{"id":11006,"date":"2018-09-14T15:49:03","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T22:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=11006"},"modified":"2018-09-14T15:49:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T22:49:03","slug":"the-assad-brothers-are-featured-on-the-latest-paul-simon-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/the-assad-brothers-are-featured-on-the-latest-paul-simon-album\/","title":{"rendered":"The Assad Brothers Are Featured on the Latest Paul Simon Album!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest album from the great American singer-songwriter Paul Simon<\/a>, In the Blue Light<\/em><\/a>, aims, according to his website, “to lend fresh perspectives on ten of the artist\u2019s favorite (though perhaps less-familiar) songs, drawn from his unparalleled body of work.” In other words, these are re-imagined and newly arranged recordings of tunes spanning Simon’s solo albums from 1973’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon<\/em> through 2011’s So Beautiful or So What<\/em>. Simon has long been among the most interesting arrangers in pop music\u2014you may well be familiar with some of his fascinating alchemical creations that blend aspects of folk, various African, South American, zydeco, gospel, and myriad other styles into his highly distinctive poetic oeuvre\u2014so it is hardly a surprise that this famously restless creative spirit would be interested in revisiting and recasting some of his works. (For those who do not know, Simon originally became famous as the driving force of the extremely popular folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel in the late 1960s; author of such classics as “The Sound of Silence,” “Homeward Bound,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “The Boxer,””Bridge Over Troubled Water,” et al. His solo work has been even more compelling, and includes such uniformly excellent albums\u00a0 as Paul Simon<\/em>, Still Crazy After All These Years<\/em>,\u00a0Graceland,<\/em>\u00a0and Rhythm of the Saints<\/em>. Simon fans will definitely want to pick up Robert Hilburn’s superb new biography Paul Simon: The Life<\/em>, which I just finished reading.)<\/p>\n

But the reason I’m writing about Paul Simon here is that one of the songs on\u00a0In the Blue Light\u2014<\/em>“The Teacher,” from 2000’s highly underrated You’re the One<\/em><\/a> album\u2014<\/em>prominently features S\u00e9rgio and Odair Assad<\/a> playing a serpentine and quite hypnotic guitar part throughout the track which, as advertised, is quite dissimilar from the original arrangement of the song\u00a0<\/a>on You’re the One<\/em>. I love it!<\/p>\n

The second I heard about it (thanks to David Tanenbaum<\/a> for the tip!), I knew I had to ask S\u00e9rgio how the duo’s involvement with the track came about. His email reply:<\/p>\n

“I didn\u2019t know Paul Simon personally until a couple of years ago. I was introduced to him by\u00a0Jamey Haddad, who has been his percussionist for many years now. I\u2019ve known Jamey\u00a0for decades and we worked together a few times. Simon heard Odair and me playing through\u00a0Jamey and became interested in checking out what we could do for his ‘new’ album. He flew me to New York City just to talk a little and explain what his project was: recording old pieces that he liked but weren\u2019t his top hits. His idea was to leave me free to arrange any song I chose. I picked two of the songs on the list and prepared the guitar parts. One was ‘Question for the Angels’ [from So Beautiful or So What<\/em>] and\u00a0the other one was ‘The Teacher.’<\/p>\n

“A month later he flew Odair from Europe and we all met in his studio in upstate New York. We stayed there for a couple of days. On the first day, Odair and I just worked on our parts together, but they did record the whole thing. On the following day, Paul showed up and listened to what we did. He particularly liked ‘The Teacher’ and ended up using that one. I think the reason was is that I did something completely different from his earlier version.\u00a0 The earlier version had a lot of brass and heavy percussion and the text didn\u2019t come out as it should. With a lighter\u00a0duo guitar version, an odd meter and some oriental modes behind, his voice and text could be heard much better, I think.<\/p>\n

“We had a contract saying that there would perhaps be edits on what we did and that they could use just parts of what\u00a0we recorded. However, they ended up using the whole thing! They just added a sax improv [by\u00a0Walter Blanding] but that was already expected. During the sessions, Paul was always very kind and never tried to \u00a0impose anything on us. I was told he can be a little ‘complicated’ in studio sessions but it wasn\u2019t the case with us.”<\/p>\n

The Teacher<\/h4>\n

There once was a teacher of great renown<\/em>
\n Whose words were like tablets of stone<\/em>
\n \u201cBecause it’s easier to learn than unlearn<\/em>
\n Because we\u2019ve passed the point of no return<\/em>
\n Gather your goods and follow me<\/em>
\n Or you will surely die\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I was only a child of the city<\/em>
\n My parents were children of immigrant stock<\/em>
\n So we followed as followers go<\/em>
\n Over a mountain with a napkin of snow<\/em>
\n And ate the berries and roots<\/em>
\n That grow along the timberline<\/em><\/p>\n

Deeper and deeper the dreamer of love<\/em>
\n Sleeps on a quilt of stars<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s cold<\/em>
\n Sometimes you can\u2019t catch your breath<\/em>
\n It\u2019s cold<\/em><\/p>\n

Time and abundance thickened his step<\/em>
\n So the teacher divided in two<\/em>
\n One half ate the forests and fields<\/em>
\n The other half sucked all the moisture from the clouds<\/em>
\n And we, we were amazed at the power of his appetite<\/em><\/p>\n

Deeper and deeper the dreamer of love<\/em>
\n Sleeps on a quilt of stars<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes we don\u2019t know who we are<\/em>
\n Sometimes force overpowers us and we cry<\/em>
\n My teacher, carry me home<\/em>
\n Carry me home, my teacher<\/em>
\n Carry me home<\/em>
\n Carry me home my teacher<\/em>
\n Carry me home<\/em>
\n Carry me home my teacher<\/em>
\n Carry me home<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2000 Words and Music by Paul Simon<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest album from the great American singer-songwriter Paul Simon, In the Blue Light, aims, according to his website, “to lend fresh perspectives on ten of the artist\u2019s favorite (though perhaps less-familiar) songs, drawn from his unparalleled body of work.” In other words, these are re-imagined and newly arranged recordings of tunes spanning Simon’s solo albums from 1973’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon through 2011’s So Beautiful or So What. Simon has long been among the most interesting arrangers in pop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":11012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-watch","post_format-post-format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/assad-brothers.jpg?fit=700%2C450&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}