Thirty or so years ago, I did a phone interview with the late Maggie Roche of the Roches. It was shortly after my divorce. We hit it off and talked for several hours (I remember her telling me how hard it was for her sister Suzzy to rent an apartment with her kid. “Isn’t that illegal?” I said. “You don’t know New York real estate,” she said tartly.)
I remember my kitchen was cold; I stared at the cigarette burns on the green Congoleum floor from the previous tenants, who were junkies. I wanted to go to bed, but we couldn’t stop talking. She talked about Paul Simon producing their first album, and I mentioned that Hearts And Bones was my favorite Paul Simon album. “Oh!” she said. “I have to tell him that. It’s his favorite, too, but the critics didn’t like it, it didn’t sell, and it really broke his heart.”
