No. 050 - Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” changed my life

MJ Sieber's family odyssey, set to the sounds of Graceland

Aug 02, 2024

This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created by Grace Lilly, supported by readers.

Graceland featuring "Under African Skies" film

• 5 min read •

My dad cycled through a number of cars as we grew up in Irvine, CA, but it wasn’t until the year he moved out that he finally bought one that could fit our family of four.

The first was a white pick-up truck that would routinely shuttle us to soccer practice as he took sharp turns to ricochet around my brother, Sean, and I like a pinball machine in the bed of the truck. We loved it and though we likely nearly died every trip, we were oblivious.

The next car was a Nissan Z sports car that was perhaps the most impractical vehicle a married man with two growing boys and a satchel of baseball gear could own. Now, Sean and I would take turns squeezing into the back of this compact mid-life crisis, praying we would not have to make an abrupt stop, or — even worse — get into a mild accident.

The next, and final car he owned in the last fizzling years of his marriage to my mom, was a red and roomy Jeep. Somehow it took him till we were solidly in puberty to acknowledge that his two sons would keep growing and need seat belts if they were to reach adulthood.

His music selections were nothing to write home about, and as we grew and refined our own budding tastes, we proceeded to mock him every time he’d slip in an Eagles cassette, or even worse: Hank Williams Jr. But there was an album that he could aways play and we would all gladly sing along: Paul Simon’s Graceland. I have a fleeting recollection that the tape was a Christmas gift from one of us, which, at that age, meant it was from our mom.

Whether he was escorting us to dreaded church on Sundays, shuttling us to and from various excruciating sporting events, or just taking us on random joyrides through our well pruned and spotless neighborhood, the one song we would pump up and repeat was “You Can Call Me Al.”

The song was just so damn catchy, and though I marveled at the sounds of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Boyoyo Boys transporting me somewhere between 1960s New York and 1980s South Africa in the last stages of apartheid, the scope of those songs inhabited an almost mythic quality. “You Can Call Me Al,” on the other hand, seemed to be about… nothing?

Angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity

What does that mean?

My dad would respond, “It’s just a song, it doesn’t need to mean anything. All that matters is you like it.”

And we did.

That song became the song we’d stop everything for if it suddenly blared up at the Olive Garden on family night. Or when we first saw Chevy Chase mouthing the words next to Paul Simon in the music video as Simon played all the instruments. We soon came to learn the lyrics we could glean from repetition and approximated the rest with whistles and non-sensical “Do-Do’s.”

Then my parents divorced.

It was messy and mean and I was in high school and oblivious to most of the hurt my mother was feeling. Not oblivious to the affair he’d had.

One day, probably 6 months before he moved out, I found a woman’s ring next to the Graceland cassette in his glove compartment. I knew what it was. I never confronted him about it. But I did tell my mother one night after a fight while Dad was “on a business trip.”

“I know Dad is having an affair.”

My mom grilled me on just how I knew.

“I found a ring.”

She knew too. It was all over.

I graduated high school. Left for Seattle to pursue a highly marketable theatre degree. Stayed there for 25 years broadening my musical tastes. Found success and failure and eventually my wife.

My father had a stroke while I was visiting him after a surgery. He developed aggressive dementia. My wife, Keiko, and I moved back down south. He was moved into a memory care facility. At the same time my mother’s brain was sharp as a tack but her beautiful heart was failing.

I visited them both one day in their separate hospitals and that night I told my brother, “I don’t think I can handle it if Mom goes first.”

Two days later she did.

My father’s mental state declined. He lost his ability to walk, to joke, to smile and laugh, to tell me I’ve gained weight, to ask me when I’d finally give up on acting and find a real job, to recognize my face, my name, and our entire history in dangerous cars with Paul Simon.

One day I sat with him outside (during the early days of the lockdown) and just told him about our wonderful lives. I recounted the past 40 years for him. I gave him permission to go. I didn’t know if any of it was registering. Then I stood up and told him I love him, and the last words he said to me were the same.

In his final days, as he lay drifting away, I played him Graceland. In his final hours, I sung the words I knew of “You Can Call Me Al.” And the next morning my brother and I were orphans.

Angels in the architecture, Spinning in infinity. ◆

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About MJ

MJ Sieber is an actor, director, illustrator and filmmaker currently splitting his time in Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle. This fall he’ll appear as the lead in The Adding Machine with The Feast in Seattle and direct Stephen King’s Misery with Backyard Renaissance in San Diego. He shares his home with his wife Keiko and their biological son: a Basset Hound named Gus.

Instagram @MagicSieber

Website www.mjsieber.com

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