Homeward Bound

Homeward Bound is a Paul Simon song, produced by Bob Johnston and recorded on 14 December 1965. It was released as a single on 19 January 1966 on Columbia, with Leaves That Are Green on the B-side, and was their second single after The Sound of Silence. It appeared on the British Sounds of Silence and the American Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

In the United States it reached number five on the Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for twelve weeks. It also reached number two in Canada, number one in New Zealand, number four in the Netherlands and number nine in Britain. Billboard called it an interesting off-beat rhythm number, and Record World called it haunting and sad. In a 1990 interview quoted by Songfacts, Simon said he did not like the song that much and that the title was not original.

Writing

Simon returned to England in early 1964 and became a nightly fixture at the Railway Hotel in Brentwood, Essex, from April. He was reeling from the Greenwich Village folk scene and from the making of Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., which he expected to fail. At the club he met the ticket taker Kathy Chitty. In the best-known account, after a show in Widnes he was dropped at the railway station for a train to Manchester, on the way to Hull, and began the song on a scrap of paper while missing her. A plaque on the main platform at Widnes marks the story. Chitty is also named in Kathy's Song and America, and Simon alludes to a railway station in The Boxer.

Biographer Marc Eliot attributes the song's melancholy to an echo of longing over the failed relationship with Chitty. Cash Box called the single a catchy, low-down blues-tinged folk-styled ode that should speedily move up the hitsville path. The 45 was issued as Columbia 4-43511 and is credited to Simon as writer and Bob Johnston as producer.

Live

The duo are logged with 157 performances on setlist.fm, second only to The Sound of Silence at 172. They played it at the Hollywood Bowl on 23 August 1968, at Forest Hills on 18 July 1970 and in Central Park in 1981, and a live version is on the Greatest Hits compilation of 1972. Simon and George Harrison sang it on Saturday Night Live on 20 November 1976, and Harrison also sang Here Comes the Sun with Simon that night. Their duet appears on the benefit album Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal. Simon joined Billy Joel for it at Nassau Coliseum in August 2015. Many artists have covered it, including Burl Ives, the Beau Brummels, Cher, Petula Clark, Ronan Keating, Jack Jones and Glen Campbell. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official studio recording.