Paul Simon Plays a Partially-Finished Version of “Still Crazy After All These Years” for Dick Cavett, Then Tries to Figure Out How to Finish It (1974)

It’s hard to imag­ine one of today’s nation­al­ly known singer-song­writ­ers vol­un­tar­i­ly shar­ing an unfin­ished com­po­si­tion on late night TV, then ask­ing for advice on how to wrap things up.

That’s exact­ly what Paul Simon did on The Dick Cavett Show on Sep­tem­ber 5, 1974, when he shared the first two vers­es of “Still Crazy After All These Years,” accom­pa­ny­ing him­self on acoustic gui­tar:

I met my old lover

On the street last night

She seemed so glad to see me

I just smiled

And we talked about some old times

And we drank our­selves some beers

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

I’m not the kind of man

Who tends to social­ize

I seem to lean on

Old famil­iar ways

And I ain’t no fool for love songs

That whis­per in my ears

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

Next, he pre­sent­ed Cavett and the stu­dio audi­ence with options, warn­ing that they would be musi­cal choic­es, “because lyri­cal­ly, I real­ly don’t know what I have to say.”

Simon quick­ly demon­strat­ed what a fol­low up might sound like in G major or G sharp minor, explain­ing that the wis­est move from a music the­o­ry stand­point, would be an as yet unused C nat­ur­al or C sharp, to sub­lim­i­nal­ly refresh listener’s ears, a tac­tic he likened to the comedic Rule of Threes.

When the song was released the fol­low­ing year, the key had gone up to G and the gui­tar had mor­phed into piano backed by the Mus­cle Shoals Rhythm Sec­tion, with a jazzy sax solo after the bridge.

All in all, a slick­er, less intro­spec­tive sound.

In an inter­view with Amer­i­can Song­writer, Simon not only delves fur­ther into Still Crazy’s chord pro­gres­sions, he pegs its famous­ly enig­mat­ic lyrics as an unhap­py assess­ment of his per­son­al life at the time of their writ­ing:

That was a long time ago. I’ve long since stopped feel­ing that way. I prob­a­bly wouldn’t describe myself that way. I prob­a­bly wouldn’t think that way at all.

The words are per­son­al. It sounds like I was talk­ing about where I was then. I have the same instinct as all writ­ers: if some­thing from my life works, I use it. If I have to change it and exag­ger­ate it because that works, I’ll change it and exag­ger­ate it. 

I’m not com­mit­ted to telling the truth. I’m com­mit­ted to find­ing what the truth is in the song. But that’s not a com­mit­ment to telling every­one what’s going on with you. That’s very com­mon.

True. But would he still agree to per­form the song in a turkey suit if threat­ened with the sobri­quet “Mr. Alien­ation”?

Here are the lyrics that stuck, from the album that shares the song’s title:

I met my old lover

On the street last night

She seemed so glad to see me

I just smiled

And we talked about some old times

And we drank our­selves some beers

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

I’m not the kind of man

Who tends to social­ize

I seem to lean on

Old famil­iar ways

And I ain’t no fool for love songs

That whis­per in my ears

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

Four in the morn­ing

Crapped out

Yawn­ing

Long­ing my life away

I’ll nev­er wor­ry

Why should I?

It’s all gonna fade

Now I sit by my win­dow

And I watch the cars

I fear I’ll do some dam­age

One fine day

But I would not be con­vict­ed

By a jury of my peers

Still crazy

Still crazy

Still crazy after all these years

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Jazz Vir­tu­oso Oscar Peter­son Gives Dick Cavett a Daz­zling Piano Les­son (1979)

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.