The new biopic A Complete Unknown follows a young Bob Dylan as he arrives in New York and changes American folk music forever. Edward Norton plays folk icon Pete Seeger, who had a big impact on Dylan. Seeger was famous for his songs about working people, unions, and social justice. We're revisiting Terry's 1984 interview with Seeger, as well as her 2016 interview with Bruce Springsteen, who was compared to Dylan when he broke onto the scene.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Merry Christmas. I hope you're enjoying the holiday. The new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, opened today in theaters. It stars Timothee Chalamet as Dylan. Today we're featuring interviews from our archive related to Dylan. We'll start with folk singer Pete Seeger, who influenced Dylan and is portrayed in the film by Edward Norton.
and later will feature an interview with Bruce Springsteen, who described Dylan as the father of my country and inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Pete Seeger was famous for his songs about working people, unions, and social justice. He was one of the most important figures in 20th century American folk music and was at the forefront of the folk music revival in the 1950s.
He popularized the songs This Land is Your Land and We Shall Overcome and wrote If I Had a Hammer and Turn, Turn, Turn. In the 1940s, he sang union songs with the Almanac singers. A few years later, he co-founded the Weavers, who surprised everyone, including themselves, when they became the first group to bring folk music to the pop charts, until they were blacklisted.
Seeger refused to answer questions about his politics and personal associations when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s during the committee's investigation into so-called subversive activities in the entertainment field. When the committee asked about a song, Seeger offered to sing it. Permission was denied.
In 1961, he was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about his politics and about other people's politics. Permission to sing the song was denied again at his trial. There's a scene based on that in the new movie.
Your Honor, you may know a friend of mine, Woody Guthrie. Great songwriter and a great American, and Woody's not well. But he's been much on my mind as I've been going through this because Woody once said that a good song can only do good. And the song I'm in hot water for here, it's a good song. It's a patriotic song, in fact.
And I thought maybe you'd like to actually hear the words and I can play it for you.
And you won't know. You're not doing that again.
Pete Seeger was convicted for contempt of Congress, but that was eventually overturned on appeal. He later performed at President Obama's inaugural concert. As a young man, Seeger believed songs were a way of binding people to a cause. Here's one of his many labor songs, called Cotton Mill Colic.
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