At 83, Paul Simon is a living legend of American popular music. Simon has remained artistically active later in life, but he’s been suffering from catastrophic hearing loss in the past few years. Simon has been open about his problems with hearing, which helped inspire his most recent record, last year’s Seven Psalms. This morning, Simon discussed his treatment on CBS Mornings.
On today’s broadcast, Simon said that he’s only got about 6% hearing in his left ear and that he sometimes struggles to hear himself when he’s singing. When he makes concert appearances these days, he needs a special speaker setup and balance, and he says he’s “reducing a lot of the choices that I make to acoustic versions. It’s all much quieter. It’s not ‘You Can Call Me Al.’ That’s gone. I can’t do that one.”
Hearing loss is usually irreversible, but Simon is currently working with Stanford scientists in Palo Alto, trying to repair it. Some of those scientists are also studying zebrafish, which apparently have similar inner-ear structures. In a recent discovery, those scientists have found a drug that can treat zebrafish hearing loss, and there’s hope that it might work on humans, too. Other scientists are finding advancements by looking at hair cells in mice. Simon says that his visit to Stanford “gives me hope that there is some significant improvement on the horizon.” Watch the CBS Mornings story below.
