Paul Simon took a new direction for his second solo album, travelling to Jamaica to record Mother And Child Reunion with some of Kingston’s top reggae musicians.

I doubt anyone who bought Bridge Over Troubled Water (me!) could have foreseen Paul Simon “going reggae” – let alone making an album of African music years later. But he did. And you know what, you can stick your cultural appropriation up your arse because he did a decent job of it. I think it’s my favourite Paul Simon song.

And the reason he did a decent job of it was that he had/has a genuine love of Jamaican – and African – music and took the trouble to learn about it
In fact, he initially recorded the Simon & Garfunkel song Why Don’t You Write Me in a Jamaican style but felt the finished version sounded like inauthentic cod reggae and abandoned it.

A self-professed fan of Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff, he recorded this song at Dynamic Sounds Studios in Kingston, JA, because that’s where Cliff had recorded his anti-war song Vietnam in 1970. Simon used Cliff’s backing group of Hux Brown and Jackie Jackson (also members of Martin Belmont’s favourite group Toots & The Maytals).

Determined to sound authentic, and apparently awkward at being the only white man in the studio, ihe first nsisted they educate him in the history of Jamaican music, explaining the nuanced differences between bluebeat, ska and reggae,before they began recording.

Then he took the tapes back to New York to add his vocals and Larry Knechtel’s piano with Cissy Houston on backing vocals.

To be honest I had always wondered what Mother And Child Reunion is about (because I have never had the faintest idea) and I now discover that the title was inspired by a the name of a chicken-and-egg dish in a Chinese restaurant.
Which is very funny. Unlike the traumatic inspiration for the lyrics, when Simon saw his familly’s pet dog run over and killed – making him to ponder how he might have felt if had been his wife Peggy who had been the victim. And turn it into a hit single.

In case you’re wondering… no, they didn’t stay married for long after that.