... The Irish Times

'HALFWAY through his 90th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, Pete Seeger urged everybody in the 18,000-strong audience to join in an a cappella version of Amazing Grace.

"There's no such thing as a wrong note as long as you're singing it," he said.

Fifty of the biggest names in American music, including Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez and Kris Kristofferson, joined Seeger onstage for the 4½-hour event. It had less the feel of a concert, however, than of a giant sing-along with a group of old friends.

Seeger has been singing and campaigning on behalf of progressive causes for almost 70 years, standing with trade unions and migrant workers in the 1930s and 1940s, opposing the Cold War in the 1950s, marching for civil rights and against the Vietnam war in the 1960s, joining the struggle against South African apartheid in the 1970s, and focusing on environmental activism ever since.'