Post your questions for folk music legend Peggy Seeger
After a long career which has established her as one of the most significant folk singers on both sides of the Atlantic, Peggy Seeger is about to celebrate her 90th birthday with a final tour and album – and will answer your questions.
Born in New York to a musicologist father and a modernist composer, and with siblings including future folk legend Pete Seeger, she started out on piano at seven years old, eventually adding guitar, banjo, autoharp, dulcimer and concertina to her skillset.
She has lived in the UK for more than 60 years after travelling to London in 1956 for a job offer to be a singer and banjoist with folk group the Ramblers, where she met her future husband and folk singer Ewan MacColl. The two started an affair and in 1957 MacColl wrote the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for Seeger, performing it for her over a long distance phone call (it was later a No 1 hit in the US for Roberta Flack). Seeger often performed with MacColl by her side until his death in 1989. She then married singer Irene Pyper-Scott, after forming an intense connection – she later described herself as 'uncontrollably in love'.
Seeger is also widely recognised as a feminist icon and an activist on issues from the environment to war and workers' rights. Her song I'm Gonna Be an Engineer became a feminist anthem thanks to scathing lyrics such as: 'She's smart – for a woman, I wonder how she got that way / You get no choice, you get no voice / Just stay mum, pretend you're dumb.'
It's a remarkable career, and one that's coming to an end: her latest album Teleology, out now, is being billed as her last, and she is doing a 25-date farewell tour of the UK and Ireland from 14 May. Before she brings the curtain down, what would you like to know about her songwriting, her activism, her loves and losses, and the rest of her richly lived life? Post your questions in the comments before Wednesday 7 May, and her answers will be published on Friday 16 May.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
11-05-2025
- BBC News
Peggy Seeger loving life in 'iconic' Oxfordshire village
"I rent in an iconic village in south east Oxford and I've become part of the community."Folk music legend Peggy Seeger, 89, is about to hit the road for one last tour of the UK and Ireland with her 25th solo album said while she misses the stage, she now enjoys walks in Iffley, Oxfordshire, where she has been living since more than 70 years of music-making and activism, Seeger said she "never tried to be famous" but just "do what I do, as good as possible". "I've had some absolutely wonderful feedback from people and they seem to really know how to listen to it because it's not an easy the album," she said of her latest contains nine new songs and two reinterpretations, one of which is The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - a timeless love song that folk singer, broadcaster and activist Ewan MacColl wrote for her in pair went on to make more than 40 albums together, marry and have said: "It's a strange thing because people think that my husband and I both fell disastrously in love with each other, but we didn't."I ran away from him for three years, he was not my idea of what I wanted to do with my life."But despite her resistance and a 20-year age difference, they got together and Seeger said the truth about it was written in her memoir."The first kiss I got from him just curled my toes," she said. Peggy Seeger on her husband Ewan MacCollPeggy Seeger: The First Time Ever I Saw Your FaceHow Folk Songs Should Be Sung But in a Radio 4 interview, she said she had become "weary" of talking about the past. After MacColl's death in 1989, she moved back to America where she decided that "really, my true home where I wanted to live until I die, was the UK". "My children and my grandchildren are here and I know this country better than I know the United States," she said."I love this country - all four nations of it."She said that in Iffley, it was the "first time I've been really part of a community", adding: "I'm now on the village committee and my job is to raise money."She also continues to be involved in environmental concerns, joining a campaign against building on two green has made a film called The Mother, which she said will be shown around Oxford "because it's important to save as much of Oxford's green land that we can". Seeger said she "loves" walking along the River Thames, going down to the Iffley lock, meeting "some absolutely wonderful friends" and visiting the village shop."But I don't get up to much in Oxford because I'm not very fit," she said."I love the Christ Church garden but, generally, I will go outside of Oxford because I can't park [in the city], so I'll maybe go out to Waterperry Gardens or drive up to Burford." Seeger said her upcoming tour "is going to be fabulous".She said: "Part of it grieves me because there's going to be so many friends there and I won't have time to see them. "I miss the stage but I'm not physically up to it anymore."Her message to budding musicians, she said, would be: "Examine your reasons."It's almost impossible to make living from it - venues closed down one after the other when Covid hit ... the competition is fierce and you have to really be something different to capture the audience."Seeger said that when she came to the UK, she had "the right combination of who I was"."I was female, young, reasonably good-looking," she said. "I was American and I played a longneck banjo and I was greeted by one of the main folklorists in the world."I've never tried to be famous, I don't want to be, I just want to do what I do as good as possible." You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
The Courier
06-05-2025
- The Courier
Peggy Seeger:
'I loved Scotland from the moment I entered it on my Lambretta scooter in 1956,' says folk singer Peggy Seeger, casting her mind way back to her earliest days exploring the UK. 'It was summer, and I remember coming into Edinburgh from the south at sunset. Behind me and to the west was the most glorious, unbelievable sunset.' At the age of 89, Seeger's inquisitive nature is as sharp as her memory, and on the phone her voice sounds strong. She's been singing professionally for more than 70 years, and now she's going on tour for what she says will be one final trip – including a visit to Stirling as one of two dates in Scotland. 'I was coming up from London, and I wanted to get to the top of Scotland,' she continues. 'I only got to Aberdeen, where I stayed with Jeannie Robertson during an iconic rainstorm that lasted for three days.' Arriving at the house of the esteemed late Aberdonian folk singer, Seeger found all her belongings were soaked. She ended her journey there and never did travel further north in Scotland, a minor regret amid an extraordinarily full life. 'I come from a big country,' she says. 'The United States is 3000 miles across and a thousand miles top to bottom, you could fit Britain into Texas. I love the smallness of this country, how it changes every ten miles as you go north. 'The different stones that are used, the different architectural ways of making the cities, and the oldness. 'When I left America we only had about 250 years of history behind us. Of European history, that is.' Seeger can still pinpoint the main difference she sees between her birth country and her adopted UK home. 'I love the informality of America,' she says. 'Americans are impudent, and even now my manners sometimes offend people over here. 'But I've lost track of America, I've revoked my American citizenship. I'm just a Brit now. 'I swore allegiance to the Queen in 1959 in a fly-blown solicitor's office in Lincoln's Inn Fields.' Born in New York City in 1935, Seeger's surname is one of modern folk music's most famous. Her father Charles was a celebrated musicologist and folklorist, and her brother Mike followed in the family tradition while also playing music. Yet it was her half-brother Pete who became one of the most widely-celebrated folk and protest singers ever. Caught up in McCarthy-era discrimination against America's folk musicians, Peggy came to Europe in the 1950s and ended up living in Beckenham in Kent from 1959 until 1995. She then moved back to the US for 16 years, but she's lived near Oxford ever since. She had three children with her second husband, the famed British folk singer Ewan MacColl, who live within driving distance of her now (while this marriage also made her stepmother to the late Kirsty MacColl). Now her sons Neill and Calum are her backing band, while Peggy also writes with her daughter-in-law Kate St John, once of pop group the Dream Academy. 'They're the ones I always travel with,' says Seeger of her sons. 'I wouldn't want to play with any others. They're so sensitive, they put up with all my quirks. 'Sometimes family doesn't work, but ours has.' The tour, she says, is a chance 'to prove that I'm still vertical, breathing and walking'. 'I won't have a chance to have quality time with a lot of old friends in the audience, but I will get to say hello and goodbye to them,' she adds. 'It's nice to have new people come in, especially young people, and old friends can see I'm still here. It's a commemoration of more of 70 years onstage. 'I first went on stage when I was 12, with my knees shaking in a talent contest which I lost, and I've been on the road since I was 21,' she continues. 'Of course I'll be singing I'm Gonna Be an Engineer, I'll be singing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (which MacColl wrote in tribute to her). 'I'll be singing some of the old ones, but there'll maybe be one or two that people haven't heard.' This tour also promotes her memoir First Time Ever and the recent final album Teleology, both of which will be on sale in signed versions. It's a rare privilege, isn't it, to be able to consciously cap a career in such a way? What's on her mind in these songs? 'Well, what do you think is on the mind of a 90-year-old?' she smiles. 'You're very mortal at my age, especially if you had a bad fall a year ago and you're creeping about a bit. 'It's seeing the goal post, if you can see it without putting your glasses on. It's very humbling. 'Most of my political work at present is towards climate change, making people aware that human beings are part of nature, and until we start acting as if we're part of nature, we're going to destroy our own environment. 'I'm not trying to convert anybody, though. Some of the songs are for fence-sitters, people who don't know which way they're going to fall, and you're hoping to nudge them over onto a constructive side where they can pull their own weight. 'I don't tell people what they should do, I just show them what I've done and say, you can be very effective in your own little way.' Peggy doesn't consider herself 'famous', but rather 'well-known in my field'. 'Probably a lot of older people, if you mention my name they'll say, oh yes, I heard of her somewhere, what does she do?' she smiles. 'It's a nice place to be.' Although writing albums and touring are ending soon, Seeger still might record the odd song for Bandcamp or pop up near her home to talk about her life. 'I'm regarded as a resource now, somebody who remembers the old greats,' she says. 'People are always impressed: 'oh, you met Woody Guthrie, you met Leadbelly, Pete Seeger was your brother, you met the Lomaxes, Ewan MacColl'. 'I say, yeah and I'm still here, so let's talk about what I'm doing now. That's more important, because there's plenty of people my age who can still sing. 'They're just not given the luck of having a family that's willing to take them out on tour.'
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- The Guardian
Post your questions for folk music legend Peggy Seeger
After a long career which has established her as one of the most significant folk singers on both sides of the Atlantic, Peggy Seeger is about to celebrate her 90th birthday with a final tour and album – and will answer your questions. Born in New York to a musicologist father and a modernist composer, and with siblings including future folk legend Pete Seeger, she started out on piano at seven years old, eventually adding guitar, banjo, autoharp, dulcimer and concertina to her skillset. She has lived in the UK for more than 60 years after travelling to London in 1956 for a job offer to be a singer and banjoist with folk group the Ramblers, where she met her future husband and folk singer Ewan MacColl. The two started an affair and in 1957 MacColl wrote the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for Seeger, performing it for her over a long distance phone call (it was later a No 1 hit in the US for Roberta Flack). Seeger often performed with MacColl by her side until his death in 1989. She then married singer Irene Pyper-Scott, after forming an intense connection – she later described herself as 'uncontrollably in love'. Seeger is also widely recognised as a feminist icon and an activist on issues from the environment to war and workers' rights. Her song I'm Gonna Be an Engineer became a feminist anthem thanks to scathing lyrics such as: 'She's smart – for a woman, I wonder how she got that way / You get no choice, you get no voice / Just stay mum, pretend you're dumb.' It's a remarkable career, and one that's coming to an end: her latest album Teleology, out now, is being billed as her last, and she is doing a 25-date farewell tour of the UK and Ireland from 14 May. Before she brings the curtain down, what would you like to know about her songwriting, her activism, her loves and losses, and the rest of her richly lived life? Post your questions in the comments before Wednesday 7 May, and her answers will be published on Friday 16 May.
