Aaé 10

Ryan O’Connor

Recently I had the RO: Yes. Overcome,” and chapter is all about by the quite famous its in India, Yugoslavia, opportunity to speak Jackson Browne and putting verses to other — writer E.B. White, and _or in Peekskill, New ~ with Pete Seeger. A fi PS: Oh dear! The somebody singin peoples songs. I’ve he called his poem York, are the two most music icon, he has also beginning of the end. “Kisses Sweeter Than done it myself. No, I “Natural History,” but —_ important sidés of what” been recognized by such Wine.” This record think there’s a great I call it “The Spider's I look upon as THE organizations as the RO: Are you planning _—_actually sold better than _ deal of songwriting Web” ‘cause that’s what world crisis. I look Kennade Center and the onanewCD, or are any record of my songs going on, it aa not be __ it’s about. upon it as one crisis,

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — of which he is an inductee. It was indeed an honour to discuss such items as the fixed link, songwriting, and the world’s situation, with him.

Ryan O’Connor: How

are you?

Pete Seeger: Well, I’m losing my hearing, my voice is about 80%

one, and I'm getting Eiuntier in the eyes too, but otherwise I’m still here.

RO: Good health?

PS: Ah, moderately good — for people my age. I’m eighty.

2 ve I

oned, you

eee knew P.E.I. Have you ever been here, or do you know much about it?

PS: I may have been there once or twice in my life, but I never went to see

Anne of Green Gables.

Unlike most Americans I’ve only heard of Prince Edward Island. I don’t really know much about it.

Have they put in that fancy bridge so there are

more tourists now?

you trying to take it easy?

PS: I’m not trying to make any recordings. With my grandson helping me I made a one track for a new recording by the tiny little company “Appleseed.” They put out a record of my songs sung by other people about a year or two ago. It’s called Where Have All The Flowers Gone, and that song was sung by Tommy Saaahs over in Ireland. I’m very proud, it is the best recording ever done by anybody. He and an Irish woman alternated verses, and Vedran Smailovic, the Sarejvo

cello recor:

layer, was on the ; They had Bruce Springsteen singing “We Shall

ever, and now they’re putting out a second one.

RO: When I phoned you to line the inter- view up you mentioned you have too much publicity, and you’re just trying to keep your head above water. Is this really a problem?

PS: Yes, I don’t have a secretary - I don’t intend to - my wife and I drown in paper these days. I don’t know how to file things properly, so there’s tens of thousands of pieces of paper stacked here and stacked there.

RO: I spoke to Tommy

Makem, and he men- tioned that he believes the song writing tradition is dying. Do

you believe this?

PS: Oh, it depends on your definition of the word “tradition,” because it means different things to other people. Songs are being written all over the country now, and people change songs, they'll any words, add verses, and sometimes they’re quite good. I don’t know if you’ve seen a book I’ve written called Where Have All The Flowers Gone which is a long discus- sion of how I learned, or tried to learn, to be a songwriter. One

one in the traditional sense though, yet there are similarities just because a lot of it is done by ear, a lot of

eople don’t bother feaaia how to read music these days, they learn a song from record, and then the make another ae and they change it a little bit (laughs). Somebody es hears the new record, and they learn it and they change it a little bit. So the folk process is no longer what it was a hundred years ago. The folk process in- volves recordings, computers, and Lord knows what else.

RO: Of all the songs you wrote, which one are you the proudest of?

PS: Well, that’s like asking a mother “what’s your favorite child?” At any one time, one gets my attention, but there’s probably several dozen songs that I think are better than the others. However, some of what I think are my best songs are hardly ever been sung by anybody. Like where I put a melody to —— oem called “When I Was Most Beautiful,” and it'll finally get in this next recording of Where Hav P e Flow Gone. [the tribute CD] I put a melody to another poem, written

RO: That was on your Pete CD, right?

PS: I'd forgotten that. Maybe it was. I never listen to records myself, not my own or any- body else’s. Only time I listen to records, I really mean it, is during January when we have a skating rink in the back yard, and I usually turn on steel drum music because I like to skate to steel drums.

RO: In the past, you were involved in the fight against fascism, against racism, and now you re involved in promoting the environ- ment. Can you pick any of these as the most important?

PS: I'd say the s le for peace in the world, and the struggle against ethnic conflict, whether

and if there’s a human race here in a thousand years we'll have a name for it, like we have a name for the Renaissance. We don’t say the Renaissance in printing and the Renaissance in art, or the Renaissance in anything else, it’s a general rediscovery of classic Greek and Roman culture by the

Middle Ages, and lead to a whole batch of new ideas coming along. And right now there’s a crisis in the human race, we've brought it upon ourselves by our own cleverness and our own shortsightedness. It’s one thing to invent something and make a profit out of it, and it’s another thing to solve the problems which these changes bring about. And they’re very, very big problems. As you know, there’s a lot of people quite sure that there Il be no human race here in a few hundred years. T.S. Elliot says “This is the way the world will end. This is the way the world will end. Not with a bang, but a whimper.” I used to disapprove of him reatly, and now I think that there’s a real grain of truth there.