Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Folk singer and songwriter who led the British folk revival with Ewan McCall and continues to perform in the US.
On the island
Eight records
Alan Jabbour, Mike Seeger, Tom Kelly and Gill Carter
pieces like this that I learned to play the banjo from and which I'm listening to now in North Carolina where I live.
Air on the G String (from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068)Favourite
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
I love to listen to what all the instruments are doing because Bach. worked on multi levels. He worked one set of instruments. Against and with the others.
it's very simple. It's got a melody that just every time I hear it I get happy.
I listened to this piece, and I listened to it, and it just absolutely vibrated my whole body.
Isle of View (from Union Cafe)
I'm an accompanist for a living, so what I would do with this on a desert island is I would play it, which is what I sometimes do at home with Penguin Cafe, and just sing whatever I want.
I would have this on a desert island because I like the last one, I want to hear the voices of the two people that I have loved most as lovers in my life.
I love Paul Simon's songwriting. He is superb. He knows what to leave out. He knows when not to be logical, when not to follow a chain of logic.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30How did your first meeting with Ewan MacColl come about?
I was youth hostelling in Denmark. And Alan Lomax, the collector, phoned my father in California and said, Where's Peggy? Because he wanted for a television program called Dark of the Moon, he wanted a female singer who played the banjo. This was for Granada Television. … So he started phoning youth hostels and found me in Copenhagen. … And he looked at me and his face fell. He says, We're going to have to do something about you. … And she [Susan Mills] dressed me in her own model's gear. … and they sat me on a stool and said sing … That was how Ewan saw me, trying desperately to stamp my feet in high heels
Presenter asks
10:49How did your mother's sudden death change things for you?
Yes, I became aware of her in a way that I hadn't been before. Because when she died for the first year I felt she was under my skin and I was seeing things for her. I also was aware of my father's suffering, because he s he lost the love of his life. … It was the end of childhood.
Presenter asks
13:12How political were you compared to Ewan MacColl?
Hardly. Hm. I thought my family was political until I met Ewan. I did. We were liberals. We were genteelly political. Ewan was vulgar political, common political. He'd been brought up in On the edge starvation and poverty. … and Ywain had an an anger, a fury, an outrage. that meant that he never swerved in his political ideals.
The keepsakes
The book
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
The language is superb. It's in Scots. And the last time I read it, I read through it three times.
The luxury
a banjo with a plastic head and an inexhaustible supply of parts (strings and pegs)
I would take a banjo with a plastic head which wouldn't break, and an inexhaustible supply of parts for it. strings and pegs.
Presenter asks
14:33Was your feminism born of your own situation with Ewan MacColl?
My feminism was born not through you and But through writing Gonna be an engineer. … I sat down and literally in an evening did this quite complex song called Gonna Be an Engineer. … the feminists loved it, and they began asking me to their their dues, their events. And I found I had no other songs to go with it … So I started writing songs purposely. … Oh, not at all. No, I never wanted to be an engineer.
Presenter asks
22:11How did Ewan MacColl's illness change the balance of your relationship?
For the f most of our life he had been the one who dreamed up the the projects to do, and I was kind of riding on the tail of this comet. … The minute I entered into the feminist world I began to be the head of my own comet. … When he got ill, and I started occasionally doing concerts on my own, I began to take the leadership in doing things. I began to do most of the driving. I began to do most of the The work that ran the two of us. It was just a change of power structure.
Presenter asks
28:05Why did you decide to move back to the United States and set up home in North Carolina?
Well, put like that, I ask myself the same question. But now if you're talking about the weather, or London traffic, or the fact that everywhere I go in this country reminds me of Ewan, You'll know why I went. Too many memories. … I was looking for a place that had good air. I wanted a small town. I wanted to hear Boatman pieces like that again. I wanted wide skies.
“I think he fell in love with the house. And with a banjo. And a woman who could sing like he knew these songs ought to be sung.”
“The folk songs were made in m in the mouths of generations of people. They were stripped down like skeletons, many of these texts, so that everything was right there and they were sung in certain ways so as to keep that skeleton. pure and clean.”
“I remember somebody saying, if the Revolution, if I can't dance at the Revolution, I'm not going. This is one thing that I learned a little bit from Ewan and a lot from Irene. that it's necessary to laugh, because the laugh brings the endorphins on. You live longer to fight, so to speak.”
“I'm glad he didn't live to see his daughter die.”