Though they weren’t using the term “diss track” yet, plenty of musicians were slamming their contemporaries via song back in the ’60s. Even Paul Simon wrote a seemingly vengeful tune about another iconic singer-songwriter who apparently hurt his feelings: Bob Dylan.
According to Paul Simon: The Life, it all started in 1964 when Simon and Art Garfunkel played at Gerde’s Folk City in NYC’s Greenwich Village. Dylan was in the audience, along with New York Times music critic Robert Shelton, and the pair had been drinking (perhaps a bit heavily).
At one point during the performance, they started laughing about something unrelated to the music — or at least that’s what Shelton later claimed. Either way, Simon was reportedly “furious.”
Years later, Simon disagreed with Shelton’s recollection.
“I wasn’t furious,” Simon said. “But I was hurt. Here was someone laughing during my performance — especially someone I admired.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the next year, Simon recorded a song Shelton described as a “vicious burlesque” of Dylan: “A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission).” Originally, the song appeared on Simon’s 1965 U.K.-only solo debut, The Paul Simon Songbook; Simon & Garfunkel also recorded the track for their 1966 album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.
The track was widely assumed to be a sort of parody of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” released the same year Simon recorded “A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission).” The lyrics seem to be a direct jab at the former:
I knew a man, his brain was so small / He couldn’t think of nothing at all / Not the same as you and me / He doesn’t dig poetry / He’s so unhip, when you say Dylan / He thinks you’re talkin’ about Dylan Thomas / Whoever he was / The man ain’t got no culture / But it’s alright, ma, everybody must get stoned
Later, Simon played the song off as a joke.
Related: The Paul McCartney Song That Paul Simon Once Called ‘Garbage’
“I was having fun,” he said. “I thought it would be funny to use those unusual words ‘desultory’ and ‘philippic,’ in a song title, and I also wanted to sneak in some Lenny Bruce, who was my favorite comedian. That line, ‘How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission,’ is pure Lenny.”
However Simon felt about him personally, he went on to praise Dylan in a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone, saying, “Well, you can go back and pick out five or six very important Dylan songs.”
“I’m aware of that, because he became popular a year or so before we did,” Simon continued. “Many of his still make it for me, whereas only a few of mine make it for me. I like his earlier stuff. His early songs were very rich, simple but very rich, with strong melodies. ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ has a really strong melody. He so enlarged himself through the folk background that he incorporated it for a while. He defined the genre for a while. That’s quite an accomplishment.”
Of course, Simon did go on to say that he wasn’t as much of a fan of Dylan’s more recent works at that point, adding that he “certainly didn’t like” Dylan’s cover of “The Boxer” as the Simon & Garfunkel original. (He was, however, “flattered” that Dylan chose to sing one of his songs.)
Interestingly enough, Simon and Dylan even ended up touring together in 1999, so they must have made peace eventually. Even so, Simon admitted to Rolling Stone in 2011 that he didn’t like the two of them being compared to each other.
“I usually come in second,” he said. “I don’t like coming in second. In the very, very beginning, when we were first signed to Columbia, I really admired Dylan’s work. ‘The Sound of Silence’ wouldn’t have been written if it weren’t for Dylan. But I left that feeling around The Graduate and ‘Mrs. Robinson.’ They weren’t folky anymore.”
Related: 1966 Bob Dylan Hit, Ranked Among ‘Greatest Songs of All Time,’ Was Recorded in One Take on Valentine’s Day
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