Don’t try to take it with you
A touching story about an exchange between Neil Young & Pete Seeger at 2013 Farm Aid turned up in the editorial section of the New York Times.
It was the last time the 94-year old troubadour of Americana performed on stage.
Written by NYT editorial writer Jesse Wegman, who attended the benefit concert, and exchange between Young & Ochs involved the deaths of musicians Phil Ochs and Curt Cobain. Seeger told Young of the night in 1976, he was with Ochs before he hanged himself.
Wegman writes:
On Tuesday morning, the day after Pete Seeger died, Mr. Young told me the story that Pete had told to him: Pete had been in New York City and was late for the train home to Beacon, an hour up the Hudson River. Ochs, a good friend and fellow folk singer, was in trouble. He’d been depressed and drinking for a long time, and he reached out to Pete.
“Phil really wanted to talk,” Mr. Young recalled. Pete had to choose between staying in the city another night or getting home. He chose the train.
“Pete remembered shaking hands with him, and when he said goodbye to him for the last time,” Mr. Young said. “He regretted not talking to him.”
For 37 years, the decision to leave that night ate at Pete. “ ‘I wish I’d done something more to stop that from happening,’ ” Mr. Young recalled him saying shortly before he took the stage.
Neil, having a similar experience dealing with Kurt Cobain’s death, gave Seeger this advice:
“Don’t try to take it with you. Leave it where it happened. I felt similar to how Pete felt for a while. But there’s nothing — you can’t carry it with you.”
Read the entire editorial at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/opinion/pete-seegers-last-night-on-stage.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=1
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
liza on 
Baz on 
