Still Crazy After All These Years

Harry Smith Learns First-Hand Paul Simon's Unending Passion For Music

(CBS)  He's been at it for decades. Paul Simon comes along with the right song at the right time.

"It's outrageous to line your pocket off the misery of the poor. Outrageous the crime some human beings must endure," Simon sings in a song aptly titled "Outrageous."

So for us Simon fans it does seem outrageous that we've had to wait six years since his last recording, quips CBS Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

Simon's old enough for social security, but secure enough to have plenty to say.

Simon tells Smith he is 64-years-old. "I know that because on my 64th birthday Paul McCartney called me up and sang 'When I'm 64.' So I know it's a fact," Simon jokes.

At the time of the interview, Simon was preparing for a show at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The set includes some new stuff and some of the old.

"Part of the issue with people who get to be, ah, my age and have had a long history of hits is that you're carrying those hits, you're really lugging them along with you, you know," Simon says.

"Ah, and so you have to keep playing them because people want to hear them. They're not really familiar with what you're thinking at the moment. So you have to make a case for all of it to be interesting."

Paul Simon is a legend who's more concerned with today and tomorrow than yesterday.

Simon believes his creativity has not slowed in his older age.

"I'm very grateful for that, that my musical thinking is, I'm still very interested in it," Simon says. "I ask myself this question when I begin, every time I begin work on a new record, I say, 'Is it, are you sure you want to do this? Are you still interested in this?'"

The answer, Simon says, "I am."

Even more noticeable than Simon's creative mind is his radiating happiness.

"You know, I mean I had a very happy childhood. By the time I was almost 16 I made my first record. And that was a kind of a hit. A big enough hit that I was really famous in high school with my buddy Garfunkel, you know," Simon explains.

Simon's buddy, Art Garfunkel was a high school pal from Queens.