Paul Simon to retire after 61 years of making music Paul Simon has admitted that he’s “coming towards the end” of his career, after 61 years as a musician and […]

Paul Simon has admitted that he’s “coming towards the end” of his career, after 61 years as a musician and songwriter. “It’s an act of courage to let go. I am going to see what happens if I let go,” he told the New York Times.

Simon, 74, admitted to the newspaper that he now often needs 15 hours of sleep a night during tours and recently mistook four white tents for mountains whilst without his glasses onstage.

Simon – who parted ways with Art Garfunkel in 1970 after almost twenty years – also made a point of explaining why he was never seduced by a showbiz lifestyle.

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“[It] doesn’t hold any interest for me… I’ve seen fame turn into absolute poison when I was a kid in the ’60s,” he said. “It killed Presley. It killed Lennon. It killed Michael Jackson. I’ve never known anyone to have gotten an enormous amount of fame who wasn’t, at a minimum, confused by it and had a very hard time making decisions.”

Simon will play his last tour European tour date this autumn, after which he’s going to have a ponder about what’s next, and perhaps travel a bit. “ I’m going to see, who am I? Or am I just this person that was defined by what I did? And if that’s gone, if you have to make up yourself, who are you?… I don’t have any fear of it.”