Penthouse
January 1971
Penthouse Interview: Pete Seeger
Only a rare entertainer can appeal to rival generations on two continents for different reasons, which is the achievement of Pete Seeger. To radical youth he is the committed pioneer of protest song, the grand-daddy of American folk music. To middle-aged fans he is the amiable performer of catchy, if bitter, ditties like "Little Boxes" (in which he sniped at the status symbols of the consumer society as "all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same"). Now 51, the loopy, lanky balladeer, who once fought in the International Brigade in Spain's civil war, has turned his persuasive talents to the cause of ecology, sailing up the Hudson River to deliver a series of words-and-music sermons on pollution from the 76 ft. sloop Clearwater. "My mission in life," he says, "is to interest young people in finding a mission." He seems to be succeeding: the sloop was manned by an alternating crew of students. An acknowledged influence on the likes of Joan Baez, Abbie Hoffman and others, Seeger quit Harvard long before dropping out was fashionable, and wandered the countryside, collecting songs of the U.S. proletariat. His father, a professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA, was deeply involved in reviving folk songs, and Seeger's musical pedigree also included a mother who was a violinist and a great-grandfather who studied in Germany with Schiller. Outspoken on unions, peace and civil rights, Seeger fell foul of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during the 1950s and was cited for contempt of Congress. He was later cleared by the U.S. Court of Appeals. Today he is among the many voices raised against the war in Vietnam, singing songs of his own like "Waist deep in the Big Muddy" and "If you love your Uncle Sam, bring 'em home". In this exclusive Penthouse interview, conducted by Charles Childs, outdoors at the subject's request in "the clean air" of the Catskill shoreline, Seeger talks of his hopes and ideals, and defends his belief in the proselytizing power of popular song.
Penthouse: Was it your father who got you interested in the folk idiom?
Seeger: Yes. He was studying American folk music back in the ‘dirty ‘30s." I can remember my father and Alan Lomax putting their heads together and plotting what would be needed to have a revival of folk music. They’d never have dreamed of what good and bad would happen. I was dropping out of school and very interested in all the social movements of the day. The CIO unions were getting started. I realized at that time that my interest in folk music and my interest in social problems ran along very similar lines. So, Woody Guthrie and I started singing to the automobile workers and the textile workers.
Penthouse: Was it your thought at the time that you could use music as a means of radicalizing those workers to their social condition?
Seeger: Yes—don’t take this as a shallow answer, though. In my opinion, every great artist has looked on his art as a means of communication to try and change the world. This is true of Beethoven, certainly George Bernard Shaw...he admitted it frankly. Shaw spoke on the soap boxes for the socialists of the 1890s, and then around 1900 he started writing plays. The same is true of painters, and not only socialist painters like Daumier. I would say every artist is, in effect, trying to figure how the human race can be saved from itself. So in those days when we sang for the union workers, and today when I go around and sing on a picket line, I’m not really being all that different. Artists who say "We’re only interested in art for art’s sake" are fooling themselves, I think.
Penthouse: Is there a strategy behind the way you use your music to convey a message?
Seeger: Not particularly. The method, if there is one, is feeling the continuing history of humanity. I’ve never thought of myself as a great soloist. I don’t have much of a voice and I’m no great virtuoso on the instrument. My ability, I think, lies in being able to get a crowd to sing along with me. When I get upon a stage. I look on my job as trying to tell a story.. .going into a dialogue with the audience, perhaps. I use songs to illustrate my story and dialogue between songs to carry the story forward.
Penthouse: What is the dividing line between this kind of story-telling folk music and ordinary commercial music?
Seeger: The most meaningful dividing line I can think of is whether the person is making music for his or her own amusement or whether they are being paid to do it. There are lots of other boundary lines that scholars try to set up, like "Is the music electrified or not ?" or "Is it traditional, and how traditional ?" and so on. But music for amusement seems to me to be the only half-way significant boundary line. I don’t use the phrase "folk music" unless I have to because these boundary lines are not agreed, even by the scholars. So I try not to use it any more than I have to.
Penthouse: Don’t ordinary commercial music and folk music both have to be composed. and are not both performed for payment ?
Seeger: No, folk music was originally the music of the peasantry, age-old, anonymous and non-professional. Strictly speaking. I am not a folk-singer.
Penthouse: Isn't the pop music of today perhaps the folk music of tomorrow?
Seeger: Sometimes, yes. I can see, 100 years from now, some guitar player playing a pop tune of the mid-20th century learned from his parents, who learned it from their parents-and it's a changed version, so you would hardly recognize it. That's perfectly possible.
Penthouse: How can you tell which pop songs will become folk songs?
Seeger: Everybody wishes they could tell that. Only time can tell for sure. The best critics have been proved to have 'clouded crystal balls.
Penthouse: Surely the, real folk music of today is the sound created by young people-the sound of raw people or the sound of young people accompanied by all the apparatus of electronics?
Seeger: Whenever anyone says the word "the"-puts the THE in front of a word-I start getting suspicious. If you want to say "the folk music of today", I would include all the different kinds of music made by amateurs for the fun of it, whether with electricity or bag-pipes.
Penthouse: So your definition of folk music would be "by amateurs, for the fun of it, without pay involved"?
Seeger: That's right.
Penthouse: But times have changed, and rural areas are no longer isolated culturally and music is easily available to everyone through broadcasting and records. Isn't the original basis of folk music now non-existent?
Seeger: Again, I have to take exception to your use of "non-existent". I think it would be incorrect to answer that question with a yes or a no. I'd have to hedge and explain. To a certain extent it is true but you could talk for an hour deciding to what extent it is untrue. I will say this: the tenacity of some of the old forms amazes each new generation of critics. In the 18th century, Bishop Percey said, "These old ballads will never be heard again. The old people I've learned them from will soon be dead". A century and a half later Cecil Sharp was saying "These old ballads will never be heard any more. The old people I have learned them from will soon be dead". And my guess is that 100 years from now somewhere in this world there will still be some people still singing "Barbara Allen" and "Lord Lovell", and somewhere in this world will still be found critics who are saying: "These old ballads will soon be gone because the old people singing them will soon be dead".
Penthouse: Hasn't folk music become just another mode of pop music? Hasn't it just been commercialized and become fashionable?
Seeger: I suppose in the mind of the average person the term "folk music" has become just another form of pop music, like jazz. I think that it is unnecessary to rob the old definition quite that 100 per cent. There a fair number of people in the world-good scholars-who still know a little more accurately what folk music is, I think. You see, in 1964, when so-called folk songs hit the top 40, the term "folk-music" suddenly became a mass word. Until then it was only known to a few intellectuals, middle-class people and so on. The only parallel I can find is way back 25 years ago. If you remember, Freddy Martin did a recording of Tschaikovsky's piano concerto and during the next few years there were numerous attempts to make money out of 19th century piano music. Well it didn't work and a few years later pop music had abandoned that attempt to mine that particular lode, and went on to other more money-making places.
Penthouse: At that time would you have said classical music was dead?
Seeger: In the minds of the average person, that was classical music. Now that classical music is no longer on the hit parade, that is not to say that classical music is dead. This is the nearest equivalent I can think of to what is happening in relation to this question, which is the sort of question asked by someone who only heard the term "folk music" when the Kingston Trio came along. Now that the Kingston Trio has gone on its way and you find "folk rock" and so on, what you don't realize is that there is a heck of a lot of music in the world that is not in the top 40.
Penthouse: Do you think a protest song is capable of having any political effect?
Seeger: Anatole France said: ""Songs have overthrown kings and empires." I think he exaggerated the case, but nevertheless it is a point to consider.
Penthouse: To put it differently, isn't a folk song really a kind of slogan set to music and sung by the converted?
Seeger: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I'll tell you this, there must be something in protest songs or television wouldn't be so anxious to keep them off the air. This is usually my best proof that there must be some danger in them.
Penthouse: Has a specific music ever played a part in bringing about political change?
Seeger: Music plays perhaps a more important part in maintaining stability and continuance of tradition. Music has performed both these functions at various times.
Penthouse: Isn't folk music a reflection of the life style or mood that already exists, rather than a message that deals with a specific problem like oppression or injustice?
Seeger: This is true of all communications including newspapers and critics, I'd say. Whether it is novels or newspaper editorials, or any other form of communication, the art form reflects the existing situation and, to a certain extent, attempts to influence it. If the situation is a bad one, some elements of the art created will ask for change.
Penthouse: There are those, however, who assert that music should not contain propaganda and that it is only good when it provides escape through entertainment.
Seeger: I think history refutes those people. Music has been used throughout human times in many ways, sometimes to support the status quo, sometimes to disturb the status quo. Music has been used in religion, in war, in politics and love. It is only recently that music has been thought of as mere entertainment. In previous centuries, man needed music to help him get through life. Whole villages sang their songs together, confirming the fact that they were members of that village, and when they danced and sang together, it reinforced their strength as a community of people. I'm sorry when people think that music is just something to escape their troubles. At best, music helps in understanding troubles and helps get people together to do something about their troubles.
Penthouse: The indigenous' music of the working classes has tended to last as folk tradition, whereas pop music tends to be fleeting. How do you account for that?
Seeger: I guess pop music is unstable because some people make money from it. Those people, I suppose, want to have planned obsolescence built into music. There is also the tendency for people who are uprooted from the past and tradition to rather restlessly seek something new. I think this is the big problem of modern life: the lack of continuity
that confronts all of us. I think America is symptomatic of this restlessness. We are the sons and daughters of a people who restlessly moved out of Europe, and their sons and daughters also restlessly moved from town to town, from city to city. I think good music stems from a community of people, over a period of time, where these people obtain an
identity. Identity has meant, and always will mean, a certain element of imitation. Only now we are developing a mass urban culture, we insist on originality and we are afraid of anything traditional. I have a great deal of distrust for people who insist on the cult of originality. There's nothing at all wrong with the imitation of good things. However, society today has downgraded tradition and replaced it with a gambler's psychology; instead of working with an audience that can grow with you, young performers are always trying to make it big. I sometimes wonder what would happen if parents raised their children in the same way, turning out child after child trying to get that hit. All too many musicians ask "What will strike the popular fancy this year", instead of asking, "What is the best music I can make?" Young people do this because they have to make a living, so they become cynical and frustrated in their approach to music. We need a way to get people to recognize that this problem exists. Constantly changing fads are typical of the restlessness of urban culture; I'm not sure if it is good or bad but I can see it everyplace. People are tremendously dissatisfied with what they have, perhaps because in today's world they don't really feel secure about their possessions or about what they do.
Penthouse: You frequently use the expression "good music". What about "bad music"? There are whole series of songs that don't espouse the beliefs you cherish and yet they have become popular. "Welfare Cadillac", for example.
Seeger: This is perfectly normal. Music is not the privilege of only right-thinking people. After all, Hitler's Storm Troopers goose stepped to military music. I think, however, some of the popularity of "Welfare Cadillac" and "Green Beret" is due to the fact that stations sometimes push right-wing songs when they're afraid to push left-wing songs. The song "Green Beret" was not a great song, but every radio station in the country pushed it, so it sold a million copies. There have been some other songs that tell how soldiers really feel about the war in Vietnam, anti-war songs that not only have not been pushed but have actually been kept off the air. 1 sing some of these songs, like "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" during my concerts. I know that this song got more applause than any song I've sung. Also, "If You Love Your Uncle Sam, Bring Them Home, Bring Em Home". Both these songs got standing ovations. But few radio stations were willing to play them. They were scared.
Penthouse: What you are alleging then is a kind of blacklisting, the kind of blacklisting you suffered during the McCarthy period.
Seeger: Yes, only I don't draw a sharp line around any period of suppression. McCarthyism was an extreme period, but McCarthyism exists today as it existed hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, there were radicals who were called "Levellers"; their writings and their speeches and their songs were, in effect, blacklisted. During the 19th century, there were the Abolitionists of the 1 850s, and their songs were blacklisted. At that time there was a group of singers called The Hutchinson Family. When they sang, there would sometimes be near-riots because they advocated the abolition of slavery. During the early days of the labor movement, labor songs were considered seditious, so I don't really see that suppression is anything new. The question is not suppression, but how extreme will the suppression become. So far, I believe there are reserves of strength in America that will not allow suppression to get out of hand. I say this out of the knowledge that it was really conservatives like old Senator Flanders of Vermont and Lawyer Welch who spoke up against McCarthy when the liberals were tongue-tied and cowardly.
Penthouse: Is there never something to be said for wanting to suppress music that would tend to increase dissension and inflame polarizations that already exist?
Seeger: The songs I sing find a response in many different kinds of audiences. I think this happens because there is a genius in these old folksongs that cuts across various lines of polarization. Rather than divide people, I think music usually unites. I get a little impatient with the classification of people into left and right, anyway. Some of the most warmhearted, generous and true human people I've ever met were people who tended to be very conservative. Some of the most dogmatic and rigid people I've ever met were people who call themselves radical.
Penthouse: Nevertheless your image in the public mind is still one of a radical.
Seeger: Maybe so, but when it comes right down to it, I think I'm more conservative than many conservatives. You can tell by the kind of music I play, old-fashioned country music. I think that labels are too easy. Labels are often ways of preventing men from sharing each other's fortunes and misfortunes. To say a person is this or that is only concentrating on differences, when it's what is held in common that should be emphasized. What's interesting now is that the environmental crisis is going to force people into more of this. The artist will find that he will have to get to know the scientist in order to survive; and the scientist will have to learn a little of what the artist knows before he understands why he should not pollute.
Penthouse: Then you look forward to more ideal social conditions?
Seeger: No matter how pessimistic I get, I realize that the sensible man bases his actions on his hopes and not just on his despairs. If I were dropped into the Niagara River a half mile from the Falls, there might be only a 5% chance to swim for shore before I was swept over the brink. But, still, if I thought there were even a 5% chance, I'd strike out and try it. This, I think, is the situation we're in. Unless human beings change their way of life and their relationship to one another, in 100 years there is going to be no human race. It doesn't have to be the atom bomb, it can be racism or DDT, or the population explosion. To be idealistic, to strive for change for a better world, may just be the 5% of effort that will save us.
Penthouse: The change you speak about, does this mean changing the whole system?
Seeger: Probably, yes. This is what Jesus was talking about, this is what Jeremiah was talking about-this is what the old religious radicals were talking about, and what the socialists were talking about-and the communists, too. I think what is needed is major change. The only way you can define it is changing the system. I'm not the only one who thinks this way-big businessmen are now talking like this. Thomas Watson, the head of International Business Machines, said in January: "Our nation must have planning-national planning". Well, as I see it, there is no other word for that but socialist.
Penthouse: Does that make you politically a socialist? Or even a communist?
Seeger: I say I'm as communist as the American Indian, because frankly I think it's an oversimplification to try to get any one word to tag me. I strive for simplicity, but I have also learned to mistrust it. I've become mistrustful of labels that try to put me into a simple box. I think my political beliefs are songs. When I go to a college campus, I never leave young people with concrete political ideologies. I sing them a lot of songs, and songs are ambiguous-art is ambiguous. In effect, I say, here are some issues you're going to have to talk about and try to resolve.
Penthouse: If we can't put a label on you, can we say you espouse a more planned society?
Seeger: Well, yes, something like that. I believe we should start here in America because the Americanization of the world may destroy the world. I'm saying to students that thermal pollution is something you should learn about. Electric power is being doubled every 10 years, carbon monoxide and the nitrous gases of industry may be upsetting the ecology. In order to check and control these things, we need controls. We need to have a more aware technology, because there are secondary effects and tertiary effects from every invention. I laugh to think old Henry Ford was such a Puritan. Had he ever known that his cheap cars would change the sex habits of the American nation, perhaps he would have postponed his car, thinking of all the girls who would later have their virginity taken away in the back seat of his invention. This, of course, was a secondary effect of an invention, and ecologists and scientists are just now waking up to the fact that every invention has one.
Penthouse: To accomplish this planned America, to change it into a more sympathetic society, won't students and concerned people have to get inside the system rather than drop out?
Seeger: America is full of people trying to work from within the system, and I wish them the best. But I think some people can also work outside it. My guess is, looking at history, that this has always been so. Abraham Lincoln worked within the system. He did his best to try and abolish slavery. He didn't get rid of racism, but he made a step forward. Only he could not have made that step forward, had it not been for a lot of people who worked outside the system-people like John Brown, who was considered an outlaw, Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists.
Penthouse: So there is a role that some can play outside the system, even antagonistic to it?
Seeger: Absolutely-that's why I admire people like the Black Panthers, people like Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. I may not agree with them completely, but I admire them tremendously. Nowadays, I admire women struggling for women's rights, women who are trying to figure out how women can be liberated while they still love men.
Penthouse: Do you also admire any political hero, John F. Kennedy for instance?
Seeger: I think I feel sorry for all politicians, because they are at the mercy of the system, perhaps more than anybody else. They can't say what they feel-they have to go through life saying what will get them elected. That's a pitiable situation.
Penthouse: They are still the men with the power, though.
Seeger: True, and not so true. There are lots of good people in America. As long as they are alive and kicking, this United States is still capable of fulfilling the dream of Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass, because this is a land not just of power and glory, but of truth and beauty also. The only way it can be otherwise is if the know-nothings, the American fascists, would take it over. And so far, despite the hard-hats and the Agnews, they haven't been able to do it . . . altogether.
Penthouse: Mr. Seeger, thank you.