Maxine Peake: Real voices, real lives - the inspirational Ewan MacColl
He thought albums were a self-indulgence and said his favourite songwriter was 'Anon'. Actor Maxine Peake pays tribute to the man who inspired her to act, write – and even relocate to Salford
I can't recall the exact moment that I became aware of Ewan MacColl and his music. My grandparents were active members of the Communist party and, as a child, I spent weekends and school holidays at their house, where the records of MacColl and Paul Robeson were always playing. My grandad also loved Lada cars and goods procured from the eastern bloc.
Still, I know when I was first inspired by him. At 16, I went to Salford College of Technology on a two-year performing arts course, where I learned about Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop. I found out she had been married to MacColl before he had taken his stage name, when he was still known as Jimmie Miller. They were artists ahead of their time. The couple met through The Theatre of Action, a revolutionary drama group, and were the first to introduce the Stanislavsky system of acting to the UK. Their work inspired me to apply for drama school.
MacColl eventually drifted away from theatre, focusing increasingly on music. In this, the centenary year of his birth, what should we make of his life and work? The celebrated folk singer tended not to think of songwriting as work at all, and not only because he'd been writing tunes for as long as he could talk. The very term songwriter jarred with him: it spoke of individual endeavour. He thought of song-making as ongoing conversation with what had come before.
His sources were wide: early songs written for his Manchester street troupe, the Red Megaphones, echoed German or Soviet models; The Manchester Rambler, written when he was 16, drew on popular waltzes and music hall; The Joy of Living, a late song from 1986, refashioned a Sicilian folk tune.
In 1957, radio producer Charles Parker asked him and Peggy Seeger, his third wife and long-term collaborator, to write a radio play about John Axon, a steam locomotive driver whose heroism cost him his life when he attempted to rescue his runaway train. MacColl met Axon's widow and workmates to record their memories. Listening to the recordings, he realised that the real voices were more affecting than any an actor could reproduce. Combining their voices with his songs, he created The Ballad of John Axon – and a new form of radio was born.
MacColl, Seeger and Parker went on to create seven more of these dazzling sonic experiments, taking as their subjects working-class lives including miners, fishermen, and the men who built the M1. Using real voices in a dramatic context was unheard of at the time, especially those of the working class. Those ballads were a huge influence on me. When I wrote my first piece for radio, about the legendary cyclist Beryl Burton, we recorded interviews with Beryl's husband Charlie and their daughter Denise, then wove their stories through the piece.
As the leader of the postwar new folk revival, MacColl had rigid ideas. He exhorted young musicians to retrieve the lost folk music of their own regions and nations. And any new songs they wrote should be extensions of those traditions. (For him, the greatest compliment for a new song was that it was indistinguishable from "the tradition".) The Singers' Club, which MacColl founded in 1961, introduced the notorious policy that only those who shared these values were welcome to perform. MacColl's own songwriting, thankfully, always remained far more eclectic than his theory.
Still, those who went to MacColl's concerts or bought his records expecting to hear his compositions would seldom hear more than a sprinkling. Some of his best-known songs were never even recorded by him, including The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, a love song for Peggy Seeger. Not until 1983, when he was 68, did MacColl record an LP of his own songs. (His sleevenotes suggest he was embarrassed at what he saw as self-indulgence.)
His own favourite songwriter was "Anon" – predecessors whose identities were forgotten but whose music remained, and he was forever uneasy with consolidating a personal legacy of his songs for posterity, in case it breached the spirit of that collective tradition. His prolific output became clear only in 2001, thanks to Peggy Seeger's labour of love, The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook: Sixty Years of Songmaking. That book showed MacColl's legacy lay not in the unperformed plays, archived broadcasts or even the deleted LPs, but in a body of more than 300 songs. MacColl was never interested in being a major songwriter of the 20th century – but he became one anyway.
After many years living in London, I decided to move back north. I chose Salford largely due to its socialist pedigree, of which MacColl is such a key part. A particular draw was the wonderful Working Class Movement Library, started by Ruth and Eddie Frow, friends of MacColl, which hosts an annual celebration of MacColl and his work. I still get great pleasure from informing people that Dirty Old Town is not about Dublin at all, but about my beloved Salford.
A double CD, Joy of Living: A Tribute to Ewan MacColl, is out now on Cooking Vinyl Records. Blood & Roses, a tribute concert is at the the Lowry theatre, Salford, 4 November, the Sage, Gateshead, 5 November, and the Barbican, London, 9 November. Additional contributions by Ben Harker, author of Class Act: The Political and Cultural Life of Ewan MacColl.