PETE SEEGER’S GOD BLESS THE GRASS

Paying tribute to Pete Seeger's groundbreaking 'environmentalist album', God Bless the Grass.

On the 21st of September 2013, performing less than three months after the death of his wife Toshi, the legendary folk singer Pete Seeger (94) appeared as a surprise guest at Farm Aid’s fundraiser in New York. Towards the end of his rendition of Woody Guthrie’s 'This Land Is Your Land', he turned to the audience and said: “I’ve got a verse you’ve never heard before!” To huge applause, he finished it off with “New York was meant to be frack-free!”

While songs about the wonder of nature reach far into our musical history, the use of music as a direct form of environmental activism remains strangely scarce. Seeger was one of the earliest musicians to venture into this unknown territory. In 1966, he released what many regard as the first ‘environmentalist album’, God Bless the Grass. It was a significant milestone in the emergence of environmental themes within popular music.

Many of the standout songs on this record were not written by Seeger, but by his friend and collaborator Malvina Reynolds. Rather than singing about a distant forest, she focuses on environmental issues in her own back yard. The title track plays with the idea of a blade of grass battling its way through concrete. It’s a tribute to the perseverance of nature and - "God bless ...the wild grass growing at the poor man’s door" - to hope. Some of the other songs are rather less subtle. In 'Cement Octopus', the Californian freeway system is compared to a monster whose smothering tentacles extend across the landscape. 

The album goes on to explore ecosystems and the delicate interconnections from which they are built. As well as looking to inform though, Seeger also offers hope for the future. The only song on the album that he wrote himself, 'My Dirty Stream', relates to his successful campaign to clean up the Hudson River. His vision was to build a replica 18th-century sloop (a kind of sailing boat). Since it set sail in 1969, the sloop Clearwater has been inspiring people to enjoy the river and protect their local environment.

Pete Seeger has never been afraid to use his music as a platform for activism. One area that he hasn’t often commented on though, is the topic of religion. “[I used to say] I was an atheist”, he explains. “Now I say it’s all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I’m not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I’m looking at God. Whenever I’m listening to something I’m listening to God.”

(Originally published in Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine, February 2014).