Los Lobos: Dream in Blue by Chris Morris (music Journalist)

Author:Chris Morris (music Journalist) [Morris, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781477308530
Google: -MdXvgEACAAJ
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2015-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

9

BREAKDOWNS

The Graceland Session and By the Light of the Moon

It is a measure of Los Lobos’ burgeoning artistic cachet that they were asked during the summer of 1985 to collaborate with one of the most popular and respected American singer–songwriters, their Warner Bros. labelmate Paul Simon.

Through the late ’60s and early ’70s, Simon had forged an estimable commercial track record in Simon & Garfunkel, his vocal duo with Art Garfunkel; they had released five multiplatinum studio albums, and Simon had penned such enduring classics as “The Sounds of Silence,” “Mrs. Robinson,” and “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Simon’s solo records for Columbia following the pair’s 1971 split were also highly esteemed, and all reached either platinum or gold status. However, his fortunes had experienced a serious downturn after he signed with Warner Bros. in 1980: the soundtrack for his flop movie vehicle One-Trick Pony had been a comparative failure despite its Top 10 single “Late in the Evening,” and his 1983 studio album Hearts and Bones had enjoyed neither critical acclaim nor chart success, peaking at No. 35, the lowest ebb of his career to date.

Steve Berlin, then an avowed Simon fan, says, “At that time, Paul—who I respected and still respect as one of the finest American songwriters alive—had had a couple of stiff s. Hearts and Bones did like next to nothing. My perception of the moment was, here’s this great American songwriter who’s on a slight dip in his career. So Lenny [Waronker] came to us and asked if we would participate in this record that he was doing . . . As a favor to Lenny, and it was kind of a big deal to me, we agreed to go in the studio with Paul, and Lenny said, ‘Just see what happens.’ We weren’t promised anything; we didn’t promise him anything. We didn’t know what was gonna go down. The way it was put to us was, ‘We’ll jam.’ ‘All right, we’ll jam.’”

At the first day of sessions at Warner’s Amigo facility, Simon played some of the other music he had recorded for the members of Los Lobos. Still in raw form, and lacking lyrics, the material moved dramatically away from the folk-based style of his early work. The L.A. act’s sound meshed with what they heard, for, like their norteño-style material, the tracks Simon had cut were made with accordion-based units—the Louisiana zydeco group Rockin’ Dopsie & the Cajun Twisters and some South African bands that also made prominent use of the instrument.

Work in the studio became an instantly uncomfortable chore, for, Berlin says, Simon and his longtime engineer Roy Halee were “just really bizarre dudes” who mainly kept themselves walled behind the glass in the control room, while Los Lobos—never a jam-oriented group to begin with—were uncertain about what they were being asked to do out on the floor.

Berlin says, “There wasn’t anything close to clicking, even vaguely close to an idea. We’d noodle on something, and Paul would go, ‘Nah, I don’t like that, let’s try something else.

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