Judy Collins

by Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music

  “I thought, well, if she can’t write songs, she’s pretty good-looking! I figured I could only lose a night’s sleep out of the deal,” he told me later.

  My good luck is that when they got to Joni’s place, instead of jumping into bed with him, she sang him “Both Sides Now.” Al had already been in the music business a long time, and he knew a lot of singers. It was my luck that instead of calling Janis or Buffy or Carolyn or the other Judy (Henske), he called me. He knew I was recording another album, and I was the first person on his mind. I will always be grateful that he chose to dial my number.

  After Joni sang me “Both Sides Now,” I put the phone down and wept. I had never heard a song that I felt was so beautiful, and it would change both our lives.

  The next day, this time with Jac, I heard Joni play the song again. It was still magic, and as her blond hair hung over the guitar as she sang, I wept once more, as I would when I heard many of her songs. She was a muse to me in many ways: her great beauty, the light in her eyes, the sadness I felt in her soul. We all felt that, those of us who fell in love with Joni’s music. I needed those songs, as Joan had needed Bob Dylan’s songs. Joni’s writing was magnificent, and I knew that I could sing them. I looked forward to the process, and tried to forge a relationship with this “Lady of the Canyon.”

  I thought we were friends. We saw each other in New York, and later I brought her to the Newport Festival for the first singer-songwriter concert that I put together in July of that year, which featured Joni, Leonard, Janis Ian, and Tom Paxton, when I was still on the board of the Newport Folk Festival. We laughed a lot, and I can still hear her tinkling laughter. We sometimes did things together. She came to sing on a session I did in California the following year, when my son, Clark, recorded his song “Flying, I’m Flying.” During the thirteen minutes of out-and-out rock-and-roll madness, with Van Dyke Parks playing piano, Stephen Stills on guitar, David Crosby on vocals, and John Haeny recording, Joni harmonized with Clark and me. She was an easy friend, and when I went to her home in Laurel Canyon we sat in her tree house and sang duets.

  Joni was born in 1943 in Alberta, Canada. Her father was an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Like me, she had had polio as a child; fortunately, she survived without noticeable damage. As a teenager she started playing the ukulele and the guitar, and moved to Toronto, telling her mother she was going to become a folksinger. A beautiful blonde with a wide smile, she sang in coffeehouses and basket houses in Toronto, and then became pregnant with her ex-boyfriend from the Alberta College of Art and Design. In Toronto she married Chuck Mitchell, her new beau, and began singing with him. Kilauren, Joni’s daughter, was born a few months later, and Joni gave her up for adoption several weeks after her birth. (Kilauren Gibb would begin searching for her mother in 1997, and they would be reunited.) In those years, Joni held the secret close and seldom confided about her lost child. It had to be terribly painful. Joni would pay homage to her daughter in the songs “Little Green” and “Chinese Cafe.”

  By 1967, Joni and Chuck had divorced and she was trying to make it on her own. In New York, Oscar Brand featured Joni on his radio show a number of times. Tom Rush took a shine to Joni and sang one of her songs, “Circle Game,” and he talked about Joni to everyone. Even if I hadn’t heard Joni sing, I would have heard a good deal about her fairly soon.

  When I began to sing “Both Sides Now,” I felt I had lived through the song. Joni had written a great song, perhaps one of the greatest ever written. “Both Sides Now,” as a composition, has everything: sweep and tenderness, specificity as well as breadth. It speaks to everyone who might hear it, a perfect jewel of a song.

  Jac Holzman, Mark Abramson, and everyone at Elektra felt “Both Sides Now” was going to be a hit. It might have been the first time anyone really talked about hits in all my years with Elektra, though I learned that they were always hoping that would happen. I had made and sold many records, and had already been at it long enough to track the evolution of my career, but a big commercial hit—a pop single—had never crept up the charts to the top ten. There was no question that I was going to record the song as soon as possible.

  Joni and I had spent time together in New York before she moved to Los Angeles. I remember a night at her apartment when she sang some of her other material for me. The flickering candles and light from cut glass lamps fell across our faces. I felt the pull of her talent. I thought then and think now that she is a genius, a wonderful artist whom I will always admire, creative in every medium in which she works. Joni can be touchy and sometimes distant, but all of us have complicated lives.

  At the Newport afternoon concert I arranged for “new singer-songwriters” with Leonard, Joni, Janis Ian, and others. Joni took Newport by storm. Her willowy blond good looks and her songs and stories, in which the ache of loss is so vivid and real, connected instantly with the audience.

  Joni and Leonard met for the first time at that concert and began a love affair. Still, everyone was a little off-center. I remember being in bed with a man I did not know who was coming down from an acid trip and wanted me to “comfort him,” no sex involved. Leonard sat in the room with us, singing “The Stranger Song” softly to himself, not paying any attention at all to what was happening on the bed. The Chelsea Hotel indeed! I trusted Leonard completely in very intimate situations, and although we never had an intimate exchange of that kind ourselves, he was a constant ally I could take into battle with no fear of betrayal. Joni wrote “That Song About the Midway” about Leonard, or so she says. Sounds right: the festival, the guy, the jewel in the ear.

  In the fall of 1967 in New York and L.A., we recorded Wildflowers, my seventh album, which included “Both Sides Now.” I was a veteran by that time, but this album was a new experience in many ways. Not only did we think we had a real shot at a commercial pop single, but just as important to me, the album included my first original compositions, “Since You Asked,” “Albatross,” and “Sky Fell.”

  For the cover of Wildflowers, I had some photos taken—in the nude—in the front yard of John Haeny’s house, the same little house where I would later meet Stephen Stills. They were my first nude photographs and in those days something unique. We also spent time in a field of wild daisies near John’s house and took a few indoor pictures as well. The photograph of me in my green velvet dress in a field of daisies became the cover of Wildflowers. The nudes were altogether too daring; they’re probably still at Elektra in storage somewhere, giving off heat. We never used them, but I always wonder.

  I also wonder whatever happened to the friendship I thought I had with Joni. She disappeared from my life, and in spite of my efforts to reclaim that closeness, there is still a wall I cannot fly or climb over.

  But I can say thank you. She gave me a beautiful song, and sometimes that is all one can expect—or, should I say, more than anyone has any right to expect.

  The press often referred to my “overnight success” in 1968, when “Both Sides Now” became an international hit. In reality it was years of showing up, one night at a time, one club at a time, maybe singing three shows at some place in Oklahoma, San Francisco, or Texas. That’s what it took, but it’s also true that everything came together as never before for me with “Both Sides Now”—a perfect song, a perfect arrangement, perfect timing. I had my first legitimate, ubiquitous hit single,

  The orchestra that played on “Both Sides Now” gathered at the Columbia Studio in New York, which was known for its great records. Sinatra and many other well-known singers had recorded there. We had a big string section, and Josh had asked to have a harpsichord brought in. I had not known of his idea beforehand, and when he began to play the riff on the harpsichord, I was awed and amazed. It gave a classic-rock feel to the songs, even though the instrument was usually heard in Renaissance and Baroque music. I sang with even more pleasure with the strings behind me and the rest of the orchestra producing an unusual and exciting sound. The musicians said they knew they had a hit whe
n they heard it.

  Of course, you knock wood when people talk like that, but they were exactly right. Listening to the song today, I am struck by how much I heard that first time, on the phone, how deeply the song affected me at once, and how remarkable a piece of writing it still is. A classic song has much mystery as well as mastery in its form; it sits still in the mind, throwing light on the past and the future, often bringing tears to our eyes, for it reaches into deep emotional wells that are often forgotten in the rush of the moment. The songs that touch me are on a very high level in terms of form and classic structure, and “Both Sides Now” has all of the requirements to make it irresistible. For me, it was an immediate love affair,

  With my first top-ten single on the Billboard charts, people were even beginning to answer my phone calls. The important thing about Wildflowers is that it was a romantic and daring departure—daring in that the songs were fully orchestrated. It was an artistic decision made in the heart, and the heart won. The album cast the idea of folk music and of Judy Collins in a new light. I had been working toward a fundamental breakthrough for years, and Wildflowers announced my arrival on that shore.

  In December 1967, as I was reveling in the attention Wildflowers was getting—which meant invitations to parties, contracts for many more lucrative concerts, and being besieged by requests from songwriters who wanted me to hear their new songs—I got a phone call from my ex-husband in Vancouver.

  “I guess you know that Sue and I have been talking about Clark coming to live with you.”

  You could have knocked me over with a feather.

  “We have talked about sending Clark to military school or sending him to you in New York, and you won.”

  “Put him on a plane and I’ll be there to meet him. I can’t wait,” I told his father. I immediately prepared for Clark’s arrival at the beginning of the year, wanting everything to be perfect. For weeks I felt as though I was walking on air. The long wait was over—I was going to have my boy with me, where he belonged, at last.

  Clark was barely off the plane in New York when I took him to the courthouse downtown, where I signed papers from his father that would give me sole custody. I swore to myself that I would never relinquish him again.

  In New York Clark grew his hair long, which his father and stepmother would never allow. I enrolled him in a great school, and I had already hired a housekeeper, the grand Dahlia Johnson, from Kingston, Jamaica, who previously had taken care of my son and me during those times when he was visiting me in New York.

  And now we began to work out how I could tour and be a mother at the same time. I was thrilled that we were together. The battle was over—but the war had just begun.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sky Fell

  The rain is falling down

  Along with the sky

  The colors and remembered suns

  Are pouring by.

  —JUDY COLLINS, “Sky Fell”

  ELEKTRA Records was a home for me, both comforting and inspiring. The label exposed me to artists who opened up new worlds, musically and otherwise. One night in his apartment in the West Village, Elektra’s founder, Jac Holzman, played Tim Buckley’s new album for some friends and me while we were getting stoned on Jac and Nina’s hash brownies.

  When I met Tim, his sweet air of innocence made me want to shelter him from the world—and from himself. With his tousled, matted hair and tattered denims, Tim was a gem, offering his delicate, scared smile to strangers as we strolled through Washington Square. Born on Valentine’s Day, 1947, he was destined to be a star. He was a child—a delightful, teasing playmate, with an angelic voice. But he was also a tortured soul who shot heroin at night while I was safe at home in bed after a night of Jim Beam.

  Herb Cohen, who managed Judy Henske and Jo Mapes in L.A., had heard Tim Buckley and told Jac he would be perfect for Elektra. In early spring of 1968, Jac’s wife, Nina, put on one of her famous dinner parties for Tim, whose wonderful second album, Goodbye and Hello, had been released that year, launching Tim on the road to stardom.

  I decided when I first heard Tim perform that I would get myself a Martin twelve-string and see what I could do. I loved his songs, especially “Morning Glory” with its strangeness (“Tell me stories, I call to the hobo”) and “Once I Was.” Tim’s pure, haunting voice, sometimes with the hint of a scream in it, was both electrifying and full of beauty.

  We didn’t know it was the sound of his heart breaking.

  I HAD made enough money in 1967 to give my parents a special gift—a trip to Hawaii, all expenses paid. I hoped it would raise my father’s spirits. I was imagining them, Daddy with his bare feet, shouting at the waves, reveling in the sun and the sand, my mother relaxed, at last able to have a respite from all her children and the pressures of her life.

  I thought of them in the warmth of the sun when I woke up to a cold day in New York. It was March 17, 1968, St. Patrick’s Day—and just one day after U.S. troops carried out the atrocities at My Lai in Vietnam. An hour after I got up, Phil Ochs called me on the phone.

  “Get dressed. I’m picking you up in an hour to take you to the first Yippie press conference!” He sounded very excited.

  “And top of the morning to you, too!” I answered. Clark and I were drinking green Kool-Aid and putting a shamrock in Clark’s coat pocket for the Irish songfest at his school.

  Phil was recording for A&M. His album Pleasures of the Harbor had come out in 1967 and was doing well. He had been writing and recording since 1962, and had made albums for Elektra before signing with A&M. His songs were inspired, tough, intelligent. But I knew he had been depressed of late, looking gloomy and fancying that everyone in the country was after him for his cutting compositions and his political views. Phil’s voice was a bit ragged but upbeat and excited in a way I hadn’t heard in a while.

  “We’re going to the Americana Hotel!” He said he had been on the phone for days, talking up the conference for the Youth International Party, or the Yippies, as they were known. He hung up before I could get any more information from him, but I knew about the Yippies from Nancy Bacal, Leonard Cohen’s school chum from Canada. She had been a witness to the earliest beginnings of the Yippie movement over Christmas in 1967, while I was in Colorado with my son and my family. Nancy was house-sitting my apartment in New York and dating Paul Krassner, the writer and publisher of the 1960s antiestablishment magazine The Realist, who along with Abbie Hoffman, Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Nancy Krushan founded the Yippies.

  Nancy told me how she and Paul had headed to the Village to celebrate the year’s end and found themselves at the famous Greenwich Village New Year’s Eve parade in the company of elaborately and bizarrely costumed celebrants. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were stoned on acid, running around dressed in flowered skirts and fancy masks, telling everyone how they were starting a movement that would galvanize the world.

  “Yippie! That’s what we’re going to call ourselves! The Yippies!” they were shouting, out of their minds with joy and high as kites. Nancy, Paul, and the two newly created “Yippies” danced together toward Seventh Avenue amid whirling revelers. The calendar turned from 1967 to 1968 and the war in Vietnam, begun with advisers in 1957, entered its eleventh year.

  Phil arrived at my front door that day, all aflutter, to pick me up for the Yippies’ press conference. No green, I noticed as he grabbed a homemade muffin off my kitchen table. I asked him who would be there.

  “Abbie and Paul, Nancy, Dave [Dellinger], Rennie [Davis] and Jerry [Rubin], John [Froines], Tom [Hayden], and Lee [Weiner], that’s who!” he said. “Bill Kunstler will be there, too. Our lawyer.”

  I wondered aloud why they would need a lawyer. I would learn later that it was essential.

  Fiercely political, William Kunstler was already famous for taking on the causes of radical movement groups and individuals. In his career he would defend the Berrigan brothers and the Catonsville Nine, the Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground, th
e Attica prison rioters, and the American Indian Movement. He was a passionate defender of First Amendment rights and a lovely, sweet man who would represent the Yippies from that very day.

  Phil and I took a cab to the Americana Hotel in midtown, where the Yippies had strung a rainbow of balloons and ribbons across one of the big banquet rooms.

  “Thank you for coming,” Abbie said, giving me a great hug. “You and all of us are about to make history and stop this goddamned war!”

  Abbie’s wild head of hair was wilder than usual that morning, and he had a wired energy as well. He was wearing a white shirt, à la the Maharishi, Levi’s, and a string of beads around his neck.

  Abbie was three years older than me. He called himself a political activist and saw his mission as making people realize we had to get out of Vietnam and make love and not war. I had heard him say in radio interviews on WBAI that the Yippies were going to spread banana peels in Chicago. He imagined everyone slipping around and laughing at their antics. He was famous for telling kids to lay off the drugs with needles; “the only dope you need to shoot is Richard Nixon,” he would say. Abbie was funny, always, and there was a feeling of an agitated sprite about him. He could be dark in his jokes, but they stung with wry humor. He once noted that you get ten years for possession of dope in the United States but only five for killing a kid, so he suggested that if you were caught dealing drugs, you better shoot a kid quick. Most people did not take Abbie or his form of humorous anarchy very seriously. Some people referred to the group around him as “Groucho Marxists.”

  Abbie was excited about the Yippie launch and glad to be with his cohorts, most of whom I knew from different rallies and events protesting the war. Of those in the room, I knew Phil Ochs and Dave Dellinger the best.

  Dellinger looked like a college professor, his hair cropped short. He was wearing a blue suit and a white shirt, in contrast to Abbie and the rest of the group, who were mostly in jeans. At fifty-three, he had already made difficult decisions in his life and stood up for unpopular causes.