“I thought it would pass”

Legendary musician Paul Simon has revealed he lost most of the hearing in one of his ears.

The 81-year-old ‘You Can Call Me Al’ hitmaker admitted he wasn’t sure what caused the hearing loss in his left ear, but noted it happened “quite suddenly”.

“My reaction to that was frustration and annoyance; not quite mad yet, because I thought it would pass, it would fix itself,” the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame musician told The Times of London.

The 16-time Grammy winner, who wrote some of Simon & Garfunkel’s greatest tunes, said he started losing his hearing while working on his new album ‘Seven Psalms’ – released last week .

Hearing loss will likely impact touring, he says, and force him to avoid playing songs he doesn’t like.

“The songs that I don’t want to sing live, I don’t sing them,” he explained.

“Sometimes there are songs that I like and then at a certain point on a tour I’m like, ‘What the hell are you doing, Paul?’ Quite often, this happened during ‘You can call me Al.’ I would think, ‘What are you doing? You’re like a Paul Simon cover band. You should get off the road, go home.

Elsewhere in the interview, the singer admitted that going on tour again is becoming more of a challenge for his age group.

“My generation’s time is over,” the “Graceland” singer told the outlet, referring to the recent deaths of musicians Gordon Lightfoot and Jeff Beck.

Despite this, he’s not ready to throw in the towel just yet and insists his hearing loss won’t stop him from doing what he loves.

“Boy, have I been beaten in the past two years,” he shared, adding that he had struggled to recover from Covid-19. “But I look good, don’t I?”