it seems there are no forbidden subjects. Te only sexual subject that hasn’t been outed is masturbation, but we’re getting there! Folk music often sees the same song sung by different people, in a way that doesn’t happen so much in other genres. Tat must have been interesting to hear other people hear your songs like your brother Pete singing Gonna Be An Engineer. Well there are different versions Wof songs because they travel. Tey landed in different economic circumstances, a different mix of people…as far as Pete singing Gonna Be An Engineer, he didn’t like long songs so he cut out the sections in minor keys. I pointed out to him that he’d cut out society’s response by doing that, and he was horrified when he learned that! Mind up, he made some wonderful songs, more singable by more people than mine. A lot of people change a song because they just don’t listen properly. Te tune that you hear on Roberta Flack’s version of Te First Time Ever is not the tune that Ewan wrote, for example. It’s very different. Nonetheless I collect the royalties so I don’t care! Ewan wrote First Time Ever I Saw Your Face about you. When he first played it to you, how did you feel? Oh good lord no. I thought it was a pretty song and I sang it as such for the first three or
four years. I was quite embarrassed singing it onstage, that third line “the first time ever I lay with you” with Ewan sitting there right next to me probably chortling away, but everyone’s going to get a very different idea of the first night we actually spent together from my memoir, and I’m not giving you any spoilers. You are now in a civil partnership with Irene, an Irish singer. How did you meet, and have you and Irene ever recorded anything together? Oh, we made a whole CD together called Almost Commercially Viable, and it has its own story. She sang very traditional songs but she doesn’t
up here aged 24 to 54. I know this country, I don’t know America – I was away too long, for 35 years. It would be a real challenge to be in America right now. Which modern singers do you admire? Well now here’s a shocker – I don’t listen to a lot of music, chiefly because if I hear music I have to stop thinking about anything else and I have a very busy life, and I’m very hard to please with music. I listen to music from the 30s and 40s, and I love country and western. I like music that has good tunes and good words, and a huge amount of the music being presently made, I can’t understand
“Folk songs were not created to be sung on
stage to strangers.”
sing any more. She lives in New Zealand and we see each other six months a year. We’re still together but apart. We haven’t sung together since 1993..we called ourselves No Spring Chickens and formed a record company. It was a period of life. You’ve lived in Oxford for some years now. What do you miss about the States? I miss the informality
of American people. Sometimes it can be too informal too quick – if the bank manager hugs you, for example! But I’m completely at home in both countries, and both have something the other doesn’t
have. I came back because I grew
the words because there’s so much instrumental noise with it. As far as folk music is concerned, one of my favourites is Sam Lee, he’s an excellent singer of folk songs. I like Tom Paxton too. Is there anywhere in particular you’re looking forward to visiting on this tour? Well I will say that Norwich has always been one of my favourite towns – I loved it from the first time I saw it. One of my dearest memories is that we bought our 52 volume set of Balzac’s Comedie Humaine from a secondhand bookshop in Norwich, a Caxton edition. It’s absolutely beautiful, I’ve read it all three times. Tat’s what I’m taking to my desert island! Te centre is pedestrianised now isn’t it? I don’t know if we’ll have time to look round this time – it’s a shame that generally you don’t see where you actually go on tour.
LIZZ PAGE
INFORMATION Peggy Seeger plays at Epic on 26th October. Tickets available from
ueatickets.ticketabc.com
22 / OCT-NOV 2017 /
OUTLINEONLINE.CO.UK
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