Paul Simon's Mother and Child Reunion

Mother and Child Reunion is a song by Paul Simon on his 1972 album. It was released as a single, reaching #4 on the U.S Billboard Hot 100 chart. In the Weekly charts, the song reached a peak position of #1 place in South Afr­ica, #4 place in New Zealand and #5 place in Australia.

Inspired by Simon’s grief over his dog’s death, it was suggested that Simon predicted the title ev­ent, the mother and child reunion. The second ver­se desc­rib­ed the effect of what happened on the str­an­ge and mournful day, but without making clear what it was. How­ev­er Simon said he wrote this in response to the Jimmy Cliff song Vietnam 1970, where a mother received a letter about her son's death on the battlefield. [The timing was right for Aus­tralians. It took until Dec 1972 before the Austral­ian Government officially declared the end of our involvement in the Vietnam War].

Mother and Child Reunion, Simon with Cliff 

Graceland 25th Anniversary Tour, London 2012

Londongigger

Simon was already a fan of reggae music, a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. So he wanted to go to Kingston Jamaica to record the song, as that was where Jimmy Cliff had recorded his antiwar song. Simon wrote HIS song in 1971 and re­leased it in 1972. This was his first solo album after Bridge Over Troubled Water. The song was indeed re­c­orded at Dynamic Sounds Stud­­­ios in King­ston, with Jimmy Cl­iff’s group: guit­ar­ist Huks Brown and bass guitarist Jackie Jack­son. Cissy Houston sang backg­round vocals on the recording. It was an early song by a white musician to feature reggae, and the fact that the song was recorded in Jam­aica using Cliff's musicians may have explained the authentic sound. Ditto the African-reggae guitars, organs and drums.

The success of this song proved that audiences were willing, from then on, to ac­c­ept Simon without Art Garfunkel at his side. But when my own mother passed away in Melbourne and a friend suggested this song as a source of comf­ort, I didn’t even remember the 1972 changes made in Simon and Garfunk­el’s musical works.

Mother and Child Reunion by Paul Simon (youtube)
[Chorus] No, I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away

Oh, little darling of mine
I can't for the life of me
Remember a sadder day
I know they say let it be
But it just don't work out that way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again

Oh, little darling of mine
I just can't believe it's so
Though it seems strange to say
I never been laid so low
In such a mysterious way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again

Oh, the mother and child reunion is only a motion away
Oh, the mother and child reunion is only a moment away

Paul and his mother Belle Simone holding hands

Pinterest

The Every Single Paul Simon Song blog attempted to cover all the possible explanations for the “mother and child reunion” central to the song. For example the speaker referred to the listener as Little darling of mine, so he pre­sumed some fam­il­iarity between the two parties. Also the list­en­er seemed to be at least a generation younger, given that form of address.

Simon himself said in a 1972 interview that "Last summer we had a loved dog that was run over and killed. It was the first death I had ever experienced personally. Nobody in my family died that I felt that. But I felt this loss and thought "Oh, man, what if that was my (then) wife Peggy? What if somebody like that died? Death, what is it, I can't get it. Somehow there was a connection between this death and Peggy and it was like Heaven, I don't know what the connection was. Some emotional connection. It didn't matter to me what it was. I just knew it was there".

When my beloved mother passed away, I Helen assumed the lyrics referred to the desolate child who will remain on earth until they are reunited forever, in heaven. So thank you providing some small comfort at a terrible time, Paul Simon.