Swan songs

Some say that pop music has nowhere else to go, but they are wrong: there is still extreme old age to negotiate. This week the American singer-songwriter, activist and folk evangelist Pete Seeger is 90 years old. Fifteen years ago, when he was 75, I’m not sure anyone was paying much attention. Folk music had drifted so far away from the cultural mainstream that search parties had given up for the night and helicopters had been recalled to base. Now, of course, everyone is a folk singer and Seeger is a revered elder statesman, with the satisfaction of having survived long enough to witness the revival of his own folk revival. Forty years ago, as a mere quinquagenarian, he was campaigning for civil rights and against the Vietnam War; now, like all the old hippies, he’s banging on about the environment. The big difference is that more people now are prepared to listen. In 2006 Bruce Springsteen released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, which was more inspired by the Seeger modus operandi than by his actual songs, none of which appeared on the album. (Nonetheless, it was the first Springsteen album I’d enjoyed for years.) In 2008 Seeger appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, having for many years being quietly excluded from US television as a dangerous rabble-rousing beardie. Earlier this year he sang Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ at Obama’s inaugural concert in Washington DC. You can’t always vanquish your enemies but you can certainly try and outlive them. Surviving to a great age is the nearest any of us will ever get to having the last word.

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KB

April 30th, 2009 10:42am Report this comment

How ironic that a man who sang "This Land Is Your Land" should try to rip off poor South African Solomon Linda by appropriating his song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" as his own.

Chris

April 30th, 2009 11:57am Report this comment

I hodl no brief for Seeger, a vile, smug and stupid man, who only admitted last year that maybe Joe Stalin wasn't all that he might have been; but he did not rip off Solomon Linda. There was no way Linda could have enforced a copyright in the US courts, whereas Seeger* could; any royalties Seeger got went to Gallotone, Linda's record company, who should have passed them on. That they didn't is their bad, not Seeger's.

* who sings about the badness of signs reading 'private property' in 'This Land is Your Land.'