Behind Paul Simon’s Tribute to John Lennon and Its Alleged Curse

Paul Simon is among many artists who have paid musical tribute to the late John Lennon. But whether it was fate, coincidence, or a sly prank from beyond the grave, strange events followed Simon whenever he tried to perform the song in the early 1980s.

The uncanny repetition of such events prompted rumors of a curse on the song, which combines the story of three prominent public figures who lost their lives in tragically premature deaths.

Paul Simon’s Tribute to John Lennon

Prior to John Lennon’s assassination in December 1980, Paul Simon was already working on a solo composition titled “The Late Great Johnny Ace.” Simon wanted the song to connect two notable deaths that occurred in his lifetime. The first was singer Johnny Ace, who died in a game of Russian roulette. The second was the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

After Lennon’s death, Simon added the former Beatle to the song’s narrative. In the third verse, Simon describes hearing the news of the rock icon’s killing. On a cold December evening, I was walking through the Christmas tide when a stranger came up and asked if I’d heard John Lennon had died, Simon sings. The two of us went to this bar, and we stayed to close the place. Every song we played was for the late, great Johnny Ace.

The murder of John Lennon sent shockwaves through the musical community and beyond. And while Simon was hardly the only musician to pen a song for or about the ex-Beatle, the folk-rock star seems to be among the unlucky few whose song had a “curse” over it.

A Cursed Ode to a Former Contemporary and Rival

John Lennon and Paul Simon’s careers ran parallel to one another, each pursuing their own path to fame via the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, respectively. Although they held esteem for one another as contemporaries, both musicians had slung their fair share of mud toward the other over the years. Simon famously said he found Lennon’s work to be “pointless” in 1972, and Lennon countered years later by calling him a “company man” and “singing dwarf” on a recording from 1979.

This complex relationship and the shock around Lennon’s death made Simon’s “The Late Great Johnny Ace” ripe for rumors and superstition. Buzz of a curse first began during a Simon and Garfunkel reunion show in New York’s Central Park in 1981. Just before Simon made it to the third verse of his tribute that describes Lennon’s death, a crazed fan stormed the stage toward the musician. Security had to drag the man offstage as a clearly disturbed Simon tried to regain his composure.

The following year, Simon attempted to perform the song on Late Night with David Letterman when, just before the third verse, Simon had an instrument malfunction that forced the show to go to break. “I’m now beginning to have my doubts about whether I should perform this song at all,” Simon commented on the show.

Simon has incorporated the tribute in other performances with no interruption since then, including a 1986 episode of Saturday Night Live that marked the 23rd anniversary of the JFK assassination. Still, the ominous series of events only adds to the dark mystique around a song that details three of pop culture’s most notable deaths of the 20th century.

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