Judy Collins takes us on a captivating retrospective of her music. From her formative years rooted in Colorado’s landscapes to an unforgettable moment of witnessing Bob Dylan penning Mr Tambourine Man, Judy shares intimate insights in this new interview with Jason Barnard. She describes her bond with Leonard Cohen, what inspired some of her greatest songs including those from her latest album Spellbound, many of which will feature on her forthcoming UK tour.
You’ve just played the Cambridge Folk Festival over here in the UK and you’re coming back over here in September. How will the set list and the music you’ll be doing compare between the two? Was Cambridge more of an abridged version of what you’ll be doing?
Well, it’s interesting because at Cambridge I performed the material from my 1967 album Wildflowers, and so it’ll be very different. I don’t think I’m doing Wildflowers at the Barbican. No. So I’ll be doing the whole range from Send in the Clowns, which we didn’t get to that the other night because we were cut short by the timetable. And so it’ll be a whole fresh bunch of songs, brand new songs, songs that I have written in my most recent album, Spellbound. I did Amazing Grace, but actually the audience sang Amazing Grace as I was leaving the stage in Cambridge because we had to scramble so the next act could get on board. And so maybe I’ll do The Blizzard. I’ll certainly do Spellbound from that album, In My Life, probably all kinds of hits. So it’ll be an extensive Judy Collins tour.
I wanted to ask you about some of your material from your most recent album, Spellbound, given you mentioned it. Arizona, for example, that’s a song that seems to dig back over 60 years ago, doesn’t it?
It does. I wrote it, of course, recently. But I’ve been working on that song for a long time. It’s really just a story that came out of my 1962 trip to Arizona. I was singing at a little club in Tucson called the Ash Alley. I was very sick. I didn’t realise I was sick, but my lungs were gurgling. And I went and did my show at the Ash Alley. And the kids who were running the show, they were kids, they were my age. I was 23 and they must have been 24, 25. But they were interns at the Tucson Clinic and they worked for a doctor who was a lung specialist. And when they heard me that night, they said, “Tomorrow we’re going to take you over to the doctor at the clinic, at the Tucson Clinic and have him look at you, look you over”. So he looked me over and he said, “My dear, you’re not going anywhere. You have tuberculosis.” And it was at that point that I was in quarantine in this gorgeous hospital in Tucson. And I looked out of the window, out of the screens at these magnificent colours and shapes and shadows and purple and orange and red. I was just spellbound by this view of Tucson. I’m a Colorado girl, so I was used to mountains and snow and the Rockies but I hadn’t seen these incredible, delicate colours. And also it transformed me. I was there for a month and a half and then I went to Colorado for more times because it takes you a while to recuperate from tuberculosis.
And on that album you’ve also got When I Was A Girl In Colorado. So, again, that’s a song that reaches back to your memories, back many years ago.
It is. And it was probably the last song that I wrote for that album. And it just came very quickly. Sometimes they’ll do that. They just pop into your mind. It reminded me of when I was 27 and I met Leonard Cohen. He came to see me in 1966 to play me his songs, and he said, “I don’t understand why you’re not writing your own songs.” And so I sat down and wrote, Since You’ve Asked, in about 40 minutes. And that’s what happened with A Girl From Colorado. I sat down and it all came in a flood in about 40 minutes. And it just tells the story of when I was a girl, how many wonderful things happened in Colorado.
The Blizzard, I think that’s a bonus track on your new album on some versions.
Yes.
But that’s a song that was done about 30 years ago, isn’t it, originally?
Oh, boy. Yeah, it was done in 89 and it was on an album called Fires of Eden, which actually was on Sony. And Sony has a habit. For instance, when Leonard Cohen made the album in 1986 that included Hallelujah, Sony and the people that ran Sony at that point did not like Hallelujah and they didn’t put it out, they sent it overseas. And that’s what they did with Fires of Eden. They didn’t put it out in the States, they sent it overseas. So you all heard, The Blizzard, before the people in this country did.
And it’s worth asking about your roots. I’ve heard you before sing Gypsy Rover, an Irish folk tune. So in terms of some of the songs that really influenced you in your early years, you go back to some of those more folk standards, don’t you?
I do, in fact, quite often will sing Maid Of Constant Sorrow just with the guitar, my wonderful guitar player, Thad DeBrock. And it’s very intriguing to do that, to go back to those original songs. And, of course, throughout the show I’m doing songs from what, 60 years? 64 years, actually, of working, producing songs, producing albums, touring the world. [laughs] So it’s an exciting adventure for me. And I would say I never intentionally do the same set twice because what I’m after is something that satisfies me as well as the audience. And so I tool carefully the sequence of songs that I do primarily because when I put different songs together and they rub up in a certain way, it will remind me of stories that I might not have ever told on stage. And that’s part of the magic of what happens in a live show in that there’s a lot going on emotionally, intellectually, physically, spiritually. And I think the audience gets involved in that. People love stories. I mean, after all, I don’t think any of us would be on the planet anymore if we didn’t have stories to tell. And sometimes we draw them with pictures, sometimes we write them with poetry, sometimes we paint them, sometimes we sing them.
It’s amazing that even in the period before you started writing songs you had an amazing knack to be able to spot talent or spot things wonderful in other songs or songwriters. In some of those early albums you’ve got songs by Bob Dylan like Masters of War. Certainly in that Dylan aspect was that through Roger McGuinn?
No, that was me. I was recording Dylan shortly after he wrote Masters of War. I recorded that and of course, I recorded Tambourine Man myself in 1963. I was at a party at Al Grossman’s house in Woodstock. And it was a party where Dylan was and Susie Rotolo and other people that I knew. And at night I was sleeping or passed out, what everyone did in those years. And I was upstairs on the third floor and I heard this voice coming up the stairs and it was Dylan writing Tambourine Man. So I got my robe on, I went downstairs and I sat for 2 hours in front of this blue door behind which Dylan was writing Tambourine Man.
So it was an exciting time and of course, I was around all these singers and songwriters. Tom Paxton, I lived in the Village, so people would walk down the street and sing me songs and say, do you want to record this? I was in New York when Leonard Cohen came to see me and play me his new songs. And of course, I always say he came to see me because I had already recorded Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Dylan. And I think that Leonard thought, well, she’s the girl who records other people’s songs. And also, who would he play his songs for that wouldn’t sing them? I mean, certainly Dylan wouldn’t and Tom Paxton, wouldn’t probably. David Blue, Phil Ochs, Eric Anderson. They weren’t going to necessarily sing Leonard Cohen songs because they had their own. Whereas I had never written a song in my life, I always recorded other people’s songs at the age of 27. But after I met Leonard and he said to me, why aren’t you writing your own songs? And I started and I’ve never stopped. So thank goodness for Leonard Cohen. And he always says, thank goodness for Judy Collins. So it’s a very nice equal parts story.
And you mentioned before that it was Leonard who really drove you to write your first song Since You Asked.
Yes, he asked me the question. Well, it wasn’t a question. He said, “I just don’t understand why you’re not writing your own songs.” And I ran home to my Steinway piano, which is still sitting in my studio here, in which I’ve written all my songs on really, I think, almost. Well, I wrote Mountain Girl in Colorado, but very seldom have I written songs outside of my studio on that same Steinway.
He paid you one of the ultimate compliments by reciting Since You Asked in poem form and recording it.
That was spectacular. When I think about that album now, this was called Born to the Breed, and I think it came out 20 years ago, and Dolly Parton sang on it. Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez. Rufus Wainwright sang Albatross, probably my third song that I wrote, which I always dedicate to Joan Baez. A lot of people sang on that album, the Webb Sisters, who sang a song of mine called Fortune of Soldiers, and they were the singers backing Leonard Cohen. They’re English and their parents have a salon which sells shampoo and things like that. And they were singing and backing up Leonard when I discovered them.
The orchestration on your original version of Albatross off your album Wildflowers is amazing. Were you very open to orchestration and strings and woodwind on your music in that period?
Well, in that period I was, of course, recording for Elektra and Josh Rifkin, who was a classical composer and producer of albums for Nonesuch, which was the label that Jack Holzman started in order to satisfy his needs in other musical directions. I got to know Josh very well. We did In My Life together, and he did all the orchestrations and we recorded In My Life, and also the first of Leonard Cohen’s songs in 66. Then in 67, Josh did all the orchestras on Wildflowers, the album that I’m now doing with orchestras. It was reconvened and I started up this year. So I’ve done about, I think, about 35 to 40 of those shows, sometimes with a full orchestra, sometimes 67 pieces, 57 pieces, sometimes a string quartet. It’s amazing the way those orchestrations hold up. He just did a beautiful job.
And you’re also very well known for recording the hit version of Both Sides Now. When did you first hear Joni’s version of that?
I heard it in the middle of the night in 1967, after I had met Leonard and started writing my own songs. And I was sound asleep. It was three in the morning and the phone rang and it was Al Kooper, who was a friend of mine, and he knew my phone number and he called me and he was sitting with Joni Mitchell and she was singing him songs, and he said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute! I have to call Judy and you have to sing her Both Sides Now“, which is what happened. And I am told that Joni is not too happy that I got the first hit with Both Sides Now, but look, that’s only her luck. [laughs] Isn’t it fortunate that I did record it and make it a hit? I mean, I think anybody who’s a singer songwriter would be thrilled if that happened. Not so much! [laughs]
To bring us more up to date in recent years and newer material. Dreamers is a wonderful song of yours, and that’s about the plight of migrants, isn’t it?
Absolutely. I sing acapella. I should start doing it again. I might sing it in England. All of us have, every country in the world has this issue. I say, what do they do about it? How do they handle it? Whatever goes on between the government and the immigrant population is difficult. Sometimes it’s tawdry, sometimes it’s overwhelmingly generous, sometimes it’s easy. But it’s always an issue. And it’s because of climate change, it’s because of governments which turn into dictatorships instead of friendly to the population. There are all kinds of issues and they all impact dreamers, it’s true.
The final song I wanted to close with is a Song for Sarajevo, I Dream of Peace. What was the background behind writing that song? That’s up there in terms of being one of the best ones.
Thank you. [sings] Blood in all the streets running like a flood. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere that I can go [stops singing] and then it’s just a holy day in Sarajevo. I was a UNICEF representative for a little while and I went to the former Yugoslavia. And I also was asked by the head of UNICEF to write a song around the book that was created by the children of Sarajevo and of the former Yugoslavia who were affected by landmines, and many of them writing in hospitals and dire situations. UNICEF had an art program to help these children get through their trauma, and. I was asked by the head of UNICEF if I would write a song. This was a Friday afternoon in 1994, when the war was going on in the former Yugoslavia, and he said, “I’d like you to write a song about this”. And a producer and spokesperson who was on CBS was going to interview me on Monday, and he said, I’d like you to write this song over the weekend. And so I wrote Song for Sarajevo and I sang it. I had to look at the words of course, and in those days I wasn’t wearing glasses, but I was losing my ability to read text, so I had to hold it over like this. And then, of course, I went to the former Yugoslavia and I sang the song in many of the places where these children were and recorded it shortly after. And I’m glad you mentioned it because it’s a very interesting challenge to write about in the case of dreamers, in the case of Song for Sarajevo, about the situations around us. And it’s very challenging to do that. But it’s part of the writing journey. I truly believe.
That’s fantastic. Judy, thank you so much for your time. I wish you all the best with your UK tour, which starts on the 28 September and is in six venues across England and Scotland. It’s been an honour. Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. God bless. Take good care. Have a wonderful day, Jason.
Further information
Judy Collins Strange Brew Podcast
Judy Collins – Spellbound 2023 UK Tour between 28 September 2023 and 10 October 2023
