“I never really wanted to use my name and be in the spotlight
and carry a project,” says Harper Simon. “I always wanted to be like
Keith Richards and just play guitar and write for a band.”
That might explain why it took the 37-year-old songwriter so long to
finally release a solo record. Perhaps he wanted to keep his famous
bloodline from becoming more of a focus than the actual music. Simon’s
father, of course, wrote some of the greatest American pop songs with
that Art Garfunkel character. And while the younger Simon grew up
surrounded by music, even playing guitar with his old man on a few
dates of his Graceland tour in the late-’80s, he spent his
formative years rebelliously spinning Germs and Ramones records. It
wasn’t until his late teens that he finally began to gravitate toward
country-folk artists like Gram Parsons and Neil Young.
Those later influences are all over his self-titled debut, a beauty
of a record that alternates between hushed folk and rambling country.
Simon went to Nashville to seek inspiration, and to find Bob Johnston,
the legendary producer who manned the boards for Bob Dylan’s Highway
61 Revisited and Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence.
Johnston led Simon to a treasure trove of famous Nashville session
musicians, including Lloyd Green and Hargus Robbins—names Simon
grew up reading in the liner notes of Blonde on Blonde and the
Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
It’s no surprise that he ended up making a classic-sounding country
record. “Shooting Star” and “All I Have Are Memories” feature Green’s
pedal steel spilling over acoustic guitar strums and Simon’s easily
familiar vocals. Simon spent the better part of three years finishing
the album, recording in Los Angeles as well as co-writing a couple of
songs with his dad at his home studio in New York.
“I just wanted to make a good album that was in the tradition of the
LPs of the ’60s and ’70s,” says Simon, alluding to the classics from
Dylan and his father. “I certainly couldn’t see making a record that
great, but you gotta try.”