In Restless Dreams, Alex Gibney‘s new two-part documentary about Paul Simon, premieres on MGM+ on March 17, and ahead of that, Stephen Colbert dedicated an episode of The Late Show to Simon, where he performed and sat for an interview. Colbert also spoke to Simon and Gibney at the DGA New York Theater on Wednesday (3/13) following a screening of the first part of the documentary. Among the topics they touched on at Wednesday’s talk was Simon’s hearing loss in his left ear. “That’s come back to enough of a degree that I’m comfortable singing and playing guitar and playing a few other instruments,” Simon told Colbert. “That’s good. I can hear my voice the way I want it in the context of the music.”
“If there’s a drum or an electric guitar, it’s too loud and I can’t hear my voice,” he continued to Colbert. “But when I first lost the hearing, I couldn’t get — it threw me off. Everything was coming from this side.”
While Simon retired from touring in 2018, he’s done select performances in the years since, and he told Colbert, “Next month, I’m going to try to do a rehearsal with the entire ensemble of Seven Psalms. I’ll see if I can get through the piece. I’ll see if I can sing it for 35 minutes and hear properly. And I’m optimistic that I can.”
For his The Late Show interview, Colbert asked Simon to come up with a perfect five song set for himself, and he broke his choices down into up-tempo songs — “Graceland,” “Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard,” “Late in the Evening,” and “Mother and Child Reunion” — and ballads — “The Sound of Silence,” “The Boxer,” and “Still Crazy After All These Years.” He also told Colbert about a song he’s not so keen to play live after being asked about Simon & Garfunkel’s “The 59th Street Bridge Song,” which rarely appeared on his setlists. “I loathe that song,” he said. “Sometimes in shows, if I made an error in some other song, I would sing that song as punishment. Here’s what it is: I come up to the line, and I just don’t wanna sing, ‘Life, I love you, all is groovy.’ [Scoffs] I don’t wanna sing it.”
Watch Simon’s The Late Show interview with Colbert and his acoustic performance of “Your Forgiveness” below.