Latest news with #EwanMacColl
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Climate change is going to cull us as a species': folk hero Peggy Seeger on Bob Dylan, the ultimate love song and touring at 90
Touring at 90 is amazing. What was a career highlight? Nicens_boiWhen I was 60 the thought of touring when I was 70 was anathema and the thought of touring at 90 seemed dreadful! The hardest part is sitting in the car. We're gonna be away six weeks and I'm a walking hospital case. I have meds, a step stool so I can put on compression stockings, and arthritis in both hands. My family treat me like glass, but as soon as I get on stage all these things melt away. I can only tour because I have my crew – my sons Neill and Calum, my daughter-in-law Kerry Harvey-Piper and an excellent sound engineer, Stefan Care. Or rather, they're not my crew, I'm their singer. I don't think in terms of career highlights because I could yet muck it up. What's it like being the subject of one the greatest love songs ever written [The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face]? neetoneetoIn my memoir First Time Ever I devote an entire chapter to it! I was estranged from Ewan MacColl, who had been pursuing me when I came to England. It was a very passionate encounter, but I fled back to America because a married man with a five-year-old son he adored wasn't my ideal. It turned out that both he and his wife had been unfaithful during their marriage, which made it a bit better later on. They are both gone now, and so are their issues. When Ewan sang it to me over the phone I thought it was a nice love song, but I didn't connect it with him and me because he was infatuated with me, and while I got to love him, I wasn't 'in love'. I felt exposed when I sang 'the first time ever I lay with you', because I was singing it as if I was him. Our first night together was disastrous! The second was what the first should have been. Then after I fell 'in love' with my second life partner, Irene Pyper-Scott, I started to sing it as Ewan must have felt it. It's been covered by over a thousand singers and Ewan and I hated most of them. We had a section of our record collection devoted to them called 'the chamber of horrors'. When it became a huge hit for Roberta Flack I didn't like the way she sang it, but I've come to like it a lot. A digital composer called Broadcaster has done it as a dance track, using my vocals, which is on my Bandcamp. If you listen to it as a song, it's the worst version ever, but as a dance track, it's wonderful. Did you watch [Bob Dylan biopic] A Complete Unknown? If yes, what did you think? If no, why not? ThankYouJohnI haven't had time to see it yet but I want to after the tour. I met Bob Dylan when he was Robert Zimmerman, a student. I remember him very clearly because the event organiser said: 'You know that little fellow who followed you around with his briefcase? He's Bob Dylan.' At that point I said, 'Who's Bob Dylan?', but more power to him. He's like me in that he hasn't got a 'good' voice but he's got a character voice and he created the character Bob Dylan out of Robert Zimmerman. It makes me wonder if I created myself, because I'm much more of an entertainer now than I was when I was just a singer of folk songs. I do little jokes and monologues and all kinds of things I never would've done as the Peggy Seeger of 1962. Your song I'm Gonna Be an Engineer buoyed me up through training as the one woman amid 11 men on my electronic engineering training course and the one female engineer working with 100 male engineers. Was there a particular woman's story which inspired you to write it? LMCollisFirst, I didn't want to be an engineer. I was downstairs doing the accounts and Ewan said, 'Peg, we need a woman's song.' I probably said, 'Fuck off, I'm doing the accounts!' I was very angry because he never did the accounts, but afterwards I sat and wrote that song literally in an hour or two. I'd just been to Corby and seen a young woman my age working on a turret lathe, hence the mention in the lyrics. So many women have sung that song but you can't shorten it. The first part is the woman declaring what she wants to do and the second part is the system telling her, 'You can't do that because you're a girl.' It lasts about five minutes, but was ahead of its time. Do you think folk music still has the power to engender social change? Did it ever? RobinCYou can't write a folk song – a folk song becomes one. And they have helped to engender change because the community felt they spoke for them. Most of what people call 'folk' now is just singer-songwriter stuff. The closest I come to folk on my new album is Sit Down, written in the 1930s by Maurice Sugar about people downing tools. I remade the song for now, because if all the key workers at the bottom of the economic pile just withdrew their labour, things would change. The other song of mine that's on its way to becoming a folk song is The Ballad of Springhill, about Springhill mines in Nova Scotia. Everyone up there knows it and very few of them know who wrote it [in 1958, while watching a live broadcast of the mining disaster], but it's an absolute honour that it's been taken up by the community it was written about. Any plans to rush back to America now it's 'under new management'? LowerColonNot for all the tea in China. I swore allegiance to the Queen in 1959. I'm a British subject although I did move back to America between 1996 and 2010. It's a fantastic country and has some amazing people in it, doing unbelievably brave things which we don't see on the news, like the takeover of town hall meetings by Democrats in Republican states. The Republicans are being heckled so badly! Bernie Sanders and AOC [Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez] are amazing people, and they're doing what I was talking about doing in music – not accepting what was being pumped into us – but Trump has so much power. Do you see any prospects of a new folk revival within this digital world dominated by Spotify? Even if the likes of Trump, Musk and Farage must surely encourage a strong protest movement? Brian DowsettWell, I can say what I would like to see, but I'm not sure it will happen. Climate change is going to cull us as a species. There won't be any big bands and we won't have any producers of guitar strings, so we're going to have to rely on our own voices and make instruments out of whatever we can find. But we'll always need music that expresses the hopes and dreams of the community. What is your best memory of your brother, Pete Seeger? SheerContentOh, I have so many. When we were little kids, he would come down to visit and he would've been 19 or 20, and he'd have his long-necked banjo and I'd stand on his feet while he stamped them. When I decided I was gonna live in England he sent me songs, asking, 'Do you know this?' I remember being sat singing with him in New York two or three years before he died. Pete was wonderful and I love what he did with his life: getting people to sing. He's responsible almost single-handedly for the American revival of folk music. Your mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, has become increasingly recognised as the composer of some of the most remarkable music of the first half of the 20th century. Growing up, were you aware of the significance of her work? kramskoiI didn't even know about her work when I was growing up. My father never talked about it. She never talked about it. I found out about it in my 30s and Judith Tick asked me to read her wonderful biography before it went to press. I was angry that I hadn't been told that this wonderful woman had all this music. I think my father kept it from me. He was a composer, her teacher, her professor, and I think he was jealous. I wouldn't be the musician I am without her teaching. So now I do anything I can to push her music forward. How old were you when you mastered the guitar and what are you most proud of in your folk career? Otis, aged a good question, Otis. I never mastered the guitar – my sons are better players than I am – but folk music didn't ask very much of me. I took pride in learning songs. I was a guitar accompanist rather than a solos person. I played with my father when I was seven or eight and the main thing I would say is learn something really well before you perform it for anybody else. Don't necessarily feel you have to be that good, just play and enjoy the sound of this wonderful instrument, and once you learn the normal tuning try open tuning. I've also recorded some albums that are not as good as they should be, so don't record anything until someone else – not your family – tells you it's good. I'm not 'proud' of anything, but I feel I've done my best. If you had to spend eternity listening to just one singer, who would it be? chymistI don't believe in heaven or hell, but if I did, it would be hell to listen to just one singer for ever. You'd fall asleep. So if I can sleep through eternity, give me Paul Simon. Peggy Seeger's final album Teleology is out now. Her Final Farewell tour continues until 28 June. She will perform on Later … with Jools Holland on 8 June.
BBC News
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- 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.
Glasgow Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Peggy Seeger says she would love to live in Scotland
'I love Scotland so much, I would live in Scotland if it wasn't for the weather,' the 89-year-old told the Glasgow Times. 'I have loved Scotland since the very first time I went there in the summer of 1956. 'I decided to go on a motor scooter from London to the top of Scotland. I got as far as Aberdeen. 'I love Scotland's songs, the way the language shifts as you cross the border. I love everything but the weather, it's too cold," she added. (Image: Peggy Seeger) The I'm Gonna Be an Engineer hitmaker is set to return to Scotland next month to perform at Cottiers in the West End of Glasgow. The gig will take place on May 15. 'I'm looking forward to coming to Glasgow,' Peggy said, before adding: 'I can't even count the number of times I've been to the city. It'll be dozens by now.' READ NEXT: Former Eurovision contestant announces Glasgow show The show comes as part of Peggy's upcoming 90th Birthday Farewell Tour, which will follow the release of her new album, Teleology, set to come out on May 2. From being the muse behind her late husband Ewan MacColl's The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, which became a global hit for soul singer Roberta Flack, to having her songs become anthems of the women's movement, Seeger has played a very memorable part in music history throughout her 70-odd-year career. Having grown up in America, Peggy eventually gained British citizenship and, in 1977, married Dirty Old Town songwriter MacColl. They were married until his death in 1989 and had three children together. (Image: Ewan MacColl) Peggy and Ewan's sons, Neill and Calum MacColl, will be joining her on the road for the upcoming tour. Speaking on performing with her family, Peggy said: 'Going on the road with my sons is always such a pleasure.' (Image: Peggy with her sons (Image supplied)) The singer will be playing songs from the new album as well as reviving some old tunes. She added: 'I'm going to revive some songs from the past as well as some songs that my sons feel we really should do – which I absolutely agree with.' 'It's really special for me to be able to tour, especially to do it with my sons. I'm really grateful, but after 70 years touring it is time that I stopped now.' (Image: Peggy with her sons (Image supplied)) READ NEXT: Huge Scottish singer to perform at OVO Hydro in Glasgow Tickets for the Cottiers show can be purchased online by clicking HERE Alternatively, fans can book tickets by phoning the box office 0141 357 4000 or using WhatsApp on 07941 673 035.
The Guardian
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Walking the Pennine Way put everything into perspective for me, including my right to be here
Dear Pennine Way: I'd like to wish you a happy 60th birthday. Many thousands have trodden along you, and so have I. You've brought us blisters but also beautiful views, buoyed spirits and a renewed sense of belonging. I got the idea to walk the Pennine Way – which on 24 April turns 60 – after being racially abused on a TransPennine train journey. A man asked me if I had a British passport, threatened to set me on fire and told me to go back to where I'm from. The latter hit a nerve: I am from the North of England and proud of it. One day I was looking at a map of that journey and saw the Pennine mountains rising up. I zoomed closer and saw a place called Hope, and I determined that I'd walk through the glorious place I'm from and try to channel hope throughout. Walking was transformative to my physical and mental health. I'd been suffering from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder – racism and inequality affect mental health. Walking was ameliorative as I focused my attention on the wonders of wildlife, burned away stress by the River Ribble and felt my heart beat louder as I hiked on up through the Yorkshire Dales, stopping to marvel at the view from Pen-y-ghent as the clouds began to clear. I walked along the 'backbone' of the country – as the Pennines are known due to their astonishing limestone cliff formations – as a way of showing backbone myself: I won't let racial abuse stop me adventuring in a country where I belong. My journey was inspired by the Manchester Ramblers from my home town, who walked against exclusion in the Kinder Scout mass trespass – which celebrates its 93rd anniversary also on 24 April. Their walk helped improve access to the countryside, paving the way for the formation of the Peak District (the country's first national park), the Pennine Way, and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. The Manchester Ramblers – immortalised in Ewan MacColl's song – showed that they could help walk the world to a better future. It's important to ensure that their hard-won freedoms aren't eroded: England's national parks are imperilled due to budget cuts. It's vital we speak up for their existence, for their belonging here. There were moments when I thought I couldn't go on – not least after almost toppling off Malham Cove – but what fuelled my footsteps, alongside the extraordinary landscape, was a burning sense of defiance. In Settle in the Yorkshire Dales, I saw a plaque commemorating the journey of Alfred Wainwright, who walked the Way in 1938 and wrote A Pennine Journey, published in 1986. Reading it was enraging on account of the misogynistic stereotypes – Wainwright writes about 'the wild joys of boyhood' and comments: 'I've wondered many a time: have the ladies the same capacity for enthusiasm? … I have not yet witnessed genuine enthusiasm in one of them; often I have seen a pretence of it, but the divine spark was missing.' I may be missing the 'divine spark', but my enthusiasm powered me on over mountains, valleys and considerable obstacles, all the way to the sadly now felled Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian's Wall. Toxic prejudices still persist about who belongs here and who is capable. My book, titled I Belong Here, is a chronicle of my Pennine journey and also a clarion call for rightful belonging in the face of hostile and persistent exclusion of minorities from societal power structures, and media, and publishing and literary landscapes. Ironically one agent advised me to take out the word 'Pennines', because 'the book won't sell as no one cares about the north'. I was also told that someone like me couldn't be a travel and nature writer – the subtext being that I was not white and/or male so I did not fit with the 'lone enraptured male' profile prevalent in this genre (Wainwright might be turning in his grave to know I was shortlisted for a nature-writing prize named after him. My PE teacher would be surprised too. As we celebrate this great walking path, it's worth remembering how far there still is to go for all to be safe and free and welcome while walking through the world. In England, 92% of the land is not covered by the right to roam, contrasting with Scotland, where the public has access to walk through most of it as long as they do so responsibly. England's land is still entrenched in centuries-old feudal inequality. And as women walking, we face greater levels of harassment outdoors, the vulnerabilities heightened for a woman of colour with risk of racist harassment. Long-distance hiking is a lesson in stoicism in the face of obstacles. It's an apt metaphor for the journey through life – little wonder that the walk has been a literary trope for centuries. But rather than approaching the Way as a competitive sport, I did it my way, as it were; I didn't care about finishing fastest but wanted to savour each step instead. So happy birthday, dear Pennine Way. Five years on from my epic journey, I'm trying to keep walking a hopeful path. I hope if anyone who's reading this today (or in 60 years), feels stuck or lost in life, or crushed by discrimination, that you don't give up, that you keep on going; that you believe you belong here, because you do. I hope you'll keep going for the view along the way as well as from the top of the mountain. Anita Sethi is the author of I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain and is featured in the new exhibition A Trail of Inspiration: the Pennine Way at 60
New York Times
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Roberta Flack's 11 Essential Songs
At a New York concert in 1997, Roberta Flack referred to her voice as a 'blessed instrument.' For generations of listeners it was just that, a spellbinding force that could be cool, or luxurious, or swell with suggestive power, often in the same song. Flack, who died on Monday at 88, began her career as a schoolteacher with a solid grounding in both classical music and Black church singing. She ended up one of the supreme voices of the 1970s, scoring multiple No. 1 hits that established her as a star of interpretive pop-soul, capable of stunning radio listeners and critics alike. She was a master of the revelatory reinvention. Her first hit, 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,' was originally a folk ballad by Ewan MacColl. Peggy Seeger's 1957 recording of it is a brisk, warbling take with arpeggiated acoustic guitar — a classic example of the kind of carefree-songbird tunes from the early folk revival. In Flack's hands it is slow, stirring eroticism, with a controlled range of vocal dynamics that moves from whisper-delicate to a kind of power that feels like a carnal memory. She did it again in 1973 with 'Killing Me Softly With His Song' — originally by Lori Lieberman, another folkie — which Flack transformed into a hypnotic meditation. Two decades later, Lauryn Hill and the Fugees shifted its shape again with their own remake. With those tracks, Flack became the first artist to take record of the year at the Grammy Awards two consecutive times, with 'The First Time' winning in 1973 and 'Killing Me Softly' in 1974. Those are just two of Flack's most familiar recordings, in a career that also included hit collaborations with singers like Donny Hathaway and Peabo Bryson, and later explorations into jazz standards. Here are 11 of her essential tracks. Though it would take nearly three years for this track from Flack's debut album to become a hit — a placement in Clint Eastwood's movie 'Play Misty for Me' was the catalyst — it introduced all the elements of Flack's greatness as a vocalist and an interpreter. Turning a folk ballad by Ewan MacColl into a rich, amorous incantation, Flack controls her voice with delicate restraint, letting it swell from a near-whisper to just enough of a cry to reveal a deep passion within. It went to No. 1 and became the top song of 1972. Her first single was a protest song. Written by Gene McDaniels, and earlier recorded by Les McCann — the jazz pianist who discovered Flack and brought her to Atlantic Records — 'Compared to What' has a right-on soul-jazz groove and lyrics like 'The president, he's got his war/Folks don't know just what it's for.' Flack's rhapsodic vocal flights offered a sign of her potential. Another stunning example of Flack's interpretive power, and of her role in curating a new pop songbook in the 1970s. She paints this modern standard — made famous with lachrymose sweetness by the Everly Brothers — with soft blue notes and an expertly calibrated range of vocal dynamics. By the time Flack released her cover of this Shirelles' classic, in late 1971, Carole King (who wrote the song with Gerry Goffin) had already done her own slowed-down version on her megaselling LP 'Tapestry.' But Flack's performance is still striking, a haunting showcase for her voice as well as her delicate and entrancing piano arrangement. In 1971, Flack performed at an Independence Day festival in Ghana, along with Ike and Tina Turner, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and Santana. Her a cappella version of the spiritual 'Oh Freedom' is a heart stopper, both a moaning prayer and a taste of rapture. The soundtrack has long since fallen into obscurity; it was never released on CD in the United States and is unavailable on streaming services. Donny Hathaway, a gifted and troubled singer and songwriter, was one of Flack's most important collaborators, writing early tracks and arranging the songs on her second album. In 1972 they collaborated on a joint LP, 'Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway,' that became a blueprint for '70s romantic soul. 'Where Is the Love,' a No. 1 R&B hit that remains in constant radio rotation, is a perfect duet, a tale of romance lost that still feels like a bonbon. Another surprising song choice that Flack fully remade into a giant, signature hit. She encountered Lori Lieberman's folky original while on a plane, then reworked the chord structure and added a soaring interlude, transforming the tune into a soulful odyssey. She tried it out at a concert with Quincy Jones, who told her, 'Ro, don't sing that daggone song no more until you record it,' as Flack once recalled. The recording became her second No. 1 hit, and got another boost when the Fugees remade the track in 1996. Flack produced her sixth studio album herself, under the name Rubina Flake, with a smooth touch that comes through clearly on this sensuous title track, her third No. 1 hit. The album was delayed by months of strained recording sessions, and was a relative flop upon its eventual release in early 1975. Not written as a duet, this song nonetheless reunited Flack and Hathaway for another gauzy crossover hit, which went No. 1 R&B and No. 2 on the Hot 100. Before Hathaway's death in 1979, the two had begun recording another duets LP, which was released the following year as 'Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway.' Flack found a new partner for romantic duets in Peabo Bryson, whose smooth baritone was radio gold but struck many critics as a bit too squeaky-clean, especially in his appearances on Disney soundtracks. 'Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,' written by Goffin and Michael Masser, was the lead single from their joint album 'Born to Love,' and reached the Top 20. On 'Roberta,' an album of jazz and soul standards, Flack delivered this unorthodox but captivating take on 'Angel Eyes,' a boozy tale of lost love that's long been associated with Ella Fitzgerald. The song drips with pungent blue notes, but Flack — singing over a jazz combo at a ponderous tempo — finds a way to luxuriate in the melody, bending the lyrics enough to make any fan perk up.
