“Time Hur­ries on,” sings Paul Simon in this ear­ly Simon and Gar­funkel per­for­mance, “and the leaves that are green turn to brown.” The clip is from a 1966 Dutch tele­vi­sion pro­gram, “Twien.”  The duo were per­form­ing songs from their sec­ond album, Sounds of Silence. “The Leaves That Are Green” is one you don’t hear much these days, per­haps because the song’s author has, like the leaves of Octo­ber, most cer­tain­ly changed.

Today is Simon’s 70th birth­day. He was born into a fam­i­ly of Jew­ish immi­grants on Octo­ber 13, 1941 in Newark, New Jer­sey. His father was a bassist and band­leader, and his moth­er, a school teacher, was also trained in music. The fam­i­ly soon moved to Queens, New York, where Simon would meet anoth­er kid in the neigh­bor­hood, Art Gar­funkel. The two shared a pas­sion for music, and before long Simon was writ­ing songs for them to sing around the neigh­bor­hood. They released their first record, “Hey, School­girl,” while still in high school.The song made it to num­ber 49 on the pop charts.

Over the next half cen­tu­ry, both with Gar­funkel and on his own, Simon would con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vent him­self, absorb­ing a wide range of influ­ences while hold­ing tight to a song­writer’s com­mit­ment to craft. The New York Times, in its pro­file of Simon, sums it up this way:

His music stays restrained, ever taste­ful. He sings gen­tly in his own metic­u­lous pro­duc­tions, and his songs can share radio for­mats with the most sooth­ing soft-rock. But the thread run­ning through Mr. Simon’s songs is estrange­ment. From “I Am a Rock” to “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” to “You Can Call Me Al” to the cranky reflec­tions on his 2006 album “Sur­prise,” he has sung about being alien­at­ed, mis­placed, rest­less, dis­il­lu­sioned. Moments of solace or sat­is­fac­tion are far out­num­bered by mis­giv­ings and regrets. The mate­r­i­al com­forts that he rec­og­nizes are his–as a wealthy man, as a pop suc­cess, as an Amer­i­can in a wider world–don’t bring him peace of mind. Nei­ther does the finicky crafts­man­ship that has always marked his music.

You can hear that rest­less­ness and alien­ation in the fol­low­ing track from his new stu­dio album, So Beau­ti­ful or So What, where we find the 70-year-old play­ful­ly con­tem­plat­ing “The After­life”:

When direc­tor David Hill­man Cur­tis and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ben Wolf paid a vis­it recent­ly to com­pos­er Philip Glass to film a pro­mo­tion­al piece for the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music, they were grant­ed just 30 min­utes. “He was booked sol­id the day we vis­it­ed his offices and actu­al­ly was being fol­lowed by a min­der who sat on the couch just out of the frame check­ing his watch,” said Cur­tis. “I’ve become a pret­ty good inter­view­er and was able to loosen Mr. Glass up a bit and he took it from there, giv­ing a great inter­view, and we were done in 30 min­utes.” In the result­ing two-minute film, Glass express­es amuse­ment over his recent fas­ci­na­tion with clas­si­cal music. “Where are my fron­tiers,” asks the com­pos­er, whose work is fre­quent­ly described as avant-garde? “My fron­tiers are actu­al­ly not in front of me. They’re behind me.”

You can learn more about Philip Glass and hear free sam­ples of his music at PhilipGlass.com.

Today is John Lennon’s would-be 71st birth­day, and it jogged my mem­o­ry, remind­ing me of this lengthy 1970 inter­view. Con­duct­ed by Jann Wen­ner, the founder of Rolling Stone Mag­a­zine, this impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion (lis­ten via iTunes) was record­ed short­ly after The Bea­t­les’ bit­ter breakup, and the emo­tions were still run­ning high. Run­ning over 3 hours, it is one of Lennon’s most exten­sive inter­views, touch­ing not just on the breakup, but also on art and pol­i­tics, drugs, Yoko, pri­mal ther­a­py and more. It’s not always flat­ter­ing, but it gives you a good feel for the man and the great artist.

The Rolling Stone inter­view is now added to our Cul­tur­al Icons media col­lec­tion. For anoth­er inter­view from the same peri­od, don’t miss John and Yoko’s appear­ance on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971. And note that Rolling Stone has a lengthy 7 part inter­view with Bono of U2: iTunes.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter and we’ll keep point­ing you to free cul­tur­al good­ies dai­ly…