People may tell you to just be yourself, but what they usually mean is ‘just be like me.’ It is human nature to believe we have made good choices and our children should set off down the same path. The reverse is also true – clever sons rue the errors of their fathers and […]
Tag Archives: woody guthrie
Ed Sheeran Revives Masters of War
As the death planes drop bombs on the hospitals of Ukraine and the young people’s blood flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud, Ed Sheeran’s new recording of Masters of War is a prayer for peace and a homage to Bob Dylan’s original written sixty years ago in 1962. Like Dylan, Sheeran […]
This Land is Your Land
When Jennifer Lopez sang ‘This Land is Your Land’ at the inauguration ceremony for new President Joe Biden, she was channelling Woody Guthrie’s belief in fair play and decency, in democracy, in the truth. His guitar carried the message: This machine kills fascists. Guthrie wrote ‘This Land is Your Land’ in 1940 in response to […]
Bob Dylan’s Secrets of Success
Success is illusive, fragile, hard to pin down, describe or quantify. Bob Dylan said, ‘A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.’ The hard part is knowing exactly what you want to do and whether […]