FESTIVAL WELL VERSED IN WORKERS' STRUGGLE

WE INVENTED THE WEEKEND WILL RE VITALISE FOLK CLASSIC THAT BECAME AN ANTHEM FOR MANY ARTISTS BUT BELONGS TO THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF SALFORD, WRITES NEAL KEELING

- NEAL KEELING

IT was written by her late husband. Now, at the age of 88, Peggy Seeger has recorded a version of the ode to Salford, Dirty Old Town, which opens with the lyric: “I met my love by the gasworks wall/ Dreamed a dream by the old canal.”

The gasworks which folk legend, Ewan MacColl, lamented were demolished in 2017, a rusting relic of the industrial past, but the famous wall was retained. Now the song is to be given a new lease of life more than 70 years after it was first released - with an orchestral accompaniment recorded in the city which inspired its lyrics.

Peggy, for whom MaColl also wrote the classic “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, has recorded Dirty Old Town with an accompaniment from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and will perform an abandoned verse from it at a festival next month.

Seeger, an American folk singer, said it was the first of MacColl’s music she heard him perform, after they met when she came to the UK in 1956.

She said: “I think he was infatuated with me at the time. He was 41, I was 21.

“And he brought me to Salford to show me where he had grown up. So I tied Dirty Old Town to Salford in an indissoluble knot.

“It told me about where he’d been brought up.”

The song, first released in 1952, went on to be covered by The Dubliners, The Pogues and Rod Stewart. MacColl wrote different versions of Dirty Old Town. In another, the opening lyric is: “I found my love by the gasworks croft.” The croft was a piece of land next to the gasworks.