As he approaches his 75th birthday, legendary musician Paul Simon declares that the older he gets, the happier he is. "When you've passed through crises a few times - when people die, when you experience enough sadness and enough joy - you tend to turn your attention towards the joy," he told the BBC.
"The sadness is a constant anyway, so why deliver it as a gift to someone else? 'Here, take my sadness and listen to it for an hour.' I wouldn't do that."
The diminutive singer-songwriter has been promoting and touring his new album, Stranger to Stranger which was produced with help of Roy Halee, the man responsible for the early Simon & Garfunkel productions.
Simon is scrupulous about getting the finished product to be exactly as he wants it and the new record took four years to achieve that. "A lot of people believe first idea, best idea, but I don't. I'll sing a song many, many times before I get the vocal I want."
He says he re-writes songs, "not because I'm trying to make them more commercial, but because there's something about them that's unsatisfying to me." Eventually, he says, you find the thing you don't like in a song and that's got to go."Sometimes it takes me a year or two. I'll be in denial about it. But once it goes, then I'll try and fix it."
The musician worked with Italian dance producer Digi G'alessio aka Clap! Clap! and drew from Flamenco rhythms as inspiration.
The song Wristband takes a look at the harsh inequalities that abide in the USA. "There's inequality and the inequality is institutionalised. A lot of people start off life with such a disadvantage - they're born into poverty, or (they face discrimination) because of their race or gender.
"People are more and more aware of the fact the world is not fair. How that feeling will manifest itself, I'm not sure, but it's powerful enough that we all should be frightened."
He is no fan of Donald Trump but attempts to explain the Donald phenomenon. "He articulated that anger in a way that was atypical of politics. You know, 'I'd like to punch that guy in the face'. Nobody says that - but he did and people were like, 'Hooray! Hooray for that!' As his message became more negative, that connected with deep-seated anger that many people feel in the United States." The musician believes there is potential for that rage to explode in a way that could do enormous damage.
The Stranger to Stranger album has been widely acclaimed since its release earlier this week. "This is pop music at its most artful and relevant, a sentiment from a septuagenarian representative of rock’s old guard that's arguably as potent as anything from seemingly more streetwise artists one-third his age," wrote Randy Lewis in the Los Angeles Times. Simon turns 75 on October 13.
