Homeward bound

There came a moment – just over an hour and twenty minutes into the opening night of Paul Simon’s ‘Homeward Bound‘ farewell tour in Vancouver on Wednesday last – when the most excellent fifteen piece band brought an exuberant rendition of ‘You Can Call me Al‘ to a juddering close and the great man himself stepped forward to acknowledge and bask in the applause of the devoted crowd – when a sudden startled stir rippled through the arena. Was that it? Had a mere sixteen songs from Simon’s extraordinarily extensive back-catalogue been all that we would be left to remember him by?

It was not enough. Not by a long chalk…

Three extended encores (featuring ten further songs and lasting for a full fifty minutes) later we reluctantly let the man go. He is – after all – seventy five years of age and this was the first night of a long tour. Perhaps he was testing the water – investigating what was possible and seeing how far he could push a voice that – whilst it sounded a little tenuous at the start – warmed up more and more as the evening progressed.

Were we satisfied? Well – of course we were – though much of the talk afterwards was of classic tracks that had not been included. There was no ‘Kodachrome‘ – no ‘Train in the Distance‘ – no ‘Only Living Boy in New York‘…  but I guess that is the inevitable side-effect of having such a voluminous inventory of classic compositions from which to choose.

Simon ended alone on stage singing – along, it seemed, with the entire crowd – ‘The Sound of Silence‘. My view (widely shared of course) that the man is a complete genius was again borne out by the recognition anew that his music – even that dating from the mid-sixties – has really not aged at all – neither in its poetry nor its melodies. This is surely a true mark of the enduring legacy that this great artist has gifted to us. He makes us sing – he makes us happy – he makes us dance – he moves us to tears (at least three times during Wednesday night’s show).

More than this we cannot ask – though should his tease that he had only billed the tour as his farewell so as to be able to push up the ticket prices turn out to be true – I have no doubt at all that he would be welcomed back to the West Coast with open arms.

Genius! ‘Nuff said!