What the heck is Paul Simon singing about in "You Can Call Me Al"

[glen]

 

[a7berwill]

I've wondered that myself.

 

[toant103]

Originally posted by: glen

because it's catchy.

i don't know

 

[MichaelD]

Something about riding a roller coaster with a big, gay guy. Song's catchy, though.

 

[TheCorm]

Is that the song with chevvy chase and the trumpets?

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: TheCorm
Is that the song with chevvy chase and the trumpets?

yup - what a classic video

 

[Medellon]

Yes, that Paul Simon is a runt.

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: Medellon
Yes, that Paul Simon is a runt.

yep, he's got a short little...



























...span of attention.

 

[glen]

So, basically no one on the entire internet knows.

I even tried google, but could only come up with the lyrics.

 

[KokomoGST]

Heh, methinks if you look it up in a Paul Simon book, it'll tell you...
I had no luck finding out why The Who named "Baba O'Reilly"... I do know why Zeppelin coined "Black Dog"

 

[Vic]

Cause it rhymes?

 

[FeathersMcGraw]

This was the best I could find.

Now I have that song (with the associated video) stuck in my head.

 

[anno]

"It has such a light happy feel to it that I think people tend to think of it as a funny song where in fact it has an interesting development -- the character starts off a totally self-absorbed guy who's worried about how fat he is, and ends up a guy in a strange world looking at angels in the architecture. It evolves through all those tum- bling, jammed up lyrics and falls into that. It took a long time to write, which probably makes sense because there's a lot of words in it. The chorus, the bodyguard part, I always thought was the weakest phrase, but sometimes whatever comes to your mind won't leave and then that's what you have to do. If I could have found another chorus I would have, but I couldn't. But then because it became a kind of a hit with kids, it turned out that kids very much liked the idea of bodyguards, were very familiar with the idea. That's the violence of the world that we live in -- kids know about bodyguards. A lot of times kids will go, Did you do that song, Bodyguard? So, actually it turns out to be a good hook for a chorus. "


http://www.medialab.chalmers.se/guitar/simon.interview7.html

looks like paul simon isn't really all that sure either.

(oops.. too slow.. story of my life..)

anno

 

[glen]

Originally posted by: FeathersMcGraw
This was the best I could find.

Now I have that song (with the associated video) stuck in my head.

Cricky, seems Paul doesn't really know himself what it means.

 

[Shelly21]

It's about Weird "AL".

So he could do a parody "You can call me paul"

 

[nakedfrog]

and he's soft in the middle

 

i dunno, but the people in charge of lights and sounds at our college play that everytime the president of our university is there or on stage. His name is Al of course.