1968 getting out of the Navy walking the streets of San Francisco in my navy uniform. Age 22. Watching all the hippies protesting. Remembering my friend Joe who got killed in Vietnam. Never came home alive.. Hopping on an air plane homeward bound to San Antonio texas. Remembering the girl who left me the year before. This song "Homeward bound" brings so many memories. Here I am age 75 Remembering all those things a lifetime ago.
When he starts playing it the top E string buzzes, and I thought it was going to ruin the performance, but it goes away. It took a couple of watches to realise as soon as it happens, he notices it and moves the capo a bit with his thumb and it goes away. Just an amazing musician.
I give him a ton of respect at least, haha. He's one of those guys where I'll learn one of his songs, and finally play it pretty well after playing it fairly regularly for two or three years.
A live improvised version that’s so one take perfect you could drop it straight to vinyl and cut the single. Just so pure and heart felt. How many artists could just sit there and in front of a studio audience and effortlessly reel that performance off?
I'm an old man now, and I really have no "home" to go back to. This song gets to me every time. This is surely one of the more beautiful versions of it. Thank you, Paul, for this treasure.
@@richieboy6825 I’m an old man now, too, and what I took from his comment is how it makes me feel when it’s so clear that you CAN’T be homeward bound. Not in the sense of the song. The world feels very different when your memories far exceed the horizon of the dreams left to you.
ThinkingOutLoud yeah, I understand. I’ve always been nostalgic to a fault & I know my childhood home and the people that lived there are gone. I’m reading Emerson right now and it’s just broadening my notion of what home means to me- a place where one can attain respite, comfort, and peace- that can be found in the natural world every day of our lives. Happy New Year to you!
@@richieboy6825 yeah, you nailed it. I was born in Montreal, but I moved when I was 12, 52 years ago. I've lived in several cities since then, and have been in Toronto for 25 years. I love it here, and I'll probably die here, but it's not "home". The house I was born and raised in is still there, and I last walked down my old street maybe 35 years ago. It was different. None of my friends were there. I recognized no one. I just didn't feel a connection. So it just doesn't feel like I have a "home" as in "the old family home" or a homestead or a home town.
One of the best acoustic guitar player and composer ever. As a guitar player myself I find its music incredible complex to play correctly (full of inventions and tricks the textures) but at the same time easy and smooth to listen, he is a master of acoustic guitar
C’mon let’s face it , some people want it , some people try it , and there are not many people who have it ! but Paul Simon has it pure perfect and class
@Bill Hill so true, when it’s played 100’s of times, that’s when you get the feeling, you can play without worrying/thinking about each note and where/how to play it.
@Bill Hill that is truth beyond measure when you're putting down the licks the nuances you got to believe it is just second nature and requires some thought but nothing as intensive is trying to pick it off a record or trying to figure it out
I met him in Leeds station sitting on the old wooden stairs after a football match with West ham,we chatted and he told me he was going home soon,3 years later I am one of those fan for life.
PS wrote this song when he missed the last train and got stuck on Widnes station. Few songs express such a deep longing to be elsewhere. If you have ever been to Widnes, you will have a deeper understanding of this classic tune.
It's the people and not the place. I have good friends in Widnes... Admittedly, that's the only reason I ever go there but, if more decent people relocated there, it'd be a better place 😊
Not true. Paul Simon said he loved the North of England. He stayed with his good friend there. He also said he wrote the song on his travels around the north, not just Widnes. I went to school next to that railway station.
To think he wrote the words and music, AND performed it, is pure musical genius. And this is just 1 of 100 that are pure gold. This guy is a living legend.
Just came home from a restaurant where a guitarist was playing lots of old songs from the sixties and seventies - requested this and thought I'd also listen to the original again! I was 20 in 1975 when this aired but it seems like yesterday.
@@ReneHvidsten I'm still trying to fathom the number of syllables in your name, not being a..., Er... Viking? No disrespect... The British are not that bright! However, here in good ole Blighty we say, "the choo-choo stop," so God only knows where he came up with these lyrics! 🤪
Being a singer/guitarist myself, I wanna share that: it's one thing to play the guitar this way, because it's much more difficult than it appears it's another thing to sing this well while playing, again it's much more difficult than it appears finally to come up with both the song that is simply beautiful and also the lyrics, which are divine too, is beyond words And to play this live in a studio on the first take... Pfff, WOW! Thank you Paul Simon for sharing your talent with the world, may God bless you and yours.
All true, to add to that is the fact that the combination of voice and guitar is adding a harmony underneath the performance that sounds like a vocal from another musician, its sublime.
Very well said, AD. I say this as someone who can neither play the guitar nor sing but having tried both know how difficult trying to do one or the other is, let alone both... plus the rest as you pointed out.
So many memories flood back to me from when I was wasn't even a teen growing up in early 70's and he which is making me incredibly emotional now because I was introduced to Simon and Garfunkel my brothers just a few years older than I as barely... I can hear my mother or someone's request in the family, yelling from somewhere in the house to put on one of their records on the family record player/stereo console that sat in the front room of house.
Agreed! And the Sound Of Silence lyrics are prophetic. Even more relevant today. "And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon God they made." Human nature to a T. That's what people do with cellphones now. And they create silence because of very low real social reaction. Wow. Just wow.
I bet the sound recordist is very proud of this video - whoever you are. A wonderful performance of a beautiful song and the sound is just great. I can here every note on Paul's guitar.
Honestly, one of the most impressive live recordings I've ever heard. He just casually belts out this tune singing and playing perfectly and beautifully.
Oh my goodness, I've come across this on the day Michael Parkinson died , I wasn't even looking for it , I didn't even know Paul Simon had been on Parkinson yet here it is and here I am on the day he died .
Paul simon...90% of Simon&Garfunkel. He is so unappreciated as a guitarist... How many decades will we have to wait until someone can hold a candle to this truly great composer/poet.
I’m from near the station. About 10 miles away. When I was 17 (I’m 42 now), I went to South America. I spent a couple of months in Venezuela. Not many trains, but I sat in 18 hour long coaches. I listened to this song and missed home. My parents always played it in the car. This and Stevie wonder Good times and great music
@@fionnmaccuill415 Look where you are. No matter if the person is a household name, no matter how many awards they have won, no matter how highly respected the person is, no matter how much their instrumental skills are widely and highly respected, some bozo comes along and says they are underrated. "Underrated" is the youtube motto. Do a CTRL-F for it on every video you watch, it'll be there.
Fuck me that was good 👍 Paul Simon is one of the cleverest songwriters around. He just instinctively knows how to bring the best out in songs. A rare quality. 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover - is a great example. Cheers 🥂
It's a tough business. You need a lot more than just talent. Most people never make it. I reccomend he go to school and learn a trade and have something to fall back on when the music thing doest work out.
after 25yrs of trying the band route (2 bands 3 albums), i am now 60..my metal head days are behind me.. picked up my acoustic and played the first song i ever learned: baby i'm gonna leave you... have a soft drummer and a singer...if neither or both don't work out - i will be homeward bound with just my guitar... just play and it will come...
I don't know if he has THE ultimate voice but he's one of the legends, or sure. Harry Chapin is/was right up there with him, IMO. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fo-tCNtFI10.html
Where have the great songwriters gone? Nothing today speaks to me like the songs of the sixties, seventies and some eighties songs. I guess I have finally become my Father
Not many people in the world can sing in a studio probably not made for music yet sound so good. Someone commented that the sound engineer was on his game that day and that's the absolute truth. Thank you for uploading it.
I dunno...my uncle was sound engineer on a Bee Gees track called Mr Natural, and when I asked how they got that vocal sound he said, "You just had to put the mic in front of them". These guys simply have the talent, so for sound engineers it's an easy job.
These things brings tears to my eyes. I may have only been a boy back then, but these songs of that era shaped us as people. The songs were about LOVE. Even though we had the same problems back then, if not worse--we all didnt hate each other. This wa such a magical time in humankind that will never be replicated but wil live on like the great masters of th e18th century. I now teach acoustic guitar, at 58--teaching music history at a university in Washington (History of Rock n Roll. Our most popular class) and if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go play this song.....1500 miles from home and all alone in life. not too many people my age around. An amazing thing about RU-vid for musicians is, that when you go to look up the chords to a song you'll get 5 different versions...well, here I can SEE exactly how he plays it and sure enough the capo is at the 3rd fret and that first chord is a "G". This is usually a song I have to completely avoid so I dont cry. Liej "I am a Rock" Oh my with that one when it's Christmas and youre alone away from home!
Top thé top. Thé friends.. For ever mythics thé duet of thé pop music. Its always a shiver. When I listen thé artist. Simon or art.... Garfunkel. Thé utmost.... Thé masters of guitar s with you and him. Performance.. Of apogys..... My friends my génération. Its à breathless when I listen yours songs hyper btful and grace-ful '.
Thanks for this gem. I've been reading about the early career of Simon, as in what makes a genius, and my only conclusion is he was born with it, and cultivated with years of varied experience. A hit record in HS, busking in England, studio musician along with Carole King. Include graduated from college and a semester of law school. Pretty amazing.
@@johntucker9782 Um.. you can beg all you like pal. I don't really care, to be honest. You're entitled to your opinion and you are entitled to disagree. But for me and many others, PS is number 1.
I remember watching this as a 11/12 year old.... staying up late coz it was a Saturday.... S&G never fail to move me.... Paul Simon your voice & songs make me glad I'm still breathing
Wow, he was at the top of his game! Imagine being able to conjure up a song like that, one leg crossed over the other. So many nuances in his voice, just perfect. Well he had been playing it almost a decade at that point. But still, the man was really on it!
