A Good Day for Music

May, 1973 a song that was banned on British airwaves.

Paul Simon

Kodachrome

Paul said in an interview that the song started out as another song with a different title and lyrics. He first called the song ‘Going Home’ because he had moved to England after bad publicity with his earlier songs. It was when his songs were becoming popular with American audiences when he thought it would be alright to return home. However, he said that he thought what he had written was ‘to conventual’. Instead, he changed the song around to fit the music that he already had and changed the title with a similar sound that had larger potential with listeners.

The song named after the patented film developing process from Kodak, but that sparked another problem. The BBC could air anything that might be considered commercial endorsements. The very same rules that kept The Kinks ‘Lola’ off the air until Ray Davies changed the ‘Coca-Cola’ lyric to ‘Cherry Cola.’

Simon also said that he used another commercial product the line ‘Nikon camera’ in the song, because ‘Cannon’ or ‘Kodak’ didn’t seem to fit.

He also goes onto say that during live performances, he changes that line ‘Everything looks worse in black and white’ to ‘Everything looks better in black and white’ because he cant remember how he first wrote it down.

As a historical side note: Kodak Kodachrome was official retired June 22, 2009 after 74 years.