More than half a century of recording and performing may have taken a physical toll on Paul Simon. Legendary musician Simon & Garfunkel revealed in a new interview with times He has lost almost all of his hearing in one ear, making a return to live performance unlikely.
“Suddenly I’ve lost most of my hearing in my left ear, and nobody has an explanation for that,” explained Simon, who retired from touring in 2018. “So everything just got harder. My reaction to that was frustration and annoyance. Not anger yet, because I thought it would pass, and it would fix itself.”
Simeon has not yet repaired himself. But he doesn’t seem very detached about it, perhaps due to the fact that he sometimes gets sick of his songs when he’s traveling: “My songs that I don’t want to sing live, I don’t do them.” Sometimes there are songs that I like and then at a certain point in the tour, I’ll be like, “What are you doing, Paul?” This often comes up during “You Can Call Me Al”. I was thinking, “What are you doing? You’re like a Paul Simon cover band. You should get off the road and go home.”
advertisement
Of course, Simon hasn’t stopped making music completely. Just last week, he shared a new music project called Seven psalms, is a seven-movement composition intended to be listened to as a continuous piece of music rather than an album. He also made a surprise appearance at the Newport Folk Festival last year.
Dave Grohl previously opened up about his hearing loss in a February 2022 interview, sort of joking that he’s “fucking deaf” and admitting he’s “been lip-reading for 20 years.”
