“I was having dinner with Paul Muldoon, the poet, and I said, I had this title I don’t know whether I want to keep it, ‘Wristband’”, Mr. Simon said. “He said, ‘It’s a good title. You could go a lot of places with that title, you should keep it’”. Sometime later, he got stuck while working on a lyric that involved a musician who steps into an alley behind a club and finds himself locked out, unable to regain entry without a wristband. He wasn’t sure what would happen in the song. “From out of nowhere, I said, wristband, it’s just a metaphor for, ‘You can’t get in. You don’t have what’s required’”, Mr. Simon said. “And that’s what’s going on. That battle is being fought right now, the haves and have-nots. “

(lyrics)