Fresh off his appearance at the SNL:50 celebration on Sunday, Paul Simon is coming out of retirement to do a bit of a tour this spring and summer called "A Quiet Celebration." And he'll be in San Francisco for three nights in July.
When our elder performers announce their retirements from performing, it is very often just a precursor to a comeback tour. Or a second "farewell" tour. And that may be what the 83-year-old Paul Simon is doing this year, having decided to do a tour of quieter, smaller venues around the country, titled "A Quiet Celebration."
As Deadline reports, the tour will kick off at New Orleans' Saenger Theater in just a month and a half, on April 4. And Simon will tour thirteen states and Canada over the coming months, doing a five-night stint at Disney Hall in Los Angeles in July, followed by three nights at Davies Symphony Hall, July 19, 21, and 22.
Simon last performed in San Francisco at Outside Lands in 2019, coming out of retirement to do so, and bringing out the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir to join him on their first-ever duet, singing Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer."
Simon describes arriving in the Bay Area for the first time in 1967 to perform at the Monterey Pop Festival, and knocking on the door of the house where he'd be staying, and Weir was the one who answered it. "We've been friends ever since," Simon said.
Paul Simon is, of course, an icon and a 16-time Grammy winner with six gold, four platinum and two multiplatinum solo albums — with 1986's Graceland leading the pack. He was tied with Taylor Swift for having the most Album of the Year Grammys until Swift won her fourth for Midnights in 2024.
Simon's acoustic album Seven Psalms, his fifteenth studio album released in 2023, was also nominated for Best Folk Album.
The singer went public about suffering from sudden hearing loss in his left ear in 2023, and now says he only has 6% hearing in that ear.
"It was incredibly frustrating. I was very angry at first that this had happened,” Simon said in an interview with The Times of London. “I guess what I’m most apprehensive about would be if I can’t hear well enough to really enjoy the act of making music."
Simon's music making has apparently continued, if a bit shakily, as he showed on Sunday on stage with Sabrina Carpenter (video below). But, he said in a November CBS interview, he can only perform some of his repertoire now, and "It’s all much quieter."
Tickets for Simon's SF shows, and all the other shows, go on sale Friday, February 21, on Ticketmaster, with a pre-sale starting at 10 am Thursday.
Top image: Paul Simon performs onstage during Homeward Bound: A GRAMMY Salute To The Songs Of Paul Simon at Hollywood Pantages Theatre on April 06, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
