NO LESS THAN HERO

To mark the release of Seven Psalms, an astonishing meditation on spirituality and mortality and his first album of new material in seven years, Paul Simon a giant of postwar American popular song matched only by Dylan - takes to Zoom for an RC exclusive to talk about (his) music with fan, friend and fellow master songwriter, Elvis Costello. Listening in: Terry Staunton.

- 

In the liner notes to Paul Simon's 2011 album So Beautiful Or So What, his good friend and lifelong admirer, Elvis Costello, describes him as "a man in full possession of all his gifts, looking at the comedy and beauty of life with clarity and the tenderness bought by time". They're traits which liberally pepper the elder man's work throughout a professional career stretching back six decades, and that have clearly influenced his younger acolyte's writing.

Arguably, the first illustration of Simon's fingerprints on the Costello songbook can be detected listening to prefame acoustic demos aired on Radio London in 1976, and more pointedly on the following year's single, the nakedly emotional Alison. They crop up time and again in the more confessional corners of the Costello catalogue (Simon's pensive, nostalgia-tinged state-of-the-nation paean American Tune from '73 is arguably the touchstone for Costello's Peace In Our Time a decade later); eloquent parallels that make their kindred spirit connection no surprise.

Although they've known each other on a personal level for more than 30 years, their shared professional ground is comparatively sparse. Elvis has thrice covered Paul's songs (see panel), but the only musician they have in common is the late Larry Knechtel, a regular presence on Simon & Garfunkel records, perhaps most notable for his Grammy-winning piano arrangement of Bridge Over Troubled Water, and who was part of Costello's touring band The Rude 5 between 1989 and '91.

A year after the release of So Beautiful Or So What, both men were on the voting jury for the inaugural PEN New England Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence award (the offshoot of a longer-established award for novelists and poets). Famously, jury chairman Simon chose not to use his casting vote to split a tie, resulting in the gong being shared between Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen.