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.
Few pop musicians, of course, have a CV like Seeger’s. A youthful Communist, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 and, possibly most controversial of all, unimpressed by Dylan’s conversion to electrical instrumentation at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he is surely better known for his political opinions than for having written ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’ or the tune to ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in