the uranium necessary for the weapon. Enrichment at Oak Ridge, Tennessee began in February 1943, after many years of research.

The development of the first prototypes and the experimental work started in early 1943, at the time when the Los Alamos Design Laboratory became operational in the framework of the Manhattan Project. Originally gun-type designs were pursued for both a uranium and plutonium weapon (the "Thin Man" design), but in April 1944 it was discovered that the spontaneous fission rate for plutonium was too great to use in a gun-type weapon. In July 1944, almost all research at Los Alamos was redirected to the implosion plutonium weapon. In contrast, the uranium bomb was straightforward if not trivial to design.

As part of Project Alberta, Commander A. Francis Birch (left) numbers the bomb while physicist Norman Ramsey watches. This is one of the rare photos where the inside of the bomb can be seen.

With plutonium found unsuitable for the gun-type design, the team working on the gun weapon (led by A. Francis Birch), faced another problem: the bomb was simple, but they lacked the quantity of uranium-235 necessary for its production. Enough fissile material was not going to be available before mid-1945. Despite this, Birch managed to convince others that this concept was worth pursuing, so that in case of a failure of the plutonium bomb, it would still be possible to use the gun principle. In February 1945, the specifications were completed (model 1850). The bomb, except for the uranium payload, was ready at the beginning of May 1945.

Most of the uranium necessary for the production of the bomb came from the Shinkolobwe mine and was made available thanks to the foresight of the CEO of the High Katanga Mining Union, Edgar Sengier, who had 1000 tons of uranium ore transported to a New York warehouse in 1939. A small amount may have come from a captured German submarine, U-234, after the German surrender in May 1945.^[15] Other sources state that at least part of the 1100 tons of uranium ore and uranium oxide captured by US troops in the second half of April 1945 in Stassfurt, Germany, became ²³⁵U for the bomb.^[16] The majority of the uranium for Little Boy was enriched in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, primarily by means of electromagnetic separation in calutrons and through gaseous diffusion plants, with a small amount contributed by the cyclotrons at Ernest O. Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory. The core of Little Boy contained 64 kg of uranium, of which 50 kg was enriched to 88%, and the remaining 14 kg at 50%, resulting in an average enrichment of 82.68%.

Construction and delivery[link]

Little Boy in the bomb pit on Tinian island, before being loaded into Enola Gay's bomb bay. A section of the bomb bay door is visible on the top right.

On July 14, 1945 a train left Los Alamos carrying several "bomb units" (the major non-nuclear parts of a gun-type bomb) together with a single completed uranium projectile; the uranium target was still incomplete. The consignment was delivered to the San Francisco Naval Shipyard at Hunters Point in San Francisco, California.^[10] There, two hours before the successful test of Little Boy's plutonium-implosion brother at the Trinity test in New Mexico, the bomb units and the projectile were loaded aboard the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis. Indianapolis steamed at record speed to the airbase at Tinian island in the Mariana Islands, delivering them ten days later on the 26th. (While returning from this mission Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine, with great loss of life due to delayed rescue.) Also on the 26th the three sections of the uranium target assembly were shipped from Kirtland Air Force Base^[10] near Albuquerque, New Mexico in three C-54 Skymaster aircraft operated by the 509th Composite Group's Green Hornet squadron.^[17][18] With all the necessary components delivered to Tinian, bomb unit L11 was chosen, and the final Little Boy weapon was assembled and ready by August 1.^[10]

Handling the completed Little Boy was particularly dangerous. Once cordite was loaded in the breech, any firing of the explosive would at worst cause a nuclear chain reaction and at best a contamination of the explosion zone. The mere contact of the two uranium masses could have caused an explosion with dire consequences, from a simple "fizzle" explosion to an explosion large enough to destroy Tinian (including the 500 B-29s based there, and their supporting infrastructure and personnel). Water was also a risk, since it could serve as a moderator between the fissile materials and cause a violent dispersal of the nuclear material. The uranium projectile could only be inserted with an apparatus that produced a force of 300,000 newtons (67,000 lbf, over 30 tons). For safety reasons, the weaponeer, Captain William Sterling Parsons, decided to load the bags of cordite only after take-off.

Fuse system[link]

The bomb employed a fusing system that was designed to detonate the bomb at the most destructive altitude. Calculations showed that for the largest destructive effect, the bomb should explode at an altitude of 1,900 feet (580 meters). The resultant fuze design was a three-stage interlock system:^[19]

• A timer ensured that the bomb would not explode until at least fifteen seconds after release, one-quarter of the predicted fall time, to ensure safety of the aircraft. The timer was activated when the electrical pullout plugs connecting it to the airplane were pulled loose as the bomb fell, switching it to internal (24V battery) power and starting the timer. At the end of the 15 seconds the batteries then powered the radar system and passed responsibility to the barometric stage.^[19]
• The purpose of the barometric stage was to delay activating the radar altimeter firing command circuit until near detonation altitude. A thin metallic membrane was gradually deformed as ambient air pressure increased during descent. The barometric fuze was not considered accurate enough to detonate the bomb at the precise ignition height, because air pressure varies with local conditions. When the bomb reached the design height for this stage (reportedly 2,000 meters) the membrane closed a circuit, activating the circuit between the radar altimeters and the projectile gun. The barometric stage was added because of a worry that external radar signals might detonate the bomb too early.^[19]
• Two or more redundant radar altimeters were used to reliably detect descent. When the altimeters sensed the correct height, the firing switch closed, igniting the three BuOrd Mk15, Mod 1 Navy gun primers in the breech plug, which set off the charge consisting of four silk powder bags each containing two pounds of WM slotted-tube cordite. This launched the uranium projectile towards the opposite end of the gun barrel at an eventual muzzle velocity of 1000 feet per second (300 meters per second). Approximately 10 milliseconds later the chain reaction occurred, lasting less than 1 μs. The radar altimeters used were modified U.S. Army Air Corps APS-13 fighter tail warning radars, nicknamed "Archie", originally designed to warn a pilot of another plane approaching from behind.^[19][20]

The bombing of Hiroshima[link]

The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the dropping of "Little Boy"

The bomb was armed in flight 31,000 feet (9,400 m) above the city, then dropped at approximately 08:15  (JST) August 6, 1945. After falling for 44.4 seconds, the time and barometric triggers started the firing mechanism. The detonation happened at an altitude of 1,968 feet (600 m). With a yield of 13 to 18 kilotons, it was less powerful than "Fat Man", which was dropped on Nagasaki (21–23 kt). The official yield estimate of "Little Boy" was about 16 kilotons of TNT equivalent in explosive force, i.e. 6.3 × 10¹³ joules = 63 TJ (tera-joules).^[21] However, the damage and the number of victims at Hiroshima were much higher, as Hiroshima was on flat terrain, while the hypocenter of Nagasaki lay in a small valley. According to figures published in 1945, 66,000 people were killed as a direct result of the Hiroshima blast, and 69,000 were injured to varying degrees.^[22].

The U.S. Department of Energy gives this account of the death toll of the bombing of Hiroshima:

"By the end of 1945, because of the lingering effects of radioactive fallout and other after effects, the Hiroshima death toll was probably over 100,000. The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold."^[23]

The success of the bombing was reported with great enthusiasm in the United States in the days following the attacks. See Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for discussion of contemporary support vs. opposition to the bombings, on both moral and military grounds.

Physical effects of the bomb[link]

After being selected in April 1945, Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing to serve as a pristine target, where the effects of a nuclear bomb on an undamaged city could be observed.^[24] While damage could be studied later, the energy yield of the untested Little Boy design could be determined only at the moment of detonation, using instruments dropped by parachute from a plane flying in formation with the one that dropped the bomb. Radio-transmitted data from these instruments indicated a yield of about 15 kilotons.

Comparing this yield to the observed damage produced a rule of thumb called the 5 psi lethal area rule. The number of immediate fatalities will approximately equal the number of people inside the lethal area.

The damage came from three main effects: blast, fire, and radiation.^[25]

Blast[link]

The blast from a nuclear bomb is the result of X-ray-heated air (the fireball) sending a shock/pressure wave in all directions at a velocity greater than the speed of sound (aka, the "Mach-Stem"),^[26] analogous to thunder generated by lightning. Most knowledge about nuclear weapon urban blast destruction originates from studies of Little Boy at Hiroshima. Data from the explosion at Nagasaki offers less insight, since hilly terrain deflected the blast and generated a more complicated pattern of destruction.

Frame house in 1953 nuclear test, 5 psi overpressure

At Hiroshima, severe structural damage to buildings extended about 1 mile (1.6 km) in radius from ground zero, making a circle of destruction 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter. The blast sent out a hyper-intensified shock wave which travelled at (slightly above) the speed of sound, turning buildings into shrapnel. There was little or no structural damage outside of this one-mile (1.6 km) radius. At one mile (1.6 km), the force of the blast wave was 5 psi, with enough duration to implode houses and reduce them to kindling.

Later test explosions of nuclear weapons with houses and other test structures nearby confirmed that 5 psi (34,000 Pa) is an important threshold. Ordinary urban buildings experiencing it will be crushed, toppled, or gutted by the force of air pressure. The picture at right shows the effects of a nuclear-bomb-generated 5 psi pressure wave on a test structure in Nevada in 1953.

The most important effect of this kind of structural damage was that it created fuel for a firestorm. For this reason, the 5 psi contour defines the lethal area for blast and fire.

Fire[link]

The first effect of the explosion was blinding light, accompanied by radiant heat from the fireball. The Hiroshima fireball was 1,200 feet (370 m) in diameter, with a temperature of 7,200 °F (3,980 °C). Near ground zero, everything flammable burst into flame, glass products and sand melted into molten glass. Contrary to popular opinion, nobody would have been vapourised by the burst - the detonation occurred at over 500 m altitude and the fireball did not reach the ground. The thermal pulse, while being hot enough to ignite flammable material at distance, was short in duration and these fires went out immediately after the flash or were blown out by the blast wave. The ensuing firestorm was caused by things like damaged fuel or gas pipes and tanks, overturned stoves, destroyed furnaces etc. One famous, anonymous Hiroshima victim left only a "shadow", permanently etched into stone steps near a bank building. Again, converse to popular knowledge, the "shadow" is not the remains or ash of the victim, but in fact it was the area around the shadow, not obscured by the person's silhouette that was lightened by X-rays from the burst, leaving a dark "negative" shadow.^[27]

Hiroshima blast and fire damage, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey map

The Hiroshima firestorm was roughly two miles (3.2 km) in diameter, corresponding closely to the severe blast damage zone. (See the USSBS^[28] map, right.) Blast-damaged buildings provided fuel for the fire. Structural lumber and furniture were splintered and scattered about. Debris-choked roads obstructed fire fighters. Broken gas pipes fueled the fire, and broken water pipes rendered hydrants useless.

As the map shows, the firestorm jumped natural firebreaks (river channels), as well as prepared firebreaks. The spread of fire stopped only when it reached the edge of the blast-damaged area, encountering less available fuel.

Accurate casualty figures are impossible to determine, because many victims were cremated by the firestorm. For the same reason, the proportion of firestorm victims who survived the blast and died of fire can never be known. Casualty figures are based on the estimated population inside the lethal area when the bomb detonated.

Radiation[link]

Local fallout is dust and ash from a bomb crater, contaminated with radioactive fission products. It falls to earth downwind of the crater and can produce, with radiation alone, a lethal area much larger than that from blast and fire. With an air burst, the fission products rise into the stratosphere, where they dissipate and become part of the global environment. Because Little Boy was an air burst 1,900 feet (580 m) above the ground, there was no bomb crater and no local radioactive fallout.^[29]

Intense neutron and gamma radiation came directly from the fireball. Most people close enough to receive lethal doses of direct radiation died in the firestorm before their radiation injuries would have become apparent. Survivors on the edge of the lethal area and beyond suffered injuries from radiation.

Some who initially survived died soon afterward due to acute radiation sickness, but most of the radiation effects are evident only statistically, as increases in the incidence rates of cancer, leukemia and certain non-cancer diseases over the lifetimes of the survivors and their children who were exposed in utero. To date, no radiation-related evidence of heritable diseases have been observed among the survivors' children.^[30][31][32]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Little Boy

• Footage of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Attack
• White Light/Black Rain official website documentary film about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Little Boy description at Carey Sublette's NuclearWeaponArchive.org
• Nuclear Files.org Definition and explanation of 'Little Boy'
• The Nuclear Weapon Archive
• History of Enola Gay
• A little known episode of the Manhattan Project Factitious tests of bombs and problems in aerodynamism
• Development of Little Boy and Fat Man (translated from French)
• Functioning de Little Boy et Fat Man (in French)
• Little Boy : a macabre irony (in French)
• Little Boy 3D Model
• Hiroshima & Nagasaki Remembered information about preparation and dropping the Little Boy bomb
• Models of Hiroshima city center before and after In the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
• Atomic John: A truck driver uncovers secrets about the first nuclear bombs. Essay and interview with John Coster-Mullen by David Samuels in the New Yorker, December 15, 2008 issue. Coster-Mullen is the author of Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man, 2003 (first printed in 1996, self-published), considered a definitive text about Little Boy; illustrations from which are used in the Assembly details section above.

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Rolf Harris, CBE, AM
Harris, November 2010.
Background information
Born	(1930-03-30) 30 March 1930 (age 82) Bassendean, Perth, Australia
Genres	Folk music, rock and roll, comedy
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, composer, television personality, broadcaster, painter
Instruments	Vocals, stylophone, didgeridoo, wobble board, accordion
Years active	1950–present (recurring)
Labels	Various
Website	Official site

Rolf Harris, CBE, AM (born 30 March 1930) is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, painter and television personality.

Born in Perth, Western Australia, Harris was a champion swimmer before studying art. He moved to England in 1952, where he started to appear on television programmes on which he drew the characters. He also began a musical career initially with the piano accordion. He wrote the famous song "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport", and when performing in Canada he introduced his popular routine around his song "Jake the Peg". He often uses unusual instruments in his performances: he plays the didgeridoo, has been credited with the invention of the wobble board, a rhythmic percussion instrument, and was associated with the Stylophone, a small electronic keyboard instrument.

From the 1960s he has become a popular television personality, presenting shows including Rolf's Cartoon Club, Animal Hospital and various programmes about serious art. In late 2005 he painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which was the subject of a special episode of Rolf on Art.

Early life[link]

Harris was born on 30 March 1930^[1] in Bassendean, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, to Cromwell ("Crom") Harris and Agnes Margaret Harris (née Robbins) who had both emigrated from Cardiff, Wales. He was named after Rolf Boldrewood, an Australian writer his mother admired. He is the nephew of Australian artist Pixie O'Harris (1903–1991). As a child he owned a dog called Buster Fleabags: he wrote a book of that name for Quick Reads in 2010.^[2]

Rolf Harris (14), swam the fastest time (swimming from scratch), in the Swim through Bassendean handicap race, 27 January 1945.^[3]

As an adolescent and young adult Harris was a champion swimmer.^[4] In 1946 he was the Australian Junior 110 yards Backstroke Champion.^[5]

He was also the Western Australian state champion over a variety of distances and strokes during the period from 1948 to 1952.^[6]

Harris attended Perth Modern School in Subiaco, and the University of Western Australia.

Whilst just 16, and still a student at Perth Modern School, his self-portrait in oils was one of the 80 works (out of 200 submitted) accepted to be hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales as an entry in the 1947 Archibald Prize.^[7]

He met his wife, the Welsh sculptress and jeweller Alwen Hughes, while they were both art students, and they married on 1 March 1958. They have one daughter, Bindi Harris (born 10 March 1964), who studied art at Bristol Polytechnic and is now a painter.

Music and art[link]

Harris moved to England as an art student at City and Guilds Art School, Kennington, South London at the age of 22, getting into television with the BBC in 1953, performing a regular ten-minute cartoon drawing section with a puppet called "Fuzz", made and operated on the show by magician Robert Harbin. He illustrated Robert Harbin's Paper Magic (1956). He also had a few acting roles in British television programmes and films as Harry in The Vise and as Pte Proudfoot in the 1955 Tommy Trinder film You Lucky People.^[8]

When commercial television started in 1956 Harris was the only entertainer to work on both BBC and ITV, performing on BBC with his own creation, "Willoughby", a specially made board on which he drew Willoughby, (voiced and operated by Peter Hawkins). The character would then come to life and hold a comedic dialogue with Harris as he drew cartoons of Willoughby's antics.

On Associated Rediffusion he invented a character called Oliver Polip the Octopus which he drew on the back of his hand and animated, as well as illustrating Oliver's adventures with cartoons on huge sheets of card.

He had drifted away from art school as a slightly disillusioned student and had luckily met his longtime hero, Australian impressionist painter Hayward Veal, who took Harris under his wing and became his mentor, teaching him the rudiments of impressionism and showing him how it could help with his portrait painting.

At the same time Harris was entertaining with his piano accordion every Thursday night at a club called the Down Under, a haunt for homesick Australians and New Zealanders. Here, over the next several years, he honed his entertainment skills, eventually writing the song which was later to become his theme song, 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport'. He also appeared regularly at Clement Freud's "Royal Court Theatre Club" in Sloane Square, where he sat at the piano and entertained débutantes and their escorts.

Harris was headhunted to return to Perth when television was introduced there in 1960. There he produced and starred in five half-hour children's shows a week, as well as starring in his own weekly evening variety show. During 1960 he recorded the original version of the song that he had written for the Down Under Club in London, 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' in the TVW studios in Perth, Western Australia with four local backing musicians. It was released by EMI Australia and became his first recording and his first number one. It also repeated that success in the UK. At the end of 1960 he toured Australia for Dulux paints, singing his hit song and doing huge paintings on stage with Dulux emulsion paint. While painting on stage, one of his catchphrases was, "Can you tell what it is yet?"

He and his wife Alwen went to Vancouver in Canada by mistake, and had huge success there, working two shows a night at the Arctic Club, where he was held over for 31 weeks until the club accidentally burnt down on Christmas Eve, 1961. He was immediately transferred to the huge "Cave" theatre restaurant to great critical acclaim.

He returned to the United Kingdom early in 1962 and was introduced to George Martin, who re-recorded all Harris's songs the following year, including a remake of 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' which became a huge hit in the US, and "Sun Arise", an Aboriginal-type song Harris had written with Perth naturalist Harry Butler. The song went to number two in the UK charts, losing the number one spot to Elvis Presley. He met and worked with The Beatles when they started recording with George Martin, and compèred their Christmas show in Finsbury Park Empire in 1963.

He and his wife have lived permanently in the United Kingdom since 1962, and he has regularly returned to Vancouver to entertain ever since. He has also regularly returned to Perth over the years for family visits and to the rest of Australia where he has spent as much as four months every year touring with his band.

In 1973 Harris performed the very first concert in the Concert Hall of the newly completed Sydney Opera House, to huge acclaim.

Since the late 1960s Harris had been performing top-rated variety television shows on the BBC in London, shows which were also shown in Australia and New Zealand, creating great support for his many tours in both countries as well as in South Africa.

Harris has been credited with inventing a simple homemade instrument called the wobble board. This discovery was accidentally made in the course of his work when he attempted to dry a freshly painted hardboard with added heat, from hearing the sound made by the board as he shook it by the short edges to cool it off. He suggests the effect can best be obtained through faint bouncing of a tempered hardboard or a thinner MDF board between the palms of one's hands.

In 1960 he worked on TVW-7's first locally produced show Spotlight. During his time at TVW he recorded his hit Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. The song was recorded on a single microphone placed above him in the television studio. The song was sent to record company EMI in Sydney and it was soon released as a record. Harris offered four unknown backing musicians 10% of the royalties for the song, but they decided to take a recording fee of ₤7 each because they thought the song would be a flop.^[9] The novelty song was originally titled "Kangalypso" and featured the distinctive sound of the "wobble board", which was played by bouncing it up and down.

The original 1960 single release recording of the song issued in Australia was considered controversial by some listeners because of the lyrics of the fourth verse.^[10] The verse appears to refer to Aboriginal servitude and captivity in a whimsically approving manner. In addition, the word "abo" was beginning to be seen as a term of abuse at the time. Most of the rest of the song refers to pet Australian animals.

The offending verse did not feature in later versions of the song. In 2006, four decades after the song's release, Harris expressed his regret about that original lyric.^[11] Harris also performed this song in 2000 with Australia's children's supergroup The Wiggles.

Harris sang "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" (with The Beatles singing backing vocals) in the first edition of the From Us to You BBC radio shows, in December 1963.^[12] Harris completely customized the original lyrics to a version that was specially written for The Beatles:

Cut yer hair once a year boys, (repeat), If it covers your ears you can't hear boys, so (repeat first line).

Don't ill-treat me pet dingo, Ringo, (repeat). He can't understand your lingo, Ringo, so (repeat first line).

George’s guitar's on the blink, I think, (repeat), It shouldn't go plinkety plink, no, (repeat first line).

Prop me up by the wall, Paul, (repeat), 'Cause if you don't I might fall, Paul, so (repeat first line).

Keep the hits coming on, John, (repeat), 'Til long long after I've gone, John, just (repeat first line).

It was after this recording that Harris gave Ringo his first Wobble board of which Starr now has the largest collection outside Australia.

As well as his trademark beatboxing, similar to eefing, Harris went on to use an array of unusual instruments in his music, including the didgeridoo (the sound of which was imitated on Sun Arise by four double basses), Jew's harp and, later, the stylophone (for which he also lent his name and likeness for advertising). Harris has played the didgeridoo on two albums by English pop singer Kate Bush, 1982's The Dreaming and 2005's Aerial. Harris went on to create one of his most famous roles in the 1960s, Jake the Peg but his biggest hit was in 1969 with his rendering of the American Civil War song "Two Little Boys", written in 1902. It was only recently that Harris discovered a personal poignancy to the song because the story bears such a resemblance to the First World War experiences of his father Crom and Crom's beloved younger brother Carl, who died at the age of 19 after being wounded in battle in France, just two weeks before the Armistice of November 1918.^[13] Two Little Boys was the Christmas Number One song in the UK charts for six weeks in 1969. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.^[14]

In 2000 Harris, along with Steve Lima, released a dance track called "Fine Day" which entered the top 30 in the UK charts at that time. A "Killie-themed" version was recorded and scheduled for release in March 2007 to coincide with the Scottish football club Kilmarnock's appearance in the Scottish League Cup final after the song was adopted by the fans in 2003.^[15] One of the lyrics referred to the hypothetical situation in which Kilmarnock could be 5-0 down, which ironically was similar to the final score of 5-1.

In November and December 2002, under Charles Saumarez Smith's direction, London's National Gallery exhibited a collection of Harris's art.^[16] He was also commissioned to paint a portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II for her 80th birthday, which was unveiled by Rolf Harris on 19 December 2005 at Buckingham Palace.^[17] In his words, it is an impressionistic rather than photographic depiction. Some commentators found it to be offensive and unbecoming of the Queen, but the Queen herself expressed her approval at the painting after her final sitting, particularly with the way in which Harris had painted her smile. The story of the painting featured as a special edition of Rolf on Art. The special, called The Queen by Rolf, was broadcast on BBC One on 1 January 2006. In his painting of the portrait of the Queen, Harris was following a family tradition — Harris's grandfather painted a portrait of the Queen's grandfather, King George V (in which the King was inspecting the troops).^[18] The portrait was exhibited in the Australian National Portrait Gallery in Canberra for six months, after Harris gave the prestigious annual lecture there in 2008.

In 2005 Harris played the didgeridoo on Kate Bush's album Aerial, contributing vocals to the songs "An Architect's Dream" and "The Painter's Link". In the late 1980s he was touring in Australia and was asked to sing his own comedy version of "Stairway to Heaven" on a television programme "The Money or the Gun". He did this with his own small group and had great success. Several years later it was released as a single in the UK and went to number seven in the charts, causing a great furore among "Led Zeppelin" fans, and great enjoyment for everyone else. As a result of this success he appeared at the Glastonbury Festival in 1993 and was later named the best entertainer ever to have appeared at Glastonbury. He has since appeared four more times at subsequent Glastonbury festivals and most recently appeared there on 27 June 2009 on the Jazz World Stage to a packed crowd.

In September 2010 Harris appeared at the Bestival Festival on the Isle of Wight, and played on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury Festival on Friday 25 June 2010, during the festival's 40th birthday.^[19]

On 5 August 2011, Harris played at Wickham Festival in Hampshire.

Harris also appeared on The Wiggles 2011 DVD release Ukelele Baby performing the song Good Ship Fabulous Flea with his wobbleboard and taking lead vocals on the song and The Wiggles playing the roles of the mice and background vocals.

In December 2011, a portrait of Bonnie Tyler by Harris was sold by Cathy Sims for £50,000 on BBC’s The Antiques Roadshow.^[20]

1982 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony[link]

Matilda, a winking kangaroo was the mascot for the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. When Matilda arrived at the stadium, she 'winked' to the crowd as she went around the stadium track — then her 'pouch' opened and several young children (about 5 to 7 years old), dressed as joey kangaroos, rushed out (then ran to — and jumped on — a number of trampolines which had been set up specially for them).

Harris, who was standing, complete with wobble board, at the back of a small truck, then sang a special rendition of his hit song "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport", which included some lyrics specially written for the Opening Ceremony:

Let me welcome you to the Games, friends,

Welcome you to the Games

Look, I don't know all of your names, friends,

But let me welcome you to the Games.

Following his singing of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport", Harris sang "Waltzing Matilda". As well as a videotape recording of the Opening Ceremony being released, the music for the Opening Ceremony was released as an album and an audio tape, with Harris as one of the featured artists.

"Stairway to Heaven"[link]

Harris's career received a boost in 1993 when his cover version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" became a hit, reaching number seven in the UK singles chart. Harris originally performed the song, live, during an appearance on the television comedy show The Money or the Gun. Each episode of The Money or the Gun featured a rendition of Stairway to Heaven but in the idiosyncratic style of another performer. Harris's version of the song recreated the song in the style of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport", complete with wobble board and didgeridoo solos. Harris's version was one of 28 versions of the song performed on the show — and his version is one of the 25 versions of the song which was released on the The Money or the Gun's Stairways to Heaven videotape and CD (Harris's single comes from the same recording of his version of the song). A wobble board Harris used to perform "Stairway to Heaven" on Top of the Pops is now part of the National Museum of Australia collection.^[21]

Recordings and appearances[link]

Harris is known for Channel 7 Perth's jingle "Children's Channel 7".

Harris also recorded a version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" around this time. He performed The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself" — accompanied only by his wobble board — for Andrew Denton's Musical Challenge on the MMM Breakfast Show (the recording was released on the first Musical Challenge compilation album in 2000). Later that year he made his first appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in what was seen as a novelty act. He played there again in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2009 and 2010.

Harris has also recorded an Australian Christmas song called Six White Boomers, about a joey Kangaroo trying to find his mother during Christmastime, and how Santa Claus used six large male kangaroos (Boomers), instead of reindeer "because they can't stand the terrible heat" to pull his sleigh and help the little joey find his "Mummy".

In October 2008 Harris announced he would re-record his 1969 hit "Two Little Boys", backed by North Wales's Froncysyllte Male Voice Choir, to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I.^[22] Proceeds from the new release went to The Poppy Appeal.^[23] Harris was inspired to make the recording after participating in My Family at War, a short series of programmes in the BBC's Remembrance season, which was broadcast in November 2008. He discovered that the experiences of his father and uncle during the Great War mirrored the lyrics of the song.^[24]

A sampling of Harris saying "You've just heard one of the most remarkable applications in modern electronics", grabbed from a Stylophone instruction disc, appears at the end of the Pulp hit "Countdown".

Television career[link]

Harris and Julia Zemiro ARIA Hall of Fame

Harris has had a long career on British television, making his debut in 1953 on a five-minute spot with a puppet called 'Fuzz' in a one-hour children’s show called 'Jigsaw'. The following year he was a regular on a BBC Television programme called Whirligig, with a character called 'Willoughby', who sprang to life on a drawing board but was erased at the end of the show.^[25]

Although he chiefly appeared on the BBC, he was also on ITV with his 'Oliver Polip the Octopus' character on Small Time on Associated Rediffusion.^[26] He was the presenter of Hi There and Hey Presto it’s Rolf in 1964. Consequently he was already well-known face on television when The Rolf Harris Show was broadcast from 1967–1974 on BBC1. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s this series in various formats remained a popular light-entertainment staple, latterly being broadcast on Saturday evenings as Rolf on Saturday OK? Harris was also the commentator for the United Kingdom in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest.^[27] On 31 December 1976, Harris performed his hit song Two Little Boys on BBC1's A Jubilee Of Music, celebrating British pop music for Queen Elizabeth II's impending Silver Jubilee.

On many of his television appearances he painted pictures on large boards in an apparently slapdash manner, with the odd nonsense song thrown in, but with detailed results. This was often accompanied by the phrase "Can you tell what is it yet?" just before the painting became recognisable. These appearances led to a string of television series based on his artistic ability, notably Rolf Harris's Cartoon Time on BBC1 in the 1980s and Rolf's Cartoon Club on ITV between 1989–1993. On the children's show he also gave out tips to children on how to draw and create easy animation techniques, like flickbooks. The latter programme witnessed another Harris catchphrase, "See you on Ro-o-o-o-o-o-lf's Cartoon Club, next week!" He also hosted a successful variety television series in Canada, which was a second home to Harris during the 1960s.

From 1994–2004 he was the host of the reality television programme Animal Hospital, which chronicled the real-life activity of a British veterinary practice. Harris then adopted an English Bull Terrier that had been abandoned at the vet's, named Dolly. Harris presented 19 series of Animal Hospital for BBC One. It was five times winner in the Most Popular Factual Entertainment Show category of The National TV Awards. In an Australian Times article, journalist Kris Griffiths wrote of Animal Hospital: “One scene of Rolf’s tearful breakdown as a dog is euthanised became forever ingrained in fans’ memories, a spontaneous display that boosted the next episode’s ratings to a zenith of 10m.”^[28] When referring to a dead or dying animal on the programme, one of his catchphrases was, "The Poor Little Blighter".

In 2001 and 2004 he presented Rolf on Art, which highlighted the work of some of his favourite artists, including van Gogh, Degas, Monet and Gauguin. Rolf on Art which made television history when it gained the highest television ratings ever for an arts programme, is now in its sixth year. On 26 September 2004 Harris fronted a project to recreate John Constable's famous The Hay Wain painting on a vast scale, with 150 people contributing to a small section. Each individual canvas was assembled into the full picture live on the BBC, in the show Rolf on Art: The Big Event. He was named as one of the Radio Times's list of the top 40 most eccentric television presenters of all time in July 2004.

The story of Harris's 80th birthday portrait painting of Queen Elizabeth II featured as a special edition of Rolf on Art, broadcast on BBC One on 1 January 2006.^[29] Harris's portrait of The Queen was voted by readers of the Radio Times the third favourite portrait of Her Majesty. The royal portrait was exhibited at Buckingham Palace, the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, and was exhibited on a tour of public galleries in the UK.

In September 2006 the Royal Australian Mint launched the first of the new 2007 Silver Kangaroo Collector's Coin series. Harris was commissioned to design the first coin in the series. For the third year running, Harris designed and painted the official Children In Need Christmas card. Harris has presented three series of the BBC art programme Star Portraits with Rolf Harris. In 2007, a documentary A Lifetime in Paint about Harris's work as an artist — from the early years in Australia to the present day — was screened on BBC One, followed by a Rolf On Art special titled Rolf on Lowry.

In 2007 Harris took part in the BBC Wales programme Coming Home about his Welsh family history.

In November 2007 at exhibition of Harris's new paintings was held at Portland Gallery, London. In December 2007 a new DVD titled Rolf Live! was released through his website.

Rolf on Art: Beatrix Potter was screened on BBC One in December 2007.

Harris appeared with a wobble board in a Churchill Insurance advertisement in 2009,^[30] and hosted the satirical quiz show Have I Got News for You, aired on 15 May 2009.^[31]

Rolf Harris sketches a "Rolfaroo" self-portrait

Harris is narrator of the 2010 Australian documentary series Penguin Island, a 6-part natural history documentary about the life of the Little Penguin. In September 2010 — October 2010, Rolf Harris took part in 'Jamies Dream School' teaching Art to a class of 20 students. His personality inspired many of the students, and set a creative spark alight in the classroom. Widely respected by the students, he was seen as one of the favourite teachers at the school in Mill Hill. One of his most memorable scenes on the Channel 4 programme was when Rolf and one of the students called Ronnie sat together in a one to one Art session, when everyone else had left the class and created a masterpiece together. Harris appeared as himself on the Christmas special of My Family aired on 24 December 2010.

In 2011, Harris made a guest appearance on BBC One show The Magicians hosted by Lenny Henry.

On 5 November 2011, Harris appeared in an episode of Piers Morgan's Life Stories.

On 2 May 2012, Harris appeared on The One Show. On the programme, he described his style of art as being "impressionistic".

Honours[link]

Harris was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) on 17 June 2006, having previously been created a Member (MBE) in 1968 and an Officer (OBE) in 1977.

In 1975 he was appointed King of Moomba^[32]

On 26 January 1989 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM)^[33]

On 8 November 2007 Rolf Harris was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of East London.^[34]

On 1 July 2008 Harris was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. He was joined onstage by The Seekers to perform "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" and his Jake the Peg routine.^[35][36]

On 26 January 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate at Liverpool Hope University.^[37]

On 27 May 2012, he was made a Fellow of BAFTA.^[38]

Styles from birth[link]

• Rolf Harris (1930–1968)
• Rolf Harris, MBE (1968–1977)
• Rolf Harris, OBE (1977–1989)
• Rolf Harris, AM, OBE (1989–2006)
• Rolf Harris, CBE, AM (2006–present)

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Official Rolf Harris Web Site
• Biography of Rolf Harris as a fine Artist
• Rolf Harris at the Internet Movie Database
• http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/individual/55463 BFI Database: Rolf Harris
• Some examples of Rolf Harris's art
• Walker, John A. (2005) "Rolf Harris: Celebrity artist" Jamani/artdesigncafe, February 2005
• Rolf Harris collection at the National Museum of Australia
• BBC raw words Quick Reads — Buster Fleabags by Rolf Harris

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012)

Paul Simon
Paul Simon performing March 8, 2007
Background information
Birth name	Paul Frederic Simon
Born	(1941-10-13) October 13, 1941 (age 70) Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
Genres	Folk rock, folk-pop, soft rock, world fusion
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, producer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass, piano, percussion, lute, alto saxophone, piccolo
Years active	1957–present
Labels	Columbia, Warner Bros., Hear Music
Associated acts	Simon & Garfunkel
Website	www.paulsimon.com
Notable instruments
Martin OM42PS (Paul Simon) and PS2 Yamaha PS Signature Models

Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is a grammy award winning American singer-songwriter, poet and guitarist.

Simon's international fame and success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, launched in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts: "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Bridge Over Troubled Water".^[1] The duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity, and Simon began a successful solo career, recording three highly acclaimed albums over the next five years.^[2] In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music. Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony in 1980 and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman in 1998.^[3]

Simon has earned 12 Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award.^[4] In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame^[5] and in 2006 was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time magazine.^[6] Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007.^[7] In 1986 Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees.^{[8] [9]}

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Simon was born in Newark, New Jersey. His father, Louis (1916–1995), was a college professor, upright bass player, and dance bandleader who performed under the name "Lee Sims". His mother, Belle (1910–2007), was an elementary school teacher. In 1941, his family moved to Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, in New York City. Donald Fagen has described Simon's childhood as that of "a certain kind of New York Jew, almost a stereotype, really, to whom music and baseball are very important. I think it has to do with the parents. The parents are either immigrants or first-generation Americans who felt like outsiders, and assimilation was the key thought — they gravitated to black music and baseball looking for an alternative culture."^[10] Simon, upon hearing Fagen's description, said it "isn't far from the truth."^[10] Simon says about his childhood, "I was a ballplayer. I'd go on my bike, and I'd hustle kids in stickball." He adds that his father was a Yankee fan:

I used to listen to games with my father. He was a nice guy. Fun. Funny. Smart. He didn't play with me as much as I played with my kids. He was at work until late at night. . . Sometimes [until] two in the morning."^[10]

Simon's musical career began at Forest Hills High School after meeting Art Garfunkel when they were both 11. They performed in a production of Alice in Wonderland for their sixth grade graduation, and began singing together when they were 13,^[11] occasionally performing at school dances. Their idols were the Everly Brothers, whom they imitated in their use of close two-part harmony. Simon also developed an interest in jazz, folk and blues, especially in musical legends Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly.

Simon's first song written for himself and Garfunkel, when he was 12 or 13, was called "The Girl for Me," and according to Simon became the "neighborhood hit." His father wrote out the words and chords on paper by hand for the boys to use. That paper became the first officially copyrighted Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song, and is now in the Library of Congress. In 1957, still in their mid-teens, they recorded the song "Hey, Schoolgirl" under the name Tom and Jerry, given to them by their label Big Records. The single reached No. 49 on the pop charts.

After graduating from high school, Simon majored in English at Queens College, while Garfunkel studied mathematics at Columbia University in Manhattan.^[10] Simon was a brother in the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, earned a degree in English literature, and briefly attended Brooklyn Law School after graduation, but his real passion was rock and roll.

Early career[link]

Between 1957 and 1964, Simon wrote, recorded, and released more than 30 songs, occasionally reuniting with Garfunkel as Tom & Jerry for some singles, including "Our Song" and "That's My Story". Most of the songs Simon recorded during that time were performed alone or with musicians other than Garfunkel. They were released on several minor record labels, such as Amy, Big, Hunt, King, Tribute, and Madison. He used several pseudonyms for these recordings, including Jerry Landis, Paul Kane and True Taylor. Simon enjoyed some moderate success in recording a few singles as part of a group called Tico and the Triumphs, including a song called "Motorcycle" which reached No. 97 on the Billboard charts in 1962. Tico and the Triumphs released four 45s. Marty Cooper, known as Tico, sang lead on several of these releases. A childhood friend, Bobby Susser, children's songwriter, record producer, and performer, co-produced the Tico 45s with Simon. That year, Simon reached No. 99 on the pop charts as Jerry Landis with the hit "The Lone Teen Ranger." Both chart singles were released on Amy Records.

Simon & Garfunkel[link]

In early 1964, Simon and Garfunkel got an audition with Columbia Records, whose executive Clive Davis was impressed enough to sign the duo to a contract to produce an album. Columbia decided that the two would be called simply "Simon & Garfunkel", a replacement for the group's previous name "Tom and Jerry". Simon said in 2003 that this renaming as "Simon & Garfunkel" was the first time that artists' ethnic names had been used in pop music.^[12] Simon and Garfunkel's first LP, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., was released on October 19, 1964; it consisted of 12 songs in the folk vein, five written by Simon. The album initially flopped.

So Simon moved to England to pursue a solo career by touring folk clubs and coffee houses. At the first club he played, the Railway Inn Folk Club in Brentwood, Essex, he met Kathy Chitty who became his girlfriend and inspiration for "Kathy's Song", "America" and others. He performed at Les Cousins in London and toured provincial folk clubs where he was exposed to a wide range of musical influences. In 1965, he recorded his solo LP The Paul Simon Songbook in England.

During his time in the UK, Simon co-wrote several songs with Bruce Woodley of the Australian pop group The Seekers including "I Wish You Could Be Here," "Cloudy", and "Red Rubber Ball"; Woodley's co-author credit was omitted from "Cloudy" on the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album. The American group The Cyrkle recorded a cover of "Red Rubber Ball", which reached No. 2 in the US. Simon also contributed to The Seekers catalogue with "Someday One Day," which was released in March 1966, charting at around the same time as Simon and Garfunkel's Homeward Bound.

Back on the American East Coast, radio stations began receiving requests for one of the Wednesday Morning tracks, Simon's "The Sounds of Silence". Their producer, Tom Wilson, overdubbed the track with electric guitar, bass, and drums, releasing it as a single that eventually went to No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts.^{[citation needed]}

The song's success drew Simon back to the United States to reunite with Garfunkel. Together they recorded four more influential albums: Sounds of Silence; Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; Bookends; and the hugely successful Bridge over Troubled Water. Simon and Garfunkel also contributed extensively to the soundtrack of the Mike Nichols film The Graduate (1967), starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft. While writing "Mrs. Robinson", Simon originally toyed with the title "Mrs. Roosevelt". When Garfunkel reported this indecision over the song's name to the director, Nichols replied, "Don't be ridiculous! We're making a movie here! It's Mrs. Robinson!"^[13] Simon and Garfunkel returned to England in the fall of 1968 and did a church concert appearance at Kraft Hall, which was broadcast on the BBC, and which also featured Paul's brother Ed sitting in on a performance of the instrumental "Anji".^[14]

Simon pursued solo projects after Bridge over Troubled Water, reuniting occasionally with Garfunkel for various projects, such as their 1975 Top Ten single "My Little Town". Simon had written it for Garfunkel, whose solo output Simon judged as lacking "bite". The song was included on their respective solo albums: Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years; and Garfunkel's Breakaway. Contrary to popular belief, the song is not autobiographical of Simon's early life in New York City.^[15] In 1981, they got together again for the famous concert in Central Park, followed by a world tour and an aborted reunion album, to have been entitled Think Too Much, which was eventually released (without Garfunkel) as Hearts and Bones. Together, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.^[16]

In 2003, Simon and Garfunkel reunited once again when they received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. This reunion led to a U.S. tour — the acclaimed "Old Friends" concert series — followed by a 2004 international encore, which culminated in a free concert at the Colosseum in Rome that drew 600,000 people.^[17] In 2005, the pair sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water" with Aaron Neville in a benefit for Hurricane Katrina victims.^{[citation needed]}

The pair reunited six years later in New Orleans at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.^[18]

1971–76[link]

After Simon and Garfunkel split in 1970, Simon began to write and record solo material. His eponymous album Paul Simon was released in January 1972, preceded by his first experiment with world music, the Jamaican-inspired "Mother and Child Reunion", considered one of the first examples of reggae attempted by a white musician. The single was a hit, reaching both the American and British Top 5. The album received universal acclaim, with critics praising the variety of styles and the confessional lyrics, reaching No. 4 in the US and No. 1 in the UK and Japan. It later spawned another Top 30 hit with "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard".

Simon's next project was the pop-folk masterpiece, There Goes Rhymin' Simon, released in May 1973. It contained some of his most popular and polished recordings – the lead single, "Kodachrome", was a No. 2 hit in America, and the follow-up, the gospel-flavored "Loves Me Like a Rock" was even bigger, topping the Cashbox charts. Other songs, like the weary "American Tune" or the melancholic "Something So Right" – a tribute to Simon's first wife, Peggy – became standards in the musician's catalogue. The critical and commercial reception for this second album were even stronger than for his debut. At the time, it was remarked how the songs were very fresh and unworried on the surface while they were exploring socially and politically conscious themes on a deeper level.^{[citation needed]} The album reached No. 1 on the Cashbox album charts. As a souvenir for the tour that came next, in 1974 it was released as a live album, Live Rhymin', which was moderately successful and displayed some changes in Simon's music style, adopting world and religious music.

Highly anticipated, Still Crazy After All These Years was his next album. Released in October 1975 and produced by Simon and Phil Ramone, it marked another departure. The mood of the album was darker, as he wrote and recorded it in the wake of his divorce. Preceded by the feel-good duet with Phoebe Snow, "Gone at Last" (a Top 25 hit) and the Simon & Garfunkel reunion track "My Little Town" (a No. 9 on Billboard), the album managed to be his only No. 1 on the Billboard charts to date. The 18th Grammy Awards named it the Album of the Year and Simon's performance the year's Best Male Pop Vocal. With Simon in the forefront of popular music, the third single from the album, "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" reached the top spot of the Billboard charts, his only single to reach No. 1 on this list. Also, on May 3, 1976, Simon put together a benefit show at Madison Square Garden to raise money for the New York Public Library. Phoebe Snow, Jimmy Cliff and the Brecker Brothers also performed. The concert produced over $30,000 for the Library.

1977–85[link]

After three back-to-back successful studio albums, Simon became less productive during the second half of the 1970s. He dabbled in various projects, including writing music for the film Shampoo and acting (he was cast as Tony Lacey in Woody Allen's film Annie Hall). He achieved another hit in this decade, with the lead single of his 1977 compilation, Greatest Hits, Etc., "Slip Slidin' Away", reaching No. 5 in the United States.

In 1980 he released One-Trick Pony, his debut album with Warner Bros. Records and his first in almost five years. It was paired with the motion picture of the same name, which Simon wrote and starred in. Although it produced his last Top 10 hit with the upbeat "Late in the Evening" (also a No. 1 hit on the Radio & Records American charts), the album did not sell well, in a music market dominated by disco music. Simon recorded Hearts and Bones, a polished and confessional album that was eventually viewed as one of his best works, but that marked a lull in his commercial popularity; both the album and the lead single, "Allergies", missed the American Top 40. Hearts and Bones included "The Late Great Johnny Ace", a song partly about Johnny Ace, an American R&B singer, and partly about slain Beatle John Lennon. A successful US solo tour featured Simon and his guitar, with a recording of the rhythm track and horns for "Late In The Evening."^{[citation needed]} In January 1985, Simon lent his talent to USA for Africa and performed on the relief fundraising single "We Are the World".

1986–92[link]

Graceland (1986) album cover.

As he commented years later, after the disappointing commercial performance of Hearts and Bones, Simon felt he had lost his inspiration to a point of no return, and that his commercial fortunes were unlikely to change. While driving his car in late 1984 in this state of frustration, Simon listened to a cassette of the Boyoyo Boys' instrumental "Gumboots: Accordion Jive Volume II". Interested by the unusual sound, he wrote lyrics to the number which he sang over a re-recording of the song. It was the first composition of a new musical project that became the celebrated album Graceland, an eclectic mixture of musical styles including pop, a cappella, isicathamiya, rock, and mbaqanga. Simon felt that he had nothing to lose. He travelled to South Africa in an attempt to embrace the culture and find the most comfortable environment for recording the album. Sessions in Johannesburg took place in February 1985. Overdubbing and additional recording was done in April, 1986, in New York. The sessions featured many South African musicians and groups, particularly Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Simon also collaborated with several artists of his own culture, singing a memorable duet with Linda Ronstadt in "Under African Skies", and playing with Los Lobos in "All Around the World or The Myth of the Fingerprints". Warner Bros. Records had serious doubts about releasing an album of this eclecticism to the mainstream, but when it did in August 1986, Graceland was praised by critics and the public and became Simon's most successful solo album. Slowly climbing the worldwide charts, it reached #1 in many countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and peaked at #3 in the US. It was the second-best-selling album of 1987 in the US, selling five million copies and eventually reaching 5x Platinum certification. Another seven million copies were sold internationally to become his best-selling album. Much of the success of the album was due to the lead single, the upbeat "You Can Call Me Al", whose lyrics describe a man experiencing an identity crisis. The track featured many memorable elements – a catchy synthesizer riff, an easy whistle solo, and an unusual bass run in which the second half was a reversed recording of the first half. "You Can Call Me Al" was accompanied with a humorous video featuring actor Chevy Chase, which introduced Simon to a new audience through MTV. In the end, the track reached UK Top 5 and the US Top 25. Further singles, including the title track, "The Boy in the Bubble" and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes", were not commercial hits but became radio standards and were highly praised.

At age 45, Simon found himself back at the forefront of popular music. He received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1987 and also Grammy Award for Record of the Year for the title track one year later. He also embarked on the very successful Graceland Tour, which was documented on music video. Simon found himself embracing new sounds, a fact that some critics viewed negatively – however, Simon reportedly felt it as a very natural artistic experiment, considering that "world music" was already present on much of his early work, including such Simon & Garfunkel hits as "El Condor Pasa" and his early solo recording "Mother and Child Reunion", which was recorded in Kingston, Jamaica. One way or another, Warner Bros. Records (who by this time now controlled and reissued all his previous Columbia albums) re-established Simon as one of their most successful artists. In an attempt to capitalize on his renewed success, WB Records released the album Negotiations and Love Songs in November 1988, a mixture of popular hits and personal favorites that covered Simon's entire career and became an enduring seller in his catalog.

After Graceland, Simon decided to extend his roots with the Brazilian music-flavored The Rhythm of the Saints. Sessions for the album began in December 1989, and took place in Rio de Janeiro and New York, featuring guitarist J. J. Cale and many Brazilian and African musicians. The tone of the album was more introspective and relatively low-key compared to the mostly upbeat numbers of Graceland. Released on October 1990, the album received excellent critical reviews and achieved very respectable sales, peaking at #4 in the US and No. 1 in the UK. The lead single, "The Obvious Child", featuring the Grupo Cultural Olodum, was a Top 20 hit in the UK and appeared near the bottom of the Billboard Hot 100. Although not as successful as Graceland, The Rhythm of the Saints was received as a competent successor and consistent complement on Simon's attempts to explore (and popularize) world music, and also received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Here are also more songs about past loves; his ex-wife Carrie Fisher says in her autobiography Wishful Drinking that the song "She Moves On" is about her. It's one of several she claims, followed by the line, "If you can get Paul Simon to write a song about you, do it. Because he is so brilliant at it." ^[19]

The importance of both albums allowed Simon to stage another New York concert, and on August 15, 1991, almost a decade after his concert with Garfunkel, Simon staged another concert in Central Park with both African and South American bands. The success of the concert surpassed all expectations, and reportedly over 750,000 people attended, becoming one of the largest concert audiences in history. He later remembered the concert as the "most memorable moment in my career". The success of the show led to both a live album and an Emmy-winning TV special. In the middle, Simon embarked on the successful Born at the Right Time Tour and promoted the album with further singles, including "Proof" – accompanied with a humorous video featuring, again, Chevy Chase. On March 4, 1992 he appeared on his own MTV Unplugged, offering renditions of many of his most famous compositions. Broadcast in June, the show was a success, though it did not receive an album release.

1993–98[link]

After Unplugged, Simon's place in the forefront of popular music dropped notably. A Simon & Garfunkel reunion took place in 1993, and in another attempt to capitalize on the occasion, Columbia released Paul Simon 1964/1993 in September, a three-disc compilation that received a reduced version on the two-disc album The Paul Simon Anthology one month later. In 1995 he only made news for appearing at The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he performed the song "Ten Years", which he composed specially for the tenth anniversary of the show. Also that year, he was featured on the Annie Lennox version of his 1973 song "Something So Right", which appeared briefly on the UK Top 50 once it was released as a single in November.

Since the early stages of the nineties, Simon was fully involved on The Capeman, a musical that finally opened on January 29, 1998. Simon worked enthusiastically on the project for many years and described it as "a New York Puerto Rican story based on events that happened in 1959—events that I remembered." ^[20] The musical tells the story of real-life Puerto Rican youth Salvador Agron, who wore a cape while committing two murders in 1959 New York, and who went on to become a writer in prison. Featuring Marc Anthony as the young Agron and Ruben Blades as the older Agron, the play received terrible reviews and very poor box office receipts from the very beginning, and ended up closing on March 28 after just 68 performances, becoming a failure from which Simon reportedly lost 11 million dollars. Simon recorded an album of songs from the show, which was released in November 1997. It was received with very mixed reviews, though many critics praised the combination of doo-wop, rockabilly and Caribbean music that the album reflected. In commercial terms, Songs from The Capeman was a failure—it found Simon missing the Top 40 of the Billboard charts for the first time in his career. The cast album was never released on CD but eventually became available online.

1999–2007[link]

After the disaster of The Capeman, Simon's career was again in an unexpected crisis. However, entering the new millennium he maintained a respectable reputation, offering critically acclaimed new material and receiving commercial attention. In 1999, Simon embarked on a North American tour with Bob Dylan where each alternated as headline act with a "middle" section where they performed together, starting on the first of June and ending September 18. The collaboration was generally well-received, with just one critic, Seth Rogovoy, from the Berkshire Eagle, questioning the collaboration.^[21]

In an attempt to return successfully to the music market, Simon wrote and recorded a new album very quickly, with You're the One arriving in October 2000. The album consisted mostly of folk-pop writing combined with foreign musical sounds, particularly grooves from North Africa. While not reaching the commercial heights of previous albums, it managed at least to reach both the British and American Top 20. It received favorable reviews and received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. He toured extensively for the album, and one performance in Paris was released to home video.

On September 21, 2001, Simon sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water" on "America: A Tribute to Heroes", a multinetwork broadcast to benefit the September 11 Telethon Fund. In 2002, he wrote and recorded "Father and Daughter", the theme song for the animated children's movie The Wild Thornberrys Movie, The track was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. In 2003, he participated on another Simon & Garfunkel reunion. One year later, Simon's studio albums were re-released both individually and together in a limited-edition nine-CD boxed set, Paul Simon: The Studio Recordings 1972–2000.

At the time, Simon was already working on a new album with Brian Eno called Surprise, which was released in May 2006. Most of the album was inspired by the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq invasion and the war that followed. In personal terms, Simon was also inspired by the fact of being over 60 years old, an age that he turned in 2001 and that he humorously referred already on his single "Old" from the You're the One. Simon showed special care about the musical venture he traveled since 1986's Graceland. As he put it, "Once you go away for a bit, you wonder who people think you are. If they don't know what you're up to, they just go by your history. I'm so often described as this person that went to other cultures, which is true, but I never thought of it that way. I suspect people are thinking, 'What culture did you go to?' But this record is straight-ahead American." Surprise was a commercial hit, reaching #14 in the Billboard 200 and #4 in the UK. Most critics also praised the album, and many of them called it a real "comeback" for the artist. Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic paid attention to the attempts of Simon in embracing his classic folk sound with Eno's electronic textures, and wrote that "Simon doesn't achieve his comeback by reconnecting with the sound and spirit of his classic work; he has achieved it by being as restless and ambitious as he was at his popular and creative peak, which makes Surprise all the more remarkable." The album was supported with the successful Surprise Tour.

On March 1, 2007, Simon made headlines again when he was announced as the first recipient of the recently-created Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The Prize, created by the Library of Congress, was awarded to Simon during a Concert Gala featuring his music at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of May 23. The event was nationally broadcast on PBS on the evening of June 27, 2007.^[22] Performers at the concert included Shawn Colvin, Philip Glass, Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, and Stevie Wonder as well as Simon's former collaborator Art Garfunkel.^[23] On June 26, Warner Bros. released the definitive Paul Simon greatest-hits collection. The Essential Paul Simon consisted of two discs that reviewed 36 songs from his ten studio albums, and was also released on a special edition featuring a DVD of music videos and memorable live performances. The album was a commercial hit, reaching #12 in the UK.

2008–12[link]

Simon performing live in Germany, in 2008.

Paul Simon resides in New Canaan, Connecticut.^[24] He is one of a small number of performers who are named as the copyright owner on their recordings (most records have the recording company as the named owner of the recording). This noteworthy development was spearheaded by the Bee Gees after their successful $200 million lawsuit against RSO Records, which remains to this day the largest successful lawsuit against a record company by an artist or group.

All of Simon's solo recordings, even the ones originally issued by Columbia Records, are currently distributed by Sony Records' Legacy Recordings unit. His records were issued by Warner Music until mid-2010.^[25]

In February 2009, Simon performed back-to-back shows in his native New York City at the Beacon Theatre, which had recently been renovated. Simon was reunited with Art Garfunkel at the first show as well as with the cast of The Capeman; also playing in the band was Graceland bassist Bakithi Kumalo.

In May 2009, Simon toured with Art Garfunkel in Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

In October 2009, Simon appeared alongside Art Garfunkel at the 25th Anniversary of The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The pair performed four of their most popular songs, "The Sound of Silence", "The Boxer", "Cecilia", and "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

Simon paying tribute to musician Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen who were the recipients of the first annual PEN Awards for songwriting excellence, at the JFK Presidential Library, on February 26, 2012.

In mid-2010, Simon moved his catalogue of solo work from Warner Bros. Records to Sony/Columbia Records ^[25] where Simon and Garfunkel's catalogue is. Simon's back catalogue of solo recordings would be marketed by Sony Music's Legacy Recordings unit.

Simon's latest album entitled So Beautiful or So What,^[26] was released on the Concord Music Group label on April 12, 2011.^[27] The album received high marks from the artist, "It's the best work I've done in 20 years."^[25] It was reported that Paul Simon attempted to have Bob Dylan guest on the album.^[25]

On November 10, 2010, Simon released a new song called "Getting Ready for Christmas Day". It premiered on National Public Radio,^[28] and was included on the album So Beautiful Or So What. The song samples a 1941 sermon by the Rev. J.M. Gates, also entitled "Getting Ready for Christmas Day".^[29] Simon performed the song live on The Colbert Report on December 16, 2010.^[30] The first video featured J.M. Gates' giving the sermon and his church in 2010 with its display board showing many of Simon's lyrics; the second video illustrates the song with cartoon images.

In the premiere show of the final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show on September 10, 2010, Simon surprised Oprah and the audience with a song dedicated to Oprah and her show lasting 25 years (an update of a song he did for her show's 10th anniversary).^[31]

Rounding off his 2011 World Tour, which included United States, England, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany, Simon appeared at Ramat Gan Stadium in Israel in July 2011, making his first concert appearance in Israel since 1983.^[32] On September 11, 2011, Paul Simon performed "The Sound of Silence" at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, site of the World Trade Center, on the 10th Anniversary of the September 11th attacks. ^[33]

On February 26, 2012, Simon paid tribute to fellow musicians Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen who were the recipients of the first annual PEN Awards for songwriting excellence at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston, Massachusetts.^[34] In 1986 Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees.^{[35] [36]}

Songwriting[link]

In an indepth interview with American Songwriter, Simon discusses the craft of songwriting with music Journalist, Tom Moon. In the interview, Simon explains the basic themes in his songwriting: love, family, social commentary etc. as well as the overarching messages of religion, spirituality, and God in his lyrics. Simon goes on in the interview to explain the process of how he goes about writing songs, "The music always precedes the words. The words often come from the sound of the music and eventually evolve into coherent thoughts. Or incoherent thoughts. Rhythm plays a crucial part in the lyric-making as well. It’s like a puzzle to find the right words to express what the music is saying."^[37]

Projects[link]

Music for Broadway[link]

In the late 1990s, Simon wrote and produced a Broadway musical called The Capeman, which lost $11 million during its 1998 run. In April 2008, the Brooklyn Academy of Music celebrated Paul Simon's works, and dedicated a week to Songs From the Capeman with a good portion of the show's songs performed by a cast of singers and the Spanish Harlem Orchestra. Simon himself appeared during the BAM shows, performing "Trailways Bus" and "Late In the Evening". In August 2010, The Capeman was staged for three nights in the Delacorte Theatre in New York's Central Park. The production was directed by Diane Paulus and produced in conjunction with The Public Theatre.^[38]

Film and television[link]

Simon has also dabbled in acting. He played music producer Tony Lacey in the 1977 Woody Allen film Annie Hall, and wrote and starred in 1980's One Trick Pony as Jonah Levin, a journeyman rock and roller. Simon also wrote all the songs in the film. Paul Simon also appeared on The Muppet Show (the only episode to use only the songs of one songwriter, Simon). In 1990, he played the character of—appropriately enough—Simple Simon on the Disney channel TV movie, Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme.

Simon has also appeared on Saturday Night Live (SNL) either as host or musical guest for a total of 13 times. On one appearance in the late 1980s, he worked with his political namesake, Illinois Senator Paul Simon.^[39] Simon's most recent SNL appearance was on the February 18, 2012 episode hosted by Maya Rudolph.

In one SNL skit from 1986 (when he was promoting Graceland), Simon plays himself, waiting in line with a friend to get into a movie. He amazes his friend by remembering intricate details about prior meetings with passers-by, but draws a complete blank when approached by Art Garfunkel, despite the latter's numerous memory prompts.

Simon also appeared alongside George Harrison as musical guest on the Thanksgiving Day episode of SNL (November 20, 1976). The two performed "Here Comes the Sun" and "Homeward Bound"" together, while Simon performed "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" solo earlier in the show. On that episode, Simon opened the show performing "Still Crazy After All These Years" in a turkey outfit, since Thanksgiving was the following week. About halfway through the song, Simon tells the band to stop playing because of his embarrassment. After giving a frustrating speech to the audience, he leaves the stage, backed by applause. Lorne Michaels positively greets him backstage, but Simon is still upset, yelling at him because of the humiliating turkey outfit. This is one of SNL's most played sketches.

On September 29, 2001, Simon made a special appearance on the first SNL to air after the September 11, 2001 attacks. On that show, he performed "The Boxer" to the audience and the NYC firefighters and police officers. He is also friends with former SNL star Chevy Chase, who appeared in his video for "You Can Call Me Al" lip synching the song while Simon looks disgruntled and mimes backing vocals and the playing of various instruments beside him. He is a close friend of SNL producer Lorne Michaels, who produced the 1977 TV show The Paul Simon Special, as well as the Simon and Garfunkel concert in Central Park four years later. Simon and Lorne Michaels were the subjects of a 2006 episode of the Sundance channel documentary series, Iconoclasts.

He has been the subject of two films by Jeremy Marre, the first on Graceland, the second on The Capeman.

On November 18, 2008, Simon was a guest on The Colbert Report promoting his book Lyrics 1964–2008. He did an interview with Stephen Colbert and then performed "American Tune".

Simon performed a Stevie Wonder song at the White House in 2009, at an event honoring Wonder's musical career and contributions.

In May 2009, The Library of Congress: Paul Simon and Friends Live Concert was released on DVD, via Shout! Factory. The PBS concert was recorded in 2007.

In April 2011 Simon was confirmed to appear at the Glastonbury music festival in England.

Awards and honors[link]

Simon won 12 Grammy Awards (one of them a Lifetime Achievement Award) and five Grammy nominations, the most recent for his album You're the One in 2001. In 1998 he received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award for the Simon & Garfunkel album Bridge over Troubled Water. He received an Oscar nomination for the song "Father and Daughter" in 2002. He is also a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; as a solo artist in 2001, and in 1990 as half of Simon & Garfunkel.

In 2001, Simon was honored as MusiCares Person Of The Year. The following year, he was one of the five recipients of the annual Kennedy Center Honors, the nation's highest tribute to performing and cultural artists.

In 2005, Simon was saluted as a BMI Icon at the 53rd Annual BMI Pop Awards. Simon's songwriting catalog has earned 39 BMI Awards including multiple citations for "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Mrs. Robinson," "Scarborough Fair" and "The Sound of Silence". As of 2005, he has amassed nearly 75 million broadcast airplays, according to BMI surveys.^[40]

In 2006, Simon was selected by Time Magazine as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World."

In 2007, Simon received the first annual Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney were to follow in 2009 and 2010. Named in honor of George and Ira Gershwin, this newly created award recognizes the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world’s culture. Upon being notified of receiving this honor, Simon said, “I am grateful to be the recipient of the Gershwin Prize and doubly honored to be the first. I look forward to spending an evening in the company of artists I admire at the award ceremony in May. I can think of a few who have expressed my words and music far better than I. I’m excited at the prospect of that happening again. It’s a songwriter’s dream come true." Among the performers who paid tribute to Simon were Stevie Wonder, Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, Dianne Reeves, Marc Anthony, Yolanda Adams, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The event was professionally filmed and broadcast and is now available as Paul Simon and Friends.

In 2010, Simon received an honorary degree from Brandeis University, where he performed "The Boxer" at the main commencement ceremony.

In October 2011, Simon was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Science. At the induction ceremony, he performed "American Tune".

Personal life[link]

When Simon moved to England in 1964 he met Kathleen Mary "Kathy" Chitty (born 1947) on 12 April 1964 at the very first English folk club he played, the Railway Inn Folk Club in Brentwood, Essex, where Chitty was working part-time selling tickets. She was 17, he was 22 and they fell in love. Later that year they visited the US together, touring around mainly by bus.^[41] Kathy returned to England on her own with Simon returning to her some weeks later. When Simon returned to the US with the growing success of "The Sound of Silence" Kathy (who was quite shy^[42]) wanted no part of the success and fame that awaited Simon and they split up.^[43] She is mentioned by name in at least two of his songs: "Kathy's Song" and "America," and is referred to in "Homeward Bound" and "The Late Great Johnny Ace." There is a photo of Simon and Kathy on the cover of The Paul Simon Song Book.

Simon has been married three times, first to Peggy Harper in late autumn 1969. They had a son, Harper Simon, in 1972 and divorced in 1975. The song "Train in the Distance," from Simon's 1983 album, is about this relationship.^[44] Simon's 1972 song "Run That Body Down," from his debut solo album, casually mentions both himself and his then-wife ("Peg") by name.

His second marriage, from 1983 to 1984, was to actress and author Carrie Fisher to whom he proposed after a New York Yankees game.^[44] The song "Hearts and Bones" was written about this relationship. The song "Graceland" is also thought to be about seeking solace from the end of this relationship by taking a road trip.^[45] A year after divorcing, Simon and Fisher resumed their relationship for several years.

He married folk singer Edie Brickell on May 30, 1992. They have three children together, Adrian, Lulu, and Gabriel.^[46]

Philanthropy[link]

Simon is a proponent of music education for children. In 1970, after recording his "Bridge Over Troubled Water," at the invitation of the NYU School of the Arts, Simon held auditions for a young songwriter's workshop. Advertised in the Village Voice, the auditions brought hundreds of hopefuls to perform for Simon. Among the six teenage songwriters Simon selected for tutelage were Melissa Manchester, Tommy Mandel and rock/beat poet Joe Linus, with Maggie and Terre Roche (the Roche Sisters), who later sang back-up for Simon, joining the workshop in progress through an impromptu appearance.

Simon invited the six teens to experience recording at Columbia studios with engineer Roy Halee at the board. During these sessions, Bob Dylan was downstairs recording the album Self-Portrait, which included a version of Simon's "The Boxer". Violinist Isaac Stern also visited the group with a CBS film crew, speaking to the young musicians about lyrics and music after Joe Linus performed his song "Circus Lion" for Stern.

Manchester later paid homage to Simon, on her recorded song, "Ode to Paul." Other younger musicians Simon has mentored include Nick Laird-Clowes, who later co-founded the band The Dream Academy. Laird-Clowes has credited Simon with helping to shape the band's biggest hit, "Life In A Northern Town".^[47]

In 2003, Simon signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that provides free musical instruments and free lessons to children in public schools throughout the US. He sits on the organization's board of directors as an honorary member.

Simon is also a major benefactor and one of the co-founders, with Dr. Irwin Redlener, of the Children's Health Project and The Children's Health Fund^[48][49] which started by creating specially equipped "buses" to take medical care to children in medically underserved areas, urban and rural. Their first bus was in the impoverished South Bronx of New York City, but they now operate in 12 states, including on the Gulf Coast. It has expanded greatly, partnering with major hospitals, local public schools and medical schools and advocating policy for children's health and medical care.

In May 2012, Paul Simon performed at a benefit dinner for the Turkana Basin Institute in New York City, raising more than $2 million for Richard Leakey's research institute in Africa.^[50]

Controversy[link]

In 1971, as a jury-member of the Rio de Janeiro song contest, Simon gave no points to the 15-year-old Marianne Rosenberg, an ethnic Sinti (Gypsy) and child of an Auschwitz survivor (which Simon may not have known), because she represented Germany.^[51]

Guitars[link]

• Martin Paul Simon Signature PS2
• Martin Paul Simon Signature OM42
• Martin D-28 Acoustic
• Martin D-42 6/12 String Acoustics
• Ovation Custom Legend^[52]
• Yamaha Paul Simon Signature Model Acoustic
• Yamaha FG700S
• Yamaha FG730S
• Yamaha FX300C
• Yamaha F30BL
• Yamaha F40BL
• Yamaha GCX31C
• Taylor PS10
• Taylor 114
• Taylor 210
• Taylor 214
• Takamine TC132SC Classical
• Fender Stratocaster
• Fender Jaguar
• Fender Acoustic Guitars

Gear[link]

• Dunlop Paul Simon Picks Accessories
• Dunlop String Accessories
• Fender String Accessories

Discography[link]

Number-one albums

• 1972 – Paul Simon (UK, Japan, Norway)
• 1973 – There Goes Rhymin' Simon (US Cashbox)
• 1975 – Still Crazy After All These Years (US)
• 1986 – Graceland (UK, Australia, Canada, Switzerland)
• 1990 – The Rhythm of the Saints (UK)

Work on Broadway[link]

• Rock 'N Roll! The First 5,000 Years (1982) – revue – featured songwriter for Mrs. Robinson
• Asinamali! (1987) – play – co-producer
• Mike Nichols and Elaine May: Together Again on Broadway (1992) – concert – performer
• The Capeman (1998) – composer, co-lyricist and music arranger – Tony Nomination for Best Original Score
• The Graduate (2002) – play – featured songwriter

See also[link]

• List of songs written by Paul Simon
• Bronson, Fred (2003). The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits. Billboard Books. ISBN 0-8230-7677-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=PgGqNrqfrsoC&pg=PT12&dq=billboard#v=onepage&q=&f=false. 

References[link]