French was born in New York City as the younger of two sons to father Lou Segall, a jewelry salesman, and mother Evaline French Segall, a political consultant for the Democratic Party in New York who worked for the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign. His mother also ran the successful election campaign of Constance Baker Motley, the first African American woman elected to the New York State Senate. He and his brother Jeff Segall grew up in Manhattan.
The seeds for French's musical life were planted in 1963 when he attended his first concert, the folk group The Weavers at Carnegie Hall.
He was an anti-Vietnam war and civil rights activist. In the summer of 1967, he attended the Shaker Village summer program, and was a bunkmate of Ben Chaney, brother of James Chaney, one of the three murdered civil rights workers who died on a voting registration drive in Mississippi in 1964. The events were portrayed in Alan Parker's 1988 film Mississippi Burning.

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