Looking at the young man sporting a bowl haircut staring out from the back cover of a 1969 vinyl single, it’s hard to believe that he’s the subject of a song about a bruised and battered pugilist. But “The Boxer” — one of Simon & Garfunkel’s most compositionally ambitious efforts — does indeed tell a semi-autobiographical tale.
The dulcet-toned Paul Simon never did moonlight as an indomitable ring-fighter. But in an interview with Playboy magazine, the singer-songwriter revealed that the track was intended as an allegory for his tacit bouts with the music critics who began to attack his reputation in the late 1960s. Speaking in 1984, he explained: “I think the song was about me: everybody’s beating me up… By that time we had encountered our first criticism. [People realised] maybe we weren’t real folkies at all!”
It’s true that “The Boxer” was unlike the unvarnished, homespun records that were perhaps more closely associated with folk music at the time. Instead it was the result of a painstaking and protracted recording process that took more than 100 hours, used numerous backing musicians and even spanned a number of locations — from Nashville, to St Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University, to the somewhat less ethereal setting of a hallway abutting an echoey elevator shaft at one of Columbia Records’ New York studios.
But, for all the planning and perfectionism, there is nothing about the song that sounds cold or drained of authentic feeling. The strong emotional pull of “The Boxer” emerges from the very first notes of session guitarist’s Fred Carter Jr’s rippling, faintly sorrowful, fingerpicked intro melody. And an accompanying bass harmonica, trumpet and steel guitar give the song an epic, balladic quality. But it is the arresting whipcrack of a snare drum that resonates above all else; every pounding beat by Hal Blaine hits the listener with the brute force of the blows that the song’s narrator endures.
That single, sonorous drumbeat punctuates the song’s famous “lie-la-lie” refrain. For some lyric sleuths, “lie-la-lie” was a patent rebuke of Bob Dylan and the falseness of the image that he cultivated for himself as a Woody Guthrie-type vagabond. In fact, the vocalisation had originally only been intended as a placeholder when Simon suddenly found himself suffering from writer’s block.
In the end, this senseless cry of frustration perfectly complements an aching tale of a man bereft of company or basic comforts. Lines such as “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” reveal Simon at his most penetrating and gently heartbreaking best, while the song’s ending offers a hopeful message of fortitude born of sustained pain.
But beyond the individual narrative, “The Boxer” also serves as a bittersweet ode to the punishing reality of life in New York, and its population of misfits united in their loneliness and collective resilience. The track was performed by Simon on the first episode of Saturday Night Live after 9/11. It would again prove to be movingly pertinent in 2016, when Simon interrupted a live rendition to announce the death of Muhammad Ali.
Simon has frequently returned to “The Boxer” in concerts over the years, occasionally in touching reunions with Art Garfunkel, but often with new and illustrious collaborators, including Sting, Joan Baez (who, as one would expect, covered it beautifully herself), and Billy Joel. Any lingering doubts about Simon’s opinion of Bob Dylan were surely put to rest when the two duetted on the track in 1999; Dylan, meanwhile, had recorded his own reedy version in 1970.
A near inexhaustible list of folk and rock legends — and Mumford & Sons — have also covered “The Boxer”. A gravel-voiced and velvet-fingered Mark Knopfler recorded a wonderfully stirring version in 2018; James Taylor and Alison Krauss combined forces to great effect at a 2002 tribute to a tearful Simon; Emmylou Harris played up to the song’s folksy tale with bluegrass accompaniment; and Neil Diamond delivered a game if slightly hurried effort in 2008. Famed fingerpickers from the devilishly dexterous Chet Atkins to perennial tuning-fiddler Ben Howard have also embraced and experimented with the original’s melodious acoustic arrangement.
With Simon announcing his retirement in 2018, it now falls to other artists to ensure that “The Boxer”’s story of a poor boy continues to be told. As for Simon, whether his claim that he is leaving proves true or not, the genius songwriter still remains.
What are your memories of ‘The Boxer’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Columbia; Lo-Light Records; Columbia/Legacy; Rhino/Warner Records
Picture credit: Alamy Stock Photo