Against the '70s: "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"

When I think of romance in the 1970s, I think of one of two trends which I have no hard evidence even took place, but suspect they did. Both involve denial.

One is the outgrowth of the sexual liberation that came into being in the 1960s: the casting off of stodgy romantic tradition—the parochial, reproduction-happy column of marriage and commitment—in favor of experimentation and declassification of sexual experience. A conjugal open season. That was fun.

The other, far less perspiratory trend, is the intellectualization of romantic relationships. I have zero proof this was even a thing, except for this Paul Simon song. And perhaps I don’t mean “intellectualization” as much as I mean “rationalization.”

I see now why uptight moralists who either fought wars or sewed uniforms for war efforts disdained both these trends. After picking through severed limbs in European trenches, they believed when they got back home there’d better be the security of gingham gowns and baritone gravitas in their family way. Else, America would be just like the Weimar Republic, all fishnets and falsies and no church, ready to be felled by a failed painter with abhorrent beliefs. It’d be like they shoved bayonets into total strangers for nothing. And to rationalize romance, to apply standards of reason to define intangible attraction, and later functional relationships, must have seemed fussy.

But by the 1970s, active cells fought against that burnished sentimentality. They did it sensually, in discos and singles bars and the produce aisle, and they did it intellectually. Although I say they did so in “denial” of emotionality, the denial ultimately didn’t work. The emotional component was just too compelling to be shut down forever. The goths made sure of that in their own cadaverous way. In the ‘70s, though, you had to present some sense of invulnerability in order to get laid, and later to pick wallpaper patterns. It’s just how we did things.

Which is why Paul Simon’s satirical “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” was such a hit. (It was apparently inspired by Simon’s then-recent divorce from Peggy Harper.) It’s a conversation between two lovers, one of whom is ostensibly ruminating about how to end a relationship. I didn’t realize how comical the conversation was in 1975, owing to the fact that I was eight, and that the unquestionable appeal of the song was its simplistic, abrupt chorus that rifled through several doo-wop rhyming contrivances: “Slip out the back, Jack/Make a new plan, Stan,” etc. On the surface the verses are nothing more than conveyance devices that lead to the chorus. Which is how verses do things.

But 45 years later, the verses are far more compelling. They’re overwritten on purpose. The couple has, somehow, fallen into the analytical phase of their relationship. The 1970s brought psychoanalysis into mainstream communication, through both legitimate therapy and commercialized “encounters,” so it was inevitable some couples got caught up in the panoply of self-service options.

So right off the bean they’re framing the core issue—which is that the guy wants to leave—as a mental exercise: “The problem is all inside your head, she said to me/The answer is easy if you take it logically.” The woman in the song is either patient, deflecting, or intentionally distancing. Her rationalization’s taking her out of range of getting hurt, and gets even more hilarious as it goes on: “It’s really not my habit to intrude/Furthermore, I hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued.” This is more like a career counseling session than the first step in a breakup.

There’s more: This guy’s dense as a walnut. Knowing that Simon’s writing style has always been driven by very clear intent, I’m inclined to think he planned for the male to be oblivious to his surroundings. (Despite the inspiration, the guy in the song isn’t Simon. I don’t think.) His torment is insular, and it’s the only emotion he’s not cut off from. “It grieves me so to see you in such pain,” the woman says. “I appreciate that,” man-child replies, “and would you please explain about the 50 ways?” She forestalls the question by suggesting they go to sleep, and kisses him.

While all this is going on, notice the drum pattern. It’s lifted from New Orleans Second Line rhythms, a tradition Simon would have borrowed from. But it also sounds militaristic, like a marching pattern. You don’t hear military influences in a lot of songs about love. So what’s it doing in this one? A few things, probably. It could symbolize the first shot in a war nobody’s quite ready to declare yet. It may symbolize the cold, coarsened mechanism that intellectual objectivity inspires. It could be the rattling sound of a man who thinks too much — the kind of man Simon addressed a few years later, in a song that plays like a sequel to “50 Ways.”

There’s a cautionary tale somewhere in this song about the blind side of being dignified. My assumption is that keeping up appearances was important to Manhattan socialites in the mid-‘70s. “50 Ways” explains how awkward it can be when that distant perfectionism drifts into private lives. The couple is striving (perhaps not too hard) to have a rational, functional conversation. To them, it seems perfectly logical. To anybody reading the transcript, it must seem ridiculous. The guy’s emotionally distant from his desires; the woman’s emotionally distant with her responses. To these two, the most important goal in this moment is to remain as polite as possible, until that moment when Jack finally does slip out the back.