On This Day, May 6, 1973: Paul Simon launched his first solo tour

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On This Day, May 6, 1973…

After parting ways with his musical partner Art Garfunkel three years earlier, Paul Simon launched his first ever solo tour in Boston, Massachusetts. 

The tour launched a few weeks before the release of Simon’s third solo album, There Goes Rhymin’, which featured such songs as “Kodachrome” and “Loves Me Like a Rock,” which peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The following year in March, 1974, Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’, a live album recorded during the tour, was released, featuring Simon performing his solo material, as well as Simon & Garfunkel classics solo for the first time, including such songs as  “Homeward Bound,” “The Boxer,” “America,” “The Sound of Silence” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” 

Simon went on to have a successful solo career, and in 2018 announced he was retiring from touring after one more tour, which wrapped near where he grew up in Queens, New York, on September 22, 2018.  

He wound up returning to the stage in August 2019 for a performance at San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival in Golden Gate Park.

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