I never intended to make a living from music. That's the funny thing. I wanted to be a journalist.

I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear.

My father, Charles Seeger, got me into the Communist movement. He backed out around '38. I drifted out in the 50's.

When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American.

I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.

It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.