Peggy Seeger:

The Courier

06-05-2025

'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.'