The story of the making and legacy of Paul Simon’s Graceland, drawn from exclusive interviews with musicians, producers, record label staff, and more, written by an award-winning journalist who was a member of the Graceland tour management team.
In 1984, Paul Simon was at a creative low. His record of the previous year had failed to connect with listeners the way his previous albums had, and the musical eras of the 60s and 70s that he’d thrived in were giving way to a synth-drenched, MTV-driven 1980s, in which Simon (already in his 40s) could seemingly play little part.
That summer, he was given a mixtape of what was known as “township jive”—the street music of South Africa. He fell in love, so much so that he decided he wanted to play with those very musicians. But South Africa was under boycott by a 1980 UN resolution in response to the country’s horrific, violent policy of apartheid. Simon decided to move forward with writing and recording anyway, during a whirlwind trip to South Africa in 1985. The resulting album, Graceland, was a critical and commercial giant, earning Grammys, selling sixteen million records, and spawning a five-year, worldwide tour.
Days of Miracle and Wonder is the first book to tell the full story of Graceland. It examines Simon’s creative process, the songs themselves, the political controversies that were raised and surmounted, the open-eared spirit of the age, and the album’s technical achievements. It draws from interviews with the scores of people who contributed to the Graceland phenomenon, including African and American musicians, producers, engineers, and the Warner Brothers team. And above all, it offers a celebration of a musical masterpiece—a record created in a moment filled with hope, excitement, new sounds, a spirit of change, and a sense of global possibility.