Paul Simon: still surprising after all these years

By Spencer Patterson

Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011 | 10:54 a.m.

“Cecilia!” a man cried from the crowd, to which Paul Simon responded, “We never play Cecilia.” Then Caesars Palace’s Monday headliner turned to his eight-piece band, announced, “It’s in G,” and officially broke from his nightly 2011 fall setlist.

The musicians launched into the 1970 classic cautiously, but by its second verse, locked into a solid groove and took control of the song. It was a moment of spontaneous electricity—one that propelled some of a mostly older Colosseum audience off its comfortable cushions—but it was hardly the only surprising aspect of the two-hour, 25-song concert, Simon’s first solo gig in Las Vegas in a decade.

Simon built his set around his biggest solo hits: “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” “Mother and Child Reunion,” “Slip Slidin’ Away,” “Kodachrome,” six cuts off 1986’s blockbuster Graceland album. Yet many of the most poignant moments came when he offered up less obvious material—three tunes from April’s So Beautiful or So What, a cover of The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” and Simon & Garfunkel non-single “The Only Living Boy in New York” (which appeared in 2004 film Garden State). Simon’s band also contributed some fresh musical flavors; drummer Jim Oblon played lead guitar during Chet Atkins’ “Wheels,” Mick Rossi added avant-garde piano blasts to “Peace Like a River” and multi-instrumentalist Mark Stewart rubbed his guitar strings with a paintbrush on “Slip Slidin’ Away.”

One unsurprising aspect: the piercing emotion of Simon’s solo-acoustic rendering of “The Sound of Silence.” That spare performance left no doubt about the 70-year-old’s vocal strength, so much so that everyone surely wished he’d presented more music that way. Still, even with his full band kicking up dirt behind him, as during rhythmically driven 1990 single “The Obvious Child,” Simon’s voice and lyrics can send tingles down spines. “Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself/How it’s strange that some rooms are like cages.” Shudder.

Paul Simon’s setlist:

“The Boy in the Bubble”

“Dazzling Blue”

“50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”

“So Beautiful or So What”

“Mother and Child Reunion”

“That Was Your Mother”

“Mystery Train”

“Wheels”

“Slip Slidin’ Away”

“Rewrite”

“Peace Like a River”

“The Obvious Child”

“The Only Living Boy in New York”

“Cecilia”

“Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”

“Gumboots”

Encores

“The Sound of Silence”

“Kodachrome”

“Gone at Last”

“Here Comes the Sun”

“Crazy Love, Vol. II”

“Late in the Evening”

“Graceland”

“Pretty Thing”

“Still Crazy After All These Years”