Its last verse is the beautiful speech that Tom Joad whispers to his mother at the end of The Grapes of Wrath.“Turn! Turn! Turn!”: The Byrds Sing for Peace It was an attempt to regain my own moorings. I'm gonna bring Tommy out, and the song Tommy Morello and I are about to sing I wrote in the mid-nineties and it started as a conversation I was having with myself. He has become comfortable and casual in this immense role. Pete Seeger still sings all the verses all the time, and he reminds us of our immense failures as well as shining a light toward our better angels and the horizon where the country we've imagined and hold dear we hope awaits us. Now on top of it, he never wears it on his sleeve. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country's illusions about itself. Inside him he carries a steely toughness that belies that grandfatherly facade and it won't let him take a step back from the things he believes in. He would have the audacity and the courage to sing in the voice of the people, and despite Pete's somewhat benign, grandfatherly appearance, he is a creature of a stubborn, defiant, and nasty optimism. He'd be a living archive of America's music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along, to push American events towards more humane and justified ends. At some point Pete Seeger decided he'd be a walking, singing reminder of all of America's history. He sings all the verses all the time, especially the ones that we'd like to leave out of our history as a people. It would be near the end of the show and all he said was, "Well, I know I want to sing all the verses, I want to sing all the ones that Woody wrote, especially the two that get left out, about private property and the relief office." I thought, of course, that's what Pete's done his whole life. I said, man, you better wear something besides that flannel shirt! He says, yeah, I got my longjohns on under this thing. And I asked him how he wanted to approach "This Land Is Your Land". At rehearsals the day before, it was freezing, like fifteen degrees and Pete was there he had his flannel shirt on. He was ao happy that day, it was like, Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man!.It was so nice. ![]() My own growing up in the sixties in towns scarred by race rioting made that moment nearly unbelievable and Pete had thirty extra years of struggle and real activism on his belt. ![]() That day as we sang "This Land Is Your Land" I looked at Pete, the first black president of the United States was seated to his right, and I thought of the incredible journey that Pete had taken. How it moved from a labor movement song and with Pete's inspiration had been adapted by the civil rights movement. "As Pete and I traveled to Washington for President Obama's Inaugural Celebration, he told me the entire story of "We Shall Overcome". The lines are open to myriad interpretations, but Seeger's song presents them as a plea for world peace because of the closing line: "a time for peace, I swear it's not too late." This line and the title phrase "Turn! Turn! Turn!" are the only parts of the lyric written by Seeger himself. The song is notable for being one of a few instances in popular music in which a large portion of the Bible is set to music, other examples being the Melodians' " Rivers of Babylon", Sister Janet Mead's "The Lord's Prayer", U2's " 40", Sinead O'Connor's " Psalm 33" and Cliff Richard's " The Millennium Prayer". The Biblical text posits there being a time and place for all things: laughter and sorrow, healing and killing, war and peace, and so on. A time to be born, and a time to die a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted Ī time to kill, and a time to heal a time to break down, and a time to build up Ī time to weep, and a time to laugh a time to mourn, and a time to dance Ī time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together Ī time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing Ī time to get, and a time to lose a time to keep, and a time to cast away Ī time to rend, and a time to sew a time to keep silence, and a time to speak Ī time to love, and a time to hate a time of war, and a time of peace.
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