Judy Collins

by Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music

  And while we made music, we were safe in this magical place. The Elektra compound seemed to have sprung full-blown from what had been a vacant lot only a couple of years before. Now it shone brilliantly between the vintage clothing shops in Beverly Hills along La Cienega Boulevard. Just up the hill was Sunset Boulevard, home to Barney’s Beanery, a bar and pizza joint where the pictures and memorabilia covering the walls seemed to hold the place together. There was a sign that said “Faggots Stay Out.” People were always trying to pull it off the walls, and the offending sign was finally torn down in 1984. A lot of artists and musicians hung out at Barney’s—from Clara Bow, Judy Garland, and Errol Flynn in their day to Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Charles Bukowski in ours.

  One week I ran into Tiny Tim in the lobby of the Landmark Hotel. Tiny was famous for his version of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” which had become hugely successful in spite of the fact that it was an odd version of a hackneyed standard sung by a guy with a high, falsetto voice strumming a ukulele. He had become a regular on television variety shows with his long curling hair, his tall, stooped figure, and thin, haunted face. He had recently been married in a bizarre ceremony on The Tonight Show to Miss Vicki. I suggested that since we were both staying there, we should meet at the Landmark pool some afternoon and “hang out.” He looked down at me and declared in his high, haughty tone, “Hang? I never hang!”

  Perhaps I could have put it differently, but it was certainly fun to hang out at clubs, like the Ash Grove, where Mississippi John Hurt might be on the bill with John Jacob Niles, the clear-voiced troubadour, or Kris Kristofferson might be performing with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. The Troubadour was another legendary club where many artists and entertainers of the era would launch their careers. Over the years Lenny Bruce, the Byrds, Bill Cosby, the Committee, Bo Diddley, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Gordon Lightfoot, Steve Martin, Roger Miller, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Mort Sahl, Kris Kristofferson, and Nina Simone appeared there. You could always find a friend in the audience; many of us showed up regularly to watch, to listen, and to learn from one another. After the shows, we would often wind up eating dinner and drinking at the Italian restaurant next door, where the veal rollatini was mouthwatering and the martinis were the size of birdbaths.

  At Lawry’s steakhouse, you might find Big Brother and the Holding Company having a midnight meal after a concert at the Greek, the six-thousand-seat amphitheater in Griffith Park. A few rock-and-rollers might wind up at Hamburger Hamlet, Sambo’s, or maybe the Captain’s Table on La Cienega.

  Janis Joplin was in her heyday and by then had added heroin to her diet of Southern Comfort. She made a profound impression on the world, and on me. At the Monterey Pop Festival, where we had first met, I stood backstage as the lights swirled around Janis. Her voice was big and raw, hanging over the festival like the moon. By the end of the night, everyone was courting Janis. Her first big album on Columbia was released late that year, and everything seemed to be finally coming together for her. D. A. Pennebaker made a documentary of the Monterey Pop Festival, and Albert Grossman (now managing practically everyone in the business, I thought, except me) had become Janis’ manager. She was on cloud nine, in more ways than one.

  Heroin was cutting a swath through the music community by then, and Jimi Hendrix was using smack openly, as were Tim Buckley and James Taylor. Janis was certainly not going to be left out of the fun, and by the time of our second meeting at the Troubadour, she was hooked. Al Grossman hated drugs. He told me that when he found out about Janis’ heroin use, he took out a $100,000 insurance policy on her life—a fortune in those days. Leonard Cohen, who had an affair with her, captured a sense of her yearning and desperation in “Chelsea Hotel #2.”

  I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,

  You were talking so brave and so sweet,

  Giving me head on the unmade bed,

  While the limousines wait in the street.

  Clark, then nine, spent a few weeks with me that summer in L.A. He played a little guitar and loved being in the studio, harmonizing with me in his sweet voice, hovering around John Haeny during the mixes, and learning his way around. Clark got along well with Stephen, who taught him a few licks on the drums. The two of them even organized the recording of Clark’s song “I’m Flying.”

  “I’m Flying” consisted of Clark’s repeating of the phrase over and over, followed by a second line, “Don’t you know, don’t you know.” John Haeny, our engineer, let the tape run for thirteen minutes, with Clark singing, Van Dyke playing piano, Joni Mitchell and me singing harmony, David Crosby somewhere in the background, Jim Gordon on one drum set, Clark on the other, and Stephen on guitar.

  Ever the obsessive, John Haeny would pull out a copy he had kept for forty-three years and hand it over to me on a trip I made to Hobart, Australia, where he was living, in 2011.

  The image of Clark’s little face turned up to Stephen’s as they made music will always be with me.

  AFTER our recording sessions, Stephen and I made love at his apartment not far from the Malibu beach. While the candles burned, we explored each other’s hands and then each other’s throats and then each other’s hearts. We told each other our dreams and let our passions consume us. I felt safe in Stephen’s arms, saved. The anxiety that I usually treated with alcohol was tossed overboard like so much ballast. It was a passionate and lovely love affair.

  When Stephen and I had a day off in those early weeks of our romance, we might make love somewhere, my place or his, and then go house hunting—in Malibu, in Laurel Canyon—thinking that one day, perhaps, we would move in together. We would find a beach and gaze at the great Pacific Ocean, basking, dreaming, and planning. On the way back to L.A., Stephen would drive, holding my hand, going too fast, as I sat with my heart in my mouth. But I don’t think I ever told him to slow down! We talked about everything: our futures, our love of music, how we would change the world, stop the war, make a difference.

  One day we were shown some properties by a beautiful, articulate, deeply tanned real estate agent. While she failed to find a house that we really liked, she decided on a different tack and taught us a mantra that she said would heal our lives and bring us wealth and abundance, joy and happiness. It was Chinese, she said, Buddhist.

  “Repeat after me,” she said. “Nam myoho renge kyo.”

  We repeated, over and over, “Nam myoho renge kyo.”

  I repeated the chant while the ocean rolled by and killer whales breached the surface. I said it over and over when things were really good with Stephen and me: “Nam myoho renge kyo.”

  I learned that “Nam myoho renge kyo” is a Buddhist prayer, or sutra, said to contain the ultimate wisdom. It was created in the thirteenth century by a monk who saw in the prayer a path to spiritual peace.

  Stephen and I never settled on a house on the beach that we wanted to buy, but we hoped that if we said the mantra enough times, it might bring us that peace that was promised and help our romance last. We were both in need of peace—me to survive my drinking, and both of us to endure the pace of our fast-moving careers, which would exact a toll on our lives. I found that prayers of some kind for inner and outer peace would have to be renewed every day, every year.

  “Nam myoho renge kyo,” I chanted, while the whales leapt and the sun shone and then it rained. I knew there was something to that chant.

  I still do.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Hello, Hooray!

  Hello, hooray, let the songs begin, I’m ready.

  —ROLF KEMPF, “Hello, Hooray”

  THE title song for Who Knows Where the Time Goes was written by the great Sandy Denny, the lead singer for Fairport Convention, an English group that was coming on strong. I first heard Sandy sing “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” on a little tape player in David Anderle’s office at Elektra. She had a brilliantly clear soprano, and when she auditioned for the Fairport Convention, the leader of the group said, “It was a one-horse race really �
�� she stood out like a clean glass in a sink full of dirty dishes.” I often weep when I hear the song, for this great singer died so young, when she was only thirty-one, after a fall down the stairs at a party in London on April 21, 1978.

  Across the morning sky, all the birds are leaving

  Ah, ow can they know it’s time for them to go?

  Stephen’s sweet guitar work behind the title track pulls back the curtain on its tragic beauty, reminding me of what we’ve lost.

  After Leonard Cohen challenged me to start writing my own material I visited Bruce Langhorne, the great guitarist with whom I had traveled the country and whose opinion I valued. I showed him my book of dreams and dark poems. He gave me a plan: go home and write five songs about a relationship—the beginning, the middle, two more, and then the end. I did just that, beginning with “Since You Asked.” The fourth song that I wrote was “My Father,” which I added to Who Knows Where the Time Goes. I love the descending line that Stephen played behind the opening chords, although to this day I still chuckle and shake my head over it, because when he first played it I said, “That is not right!” Stephen just smiled and said, “You’ll see, after a while, that it’s perfect!” The great Van Dyke Parks played piano on that recording, and he played like an angel. Two more cuts, “The Story of Isaac” and “Bird on a Wire,” were written by Leonard Cohen. I can seldom resist Leonard’s songs. Many of his most successful works—“Joan of Arc,” “Priests,” “Bernadette”—begin with familiar stories, which he elevates to the realm of poetry and theater. In “The Story of Isaac,” he uses vivid imagery and a soaring melody to add weight and depth to a scene from the Bible.

  The door it opened slowly

  And my father he came in,

  I was nine years old.

  Leonard never failed to satisfy my hunger for great musical narratives. The same was true of Bob Dylan, whose “Poor Immigrant” I also included in this album. Two Nashville greats, Buddy Emmons on pedal steel and James Burton on guitar, joined Stephen in what turned into a magical string trio.

  The record also included “First Boy I Loved,” by the Incredible String Band, and “Hello, Hooray,” by Rolf Kempf. Rolf had sent a tape of this strange, mysterious song to David Anderle at Elektra, and I fell in love with it the moment I heard it. I included one traditional song, “Pretty Polly,” about the cold-blooded murder of a young woman, a classic song of the silver dagger variety, powerful and frightening. I have always been attracted to such songs because they speak to the appalling violence that has been perpetrated against women for so long.

  Our record was coming together nicely, but it wasn’t quite done. I had to return east in late June to take Clark to camp and to do some concerts. I also had one task that I was dreading: I had to break the news to Michael Thomas that I was in love with someone else. It was an emotional scene and though Michael was hurt and angry, he was as good as could be expected. We spent a night of relatively low-drama tears and tenderness. He had been good for me; he was clever and funny and had a wonderful sense of humor and a way with words. Before I met Stephen, he and I had been very happy together, physically and emotionally.

  But falling in love with Stephen was like riding the Cyclone roller coaster for the first time: the wind blew past your face and your hair was in your eyes and you could hardly breathe for the speed and the terror and the thrill. How could I explain Stephen? What was I thinking? I didn’t really know how to communicate what had happened to me, but I managed to tell Michael that he had to move out of my apartment and find a place of his own in New York.

  “I always knew I hated L.A.,” Michael said on that painful night. “Now I know why.”

  I RETURNED to L.A. as quickly as I could.

  One evening, as Stephen and I were driving back from Malibu and the setting light streamed over our sunburned bodies through the windows of the Bentley, we started talking about the rest of the sessions and the progress we had made on Who Knows Where the Time Goes.

  “I think we need one more song,” Stephen said. “What about ‘Someday Soon’?”

  The song was perfect for me, a Colorado girl at heart, and as soon as he mentioned the title, Ian and Sylvia’s gorgeous creation came spilling out of me. I remembered all the lyrics, and we hit the freeway singing together in harmony. We kept on singing as we got to Stephen’s place, where we stripped and showered and rinsed off the sand, still singing!

  The next day we recorded “Someday Soon.” Stephen’s playing on this song made my heart leap; the sound seemed to move through his fingers along the neck of the instrument and into the center of my being. He added touches to the guitar part that made it step into its own boots and Stetson and tell the romantic tale of a cowboy stealing the heart of a girl.

  Ian and Sylvia Tyson, who wrote “Someday Soon,” were Canadians. In the early sixties I got to know them in Toronto and in New York, where they often sang. Sometimes I would spell them at clubs and festivals around the country, doing a set after theirs or opening for them on some stage.

  I have always had a soft spot for Canadian writers. There is something expansive and yet intimate about their songs, broad as the northwestern plains and as comfortable as having a cup of coffee out on a pinewood porch with a friend. From Ed McCurdy to Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen, from Joni Mitchell to Ian and Sylvia Tyson, hearing their songs is hearing the truth. And, as the man says, “when you’ve heard the truth, the rest is just cheap whiskey.”

  To this day, when I sing “Someday Soon,” it takes me back to Colorado, and I see the lean, clear-eyed cowboys in their Stetson hats at the ranches I worked at in the mountains. I hear the music of Hank Williams playing at the beer joints on Berthoud Pass where we danced, spinning the night away. The West and dreams of life on a ranch—riding a wild pony, galloping over the landscape—were still in my bones, and in my romantic imagination.

  Now Stephen was my one and only cowboy. Loving him, singing with him, knowing that his sweet, solid guitar was there, supporting my voice, I felt like all my wishes were coming true.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Helplessly Hoping

  I am yours, you are mine,

  You are what you are

  You make it hard

  —STEPHEN STILLS, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”

  IN July 1968, while I was back in New York, Cass Elliot had a party in L.A., where David Crosby renewed an earlier friendship with Graham Nash, a singer with the English rock trio the Hollies. At some point in the evening Stephen showed up. In the creative brew that seemed always to be simmering in the canyons of Los Angeles, David, Stephen, and Graham sang together for the first time at that party, and the magic, Cass told me later, was tangible.

  David and Stephen began lobbying hard for Graham to leave the Hollies, as well as his recording contract with Epic. By the end of the summer, Graham was in. He relocated to L.A., and the trio Crosby, Stills and Nash would begin its spectacular rise. Graham Nash brought a great deal more than the brilliant voice that filled in the high end of the trio’s harmonies. His calmness and his quiet wisdom proved invaluable over the years to come.

  Meantime, I myself did not want to pack up and move to L.A., and therein, I think, lay the seeds of trouble in my affair with Stephen. On the surface, things appeared to be barreling ahead full steam, but, as in a beautiful old house bought on an impulse, the cracks began to show. New York had been my home for six years when Stephen and I met. If my heart sometimes still longed for Colorado and the grandeur of the Rockies, I had found my true place among the skyscrapers, hustle and bustle, dirt, noise, and frenzy of the Big Apple.

  By now I was playing concerts all over the world, and when I wasn’t on the road singing, I was either fine-tuning a record in the studio, as I was doing now in Los Angeles, or planning the next album. I would return to New York at the end of every tour, every weekend of shows, to my son, to my cats, my manager, my therapist, my singing teacher, my friends, and now, not to Michael.

  And there wer
e the Sullivanians to contend with, always opposed to steady relationships, always encouraging free love and open marriage. I was seeing Julie Schneider now, after seven years with Ralph. It would not be until I was well out of the camp of my therapists that I had some idea of what had happened to me.

  One day I mentioned to Stephen that I was going home to New York and would be talking to my therapist about us, about me, about everything.

  “I hate shrinks like I hate bad gas in my car,” Stephen said in an angry voice, “and I hate New York!” He stalked into the bathroom and turned on the light. In the coming weeks we continued the argument—about New York, about my therapist, and about my moving to L.A. Of course I needed it all, and didn’t want to believe that my life in New York and all the rest could be incompatible with my romance with Stephen.

  I always felt that any difficulties Stephen and I had were my fault, but looking back, I am quite sure now that it takes two not to tango. And I was learning that the magic and passion of our romance was never going to be enough to make me want to live in L.A. Even when Elektra had moved its studios from New York to L.A., joining Columbia and Capitol and many other artists, the lure of the West Coast wasn’t enough to make me want to leave the city.

  I thought if I had to live in L.A., I would crawl into a small hole in some wall and expire—from fear, boredom, sunlight, and bad memories. Los Angeles still held the ghosts of childhood pain for me, of my parents’ unhappiness, of my mother running out of our white stucco house in west L.A. at three in the morning in her nightgown, with my drunken, blind father running after her, seeing with his uncanny radar, and dragging her back into the house, where I screamed and hurled myself into my mother’s arms, crying, “Don’t leave, don’t leave!” She never did, but the memory of those bitter nights haunted me.