Judy Collins is a songwriter. She always has been. She can turn a simple story of growing up in Colorado and make it absolutely enchanting within a melody. She can take heartbreak and make you feel it in your soul. She can soothe and comfort, stir up visions of nature and love and the next minute make you think more deeply about how mankind can be so cruel to its own. She just has that way. Not to mention that crystal clear as a diamond voice that has never faltered in her eighty-two years on this earth. In fact, in February she released her 29th album, Spellbound, a record entirely all her own compositions. She may be the goddess of interpreting songs by Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan, but when it comes to her own words, she is at her brightest.
Ms. Collins has had a long and stellar career that continues to this day, as she is still touring and still writing, and recording songs. A classically trained pianist she fell in love with the guitar in her teens and ended up venturing into the folk scene of New York City when it was ripe and bustling with talent on every street corner, in every club. She loved those times as a young singer-songwriter but her music would eventually take her to superstardom via a couple of songs that shot to the moon: Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” Stephen Sondheim’s “Send In The Clowns” and Stephen Stills’ love song he wrote to get her back after their breakup, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” Even for the hardest rock listener, at least one of these songs is familiar to your ears.
She may sound like an angel but Ms. Collins’s life has been anything but perfect. She’s had failed relationships, was an alcoholic and bulimic, lost a child to suicide, and made albums that didn’t live up to their expectations. But she has kept her faith, her spirit, and her unshakable positivity throughout everything and come out in her eighties still as beautiful, inside and out, as she ever was. And her latest album is the proof in the pudding.
Spellbound is twelve songs of sweet melodies that give her voice an elegant platform. In our recent interview, she talked about a few of them but you can listen to her tell fuller stories via her social media. The title track was written in Hawaii during the pandemic; “So Alive” was about “all the magic” she found when she arrived in Greenwich Village in the early sixties; “Grand Canyon” is about her days running a lodge with her first husband; and “Gilded Rooms” remembers her times spent with songwriters absorbing their essence and fire.
For those into music with more rock & roll in its beat, it’s Ms. Collins’ relationship with Stephen Stills that instantly comes to mind. They dated for a short time after meeting in Los Angeles before he played on her record, Who Knows Where The Time Goes, her seventh album. “It was a clear night in Laurel Canyon. Stars floated in a black sky as I drove west over the twisting roads from my rental on Mulholland Drive. I could feel a shimmer of promise in the air,” she reminisced in her memoir, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music. “His eyes found mine and we gazed at each other, transfixed. I knew then that he would change my life.” Despite parting ways as lovers, they continued on as friends, even rekindling their musical partnership for a tour in 2016/2017.
Although our interview was brief, having an opportunity to talk to an icon of Ms. Collins’ status was such an honor. We chatted about songs, songwriting, the continued allure of Colorado, and her plans for the new year ahead.
So many of your songs are so enchanting that I never suspected you to have been a longtime New York City gal. How did that city not taint you?
I don’t know (laughs). I love New York. I’ve lived here for about sixty years now and I love it and I’m happy here. I travel a lot so that helps (laughs). I think I have a life that’s very exciting.
When you went there in the early sixties, was it easy to integrate into that folk scene?
Oh yes, it was amazing and it was just what I needed. I came here for the first time, I think, when I was about fifteen or sixteen. But I fell right in with the folk music scene and played all the clubs and I had a wonderful time. I played a lot at a place called Gerde’s Folk City and I played The Bottom Line. I really enjoyed my time in New York City, and always have. And I’ve gone from the little folk clubs to playing Carnegie Hall to playing The Town Hall to playing Lincoln Center. So I’ve done many things in New York City. I even worked at the Carlyle many, many times over the years.
And now here you are, you’re on your 29th album, Spellbound, which you released earlier this year, and you’re touring. So the inspiration and creativity must be really sparking for you right now.
Yes, it is and it’s an interesting time. A lot is happening and my writing is giving me a lot of pleasure, and I hope to give other people a lot of pleasure. So it’s a very good time.
You started writing Spellbound a few years ago, is that correct?
Yes, I started writing it in about 2016 or 2017. Then over the course of the next few years, with the pandemic interfering, I finished it and did the studio recordings that were necessary, and then we finished it up and it was ready to go in February of this year.
Do you remember which one of those songs came to you first?
I think it was a song called “Arizona.” I recorded that, I think, at the end of 2019, but I started performing it before I recorded it. People would ask, “Oh, where can I get that?” (laughs) But it wasn’t out yet, of course.
Your life is in all of these songs, especially Colorado. Why does that place still call to you so much?
Well, I was raised there and I’ve spent a good deal of my life hiking, skiing, and hanging out in the mountains. I do love Colorado. It has a spell over me (laughs).
You sing about your childhood in “When I Was A Girl In Colorado.” Those memories sound so fresh.
Yes, they are and they seem very fresh today to me. And that’s the amazing thing about art, you know. The music can bring you back to something so striking and so immediate that you think you’re there.
“Shipwrecked Mariner” is such a timeless song. Can you tell us about that one?
I don’t know anything about that song (laughs). It came to me. I heard the phrase shipwrecked mariner so that’s what caught my ear and I didn’t know where to go with it. So I sat down at the piano and it began to happen. It became a kind of lovelorn song but I don’t know where it came from (laughs). That was one of those surprises that you get when you’re writing and you hook into that. You hook into whatever comes first, whether it’s a memory or a feeling and when you get the first line, you’re off to the races.
Is it mostly like poetry to you?
I suppose so, although lyrics are different than poems and you have to sort it out. If you have a poem to start with, you have to kind of wring it’s neck and turn it into a lyric (laughs).
I’d like to ask you about a few of your older songs. Your interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird On The Wire” you take to this borderline boogie woogie country song place. What made you think to go in this direction?
I was recording the album Who Knows Where The Time Goes and it was the band, it was Stephen Stills playing and there were two wonderful players from Nashville – Buddy Emmons and James Burton – and between Buddy and James and Stephen, they put me on that track of the kind of country rock, I guess it would be, that I used in the approach to that song after that.
Speaking of Stephen Stills, you two were only together a short time yet he wrote that classic song about you. In turn, what did you pick up from him that is maybe still with you today in terms of being an artist?
Well, probably a sense of songwriting and a sense of style that’s a little different than mine. He’s been an inspiration for me for a long time. I love his work so I listen to him a lot and he just kind of gets me over the top. We had a big tour together in 2016 and 2017. We did 115 shows in a year and a half and it was very exciting, going all over the country, and we didn’t miss a show, so that was good (laughs).
“12 Gates To The City” is an old traditional that we associate with the Reverend Gary Davis. Was this your choice to go on that album?
Oh yes. I love the song and I always have the last word on everything that I do. I was living in the Village and I heard it and I heard the Reverend sing it. A lot of people were singing it and I just picked it up and loved it. And Fred Neil was another one and he was a very interesting influence on me as well. I recorded one of his songs, “Tear Down The Walls.” It was a different kind of song and it leans toward the kind of thing the Reverend Gary Davis was doing and it had a kind of gospel feel to it as well. And I was very attracted to that.
“Kingdom Come,” which you wrote after 9-11, is a very powerful song and there is a very real story behind it.
Oh yes. It was April, seven months since 9-11 – in fact, that is the opening line – and I went to a gathering of firefighters. I was invited to come by and that’s when I heard that 343 firefighters had died on 9-11. I live on the Upper West Side in New York and I’m about 90 feet away from the Firefighters Memorial and it’s very, very beautiful. Just the other day, every year on the 12th of October, about 10,000 firefighters come to this area and come to this memorial and they have a ceremony. They place wreaths and they have prayers for the firefighters who have died in the past year, and there are always a few; of course that year there were 343. In any case, the party that we were invited to was so spectacularly moving, it was hard to get through, and I say in the song about Chris Bodi playing and it was just very moving and I started writing that song right away.
Did you write “Me & My Uncle” with Papa John Phillips?
I didn’t write it but I heard it. He and I were friends and had been for years, and one night at a party he sang that song and I learned it. Then when I recorded it, he called me up and he said, “Where did you get that? Did I write that?” (laughs) And I said, “Yeah, you wrote it.” (laughs) He’d forgotten about it. It’s such a fun song.
You trained as a classical pianist. When did you fall in love with the guitar?
When I was fifteen. I was fifteen when I got the bug and decided to play the guitar instead of the piano. That was a big moment for me. I started playing “The Gypsy Rover” and that was the song that got me hooked.
Do you remember the first Bob Dylan song you performed?
Yes, it was called “Fare Thee Well” and the other one was “Masters Of War.” I recorded both of those right after he wrote them in 1961 or 1962 and they were on my 1963 album [Judy Collins 3] so it was very early.
This was during the Vietnam War. Did that make “Masters Of War” more poignant for you?
Oh yes, it was always poignant and I still sing it today in concert.
We recently lost Loretta Lynn. What do you think was her greatest gift to music for you?
That’s a good question. She was a great storyteller and she wrote beautifully about her personal stories and I think that was really very powerful for me. She would sing about all kinds of things. She was quite the artist and an amazing woman.
So what is the rest of your year looking like?
Oh it’s full of shows (laughs) It’s a huge year coming up and I’m really excited about that.
Are you writing some more?
Oh yes, always, always writing, absolutely.
Portrait by Shervin Lainez
