Today I was checking some old English newspapers and bingo….
On September 14 Paul Simon appeared at the Cross Keys Hotel in Liverpool for a show.
Anyone who saw him there (or at any other date in Liverpool) please feel free to leave a comment.
The Cross Keys Hotel
Paul Simon - 'Time it was...it was' 
The small-ad is from the Liverpool Echo
I was uncertain as to whether I saw Paul Simon at the Cross Keys in 1964 or 1965 and conflicting websites suggest different possibilities. I was in the sixth form at school and had studied during the day at the Picton Library I was debating whether to go to the Cross Keys or get the train straight home to Blundellsands from the then Exchange Station on the grounds that unusually there was an admission charge that evening to the folk night (2/6d) which i assumed was because there was an American artist. I was short of cash for ciggies and beer so I was thinking of not going. I was walking up Moorfields and a car pulled up and an American asked me for directions so I said that I was on my way there and jumped in. Paul Simon got me in for nothing, bought me a pint and gave me a cigarette. I sat at a table right at the front and bummed cigarettes off him. I think he must have recently given up smoking since he had a cigarette jammed in the headstock of his guitar but never lit one. He showed an album cover of Simon and Garfunkel at one point (presumably “Wednesday Morning 3am”) and made a derogatory remark about Garfunkel (something on the lines of “I don’t know who the other guy is”.) In the interval he said to me that he had to do an interview with a journalist (don’t know whether it was Mersey Beat or the Liverpool Echo) and went downstairs to the public bar. Later the same year or early the nest year I saw in the Billboard charts (which the Liverpool Echo used to publish every week) that “Sound of Silence was in the Billboard chart. Quite a memorable evening
The room upstairs where he played is now named ‘The Paul Simon Suite’
At that time, the folk club was run by two young men called Billy Woods and John Tennant. I used to help them on the door because they were too “posh” to keep out potential drunks and troublemakers trying to gate-crash. Years later when me and my wife were going to see Paul Simon at the Summer Pops, I told her that he had been at the Cross Keys. She did not believe me but – lo and behold = he told the audience he had indeed done a gig at the Cross Keys.
Thank you for sharing your memories. And I hope were also to enjoy his perfomance in 1965, besides being “at the door”. You mention seeing Paul Simon at the Summer Pop, can you tell me where (Liverpool???) and when? Thanks, Rob
Hello, Rob.
Better stiil here is a link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Summer_Pops
And here is another link. IT was 2002 in a giant marquee built on Liverpool waterfront
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/paul-simon-set-play-pops-3558686
He also played the Echo Arena in 2008 but we were away on holiday so could not go.
https://www.uncut.co.uk/news/paul-simon-added-to-summer-pops-festival-51232/
The Echo Arena had only just opened. It is now known as the M and S Bank Arena
Cheers,
Mick