The Paul Simon Songbook - Album Cover and Notes

Album Cover and Notes

The liner notes to the album, found on the back cover, are somewhat bizarre, consisting of a few scripts for skits that Simon wrote, one of which parodies his writing of the songs on the LP itself. At the end, he almost repudiates his efforts, saying that "there are some I would not write today," and saying that they "played a role in the transition" to where he is currently (summer 1965) as a musician. At the end he closes simply by saying of the liner notes, "I won't reread them."

It's possible that Simon's flippant attitude towards the album continued for much of his career, and could give credence to the notion that he eventually requested that it be deleted.

The album cover shows Simon and his then-girlfriend, Kathy Chitty, sitting on "narrow streets of cobblestone" in London, the city Simon had adopted as his home. In the 1970s, the album art was altered: the picture of Simon and Kathy was flipped horizontally, and the red script-like lettering eliminated in favor of an album title in white block print at the top.