Who Would Win in a Bar Fight #74

July 24, 2012 · Posted in Celebrity Bar Fight 

Paul Simon…

…or…

Los Lobos?

I’m going to let you in on a little inside baseball here. There is a certain protocol amongst the musical community where, it’s considered bad form to blatanty speak ill of a fellow musician. So, long long ago, a sort of secret code was established…subtle words and certain phrases that, on the surface seem benign but, in fact are ways to express true disdain.

Now, the general public has been kept in the dark about all of this and it really takes a trained eye to recognize these veiled insults.

Steve Berlin, sax and keyboard player for Los Lobos is really a master at this particularly inconspicuous technique.

For your benefit, I have isolated a few quotes from Steve in this interview. Now, if you look close and read between the lines, you can decipher that Steve and his fellow band mates don’t really like Paul Simon.

“I really don’t think anybody else in the band has ever owned a Simon & Garfunkel record or a Paul Simon record, or frankly gave a shit about him”…

…”I’m telling you, the guy is a weird dude – there’s no two ways about it. A really strange character”…

…”This guy’s a fucking idiot! He doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t know what the fuck he wants. The guy is crazy.”…

…”Paul has no fucking ideas, we hate him”…

…”We’re asking and asking, then finally six months later we hear from Paul and he says, ‘Sue me. See what happens.’ That’s a direct quote, so that gives you an indication of what kind of guy he is”…

…”But he stole it. There’s no two ways about it. Paul Simon fucking stole our music”…

…”It really gives you an indication what kind of person this prick is. It’s pretty obvious”…

…”In closing, everybody I know who has ever worked with Paul Simon says he’s the biggest jerk in the world. Yeah – he’s a fucking idiot.”

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Comments

5 Responses to “Who Would Win in a Bar Fight #74”

  1. Dave on July 25th, 2012 4:21 pm

    A n Ger
    P a Ralysis
    All Against
    R a Cism
    Tru Elies
    Hea Ling
    Equ Ality
    Ico Noclast
    Dea Dzone
    Just bought a new Paul Simon disc and listened to S&G Central Park. Graceland reminds me some of Buena Vista Social Club on steroids. It’s all good. Los Lobos didn’t nor ever will touch universal like Paulie. Thief, certainly, dialog and disclosure are the name of the game. The song remains the niblet. Somewhere in this morass of he said, she said, they said is a lost thread of listening to each other, saying what can we do to make this right? Then doing the right thing…Spike was a jewel as a kid. Gotta go with Los Lobos…only wish Perkins was a little more concise about how he feels.

  2. Dave on July 25th, 2012 4:23 pm

    A n Ger
    P a Ralysis
    All Against
    R a Cism
    Tru Elies
    Hea Ling
    Equ Ality
    Ico Noclast
    Dea Dzone
    Just bought a new Paul Simon disc and listened to S&G Central Park. Graceland reminds me some of Buena Vista Social Club on steroids. It’s all good. Los Lobos didn’t nor ever will touch universal like Paulie. Thief, certainly, dialog and disclosure are the name of the game. The song remains the niblet. Somewhere in this morass of he said, she said, they said is a lost thread of listening to each other, saying what can we do to make this right? Then doing the right thing…Spike was a jewel as a kid. Gotta go with Los Lobos…only wish Berlin was a little more concise about how he feels.

  3. Pribek on July 26th, 2012 6:39 am

    I remember a time when, on a pretty regular basis, I would hear stories of “so and so STOLE my song!”. When I gained a little savvy about publishing, about how the money actually gets distributed, I realized that such claims are generally pissing in the wind.

    People have the perception that songs make a lot more money than they do in reality…in most cases. But, in this particular case, the song has made a pretty damn good chunk of writer/publishing royalties. I’ll conservatively say high 6 figures.

    It’s not often that you hear somebody unload like Berlin does in the interview, and not just in the song business.

    Since this came out the other day, it’s received a good deal of attention. I haven’t seen anything from Simon that really addresses the situation.

  4. Dave on July 26th, 2012 12:42 pm

    Agreed about Simon, because when Graceland was being conceived, recorded and produced he was “aloof and condescending” much of the time. Not good PR in South Africa, at that time.

  5. Pribek on July 26th, 2012 12:54 pm

    Well yeah…and one thing that slipped my memory (pointed out in the interview) is the African guys had to get lawyered up to their dough…at the time that was all kind of brushed off…

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