Episode 42: The Honorable John Lewis, and the Inimitable Paul Simon

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour: Episode 42

Main Guests: Paul Simon & Congressman John Lewis
Host: David Remnick
Original Air Date: August 5, 2016

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Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour features two American icons: musician Paul Simon and civil rights leader Congressman John Lewis. Through in-depth conversations—Simon with poet Paul Muldoon, and Lewis with David Remnick—the show explores the nature of creativity, the evolution of American music, the roots of the civil rights movement, and the enduring struggle for justice.

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Segment One: Paul Simon on Songwriting, Influence, and Artistry

Interviewed by Paul Muldoon at the 2013 New Yorker Festival

[00:31] Origins and Early Songwriting

• Influences:
  • Simon began songwriting in his teens, inspired by 1950s rhythm and blues and early doo-wop.
  • His father, a professional bass player, taught him that “most of the songs from that era were all written to the same chord structures.”
• Notable Early Song:
  • The first song Simon wrote was “The Girl For Me,” very much in the doo-wop tradition.

Quote:

“Also, when you’re young and you’re writing, there’s really no problem with the words because you don’t know anything. So whatever you say is fine, because you don’t know anything.” – Paul Simon [04:01]

[04:35] Changing Creative Process

• As Simon matured, songwriting shifted from a simultaneous process (music and words together) to a more intricate, layered approach.
• He became more aware of complexities like “irony and the yin and yang of everything.”
• Improvisation on guitar remains central but with greater attention to meaning and nuance.

[06:49] The Making of Graceland

• Big Shift in Method:
  • A key change started with the Graceland album. Simon moved from writing with guitar alone to building songs around existing tracks and rhythms, especially inspired by South African music.
• World Music Fusion:
  • Example of “Boy in the Bubble” and collaboration with South African musicians.
  • The track “Graceland” emerged from assembling elements from various musical traditions: “It sounds like a mix between South Africa and... Soweto, hillbilly rockabilly.”
  • Accidental creation: Simon recounts that a South African guitarist added a relative minor chord—rare in local music—by referencing Simon’s previous work.

Quote:

“What we have here, really, is world music. It's really people doing what they heard and vaguely remember and trying to imitate what it was.” – Paul Simon [12:00]

• Lyrics and Inspiration:
  • The phrase “I’m going to Graceland” began as a placeholder, but stuck.
  • The opening lines came from a real drive through the Mississippi Delta.

Quote:

“The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar.” – Paul Simon, lyric quoted [10:00]
“There are aspects of the creative process that you really don’t understand. And that’s part of the great joy of it, is because it’s a mystery.” – Paul Simon [13:20]

[14:19] Reflections on Heroes and Influences

• Simon discusses his four personal heroes: Mickey Mantle, Elvis Presley, JFK, and Lenny Bruce.
• Tells an anecdote about listening to Elvis sing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
• Observes the African roots of rhythm in American music, referencing Bo Diddley’s beat as an early influence.

[19:19] Anatomy of a Song: “Darling Lorraine”

• Simon walks through the composition of “Darling Lorraine,” using humor and real-time storytelling.
• The improvisational, surprising process: Simon didn’t know where the story would go, including the song’s tragic turn.
• The song’s progression mirrors a real relationship with conflict, reconciliation, and loss.

Quote:

“As soon as I wrote that line, I said, I had no idea Lorraine is going to die. I’m sick to death of you, Lorraine. Never should have said that.” – Paul Simon [24:54]

• Paul Muldoon reflects:

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” [26:23]

Memorable Moment:

• Simon recounts being recognized by a Peruvian musician in the Amazon, both connecting over each other's music; she plays “The Sound of Silence.”

“I sang doo dee doo da doo da da da da da. And she knew it and she played it and she said, I know an American song. I said, okay, let's hear it. And she played the Sound of Silence.” – Paul Simon [27:10]

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Segment Two: Congressman John Lewis on Life, Leadership, and the Civil Rights Movement

Interviewed by David Remnick at the New Yorker Festival, 2015

[31:10] Childhood and Family Roots

• Grew up in rural, segregated Pike County, Alabama, as one of ten children.
• Early experiences with racism, Jim Crow laws, and economic hardship.
• Childhood dreams of ministry, practicing sermons on chickens.

Quote:

“Some of those chickens that I preached to during the 40s and 50s tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues listening to me today in the Congress.” – John Lewis [32:27]

• Early nonviolent protest: boycotting chicken meals when his parents wanted to eat them.

[35:05] The Impact of Emmett Till

• The 1955 lynching of Emmett Till galvanized Lewis, as did images in Life magazine and the black press.
• Also inspired by Rosa Parks; first direct encounter with segregation when denied a library card.
• Returned to that same library decades later for a book signing—finally receiving his first library card.

Quote:

“I never went back to the Pike County Public Library... until July 5, 1998, for a book signing of my book Walking with the Wind. And hundreds of black and white citizens showed up. The end of book signing, they gave me a library card.” – John Lewis [34:36]

[36:13] Training for Nonviolent Protest

• Studied philosophies of nonviolence with Jim Lawson, including role-playing extreme scenarios to build resilience.
• Emulated Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders; determined to “redeem the soul of America” through love, peace, and nonviolence.

Quote:

“We accepted the idea that the philosophy of nonviolence is one of those immutable principles that you couldn’t deviate from. No matter what.” – John Lewis [37:46]

• Arrested 40 times during the 1960s, five times as a Congressman.

[39:38] Selma, Voting Rights, and March on Washington

• Deeply involved in SNCC, worked across the South on voter registration and civil rights actions.
• Describes the murder of civil rights workers Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and its impact on the movement.
• The urgency of dramatizing racial injustice to spur legislative change.

[42:20] Tensions Within the Movement

• Candid about the divergence between nonviolence (King, SCLC, his own path) and more militant approaches (Malcolm X, Black Power).
• Refused to get caught up in “rhetoric” alone, focusing on concrete organizing and actions.

[45:05] First Encounter with Malcolm X and President Kennedy’s Legacy

• Met Malcolm X shortly before the March on Washington; Malcolm was skeptical about its impact, seeing it as co-opted by the establishment.
• Remembers shifting attitudes from President Kennedy before and after the March.

Quote:

“He kept saying, you did a good job. And when he got to Dr. King, he said, you did a good job, and you had a dream.” – John Lewis [46:04]

• On J. Edgar Hoover’s spying and the need for truth and transparency, even concerning his own FBI files.

[48:12] Hope, Progress, and Ongoing Struggles

• Remains optimistic despite setbacks and continuing racial inequity.
• Candid reflections on dysfunction in Congress:

  “I think there are people who go to bed mean, they dream mean, they get up mean, and be mean for the rest of the day until they go back to bed and just mean some more. ...They don’t believe in government.” – John Lewis [50:31]

[51:23] Views on Black Lives Matter and the Next Generation

• Expresses admiration for BLM activists, viewing them as part of a continuing lineage.

  “Maybe they’re picking up where we left off, but they’re part of an extension of that movement.” – John Lewis [51:58]

[52:33] The Ongoing Battle for Voting Rights

• Traces history of the Voting Rights Act and its challenges from the Supreme Court’s decisions.
• Warns of renewed attempts to suppress the vote in various states, driven by demographic changes and fear of a “browner America.”

Quote:

“People shouldn’t be afraid, should embrace the future. As the Pope said, we all are immigrants.” – John Lewis [54:05]

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Notable Quotes (with timestamps)

• “Whatever you say [as a young songwriter] is fine, because you don’t know anything.” – Paul Simon [04:01]
• “It’s really people doing what they heard and vaguely remember and trying to imitate what it was.” – Paul Simon, on world music [12:00]
• “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” – Paul Muldoon, quoting Robert Frost [26:23]
• “Some of those chickens that I preached to during the 40s and 50s tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues... in Congress.” – John Lewis [32:27]
• “We had to insist that the Congress pass a voting Rights Act.” – John Lewis [42:00]
• “To lose hope is to give up. You have to be optimistic. You have to believe somehow, in some way, we’re gonna work it out.” – John Lewis [48:12]
• “Maybe they’re picking up where we left off, but they’re part of an extension of that movement.” – John Lewis, on Black Lives Matter [51:58]
• “People shouldn’t be afraid, should embrace the future. As the Pope said, we all are immigrants.” – John Lewis [54:05]

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Episode Flow & Recommended Timestamps

• Paul Simon on Songwriting: [01:31] – [28:44]
  • Song craft, influences, “Graceland” deep dive, “Darling Lorraine,” musical cross-currents, stories of inspiration.
• John Lewis on Civil Rights: [30:46] – [54:46]
  • Childhood, Emmett Till and motivation, philosophy of nonviolence, SNCC, Selma, working with King, challenges in Congress, connection with current movements, future of voting rights.

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Conclusion

This episode provides rare, intimate insight into how two of America’s most influential figures—one in music, one in social change—wrestle with the demands of creativity, integrity, and purpose. Paul Simon’s openness about the mystery of artistic creation complements John Lewis’s unyielding belief in courage, nonviolence, and hopeful action—across generations and into the present day.

Transcript

[Paul Muldoon]

Floor 38.

[Narrator/Host]

It's very exciting to be having a.

[Interviewer]

Conversation with someone when they have that revelation.

[John Lewis]

I mean, it'd be good if you have a source for it.

[Narrator/Host]

Yes, the telegraph from one World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. John Lewis is a 30 year veteran of Congress and you might think that surviving in Washington that long would be his biggest accomplishment, but it isn't. Lewis is a lion of the civil rights movement. He's a protege of Martin Luther King and one of the original Freedom Riders. And when he was just 23 years old, he helped plan the march on Washington. I'll talk with Lewis about King, about JFK and surviving all those years in Congress a little later in the hour. But first up, another lion of his field, a songwriter who probably needs no introduction, Paul Simon. When Simon played Bridge Over Troubled Water at the Democratic National Convention just a couple of weeks ago, it was especially poignant because he had just announced in the pages of the New York Times that he might just retire from music entirely, maybe when his fall tour is over. Simon sat down with Paul Muldoon, the poet and poetry editor of the magazine, at the New Yorker Festival in 2013.

[Paul Simon]

Thank you.

[Paul Muldoon]

Listen, the focus today is on the art of songwriting. It seems to me that we are profoundly interested in, engaged by, excited by how things get made, be it the guitar itself and be it the, in this case, the song. So that's what we're going to focus on today, if we may. And I'm going to kick off by asking you very directly, you got involved in songwriting when you were a teenager?

[Paul Simon]

Yes, I wouldn't even say that I got involved in was just something that I naturally did because I liked the music that I was listening to when I was young. That music was rhythm and blues from the 50s and kind of what was just before doo wop. It would have probably later on be called doo wop. The thing that was great about it was that most of the songs from that era were all written to the same chord structures. So I'll give you an example.

[Paul Muldoon]

So there was a template for almost all of them?

[Paul Simon]

Well, yep, yes, you could say that.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

Will you be mine? My darling dear Love you all the.

[Paul Simon]

Time.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

I'm just a fool, A fool in love with you.

[Paul Simon]

That's Earth angel, probably the most famous of the songs from the groups of the 50s. And so my dad was a professional musician. He was A bass player. So I asked him would he teach me the chords to, you know, to these songs, which. So he said, yeah, they're all the same chords, you know. And so the first song I wrote was, the Girl For Me.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

Is Standing There. That's the one. Flowers in Her Hair.

[Paul Simon]

I'll always love her.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

And I know she'll Be true.

[Paul Simon]

You get the point.

[Paul Muldoon]

I think getting the point is really quite important in all of this. One would be surprised, I think, if one had no sense of how these songs were written, to discover that the words tend to come much later down the road.

[Paul Simon]

Oh, now?

[Paul Muldoon]

Yes.

[Paul Simon]

Well, the songwriter that I am now is very, very different from the songwriter that I was even in the 70s. And that writing was different from what I wrote in the 60s for Simon and Garfunkel and before that, when I was doing imitation of teenage stuff. That was another way. Then I just wrote the songs. I didn't. There was no need to separate the music from the words. They all came at the same time. Also, when you're young and you're writing, there's really no problem with the words because you don't know anything. So whatever you say is fine, because you don't know anything. Later on you say, oh, I can't say that. That isn't exactly true. So things become more sophisticated as our brains become more sophisticated and attuned to irony and to the yin and yang of everything. And if your professional life is as a songwriter, you begin to incorporate these concepts into your thinking. And when I started to do that, I found that simply playing the guitar and improvising over it, like, look, this is the way most songs begin. When people begin playing, okay, they go.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

Well, I'm just here, and I don't know what to say now. So I'll talk about the girl who I love, who doesn't exist.

[Paul Muldoon]

That sounds pretty good to me.

[Paul Simon]

Well, that's why I wrote a lot of hits in the beginning. Now I can't write one for, you know, for anything.

[Paul Muldoon]

So. But nowadays, do you tend to begin less often with the guitar, or do most of them still begin with the guitar?

[Paul Simon]

Now I write both ways, but the big change came with Graceland. Even before I, you know, went to South Africa, and even before I fell in love with South African music. I really felt like I don't want to go into the studio and have a song where the track isn't equal to the song. So one of the famous songs on Graceland is called the Boy in the Bubble. So that was recorded with an Accordion player who came from a little country within South Africa, a country called Lesotho. And he played a certain kind of music, Sotho music. And that was the Boy in the Bubble. In that session, we just let the tape roll, really. So one of the tracks that existed there that he played on, I said, you know what? I don't really want the accordion on it. The only thing I really like on this track are the drums. So let's just keep the drums so we have that track. I can show you. So this is a track that was recorded on the same day I recorded Boy in the Bubble. The day before I recorded Graceland, where I said, all I want are the drums. So here's the accordion track. Now, the next day, a group of musicians come in, and I say to the guitarist, he was a gifted guitarist. I say, I have a drum track that I like. What would you play to this drum track? So he hears the drum track and he says, it sounds like American country music to me, which is probably why I liked it. So you know what? Please play what we just heard and then go directly into the Graceland track. It's pretty good.

[Paul Muldoon]

Yeah.

[Paul Simon]

This is him thinking this is country music, and me thinking it sounds like a mix between South Africa and. And rock and roll, like Soweto, hillbilly rockabilly. And then I wrote that line, Da dee dee and he's playing this rhythm.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

The Mississippi Delta was shining like a.

[Paul Simon]

National guitar.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of.

[Paul Simon]

The civil I'm on Graceland Graceland Memphis, Tennessee I'm on Graceland okay, so here's what happened. This is, I think, the most extraordinary moment in the whole making of that album. The guitarist name is Ray Perry, and he's playing this stuff, KV and then he does something that's really quite amazing in the context of South Africa. You have to know. South African music is three chords and a major key. They never play a minor chord. I shouldn't say never, because I'm sure there's some. But most South African music is that. So he plays that.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

Then he goes.

[Paul Simon]

And I say, whoa, Ray, why did you play that chord? It's the first time I hear anybody play a minor chord. A relative minor. He's playing the. In the key of E. He's playing a C sharp minor. So he says, because that's the chord that you play. I heard you play those chords. Well, of course, I learned that sequence of chords from Earth Angel. So here's Ray, who's playing what he thinks is American country. And adding a chord structure that he knows from my music to a beat that came from an accordion track that had nothing to do with this. And then when he gets to the chorus, he goes into a kind of African blues. So, I mean, what we have here really is world music. It's really people doing what they heard and vaguely remember and trying to imitate what it was. So here's this track. The track exists, and I don't know what its song is about. And I'm singing Going to Graceland Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee. I'm going to Graceland. And I'm thinking, well, of course I'm not going to sing that. Because it's not about Graceland or Elvis Presley or anything. So I'm going to change that and get rid of that. And I can do that because I just have a track. So I can change the words anytime I want, but I can't. I keep singing that and keep singing that. So finally I go, I say, I'm going to Graceland. I'm going to go there and see what this is all about, you know, because I'd never been there. And as I'm driving up north on Highway 61, I mean, the opening lines are literally in front of me. I'm driving through the Mississippi Delta, and it just comes. Just a description. The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar.

[Paul Muldoon]

Not everyone would think perhaps, of the national guitar.

[Paul Simon]

Well, you know, there are. I'm sure that you understand this, Paul, that there are aspects of the creative process that you really don't understand. And that's part of the great joy of it, is because it's a mystery. You don't know why that jumped into your head, but it's not important. The thing about it is you say, ah, yeah, I could use that. That's a good thing.

[Paul Muldoon]

It jumps into your head. One of the things that fascinates me, as I've read some of your interviews over the years, is your insistence that you are there at the service of the song, of the words. And that that image, perhaps, of the national guitar, which is most of us, I think, will know, is the steel right guitar. So it's absolutely. What I'm getting at is it's a brilliant description of the landscape at an angle with the sun reflected off the water. Which is why I say not all of us would come up with that.

[Paul Simon]

And it justifies that. I'm going to Graceland. I'm going to Graceland. That's where I'm going. Now the question is, so what's the song about. Okay, you got a good reason to go to Graceland. And the reason is the track sounds like it was cut at Sun Studios in Memphis. To me, it sounds like it's a rockabilly track. Then the rest of it was just a description of being there. Poor boys and pilgrims with families. And we were all going to. These are just. Everybody got on the bus and, you know, went in. I didn't tell anybody that I was coming. I just bought a ticket and got online and went with everybody else and walked through Graceland.

[Paul Muldoon]

I don't suppose most people who walk through Graceland, though, have had the opportunity to hear Elvis Presley sing one of their songs. As you did with.

[Paul Simon]

Yeah, not most people know.

[Paul Muldoon]

As you did with Elvis singing Bridge Over Troubled Water.

[Paul Simon]

Yeah, I did. That was a kind of. It was a privilege. Because Elvis Presley was. I was thinking, not too long ago, I've had four heroes in my life, you know, where I just was fascinated by them and nobody else. Just four. The first one was Mickey Mantle. I was only interested in baseball when I was a kid. The second was Elvis Presley, which now adds rock and roll and girls and baseball. Rock and roll and girl. And that's pretty much. That's pretty much never changed since then. I haven't really grown much past that point. The third one was jfk, and the fourth one was Lenny Bruce. After that, I never, you know, I mean, there were people who I was impressed with and whose talent I thought was enormous, but I wasn't in awe of anyone. They weren't heroes to me.

[Paul Muldoon]

Bo Diddley must have been getting up there.

[Paul Simon]

Yeah, Bo Diddley was great, but I wouldn't have said, I just want to know everything there is to know about. Yeah, I loved Bo Diddley. And you know what's interesting about Bo Diddley? The beat is African. It doesn't have a backbeat. It's. It's not. That's. It's not on two and four. It's four. It's four. Four. And so me liking that, I'm not surprised that later on, I like African music, because that's the same. I just like that, you know, I mean, that's. Who knows why? Although I start to think, you know, now, oh, why is it that that's the case? Or even more important, how can I get the sounds that I love into the records that I'm making? Because if I get the rhythm right, and you asked me before, how does it start? Well, a lot of times I'll start with a rhythmic premise, which is exactly. What Graceland was just a drum. And other times, if I'm writing a ballad, I'll start with a guitar premise and there won't be any other things. So the rhythmic premise is fun because you're being. I'm. I'm. It's all counter punching. I'm responding to stimuli. I hear. I hear a groove and I say, I like that groove. Great, let's do that groove. Let me think what I play against that. I play this, I'll play that. You know, it's nice to be, you know, to be an editor. You love to be an editor, right?

[Paul Muldoon]

And a band leader in that respect.

[Paul Simon]

I think, well, that's just an editor.

[Paul Muldoon]

Absolutely.

[Paul Simon]

Now let me turn it to you. Here comes a poem. I say, paul, where did that come from? What happened? Did you think about that for a long time? Was it something that you saw when you crossed the street? Is it a childhood memory? So what? Where does it come from?

[Paul Muldoon]

Well, I think it varies a little bit from poem to poem. And I'm sure there'll be another opportunity for me to discuss what.

[Paul Simon]

You're going to duck the question. Unbelievable.

[Paul Muldoon]

Let's go back to a song that just is. So actually, its title is something that is one that was used often on their song. That's a song of yours that I adore, among so many. Darling Lorraine.

[Paul Simon]

Well, Darling Lorraine was. First of all, there was a song called Darlene Lorraine. It wasn't a big hit. I liked it. It was a doo wop song. Same chords, same stuff. That's what it was. Two guys and one person sang the background. All in the background, like that's all there was. It wasn't a group. It wasn't the usual thing. And he just kept singing la.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

Whoa.

[Paul Simon]

And then I don't even know what they were singing over the title. And the song is called Darling Lorraine. You know, I'm always interested in. Or. I really need a first line. I need to begin. It's really hard to begin. So I start off with, again, I really don't know what I'm doing. This whole first verse, I really don't know what I'm doing. The first time I saw her, I shouldn't be. I couldn't be sure. But the sin of impatience is a line from one of my notes. The sin of impatience. I said, oh, that fits. But the sin of impatience said, she's just what you're looking for. Okay. So I walk right up to her. Terrible writing, really. And with the part of me that talks, it's nice I introduced myself as Frank. Which is kind of funny, because I know the guy's gonna be a liar, you know, so we'll call him Frank. Introduce myself as Frank from New York, New York. Which is already a lie. Cause anybody from New York never says they're from New York, New York. Just say you're from New York. Everybody knows it's not New York, comma, New York. You know, like Buffalo, New York. Okay. I have a character. And I have, you know, kind of a personality trait. I don't know what. She's so hot. She's so cool. Basic songwriting, nothing. I'm not. I'm just a fool in love. Most trite line. A song that you can write in a song. Just a fool in love with darling Lorraine. Good. Here's my characters, Frank and Lorraine. Now I'm stuck with. So where am I gonna go? What's this gonna be about? So I start the second verse. All my life I've been a wanderer. I think, yeah, that is real right there. Then comes the moment that, like, makes the song for me. He cracks it open. So. All my life I've been a wanderer. Not really. I mostly live near my parents home anyway. And that's where. Anyway, Lorraine and I got married. Boom. We're like, way ahead in the story and the usual marriage stuff. Not even bothering with anything, just moving. And then one day she says to me, frank, I've had enough. Romance is a heartbreaker. And I'm not meant to be a homemaker. And I'm tired of being darling Lorraine. Devastating conflict. Then the song changes its pattern. Rhythmic pattern. And the words are. What? You don't love me anymore? What, you're walking out the door. What, you don't like the way I chew? Very, very male line. What? You don't like the way I chew? Hey, let me tell you. You're not the woman that I wed. Here's Frank again. The level of insight that you can see Frank has. You're not the woman that I wed. You say you're depressed, but you're not. You just like to stay in bed. I don't need you, darling Lorraine. Okay, good. A good fight. He doesn't know anything, Frank. Lorraine. Lorraine, I long for your love. Good fight. Breaks it up. Guy's really in love. He hasn't a clue, but he's really in love. Okay, good. Now the song changes its chord pattern and its key and everything. And the way I recorded it, it sounded very, very sugary. Sweet. Too sweet for me. So I said, well, I can either take this thing and, like, toughen it up, or else just go into a sweet story. So I say, well, okay, a sweet story. So what would that be? Okay, on Christmas morning, Frank awakes to find Lorraine has made a stack of pancakes. They watch the television, husband and wife, all afternoon. It's A Wonderful Life. But we don't even need the next argument because he's back with, what? You don't love me anymore? What? You're walking out the door. What, you don't like the way I chew? Hey, let me tell you, you're not the woman that I wed. Give me my robe. I'm going back to bed. I'm sick to death of you, Lorraine. And as soon as I wrote that line, I said, I had no idea Lorraine is going to die. I'm sick to death of you, Lorraine. Never should have said that. Lorraine. Lorraine. Her hands like wood. The doctor was smiling, but the news wasn't good. Darling Lorraine, please don't leave me yet. I know you're in pain. Pain you can't forget. Your breathing is like an echo of our love. Maybe I'll go down to the corner store and buy us something sweet. Here's an extra blanket, honey, to wrap around your feet. All the leaves were washed with April rain and the moon in the meadow took Darling Lorraine. So story. You know, who knew that that was going there? I didn't know it was going there. For the pleasure of writing a song. That one had a lot of pleasure because I didn't know it, had jokes in it, had my favorite kind of jokes about somebody who's stupid and doesn't know it. You know, Frank. And then this thing of getting just whacked by, you know, by mortality.

[Paul Muldoon]

Did you find yourself, as you came to that point. I mean, did you find yourself emotionally overwhelmed in the way that I think most people who hear that song, even if you don't mind my saying so, without the music, just to hear you speak it. To hear it spoken, I think is a tremendously moving.

[Paul Simon]

Yeah, I did. I started to cry as soon as I said, I'm sick to death of you.

[Paul Muldoon]

You know, there's a great line in Robert Frost, among many great lines he writes. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. And anyway, I think in a strange way, that's an indicator of the power of the words themselves without the music. Brilliant though it is with the music. I love that story as I remember it. I'm sure I misremember of your being in Peru and meeting a Peruvian singer. I think playing.

[Paul Simon]

I was in the Amazon.

[Paul Muldoon]

I was up the Amazon. El Condor Pasa, right?

[Paul Simon]

She was playing this, you know, sitting with her guitar, and I said, I know a Peruvian song, and I didn't have a guitar. And I sang doo dee doo da doo da da da da da. And she knew it and she played it and she said, I know an American song. I said, okay, let's hear it. And she played the Sound of Silence.

[Paul Muldoon]

You know, I think, if you don't mind my saying that says it all about Paul Simon.

[David Remnick]

Paul Simon talking with Paul Muldoon, the poetry editor of the New Yorker, in 2013. Simon's album Stranger to Stranger came out just this summer.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

Milwaukee man led a fairly decent life, Made a fairly decent living, Had a fairly decent wife.

[Paul Simon]

She killed him. Sushi knife.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

Now they're shopping for a fairly decent afterlife.

[Paul Simon]

The werewolf is coming.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

The fact is, most old bits are mixed reviews. Life is a lottery. A lot of people lose and the winners, the grinners with money colored eyes eat all the nuggets.

[Paul Simon]

Then they order extra fries.

[Singer/Backup Vocalist]

The werewolf is coming.

[Paul Simon]

Extra fries. The werewolf is coming, you know.

[David Remnick]

You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. I'm David Remnick, and welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Next week we're going to hear something kind of special, a memoir by the late Arthur Miller, the great playwright, called Before Air Conditioning. It's about the hazy summer days and nights in the 1920s when city people slept out on their fire escapes and they sweated in factories without even the benefit of a fan. It's read for us by the actor F. Murray Abraham, and it'll make you pretty thankful for modern technology. We'll also hear from the novelist Janice Y.K. lee, author of the Piano Teacher, about her own childhood in the metropolis of Hong Kong.

[Janice Y.K. Lee]

A lot of times people think of the skyline of Hong Kong, but you can have a very idyllic childhood there. And it's very quiet. For a time, we lived above sort of a beach that was backed by a farm. And so I would just go downstairs in my apartment building and we'd go through the farm and go to the beach.

[David Remnick]

That's next week on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Last fall, I got to sit down with Congressman John Lewis for a conversation at the New Yorker Festival. John Lewis is a hero. He's the last living member of what's been called the Big Six, the leaders of the major civil rights organizations that planned the march on Washington. Lewis was just a kid in the room at that time. He was Way younger than Roy Wilkins or a. Philip Randolph and even Martin Luther King Jr. In that fight for civil rights, Lewis was on the front lines, literally. He survived brutal attacks during the Freedom Rides and in Selma during the march for voting rights. So when John Lewis talks about his embrace of nonviolence as a philosophy, as a way of life, he knows better than anyone what that entails, and he's got the scars to show for it.

[Interviewer]

I'd like to begin because I think there may be some people in this room who have never been to Pike County, Alabama, by asking you to describe your beginnings, just to root us in where you started out, what it was like, your parents. Just describe it for us.

[John Lewis]

I grew up in a very large family. Six brothers and three sisters, wonderful mother and a wonderful father. The same community, the same. On the same land that my mother was born on, that my grandfather and my great grandfather on my mother's side was born home. It was dirt poor. We didn't have running water. We didn't have power. We picked a lot of cotton, pull corn, gather peanuts. As a little boy growing up, it was my responsibility on the farm to care for the chickens. And I fell in love with raising chickens. I became very good at raising chickens as a little child. We would gather all of our chickens together in the chicken yard, and my brothers and sisters and cousins were lying the outside of the chicken yard. But along with the chickens, they would help make up the audience, the congregation. I wanted to be a minister. So from time to time, I would talk to the chickens, I would preach to them. And when I look back on it.

[Interviewer]

Your parents didn't worry about that at all?

[John Lewis]

No, they. Then they thought I was growing up to be a minister, and they thought I was learning by preaching to the chicken after the sermon. So these chickens never quite said amen, but they would bow their heads, they would shake their heads. And when I look back on it, I'm convinced today that some of those chickens that I preached to during the 40s and the 50s tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues listening to me today in the Congress. And as a matter of fact, some of those chicken were just a little more productive. At least they produce eggs. I think, to be very frank and candid with you, David, my first nonviolent protestor, protesting against my mother and father when they wanted to have one of the chickens for dinner. I didn't like it, and so I would boycott the meal. But I didn't like segregation. I didn't like seeing the signs that Said white, waiting, colored waiting. White men, colored men, white women, colored women. And I would ask my mother, asked my father, my grandparents and great grandparents, they would say, that's the way it is. Don't get in the way, don't get in Trouble. But in 1955, when I was 15 years old, I heard of what happened to Emmett Till. And later, during the same year, I think Emmett Till was murdered on August 28, 1965. And then Rosa Parks took her seat on December 1, 1955. And the action of Rosa Parks inspired me. So in 1956, I was 16 years old with some of my brothers and sisters and cousins. We went down to the public library in the little town of Troy, Alabama, trying to get library cards, trying to check out some books. And we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for coloreds. I never went back to the Pack County Public Library, not the same building, until July 5, 1998, for a book signing of my book Walking with the Wind. And hundreds of blacks and white citizens showed up. The end of the book signing, they gave me a library card.

[Interviewer]

Now explain, particularly for people who are younger here, why did the Till Case, 1955, have such an electrifying effect on black America and the United States in general? From you to Muhammad Ali to any number of people that became important figures in the civil rights movement.

[John Lewis]

Well, Emmett Till, this young African American boy, 15 years old, he was lynched and there was a trial. They were not convicted. And his mother came down from Chicago and she said, I want the casket to be open so the world can see what they did to my child. And that had unbelievable impact.

[Interviewer]

Those pictures, in particular, those photographs in the black press and in Life magazine.

[John Lewis]

Yeah. People all over America started protesting about what happened to this 15 year old child.

[Interviewer]

And yet you were a very young person at that time.

[John Lewis]

I was 15.

[Interviewer]

And eventually, not that long after you go to Fisk and you become involved in actions of civil disobedience and passive resistance.

[John Lewis]

By the fall of 1959, we started studying the philosophy and the discipline of non violence. We studied the great religions of the world. We had a wonderful teacher, a young man by the name of Jim Lawson, who was a pacifist who get us together every Tuesday night at 6:30pm but we had role playing, we had social drama.

[Interviewer]

What would you do in the role playing?

[John Lewis]

Petitions like people spitting on you, beating you, throwing you in jail, mocking you.

[Interviewer]

And nothing while you're doing this. And even when the events themselves comes along, strikes you as it does many people today as absurd. Too much, too much to bear.

[John Lewis]

Many of us as young people during those days accepted the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence as a way of life. We studied what Martin Luther King Jr. Was all about in Montgomery. So we were ready. We were prepared. No. If we wanted to redeem the soul of America, if we wanted to what we call create the beloved community, we had to use the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. We accepted the idea that the philosophy of non violence is one of those immutable principles that you couldn't deviate from.

[Interviewer]

No matter what.

[John Lewis]

No matter what, you're beaten, yes, arrested, you're thrown in jail, but you would not hate. You will not become bitter or hostile. You will keep the faith. The first time I got arrested, I should tell you, I felt free, I felt liberated.

[Interviewer]

Why is that?

[John Lewis]

I felt like I crossed over because we had been told over and over again, don't get in trouble, don't get in the way. It's not a nice thing to go to jail. So during the 60s, I was arrested 40 times for sitting in or standing in marching for the right to vote. And since I've been in Congress five more times and I probably get arrested again for something.

[David Remnick]

Congressman John Lewis, we'll continue our conversation in a minute, talking about Malcolm X and how to survive life in the United States Congress. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. I'm David Remnick and welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Last fall, I sat down with Georgia Congressman John Lewis, and he talked about his early years growing up on a farm as the son of sharecroppers, getting involved in the fight against segregation in the south, and being taken under the wing of Martin Luther King Jr. Let's.

[Interviewer]

Talk about Selma for a moment. This is 50 Years Ago. When you think of your own self at that age, you were very, very young. You're at the front of the line. What got you there, what put you there? What qualities in you as such a young person had you at the front of the line at this event, that even must have seemed momentous even then, not knowing how it would play out down the line.

[John Lewis]

You know, when I spoke at the march on Washington on August 28, 1963, while I was working on the speech with some of the staffers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC had been reading a newspaper and I saw a group of black women in southern Africa, carrying signs and one man, one vote. So in my March on Washington speech, I said something like, one man, one vote is the African cry. It is ours too. It must be ours. I didn't like the fact that my own mother, my own father, my own teachers could not participate in the democratic process, that people were told they could not read or write well enough. And I knew we had to do something about it. So when I became chair of the Student nonviolent Coordinating Committee, we started working all across the South. Places like Selma, places in Mississippi. There were one county between Selma and Montgomery. Lowndes county was more than 80% African American. Not a single registered African American voter in the county. We knew we had to do something. We had to find a way to dramatize the issue, to make it real. We had to march on Washington. The Civil Rights act was passed and signed into law by President Johnson in July 1964. But people still couldn't register to vote in many parts of the South. Three young men, two from New York City, Andy Goodman, Mickey Schoener, a young African American from Mississippi, James Cherney, who went out on a Sunday night, June 21, 1964, to investigate the burning of an African American church to be used for voter registration workshops. These three young men were stopped by the sheriff, arrested, placed in jail, then taken out of jail, turned over to the Klan, where they were beaten, shot and killed. And we couldn't allow their deaths to be in vain. We had to insist that the Congress pass a voting Rights Act.

[Interviewer]

There seemed to be in you as a young man a tension between your adherence to the principles of non violence and your loyalty to Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And then a more radicalizing rhetoric and the movement towards sncc. And as you know better than anybody else in this world, there was both an alliance between and a pronounced tension between SCLC and sncc. And those tensions would grow in the movement and reach their reach an even wider gulf. With the rise of Malcolm X, black power and the Panthers. What conflict, what inner conflicts were you facing as an individual and as a civil rights leader and as a young man in the movement?

[David Remnick]

Questions?

[John Lewis]

Well, I love and admire Dr. King. If it hadn't been for Martin Luther King Jr. I don't know what would have happened to me. He inspired me. He set me on a path. In 1962, before I became the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he invited me to become a member of his board of director as sort of the liaison between the young people and the adults in the movement. He was almost like a big brother. And I was not going to separate my affection and love for Dr. King. He was my leader, and I could be strong and I could sign militant and sign radical. But I believe in the way of peace, the way of love. I believe in that. We got to have programs, not just a lot of rhetoric, but we have to engage in the 1, 2, 3s and ABCs of organizing people and organizing a movement and leading a group of people.

[Interviewer]

Were you made uncomfortable by or worried about things pulling you more to the left? Say, Stokely Carmichael, who was also in SNCC and a comrade of yours, Describe those tensions and how you look back at them.

[John Lewis]

Well, I never got caught up in the rhetoric of black power because SNCC as an organization, we believed in doing something in a programmatic way, not just talking the talk, but walking the walk.

[Interviewer]

I've never heard you talk much about Malcolm X and your evaluation of his legacy, both how you felt about him in real time and how you now look back at him and his role in.

[John Lewis]

Well, I first met Malcolm on the eve of the march on Washington the night of August 27, 1963, and we had a brief discussion.

[Interviewer]

How did he feel about the march on Washington?

[John Lewis]

He was not that supportive of the march, and he had some things to say about the march.

[Interviewer]

What did he say?

[John Lewis]

Well, he said, in effect, that we allowed President Kennedy to turn the march into a social picnic or something like that.

[Interviewer]

That JFK was somehow using you to take the onus off of him, Take.

[John Lewis]

Some of the steam.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[John Lewis]

As you well know, in the beginning, President Kennedy was not that supportive of the moor.

[Interviewer]

Not at all.

[John Lewis]

When we met with him In June of 1963, he said, if you bring all these people to Washington, won't there be violence and chaos and disorder? We would never get a civil rights bill through the Congress. And after the march took place, and it was so successful that day, President Kennedy invited us all back down to the White House. He stood in the door of the Oval Office, greeting us. He was beaming like a proud father. He kept saying, you did a good job. You did a good job. And when he got to Dr. King, he said, you did a good job, and you had a dream. That was my last time seeing that.

[Interviewer]

Did you find that purely joyful or a little patronizing or both from Kennedy's point of view?

[John Lewis]

No. I thought he was being encouraging and that he was so pleased that everything had gone so well, that in his own way, you know, he was the first President in the history of the country when he delivered that speech on June 11, 1963, said the issue raised the issue of civil rights is a.

[Interviewer]

Moral issue, but at the same time he has J. Edgar Hoover spying on Martin Luther King. So he's a double.

[John Lewis]

Well, I'm not going to try to defend or speak up for President Kennedy, but to be very frank and candid with, I think a lot of presidents were afraid of Jaguar Hoover. This man did so much damage.

[Interviewer]

Have you ever looked at your FBI report?

[John Lewis]

Oh, yes, I've seen it. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What are the highlights?

[John Lewis]

Well, I just cannot tell you. You know, when you get the report, it's a lot of. It's just mark out, it blackened out in there.

[Interviewer]

Were you grateful for that?

[John Lewis]

Not really. I think the truth, everything should come out. I didn't do anything that was. I thought was illegal or immoral or anything like that. I think this man obsessed with destroying a movement to liberate all of the American people. Hoover, Hoover, yes.

[Interviewer]

And if I had told you in 1965 that we'd be where we are now, both with a black president, but also with Ferguson and Staten island and everything we know about the dynamics of this country and its inequalities and the nature of institutional racism, whether it's in our schools or in our voting laws, how would you have reacted? Are you so immensely hopeful?

[John Lewis]

Well, to lose hope is to give up. You have to be optimistic. You have to believe somehow, in some way, we're gonna work it out.

[Interviewer]

I get that, but look at the institution you work in.

[John Lewis]

I know, but in spite of it all, we're human. We make blunders, we make mistakes. It's in keeping with the philosophy and the discipline of non violence that you have to press on.

[Interviewer]

I have to say, and I mean this with great respect, I think.

[Paul Simon]

Viewed.

[Interviewer]

From outside and even peeking in once in a while as a reporter. The House of Representatives represents one of those French caricatures of the French Assembly. And everybody looks kind of strange and weird and monstrous and it is a. Well not in front of you.

[John Lewis]

I'm not going to say no, that's okay.

[Interviewer]

A show. Nothing gets done. Leaderships don't mean much anymore. You go to work there every day. Do you come home at night and drink yourself to sleep or what's it like?

[John Lewis]

Who do you talk to? Well, it's another world. It's another world. I try to be hopeful and optimistic, but every now and then I too have an executive session. Quite a few these days saying why I've seen You know, I've been in Congress now for almost 30 years, and I've seen better days.

[Interviewer]

What's happening? Why is there this talent level, this sense of resentment and anger and fury and inexplicable. I. We're gonna have another school shooting or another mass shooting. Sure. Shooting in three weeks or in two months, God forbid, but it will happen. Well, nothing.

[John Lewis]

I think you have a group of people who've been elected, and I don't know why they ran for office in the first place. They don't like government, and some of them don't like people.

[Interviewer]

It's a great combination, really.

[John Lewis]

I think they're people who go to bed mean, they dream mean, they get up mean, and be mean for the rest of the day until they go back to bed and just mean some more, saying, who can I hurt today or tomorrow? They don't believe in government.

[Interviewer]

One of the common T shirts that I've seen among adherents to and activists for Black Lives Matter is, this isn't your granddaddy's Civil rights movement. How would you. You've obviously met with people. You've seen what's happened. You've seen the use of social media as an organizing principle. Where is Black Lives Matter at this point? What do you admire about it? Maybe what concerns you about it and what role does it play?

[John Lewis]

Just last evening I was in the airport, and a young man came up and he said, congressman Lewis, I'm part of Black Lives Matter, so I admire you. I love you so. You're my hero. You and your friends and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in SNCC made it possible for us to exist. And I said, I wish you well. Continue your work.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel a part of it?

[John Lewis]

I feel like some of these young people could be my children or my grandchildren or great grandchildren. And maybe they're picking up where we left off, but they're part of an extension of that movement.

[Interviewer]

Let's look at where they and all of us have to pick up. Where you have brought us voting rights is something that particularly concerns you. Lay out for us where we are with voting rights, what the motivations of the players are and what the possibilities are.

[John Lewis]

Well, the Voting Rights act was signed Into Law on August 6, 1965. Change America Forever. When Martin Luther King, Jr. Came back from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, he had a meeting with President Johnson, and he said to the president in so many words, Mr. President, we need a voting rank site. And Lyndon Johnson said, if you want it, make me do it. He said, we don't have the votes in the Congress to get a voting rank sack passed. I just signed a civil rank site, but if you want it, make me do it. So Martin Luther King, Jr. Joined us in Selma, Alabama. But SNCC had been working since 1962. And the drama of Selma, the drama of Mississippi and other parts of the south created the climate, created the environment to get the act passed and signed into law on August 6, 1965, 50 years ago since then, because of the decision of the United States Supreme Court. That decision put a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights act of 1965. And many states, not just southern states, but states in the Northeast, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is a good example in the Midwest. And all across our country are trying to make it.

[Interviewer]

Why is this happening?

[John Lewis]

We've made so much progress, but things are changing. People, people are afraid of the future. America is changing.

[Interviewer]

Be specific. What are they afraid of? They're afraid of a browner America.

[John Lewis]

They're afraid of a. The makeup of America is changing. Just look around, and I don't want to be that partisan about it, but just look around. When Texas become a Democratic stronghold, when the Latino population becomes citizens, and we set people on a path to citizenship, when we have comprehensive immigration reform, people get registered, start voting. America will be a different America. And people shouldn't be afraid, should embrace the future. As the Pope said, we all are immigrants.

[Interviewer]

Congressman, thank you. And thank you all for coming.

[David Remnick]

Congressman John Lewis, I talked with him last October at the New Yorker Festival. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. And that's it for today. Thanks so much for listening. You can find both of the interviews you heard today and in fact, everything we've done over the past year. It's almost a year [e-mail] the New.

[Narrator/Host]

Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sara Nix, Michael Rayfiel and Steven Valentino, with help from Owen Agnew, Alex Barron, Becky Cooper, and very special thanks this week to David Ohana and Rhonda Sherman. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.