So Long, It's Been Good To Know You

On a weekend that's important to me in a lot of ways, it's quite fitting that tomorrow should see a landmark day - the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of my longtime idols, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie.

When I play Woody Guthrie's music to people who've never heard it before, and they ask me (often impatiently) why it's so special, I often struggle for words. I try to explain the beauty of a bloke from Woody's background - born in a shack in Oklahoma, the son of a Ku Klux Klan member who had been present at the 1911 Canadian River lynching, driven from his home and forced to become a migrant worker - rising above his poverty and racist surroundings to write songs of love, unity and freedom. Failing that, I try and explain how startlingly relevant many of Woody's songs remain in today's world - especially for anyone who's fallen foul of a jolly banker, or happened to notice the perpetual truth that the gambling man is rich and the working man is poor.

Ultimately, though, it's his legacy which I try and persuade folks to appreciate. Ever enjoyed a song by Bob Dylan? Or Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, or Paul Simon? How about The Clash? Billy Bragg? Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits or Tom Petty? Even Rage Against The Machine or Public Enemy? All owed a huge, huge debt to Woody Guthrie, and those influenced in turn by those artists owe the same debt.

I owe him as well. When people ask me what kind of stuff I write, I point them straight to Woody's personal ethos:

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good.

I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what colour, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.

And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.

I personally think every artist and writer should have that message burned into their brain from the minute they pick up a pen. Sadly, many don't. But those of us who do are indebted, for so many reasons, to Woody Guthrie.

Happy 100th.