IT WAS late last November that a film crew and I left Manhattan in two wagons to interview Pete Seeger, who has been described as "one of the most influential Americans of the 20th century", "a rotten Commie bastard", and "The Granddaddy of American folk music". Pete and his wife Toshi live in the house that he built in the wooded hills overlooking the Hudson River, near the town of Beacon, New York. There was a tortuous track from the main road to their house. I'd heard that Pete had been ill and, at the age of 86, I wondered if the interview might have to be conducted at his sickbed.

My fears were quickly . . . and dramatically . . .dispelled when a tall, lean, Don Quixote of a man strode out to meet us. Actually he looked more like Paul Bunyan because he was dressed in a plaid lumberjack shirt and blue jeans. He had a large axe in his hand.

"Liam, " he said, "I just found a new song to chop wood by!" He burst into song and, with a mighty "WHUP!" split a log with one stroke. Toshi, a small wise-looking woman, half Japanese, half American, emerged from the house, and she invited us in, scolding Pete for his foolishness. I got the feeling she was used to this ritual. I also had the distinct feeling that while Pete was the frontman, Toshi was really the one who organised his life.

I first met Pete Seeger on a snowy March night in Greenwich Village in 1956 at a benefit concert to pay some of Woody Guthrie's mounting hospital bills. Woody's disease was so far advanced that it was difficult to shake the hand of the great man, because of his uncontrollable spasms.

Being introduced to Pete was like meeting Abe Lincoln . . . this larger-than-life man with an aura of timelessness and unforced authority. Shortly afterwards I went to one of his concerts and was spellbound by his magnetism. He became a hero to me.

In 1961 Columbia Records asked Pete to play banjo on our debut album The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem . . . A Spontaneous Performance. With a handpicked audience, we recorded a blinder of a session. That same year, Pete's manager, Harold Leventhal, took on the promotion of The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem concerts at Carnegie Hall and also set up our publishing company.

One day we arrived in the office when Harold was alone. He was looking at a cheque, and shaking his white head and tufts of sideburns like a fretting old grandfather.

"I don't know what to do with Pete, " he said. "I get this two thousand bucks for him for a miners' benefit and he's just left here sayin' 'Send it back, Harold. I can't take money from those people'. Hell! . . . What about my commission?"

Back in the house in Beacon, for the first time in the 50 years since I'd met him, Pete and I had a chance to sit, chat and sing together. Toshi was in the kitchen cooking up some pear pie, which she later served out to us all. Great pie!

We talked about songs, their power, about the Hudson, about friends, war, the fate of the human species andf the recipe for pear pie. The camera rolled. We talked and sang, 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone?' "That song pays my taxes now!" Pete said.

He told me about Woody Guthrie telling his young son Arlo, "They're singing 'This Land is Your Land' in schools now. Left out two important verses."

"One bright sunny morning/ In the shadow of the steeple/ By the relief office I saw my people/ And as they stood there hungry I stood there whistling/ This land was made for you and me.

"Was a great high wall there tried to stop Ime/ Great big sign there said Private Prop'ty/ But on the other side it didn't say nothin'/ That side was made for you and me."

While still vehemently anti-war, Pete is philosophical about the nature of man. "It's in our genes to want to swing clubs, " he said. "I like to swing an axe. Makes me feel good. We all are descended from good killers. The ones who were not good killers didn't have descendants. And yet we are also descended from people who knew how to sit around a council fire where life and death questions were decided by people who knew how to talk and sing, and compromise."

And we talked . . . all afternoon until the time came to wrap up. "I've got to go and cook now, " Pete announced. "Got 200 people comin' to the opening of the children's playground this evening. It's right on the river where the town dump used to be. Got that closed with the help of the Clearwater. Had a friend who said, 'Think globally, act locally.' Good advice."

Pete and I stood among the pines looking up at the blue sky above the treetops. I said, "I know old Puritans like you aren't into huggin' but I'm an old Celt and we believe in huggin' before we part."

He laughed and gave me a great bear hug.

I started to sing . . . Pete's song:

"One blue sky above usf" and Pete's weak voice joined in, "one ocean lapping all our shores, one earth so green and round, Who could ask for more? And because I love you, I'll give it one more try, to show my Rainbow Race, that it's too soon to die."

I thought of Bertolt Brecht's line, "With a man's dying breath, he must be prepared to make a new start." That's Pete.