Paul Simon has warned fans they won’t be hearing him play his 1986 hit “You Can Call Me Al” anytime soon.
The 83-year-old folk rock icon, who rose to fame with Art Garfunkel as the renowned 1960s duo Simon & Garfunkel, joined CBS Mornings on Wednesday (November 20), where he spoke about his hearing loss battle.
“I’m going through my repertoire and reducing a lot of the choices that I make to acoustic versions,” he said on the show. “It’s all much quieter. It’s not ‘You Can Call Me Al.’ That’s gone. I can’t do that one.”
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee started to lose his hearing four years ago during the recording of his 2023 studio album, Seven Psalms. At the time, Simon assumed his performing days were over.
Reflecting back on his first few months coping with the reality of losing his hearing, he said: “It was incredibly frustrating. I was very angry at first, y’know, that this had happened.
“I guess what I’m most apprehensive about would be if I can’t hear well enough to really enjoy the act of making music,” he noted.
According to Simon, he’s lost 94 percent of his hearing in his left ear. When he initially spoke to his doctors about the hearing loss, they’d claimed nothing could be done to help him. Now, he’s putting his faith in the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss, a team of 100 scientists dedicated to finding methods for hearing loss prevention and repair. Simon is hopeful in the mission.
He’s also been looking to other artists who’ve gone through similar health issues for inspiration amid the battle.
“You know Matisse, when he was suffering at the end of his life, when he was in bed, he envisioned all these cut-outs and had a great creative period,” Simone said of the 20th century French visual artist. “So I don’t think creativity stops with disability. So far, I haven’t experienced that. And I hope not to.”
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Though he won’t play “You Can Call Me Al” again, which Setlist.fm estimates he’s performed over 400 times throughout his career, Simon is “optimistic” he’ll get back to hosting full-length concerts.
Last month, he told The Guardian: “I’m hoping to eventually be able to do a full-length concert. I’m optimistic. Six months ago I was pessimistic.”
Simon’s 2018 “Homeward Bound – The Farewell Tour” began in Vancouver, Canada before finishing up in Queens, New York, just miles away from where he’d gone to school with his long-time music partner, Garfunkel.
Last month, the two reunited for the first time in years, Garfunkel told The Sunday Times in an interview with his son, Art Garfunkel Jr.
“I looked at Paul and said, ‘What happened? Why haven’t we seen each other?’” Garfunkel recalled. “Paul mentioned an old interview where I said some stuff.
“I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him. Looking back, I guess I wanted to shake up the nice guy image of Simon & Garfunkel. Y’know what? I was a fool!”
The last time Simon & Garfunkel performed together was in 2010, when they took part in the American Film Institute’s (AFI) tribute to The Graduate director Mike Nichols, whose film helped propel them to international fame by featuring a number of their songs.