Rock Memoir 🍑 Ume-chan’s Diary

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

— Paul Simon

October 13, 1963.

The London Palladium.

The Beatles appeared on the British television programme Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

Some fifteen million people reportedly watched.

Fans crowded outside the theatre. Inside, the girls screamed.

Beatlemania.

The frenzy sweeping Britain was spilling out through television screens.

That same day in New York, another Paul turned twenty-two.

Paul Simon.

Not yet an international star.

The following year, he and his childhood friend Art Garfunkel would release their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.

Sixty-three years later.

October 13, 2026.

Paul Simon’s eighty-fifth birthday. 🎂

Now, this Paul Simon.

In 1975 he wrote a song called “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”

Fifty ways to leave somebody.

You’d think he must be an expert at saying goodbye. But take a look at his life, and things get rather strange.

First, Art Garfunkel.

They met in 1953, when they were only eleven, at school in Queens, New York.

Calling them childhood friends hardly seems enough. They were almost brothers.

They knew one another’s talents, weaknesses, and most irritating habits far too well.

Jealousy. Rivalry. The urge to come out on top.

Perhaps that’s precisely why they could never quite let each other go.

The attachment only grew stronger.

Around 1969, Art left for Mexico to appear in Mike Nichols’s film Catch-22.

Paul had originally been expected to appear too, but his part was dropped.

Art went off to make a movie.

Paul stayed in New York, writing songs and waiting.

The filming went on longer than expected.

Around this time Paul wrote “The Only Living Boy in New York.”

The “Tom” in the song was Art’s old name from their days performing as Tom & Jerry.

It was a song for the partner who had gone away.

In 1970 Simon & Garfunkel effectively split.

But in 1975, Paul decided to write a new song for Art.

Art’s singing was too sweet, he thought. What if he gave him something a little meaner to sing?

That idea became “My Little Town.”

When Paul offered him the song, Art was delighted—but he knew his friend.

Once you’ve finished it, won’t you want to sing it yourself?

Sure enough, as Paul worked on it, he did.

Art suggested they harmonize together.

Paul initially resisted. He had written it for Art.

But once they sang it, there were those two voices again.

So they went to Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Southern musicians backed the recording.

Two New Yorkers singing together again in Alabama.

“My Little Town” appeared on both Paul’s Still Crazy After All These Years and Art’s Breakaway.

They sang it together, then each took it home on his own record.

After that, they kept drawing close and pulling away.

Central Park, 1981: their voices met again before a vast audience.

The reunion even led to plans for a new album.

But in 1983 Paul removed Art’s vocals from the recordings in progress and released the material as his own solo album, Hearts and Bones.

According to a recording engineer, Art’s vocals were actually erased from the master tape.

Even after Paul went that far, Art still didn’t walk away from their relationship.

Apart. Together. Apart again.

Whenever they sang, their voices blended with almost frightening beauty.

Yet beneath those harmonies lay years of unresolved conflict.

A brotherly rivalry built over decades: conflict, jealousy, affection, and finally attachment.

It’s so beautiful that it almost gives me the shivers.

Looking at this troublesome mixture of affection and obsession, a phrase came to mind: “Limerence–Monomania.”

If Beatlemania was a frenzy that swept up millions, this is a frenzy within the heart, centered on just one person.

And even when that person is gone, it doesn’t easily end.

Now, 1983.

Paul Simon married Carrie Fisher—Princess Leia from Star Wars.

He reportedly made up his mind at Yankee Stadium, watching a doubleheader, somewhere around his second beer.

He went home and proposed. Five days later they were married.

Apparently baseball and beer finally helped him decide.

They were already arguing on their honeymoon.

Carrie later recalled telling Paul that she didn’t merely dislike him—she disliked him as a person. And then they both burst out laughing.

A kind of playful sparring dressed up as hatred…

It lasted about eleven months.

But after the divorce, they started seeing each other again.

…You haven’t actually broken up!

Meanwhile, Paul was having a house built on Long Island for himself and Carrie.

The marriage had collapsed.

But construction went on.

Paul continued driving out to the site to watch the house take shape.

What was he thinking on those trips?

Perhaps he simply needed to check on the work. Perhaps there was another reason.

We don’t know.

But to me, it feels as though he kept returning to inspect the future he and Carrie were supposed to have shared.

The house hadn’t changed. Neither had the route.

Only the future of the two people who were meant to live there had disappeared.

The same destination.

The same road.

In the car, he played a cassette of South African music given to him by a friend, over and over.

Before he knew it, he’d been listening to that same tape for months.

Rather than chasing the person he’d lost, he seemed to be chasing the everyday life they were supposed to have had together.

At least, that’s how I see it.

Eventually, drawn by the music, Paul went to South Africa.

In 1986 came Graceland.

On the drive to the house he was meant to share with his wife, an entirely different life had begun.

1975.

Paul Simon, thirty-four.

As his first marriage was coming to an end, he released Still Crazy After All These Years.

There was “My Little Town,” with his old partner Art Garfunkel.

The title song, about running into an old lover.

And “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”

A man who could think of fifty ways to leave a lover somehow couldn’t make a clean break from his old musical partner.

Later, he would divorce his wife—and start dating her again.

And the song he wrote is so upbeat, almost cheerful, that I can’t help hearing a touch of self-mocking irony.

Steve Gadd plays that unforgettable drum pattern.

It’s a breakup song, and yet your body wants to move.

And despite promising fifty ways, the lyrics only spell out five.

After everything we’ve seen of Paul, even his claim to have thought of fifty ways sounds a little like bravado mixed with embarrassment.

“50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”—and in real life, he couldn’t put even one of them to use.

And that brings me back to the unfinished house.

A home for two people who would never live there together.

Paul driving out there again and again, listening to the same cassette.

—I hate you, I hate you. That’s why I love you.

The things I can’t stand about you are the very things I love.

He leaves his partner, and they sing together again.

He divorces his wife, and they start dating again.

You can part ways.

And still, no matter how far you go, you can’t quite sort out what you feel.

Jealousy, love, obsession—none of them vanish just because you’ve said goodbye.

Maybe falling out, fighting, even divorcing weren’t always the end of a relationship, but a kind of recurring recreation within it.

Maybe fifty ways to leave were also fifty ways to keep a relationship going.

Even breaking up was part of being together.

A quarrel, a breakup, even a divorce—perhaps they’re all just part of love’s process.

In 1975, at thirty-four, Paul Simon sang:

Still Crazy After All These Years.

After all this time, I’m still the same.

Fifty-one years later.

October 13, 2026.

Eighty-five.

It’s been a long time since then, Paul.

Still crazy, Paul?

Happy 85th Birthday, Paul Simon. 🎂🍑📀