HOMEWARD Bound, and this time it's final.

Paul Simon, the great American songwriter, brings his farewell tour to Glasgow's SSE Hydro on Wednesday night. There will be 12 concerts after that, two of them at Madison Square Garden, before Simon plays the final show on the tour, at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in the New York borough of Queens, on September 22. The venue is, fittingly, close to his old schools, Forest Hills High School and Queens College.

Simon is now 76. In a statement last February, publicising the Homeward Bound tour, he said the death of his friend and lead guitarist, Vincent N’guini, was a factor in his decision to stop touring. "Mostly, though," he added, "I feel the travel and time away from my wife and family takes a toll that detracts from the joy of playing."

Afterwards, he says, he anticipates "doing the occasional performance", donating his earnings from them to philanthropic organisations.

Simon is famous for the remarkable body of songs he wrote as one-half of Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Boxer, America, Homeward Bound, The Sound of Silence and Mrs Robinson. To quote from the liner notes in the duo's live album, Old Friends, Simon "early on established himself as a poet laureate of youthful isolation and alienation" but when he and Garfunkel, his old schoolfriend, combined their voices, "deeply personal and powerful musical expressions became unlikely anthems full of intimate revelations and big ideas."

Simon was a millionaire by the time he was in his mid-twenties, so popular were the duo's singles and albums. His relationship with Garfunkel, however, did not always run smoothly. Sometimes they had angry rows that would lead to years of silence. Indeed, in the index of the latest biography of Simon, by US journalist Robert Hilburn, there are no fewer than four break-ups listed – in 1958, 1970, 1993 and 2010.

Simon, however, has also enjoyed a great solo career, during which he has written any number of classic songs, including Still Crazy After All These Years, Hearts and Bones, Graceland, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, and Slip Slidin' Away.

Among the many honours and rewards he has received are 12 Grammy awards (three of them for Album of the Year) and, in 2003, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for his work with Garfunkel. In 2006 Time Magazine named him as one of the, "100 People Who Shape Our World."

Simon was born in Newark, New Jersey, in October 1941 but circumstances meant that his family soon moved to New York – to a street in which, coincidentally, a young Arthur Garfunkel lived with his family. The friendship, however, didn't actually begin until they were in sixth grade. Baseball was an early obsession of Simon's but then he discovered music and at the age of 13 he asked his father, a college professor and musician, to buy him an acoustic guitar for his birthday.

He and Garfunkel began singing together in their teens and in 1957 they enjoyed chart success as Tom and Jerry with a single, Hey Schoolgirl. By the time he found a job in the music business as a song-plugger for a music publisher, he had written many songs.

Simon and Garfunkel's debut album, 1964's Wednesday Morning, 3A.M, (which was recorded after Simon had made a number of promising visits to England) did not find immediate success despite containing The Sound of Silence. But word grew about the duo's songs and harmonies, and America and much of the rest of the world gradually fell in love with them.

After Simon and Garfunkel split in 1970, Simon continued to showcase his songwriting gift on his solo albums, the first of which was released in 1972. His 1986 album, Graceland – which "remains one of the most beloved albums in pop history", in the words of Rolling Stone magazine – had the effect of bringing him back to public acclaim at a time when he feared that he had been losing ground to a new generation of stars such as Prince and Madonna. But it came at a price.

In 1985, impressed by some South African music he had heard, he travelled there to record with local musicians for his next solo album. But South Africa was still an apartheid state, many leading US musicians had been fiercely critical of those who had played the Sun City entertainment complex in the "homeland" of Bophuthatswana, and there was a UN boycott in place over "all cultural, academic, sporting and other exchanges" with South Africa.

According to biographer Hilburn, Simon wasn't sure how the boycott applied, if at all, to western musicians going to South Africa to record with local musicians. After the album was released, a UN committee against apartheid added (then removed) Simon's name to a list of musicians who had breached the boycott.

Simon defended his actions strongly and pointed out that he had refused to play in South Africa itself. Many of the local musicians used on Graceland were grateful for the opportunities Simon had given them.

Ever publicity-shy, Simon made no official announcement about his marriage in May 1992 to singer-songwriter Edie Brickell (his previous relationship had been with Carrie Fisher). The couple renewed their vows in August 2016.

Simon has continued to record as a solo artist – his most recent album was 2016's Stranger to Stranger – and he remains one of the most widely admired of American songwriters. As he summed it up in February, "I am very grateful for a fulfilling career and, of course, most of all to the audiences who heard something in my music that touched their hearts.”