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First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on May 17, 1967
How sweet the folk
THE BLOOM, alas, has gone off the folk movement; and the bloom, alas, has also gone off Peter, Paul and Mary, those stalwart commercialisers who a few brief years ago seemed to symbolise, with the soft catch in the throat and a bleeding heart on their sleeve, everything that the sweet-folk idiom seemed to stand for.
Peter, Paul and Mary perform in Sydney in 1965.Credit:Ray Sharpe
Last night, at Sydney Stadium, they stood revealed, rather cruelly, as three slick and still very talented entertainers who are searching rather desperately for a new colouration to give to their old music - and embarrassingly failing to find it.
Mary Travers speaks to the Sydney press on May 16, 1967.Credit:Staff photographer
The old songs are still there, of course, and they sing them as well as ever: Samson, with its quite thrilling contrast of Peter Yarrow’s rhythmic tenor and Mary Travers’ strident counterpoint, If I Had a Hammer, Risin’ of the Moon, and the usual Dylan standards—Blowin’ in’ the Wind, Don’t Think Twice and The Times They Are A-Changin’.
But these have become a little tired, a little stale by now. One of the tragedies of pop groups is that they must change as fashion changes.
And so they have begun writing their own songs, and searching for a new musical image, and lo and behold what have they come up with but — parenthood! I lost count of the times Mary’s new child and Paul’s two-year-old were mentioned last night, and the number of soft-pop songs like One Child Born with phrases like “I’ll cling to the warmth of your tiny hand” (Mary) and “childish laughter” (Paul) in them.
Paul even got all sentimental about his old four-storey house in Manhattan (“shavings off your mind”) and essayed a late-hours torch song about a girl called What’s-Her-Name.