The Boxer
A Reason To Smile
Pain is an inevitable part of life, and none of us emerges unscathed. For some, the traumas are more acute — physically, emotionally, and spiritually. But there is also the indelible spirit of fighting on in the face of everything thrown against you.
There are many songs that capture this quintessentially human experience, and one of the best is Paul Simon’s classic “The Boxer,” which was released as a single in 1969. A year later it was included on Simon and Garfunkel’s fifth and final studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Simon later said the song about a prize fighter and the bruises of a hard life was semi-autobiographical. He himself wasn’t a pugilist, but by the time he wrote the song, he had endured his share of criticism and difficult living. It’s hard to believe he was still just in his 20s.
Most of the song’s lyrics evocatively express loneliness, poverty, and struggle, with lines like:
“Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” and “Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go looking for the places only they would know.”
But in the end, we get the hope of resilience that can emerge from struggle and suffering.
In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains
The song also tells its story through powerful musical composition. It was a painstaking recording process, involving multiple locations and over 100 hours. There are wonderful instrumental accompaniments, but one of the song’s signatures is a simple vocal repetition of the phrase “Lie-la-lie.” Originally those sounds were stand-ins for lyrics yet to be written. But Simon chose to keep them. Sometimes we can express more through pure music than words can offer.
We found, in our own times of struggle and uncertainty, reasons to smile in this remarkable song. We are sharing the original studio recording below. But first, this song has also been covered many times, and one of our favorites has a country style, showing the universality of the message.
It is from a concert in 2007, when the Library of Congress awarded its first Gershwin Prize for Popular Song to Paul Simon. Here the close harmony is by two women of immense talent and vocal power: Alison Krauss and Shawn Colvin. They are accompanied by the equally brilliant Dobro and lap steel guitar player Jerry Douglas.
And here’s the original recording by Simon and Garfunkel:
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Dan,
Thank you for this poignant reflection. I sit here on the hospice floor of our local hospital, beside my father, 88 and in his 8th year of dementia, as his breathing slowly becomes shallower. If ever there was a Boxer, it is my father.
Upon reflection, the scars from his early scraps were his life’s pushups, making him stronger and more capable of rising far above what any thought possible.
Thank you for this timely inspiration on a very meaningful evening here in Philadelphia.
Jeff
I was 14, headed towards 15, when this song released. By the time I was 18, I had a draft card and my parents were relieved that Vietnam was winding down. A year later I was in the service and once again they worried. Not so much at first as I was stationed near the town my mom grew up in, and still had brothers there. But, I was sent to Germany, and they worried again about a war with Russia, then Iran. They later worried when I was sent to Grenada, Gulf 1, Panama, and finally Bosnia, then Kuwait. I came home physically intact. But still, they had worried about their eldest boy.
They're gone now, and so are my siblings. And I persevere with help from friends and the VA. Thank you for this song, and both renditions. Like the boxer, all of us must weather our storms, and hopefully, that fighter still remains.
Especially now. There are many, many of us who truly care about this country and its people, and it's ever stumbling towards the "more perfect union" promised by those who founded it, flawed as they were. And, should the need arise, we will once again rise to fight those who would fundamentally change it to more suit their backwards, and fundamentally un-American desires and aspirations.