TV REVIEWS : On the Road With Simon on KCET-TV

The “American Tune”-smith gets the “American Masters” treatment in a highly enjoyable PBS special, “Paul Simon: Born at the Right Time,” airing at 8 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.

The show veers back and forth between documentary coverage of Simon’s ’91 world tour and historical background, and is unflaggingly entertaining in both regards. Even casual fans will likely find it absorbing enough to wait through the PBS pledge-breaks that have the program ending “late in the evening.”

The tour footage--with plenty of stereo performance clips, of course--is worth a documentary in itself. Simon and company play the first major pop concert in China in decades, and the shots of military guards keeping a nervous eye on attendees, who gradually work up the courage to clap and dance, play like scenes out of “Swing Kids.”

Later, there’s cause for the band itself to be nervous when radicals threaten to bomb the South African stadium where Simon’s multi-cultural crew is set to play.

But the interviews about Simon’s early life and musical evolution--with folks ranging from balding lookalike brother Eddie to pal Lorne Michaels--are just as interesting and throw intriguing light on his sometimes elusive personality. Art Garfunkel contends that Simon--who started off a typical teen-aged Elvis worshiper of the ‘50s--got into music to achieve popularity and get girls and expounds with twinkle-eyed cynicism on his earnest erstwhile partner’s ego. Director Mike Nichols recalls Simon’s short marriage to Carrie Fisher, chalking its ill-fatedness up to both partners being flowers and neither a gardener.

These occasional psychoanalyses aside, “Born at the Right Time”--directed by Susan Steinberg--focuses far more on the politics of music than personality, with special attention to the making of “Graceland” and “Rhythm of the Saints.”

This is probably as it should be, although you do have to wonder whose decision it was to not even mention other seemingly significant personal details such as Simon’s recent marriage to (and child with) Edie Brickell.