Swan songs

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Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

Few pop musicians, of course, have a CV like Seeger’s. A youthful Communist, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 and, possibly most controversial of all, unimpressed by Dylan’s conversion to electrical instrumentation at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he is surely better known for his political opinions than for having written ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’ or the tune to ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’. It may be that his survival is the best possible advertisement for the health-giving properties of political engagement. (Or perhaps he has just eaten an awful lot of lentils.) But Seeger won’t be the last popular musician to hit 90. There will be others, and one or two of them might still be dyeing their hair black. (Which will make them look nearer 100.) Pop music is only beginning to grasp the nettle of old age. At the moment, the nettle is stinging badly. Maybe gloves should be worn.

For right now, uniquely in pop history, survival really is turning out to be its own reward. Ever since the extraordinary reinvention of Johnny Cash, the industry has been scouting around for long-neglected oldsters who can be given an acoustic makeover and foisted on a new generation who don’t know the difference. When Neil Diamond made his great comeback, everyone fawned and prostrated themselves before the mighty talent who, 40 years ago, had written ‘I’m A Believer’ and, since then, buried itself in mush and cash. Twenty years ago, when reviewing gigs for the Daily Mail, I went to see Diamond at the Wembley Arena, and you have never seen a more complacent, cynical performance by a singer almost sedated by his own marvellousness. Then Rick Rubin records him in a room with an acoustic guitar, a single microphone and a log fire crackling and everything is forgiven? I think not. Now we have Glen Campbell, the original Rhinestone Cowboy, trying the same trick, and Tom Jones has grown a silly little beard and recorded with hip-hop artists, and you just have to wonder who’s next? Englebert Humperdinck? Vera Lynn? Who else is still alive?

So you might not like Pete Seeger’s politics, or his facial hair, or (in my case) ‘If I Had A Hammer’, but at least he has embraced extreme old age with dignity and a coherent sense of who he is and has always been. Maybe folk music prepares you for the twilight years better than some genres. Leonard Cohen, who seems to have been preparing for them all his life, is now a greater star than he has ever been, and without particularly wanting or trying to be. Perhaps that’s the trick: trying to exorcise the wanting and the trying. If you can avoid the dying as well, immortality beckons.