Judy Collins on the moment Dylan wrote Mr Tambourine Man

In an extract from a Strange Brew Podcast interview Judy Collins describes the moment she heard Bob Dylan writing Mr Tambourine Man.

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.