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‘I never said I was going to retire ...’ Paul Simon on disability, drive and the mystery behind his greatest songs

He halted his career after decades of hits, then a dream one night changed everything. From New York to swinging London and apartheid South Africa, he explains his epic journey

Gibney has made award-winning documentaries on subjects such as Scientology and Enron corruption as well as Frank Sinatra, James Brown and Fela Kuti, but relished the opportunity to work closely with the artist his film calls “the greatest songwriter in the history of American popular music”. “Seven Psalms is an example of the whole [seven-part] piece coming to me in a unique way,” Simon says, after I mention that he’d actually sung about how “a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping” as long ago as The Sound of Silence. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesGibney says Simon talked affectionately about the periods he spent playing English folk clubs in 1964 and 1965, which he found most welcoming after struggling for bookings back home.

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