Judy Collins

last week at a wonderful engagement in Eatontown. So I'm back on the boards and my book is full again of all those dozens and hundreds of concerts that were booked last year when we went into lockdown, and so they're all coming up now like Roses. Uh. So what do you do during lockdown? I practice the piano, I made lunch and dinner for the most part, looked for movies, had had zooms with friends and with various business enterprise.

Started my own podcast called Since You've Asked, which is coming into being I think in July July, the eight and I have interviewed a number of people that I have enjoyed being with. It's it's you know, I think you will agree. I think I'm very attracted to your podcast and to your wonderful array of exploratory talks with people. And it is kind of a way of socialize, don't you think, among other you know, I talked to my shrink and I say, listen, I'm in a bad I'm

in a bad mood. And all of a sudden, no matter what moods I start to podcast, it completely changes one. It changes your mood. It's wonderful. So it's good to be back on the wards and uh so that's what I did in the in the lockdown here in New York.

We were here, I think we have I'm I'm terribly unhappy about the losses and the deaths that we've had here, and I know you've had them there, and I have to say that we've in that in the light of that that was going on, we've had a very privileged lockdown. In fact, I've had a rest. I haven't had a rest in about sixty years, so except for being sick a couple of times. So it's been a real strange kind of a gift for me. I've worked on all my own songs which are going to come out soon

in an album, probably next year. So that's been very totalizing to me. Wow. So, uh, he's not very busy, you know, I'm busy. Okay, So what kind of movies did you watch during the lockdown? Oh? Everything you can think of the favorites. We just watched thirty episodes of Yellowstone. Now. I'm a Western girl, so I love Kevin Cosner, I love the rodeos, I love the mountains in Montana, I love the Indians. I love the fights about land and water and uh so that was a big part of it.

We watched all of a couple of big We watched The Queen. We watched What's What's the early series about King Henry the eight and the guy who played in was very sin so it was distracting for a while. We have one of our favorites, which I really recommend to everybody, is called The Night Manager, and it's I think six or eight episodes and it's a John Lacarae book of course, taken into the into the theater of television, and it is superb. I must say that was one

of our favorites. I would go back and watch. In fact, we did, I think watched that twice. We had a whole year, and then we went back and picked the highlights, and we're giving them another run. I even watched my I even watched my own movie. I can't listen to myself, so good credit for that. Let me ask you something, you so so upbeat invaluable. I'm kind of stunned. Is this your normal personality? Yes, this is me. This is me,

you know. I was born an optimist, and my sister always accuses me of taking on that that costume at all times, not taking it off very often. No, I have to be well. The first thing that you have to do as a singer. I think the practicing is initially the daily routine has to be done once a day because you're a pianist, so you have to keep

the fingers in shape. You have to keep doing your chair and doing your motort, and you have to keep writing because if you're writing poems, you might see that one or two of them come out as a sound, so sometimes they are poems and they won't fit into the lyric quality that has to be there for a song. So they then you have to eat well. You're breathing when you're singing, so that's good. That keeps your spirits up.

And I have to keep my My routine involves having to exercise at least five times a weekend, usually uh three or four miles of walking, sometimes five. So it's the exercise and I eat well. I can't eat junk. I don't Oh, we don't smoke anymore. I don't drink anymore. So what's left but to have fun. Let's go back a chapter. You say you're a Western girl. You certainly grew up in the West, but you know, having you pretty much lived in the city since then, is your

mind in the Western? Do you actually go visit the West? For years, I have visited. I've gone on ski trips, I've gone hiking ventures. I usually go to Colorado. That's the place that my heart lies, and I've and I have so such strong pull to Colorado a lot of a lot of my writing. I just wrote a new called new song called Girl from when I was a girl in Colorado, and I think it's going to actually be very strong piece in the album. I'm starting to do it in public now and a few other things.

So yes, I live in the city. I've lived in New York since nineteen sixty three when I moved here, and I've been in the same apartment here in New York for fifty years. But people associate me, Oh, I love Los Angeles. I have roots there too, certainly musical roots. And I've done a number of recordings there. And so I think the ocean and the West. Uh, the West in all its glory, has a great pulp. But I'll

tell you there's nowhere. There's nowhere like New York. Yesterday night before last, we went to Monday night, we went to an opening of a Renaissance exhibition of the Medici paintings, portraits really and the The few days before that, we went over to the met and we wandered for a number of hours through the Asian Wing, which is one of the great treasures of this city. And of course

I have friends here. I have roots here. I know all where all the good restaurants are, and some of them are still open by God, and so that's been a treat um I have. I have all kinds of friends, you know, in l A. Well, the truth is, I didn't move to Los Angeles I did work there. I had an affair there was a very important affair with Steven Stills. But I never moved there. I think I would be dead if I'd moved there. I'm too susceptible

to the rhythms there. And it was the age of drugs and overdoses, and I would have been right there in the middle of it. And I in New York. I had my therapist, I had my my lovers, and my husband now of well, my my life partner, but and my husband and my life partner of forty three years. So New York is where it's at for me. There's nothing like it. It's stimulating. My friends are not all decisions. Some of them are painters, some of them are writers.

Some of them are just weird. So you know, Colorado, Denver's in the flats and then in the mountains. Are you more of a mountain girl or do you like to see the mountains in the distance. I'm a mountain girl. I had when I was a teenager. I was living in Denver, of course, and when I was starting to have those summer jobs, I started out working at a place called Sportsland Valley guest Ranch over on the other side of birth it well, I started skiing. Of course,

my brother's skied all the time. I had to practice, so I was not up on the slopes as often as they were. So I'm not as great as skiers there, but I'm a very I'm fifty five or sixty years of skiing, and you know, it does teach you how to ski. So I'm a mountain girl and working in in the mountains, uh at at guest ranches, and then after I got out of high school and went to college for a year, had a job in Rocky Mountain National Park running running a wilderness site in the Rocky

Mountain National Park which was called Friend Lake Lodge. It was a lodge which had been in existence since nineteen ten, and when we got there, we were the first people to run it for a couple of years because nobody wanted to live there without electricity, which we didn't care. And I can live by starlight or moonlight or firelight anytime. And it was really the event of a lifetime. Really.

I had to bake pies and bread on a wood stove, and I got by the end of the summer, We're saying, you know, you really can't get a decent meal without cooking it in a was so so I'm very I very much romanticized the Rockies. Yes, things have changed. I tried to buy that place, but the government had started Operation sixty four, which was intend to move all of the commercial quotes commercial enterprises out of the National Park. So we lost that and I would have wound up

working for the parks. I was probably if I hadn't started singing songs for money. So when was lost? Time you skied? I'm a big skier in Colorado. I love I love skis, you know. I I skied pretty much every year either either Veil or Aspen or Winter Park and primarily those places. And about four or five I have I decided that I really had to give it up because I couldn't afford to have another injury, frankly because of my schedule, because I'm on the road. Because

I just couldn't do it anymore. It's too dangerous. It's a dangerous sport. And I have I have a um A replacement shoulder, I have lots of pins in my legs. And uh, I really said to myself, it's after the last big one. And I went back after the show to replacement, and I skied for a few more years. But I love it, love it, love it. But I'm not going to ski across country. It's there's no no fair comparison. And I like the speed and the wind, and I couldn't agree more. The freedom. You know. The

great thing about skiing, I'm like tennis or something. At any ability level, you can reach your limit and both enjoy it and be scared. Right exactly, So these injuries were all as results of skiing. Yes, but that's why I think so. Yes, I'd like to go back, and who knows? I may, I may, I may go back because I have a brother who's a ski instructor still at Veil, and oh yes, Dave has hung in there. You know, Dave's life consists of getting injured in the

winter and then spending the summer rehabbing. That's his life. He's in another one. They've taken one of his shoulders apart three or four times. They're giving up trying to find place, think places to put all this gear that has to go back there when he gets an injury. But he's still at it Veil and he still has has clients. I mean, he's got to be seven years younger than I I am. I thinking I made it too. So he's whatever that is, seventies something. But he also

works all the time because he's a great builder. He built about ninety of the maybe you know them, the pine Um houses in Veil in the early sixties, and then he went off to went off the tracks for one then he came back and they all they all have to keep Dave Collins on board because he knows everything, you know, he has the he's like being a national

treasure in Japan. He knows all the things to do with all the building tricks and all the things that people need to have done when they're building or rebuilding. And so he promised me that maybe next year he is going to retire, but I don't believe it, and certainly not from skiing. Okay, so you say that you're eighty two. We live in a world where every but he's lying about the rangel though now you can look

at you're so upfront. So how do you feel about aging? Well, it's a fortunate journey because you could get off anywhere along the way, and I haven't. I I like what's going on in my life a lot. I like it I am always willing to say that somebody might be right instead of wrong. So I'm open to improvement, and I think that's never ending. Learning is never ending, and

curiosity is never ending. And I live in a very interesting world which we all do challenging, certainly as challenging as the sixties world, though, I mean, nothing nothing comes up to Vietnam. Nothing does. There was a big piece in the Times, I don't know if you saw it last week about it was. It was about ten pages, well pages, uh, and about the big report that was came out in nine one about all of the lies and all of the horrible Anyway, nothing really beats Vietnam,

and frankly, we'll never get over paying for it. I said all the time as we were marching against the war, I said, you know, this is this comes with the price. This it's not just the people that are dying, both in Vietnam and our American soldiers. It's it's it's a price, and it's gonna it's gonna come to one of these days. Okay, So how is your health other than these physical injuries with h you know, the shoulder, etcetera. Perfect for a check out. Okay, So you could you can live for

another twenty years? Twenty years is what I'm counting on. Maybe I come from also a line of people who live a long time, and I have an aunt who's a hundred now, and some of my mother's aunts and uncles from uh the Bird line, in the Cope line of her family. The Birds and the Copes live a long time hundred and four hundred and five. So who knows. However, I'm getting I'm in the game for today. That's plenty for me. Well how do you feel, I mean, I'm

fourteen years younger than you and I'm experiencing it. How do you feel about your friends and people you know? Passing? I hated, I hated. I lost a couple of friends to the COVID Dynamic. Wonderful writer named Patty Bosworth was a very close friend of mine. She was one of the first to could leave. She was finishing a book on UH Paul Robeson. I'm hoping that it's coming out. I think her publishes. Her publishers said in her oh bit that she was that it was ready to roll.

I haven't seen any announcements about it. And that was a year ago that she died A little over a year ago. But of course, yeah, it's terrible. I mean, people die and the ones you don't expect to die, and you know, only the only the young die young. Okay, now, needless to say, just talking about the music business, it's completely changed from the sixties and seventies from today. And one of the big things is stars were much bigger back then. Without going into all the technology, why does

this affect your outlook? It's like, okay, you have all this visibility in the sixties and seventies and nobody has that level of visibility or do you just put your eyes forward and keep going. Well, the work is what it's all about, of course, the contact. It's interesting because during the pandemic I did too viral full fully operational shows. I went to UH September twenty three. We got in the car in our masks and we drove to We were driven to Norfolk, Virginia, where I sang to an

empty theater. It's called the Chrysler Theater, gorgeous theater. And we stayed in a hotel. There was a hilton there was full. Fully, we didn't eat any food there. We took all of our food with us, but we had a wonderful time, and I sang into this gorgeous, gorgeous theater. I don't have a problem with that. I love my audiences. But frankly, after all the years of television and recordings in recruit recording studios where you don't have an audience, and I'm a radio girl. I grew up my father

was in the radio. He had a radio show for thirty years, and so I was on the show and I listened to the show, and I was used to I'm used to singing wherever it is that I am, with or without an audience. Then I did a big town Hall show which I just signed about a hundred and fifty posters from that show, which I did here at town Hall in January, again empty theater. Well, I've

been in town Hall since nineteen sixty four. I've been singing there, and town How asked me, would I repeat some of the material that I did in nine, which involved a number of songs by Tom Paxton, Billiatt Wheeler, Bob Dylan, and so we did a repeat of a number of those things. Of course, we mixed in the current some of the current songs, but it was fantastic and of course, town Hall is a gorgeous theater with or without people in it, and it's historic, and it

sort of resonates. It gave me a chance to talk about to change, to sort of upgrade my my spield, you know my spield. I'm funny on stage. I take the time and the energy to be funny. I have done this for a long time, and to tell stories, because it came through working at the Carlisle in New York a lot and having that weekly you know, seven six or seven days, six days a week, going in

and talking while you're working. And of course I have a lot of stories having lived all this time and known a lot of people, and had a lot of lovers, and and had a lot of strange things happened to me. And so I was very comfortable. But I also went back through the history of town Hall and talked about some of the people. The people that first open town Hall in New York was the Suffragettes. They hired the theater and they started out in nineteen one. Was it

twenty one? I think so. And then everybody you can think of performed there, saying they're played in the my my teacher, Dr Brico, when I say that I watched one of my watched my movie during the lockdown. I

meant it. I made a movie which was nominated for an Academy Award in nineteen seventy five, about my teacher, Antonio Brico, and she I'm on the stage there where I had been in nineteen sixty four, almost fifty years before, and she had been on the stage during the war because she had her own orchestra in New York which played at Town Hall and at Carnegie Hall. So it was a wonderful experience, and I'll tell you it's draw It was a very successful experience, and it gave me,

referring to your idea about exposure. A lot of people have watched it, and town Halls got very excited. In fact, they made not a CD but a vinyl. So I just saw beside vinyls and and posters. I mean, can it get any better? I don't know. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. You're you know, and some of this I know from Wikipedia, as opposed to just living and knowing your career from having experienced it. So you grow up in Seattle at age four, you move right.

We moved to to Los Angeles where my dad got a job at the CBS radio station in Hollywood. And so those years from from already five to forty nine, we're in in Hollywood and in the midst of stardom, and that's where he met got got all kinds of stars that he met. But he also got um involved with people who what's the diet guru Gaylord Houser. So from then on we ate right, you know, we didn't need any white things. We didn't need any any white rice or white bread. And he was always on a

health kick, so that I'm sure that helped everybody. And then after Denver, after Seattle and then Hollywood, we moved to Denver in n Now, your father was blind. He was he was blind from the age of four, and he had I think, a stunning career and really life. He was He was brilliant, he was funny. He he read everything in Braille. He thought, if you hadn't read Moby Dick by the time you were seven, there was

something fundamentally wrong with you. And so I got rid the Russians and Ruskolnikov and and Mark Twain, and I grew up in a literate and musical household that was. There was none like it. And I played the piano from the age of about five, maybe four and a half. But let's go back at chapter how did your parents meet? Ah? They I had my mother right out her a story of her meeting my father. And and she was in Seattle. They broth in Seattle. She was one of nine kids.

She was in her early twenties, well I think she was. She was twenty two, maybe three, and she was in college. And she got on a bus to go home, and this fellow was there, she said, dressed nicely, dressed in and she noticed he sat down and began pulled out a very large book and began running his hands over at which at which point she realized he was blind. He didn't have a dog, he didn't have a cane. So there was only his appearance with the Briale book

that gave her the clue. And when she got up to get off, he got up, got up to get off, it's the same spot. And she tried to help him, you know, she said, can I give you a hand or something? And he brusquely refused that. He said, I don't need any help or something. Then it turned out that he was walking in her directions, and he was going to a club called Kenny's, which was on Queen Anne Hill, right near her parents home. And they started talking and he said, why don't you come and see me?

And they did, the family and her sisters and her best friend, Eleene. They started to go to Kenny's to hear daddy play the piano and say. My father had a gorgeous voice, and he sang all the Rodgers and heart wonderful hits of the day. And he said to her, now, I'm having my radio debut next Saturday night, so I hope that you and your friends and your family will listen. So Eileen and she and Aline, her best friend, sat down in front of the old Pine Emerson Walnut radio.

You know, the huge thing that you should fill up, Yeah, the console. And in the middle of this performance that my father did, he was singing, U been so long since yo, you went away. I think about you every day. My body, my body remember it. Your buddy misses you. And my my mother is in tears. And Aline said, what is wrong with you? And my mother said, that's

the man I'm going to marry, and she did. She went home and told her parents, I think she told her parents before she told my father, and so, so then you, uh, you start to take piano lessons. Do you like playing the piano? Do you practice? I practice all the time. I have to. I practice as I once asked my mother if she had to force me to to play, to practice, and she said no, I had to remind you to wash your hands. Because I was also a tomboy. I mean I was out in

it all the time, you know. I was always a running around town. Okay, And when did you start to be singing? I sang right away, I have. My first performance was in Butte, Montana. My dad was a big hit on the radio, and when he lost he lost his job on on the on the Seattle radio station, but immediately was out on the road with something called National School Assemblies, which was something devised by f dr Um to accommodate music Asians and communities which needed entertainment,

and so it was a whole big deal. It was something that operated all over the country. But he was doing the north western route and so I was in the car in the big Buick which my father named Claudia. From the age of two and a half or so and three and we would drive every place and we wound up. I mean, the Northwest goes only so far, but we wound up in Butte, Montana. And one night he was singing and we came to the intermission and

he said, do you want to sing something? Because I was already singing, he would play the piano for me and I would sing. So I said sure. I was very excited and I've never been asked to do that before. And I said, so what should I sing? And he said, well, you should sing something, you know, which is always a good idea. So I sang I'll be I'll be hung for Christmas. You can count on me. And of course it was a big hit. And it was also April, but that was the first of my performances and about

three maybe, yeah, close to three. So you're in school. You go to regular public school? Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh the best public schools, by the way, I did go to them. Were you known as the singer? Did people say, oh that to Judy, she's the singer. Yes, oh yes, I sang at the school shows. I sang. I played the piano and sang on my father's radio show. At my school whatever I was in the choir as,

the church choir, the school choir. I sang in the opera courses I got when I when we moved from l A to Denver, my father found me a new teacher and it just turned out to be Dr Antonio Brico, who was this wildly famous dynamo conductor and pianist. And she did, of course, was always doing opera. So I was sang in the operas y Poachi and Onyagan and so forth. And I played the piano, and I of course was going to be a great pianist, she thought.

And so the first thing I did was the first thing she did was to hand me the the manuscript. I was going to say, the manuscript, the whatever they call it, uh to the Mozart to piano concerto. This was when I was eleven, and she said, I want you to start memorizing this immediately. And so I played with her orchestra two years later and played the Mozart. So I had to practice all the time. Okay, but when you were practicing, what kind of student were you and how did you fit in in school? Were you

a loner? Were the leader of the group where you're popular? I was very popular for lots of reasons. Um, I was fun, I had liked people, I got along with people, and I was always doing something about me, playing in the shows or and I liked my teachers. I was not great in algebra, but I was very good in geometry, which I think is the clue of why I do what I do today, because geometry is really about finding your way, and a lot of what I do is

I travel, and I travel. Of course, I do about a hundred and twenty shows a year normally, that's my normal, uh routine, and I've done that for years, well since two thousand and eight. Before that, before the crash, I was probably se shows a year, and now it's twenty. That's because finances have changed in the music business. And so I was. But my two friends, my two best friends who are still I'm still in touch with, and we're all the same age, which makes it easier. But

they live in different places. Ones on the West Coast, ones in Tacoma, ones in Norfolk, not Norfolk, but we're all uh, I don't remember, it's a Confederate town and uh. And so we've been friends since we were in grade school in Denver and then in junior high in high school, we formed a group, a trio, and we called ourselves the Little Reds. Oh, everybody else called us the Little Reds. Two. It wasn't it wasn't political as it would have been

if we were here in New York. But we were called the Little Reds because we did a version of Little Red Riding Hood. And I sat at the piano and I made up the themes of Red Riding Hood and the wolf and the grandmother, and and the girls danced the story, and I played it and told it on the on the piano, and that's what led. And I'm I'm at this late date in my career, in my life, I have put together that really it was all. The rest of the music was going to be there anyway.

I was always going to be playing the piano. I was now. I was learning rockmaninof to play with my teacher's orchestra. And but the girls and I needed a new piece of of of we needed a new story because we've done this everywhere and done at the all the clubs, you know, the Elks Club and the Kawana's Club, and the and Lowry Air Force Base and for Simmons General Hospital, and we even went to the Brown Palace where we met one of those famous movie stars. Can't

remember his name right now. That's the only thing I have to complain about this. Once in a while a name slips my mind. It wasn't Tony Curtis. Maybe it was Tony Curtis. So we needed some new material and I was supposed to be playing this rock mining off piano concerto, which I was gonna do with my orchestra. I was about fifteen and a half now, and uh, but I got up and went over to the radio

and turned it on. And you know, my father sang all of the great American songbook material, but he also every once in a while he'd break into, oh oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are called. He'd do a little Irish or English melody. And I turned on the radio and I heard the Gypsy Rover, and I heard the next week, I heard Barbara Allen. So those two songs locked it into my brain that this was the music I was going to go after. I didn't know anything about folk music, or about the folk revival,

or about any of these people. But down at Wells Music when I went to buy this record of the Gypsy Rover, which was It was in the soundtrack of an Allen lab movie called The Black Night, so it was very popular. It was movie great success. And when I went into Wells Music, the guy said, well, you know what you're looking for? You here it is. I have it. Yeah, I have it. So I bought it with my babysitting money and he said, we'll see you

around on the walls. See all these albums this is there's the Classy Brothers, and there's Josh White over there, and there's Pete Seeger and there's Gene Richie. I said, what is that and he said his folk music? And I said what he said, it's folk music. And that's where I began to see my life opening up before me. You graduate from high school, then what do you do? Well, this was before that, I understand, but I want to get back to that with context, into the full folk music.

So by the time I had graduated from high school, I had, first of all, I been um, my boyfriend was this guy that I married, and we've been having our love affair for a couple of years already. But I had already memorized and learned and gone to the gotten that my calluses on my fingers to play the guitar. And I had a guitar now, and I went to all the folk music meetings in the folk Folklore Center, and I met Lingo, the drifter who played all the

songs of Witdy Guthrie. So I had that in my bag of tricks, so to speak, and I sang it every place I went. I took the guitar, I sang. I went off to a year of college in this dreary little well. I shouldn't say that, insulting a college in southern Illinois. I don't know how I got there. I think my mother got me a scholarship from one of her peo groups, some some Unitarian gathering of souls who had who got together and got me some sort

of a scholarship. Anyway, came back from that at and that's when I went to the mountains with my husband to be, and we got married in the mountains. And uh, I just would make bread and pies on a woodstove, and then I sit on the porch and play this land is your land. So that's how it all began to unfold. So how did you get from the mountains to the east coast? I had uh when we were finished with the mountains, and we tried to buy the fernlike Lodge. My husband was now in graduate school at

the University of Colorado. We moved back down to Boulder. We got a little apartment in the basement. I had my first my only son, Clark, who was a little baby. And I had a job. I worked at the university in the filing department. And my husband, of course, was in school, and he had a job. He had a paper route at four in the morning, and it was February, and he said he came in put on his boots. It was snowing. Of course, it's always snowing in Colorado.

And he came in and he said, he looked at me, and he said, you know, I was going off to file papers at the university later that day, and Mrs Chingley was going to take care of the baby. And he said to me, why don't you get a job doing something you know how to do. You've always been a musician. You have all these songs. Look, I had no clue that you could get a job singing these songs. I mean, there was no indications that I didn't know

anything about that world. I knew all those people that made records, But I thought records were for learning songs. That's what I figured. And so I called my father and I said, what about this? Do you know anybody up here and Boulder that Do you know anybody who knows anything about this? And he said, yeah, let me let me make some calls. So people will tell you

that all the time. Let me make some calls. But he did, and he found this friend of ours from Denver who knew all about the clubs and Boulder and had this connection with a couple of the owners of bars and restaurants. And so I got a job at Michael's Pub in March of nineteen fifty nine. And I came home with a job and a hundred bucks a week, which was a lot of money in nineteen fifty nine, when I'd been making forty five cents and a bottle of Coors beer for working in the college. So I started.

And in those days, you know this, you know a lot about this, this business, Bob. So you know that in those days it was really a matter of word of mouth. It wasn't even agents or gatherings. It wasn't really morse. It was you know, you're saying at the club for a few weeks. And the guy who owned the club told the next people down the road, oh, you know, she we got we sold some tickets since she did well, and so on. So that started it. And right away I was singing at the Gilded Garter

in CenTra City. There was Bob Bob Dylan who was then called Robert whatever his name is, Zimmerman. He was homeless. He was trying to get a job singing at everybody's hooting atis. You know, you'd get to sing three songs in a row. Uh. And then I when I got to New York a couple of years later, he was there in New York, same homeless as well. It was six one when I got here, so he still had not changed his name, and I thought he was pathetic. I thought, oh my god, he's singing these old witty

Guthrie blues. I thought, badly, badly chosen, badly sung. I couldn't believe it. Then one day I opened up the Bible of folk music that's called sing Out. It was a little tiny pamphlet in those days. Now it's a great, big piece of literature. It looks like a life magazine, compared to what it used to look like. Anyway, there was a song after I have a few drinks with him and heard him sing at the hooting Nanny and I think he was opening for uh Robert Johnson or

one of the one of the blue singers. After I had closed at Girty's Folk City and uh, so I looked at this little book and there was this song printed out. It said blowing in the Wind. Nice title, I thought, and I read the lyric and I was then the Then they printed the melody. I said, oh my god, this is this is brilliant. And at the

bottom it said Bob Dylan. And I had known that he had changed his name to Bob Dylan, and I thought there has to be some mistake here, so I wrote him a fan letter, which of course he didn't get because he was homeless. But still, but of course I became a complete um wreck over his music. I mean, I just thought he was and I recorded him right away. I recorded well. One of the songs that I sang at town Hall in January was the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, which when I heard it in sixty two,

I said, well, I have to sing that song. It is one of the great songs of all times, and it is, and of course it's as appropriate today as it ever was. Okay, let's go back. The folk scene has really been lost to time. Most people think popular music started with the Beatles, but for those of us who were older and you certainly lived through it and were part of it and uh before me. But it

was such a big scene. They even had a show on TV hood Nanny, So can he give us a feel of what the folk music scene was like and how that developed? It was amazing. There was a shift in the culture which had to do I sink with the guitar and the singer songwriter, and thus because previous to that, in the fifties you had to have a band. I mean I had a job with the with the band singing Rogers and Heart when I was sixteen getting dressed. I was under age, so they had to get rid

of me. But because I had to sing in bars and I wasn't able to go in. But before fifty nine sixty, before the Newport Festival which started in fifty nine, you had to if you if you were going to go anywhere, do anything, you had to have a band. You had to have a uh, one of the Rogers and Hart songs, one of the new songs from the

shows in New York. And you had to have all the accouterments that surrounded you, orchestras, soloists, long dresses, and all of a sudden there's this crop of kids playing guitars and singing songs. You remember that Woody Guthrie and Pete Seegers started their lives as protesters, as people on the edge, on the outside of the inner circle. And they were originally writing songs to raise money for the unions. And that's what where their hearts were, and that's what

they were doing. Sometimes people forgot about that in those esoteric, pristine years of some of the some of the Newport years. Because I even was on the board of Newport. As I said, I moved to New York in sixty three. Just one second. What was the motivation to moved to New York? I had? Um, I was in the hospital. My my marriage broke up in sixty two. And what happened was that the marriage broke up and I also got sick. Just just since we're getting there, why did

the marriage break up? Um? Well, we were awfully young when we met and I think that over the course of my growing career and the fact that it was very hard on on motherhood and being married, I just think we didn't get along anymore and we weren't going to stay together. And I left New York to go out to Tucson to sing after I opened actually for Theodore macall at Carnegie Hall in sixty two in October,

and then I got on a plane for Tucson. And when I got to Tucson, I was working at a little club called ash Alley, and I was already having trouble breathing. My lungs were gurgling, and I didn't want to do anything about it because I didn't want to go to the doctor because I thought that a doctor would tell me to slow down and stop running around

and working. So the people that ran the club also were interns at the two on Clinic, and they worked for a doctor who was a long specialist, and they took one look at me when I got in that night, and they said, we're taking you to the hospital tomorrow, and which he did, and Dr Schneida took one look at me and said, you have TV and you're not going anywhere. And so there I was with my guitar and my notebooks and a court of kalua and a case of of course beer, no it was, I'm sorry,

it was a Canadian beer. And there I stayed for the beginning of what became five months of hospitalization, and my husband came to see me and brought my son to Denver, where my mother lived. Then I went from Tucson for a month to Denver to National Jewish Hospital. I got in there only because because C. Bickell was on the board of directors and he got me in there or I don't know where i'd be actually, but

they were great. And I was in Denver with my mother and my son was there, which was fabulous, and my husband and I broke the knot and said this is not gonna work, which it wasn't, and so then of course I was stranded in in National Jewish Hospital. And when I left National Jewish Hospital, I went to New York. New York was the place we had lived in Connecticut for a while, and I had worked in New York at Gertie's Folk City, driven two or three

hours back and forth for a while. So that was part of probably my health breakdown, was that stress of traveling and working and driving and singing and so on. So I knew when you moved to New York, where are your ex husband and your son? In uh in Connecticut, in stores, Connecticut where he was teaching. And you know, he was a good guy. I mean, there's nothing wrong with him really, except that we didn't mesh anymore and that was just the problem. And did you get along thereafter? No? No, No,

he was he was great. He was great, He was very generous. He uh specifically wanted to have custody, and I fought him for it. I the custody battle was hard, and I lost it, which you know, my lawyer said, you can't lose women never lose custody in nineteen sixty three,

that's out of the question. But I lost custody. I was told by my lawyer that the reason that I lost custody was that I was in therapy, which is the first thing I did when I got to New York was to get into therapy, which was the best thing I could have possibly done and probably saved my sanity. And uh So, nowadays, if you weren't in custody, if

you weren't in therapy, you'd lose custody. But in those days it was so unique that that, you know, the judge in Connecticut couldn't conceive of anybody being in custody who wasn't totally crazy and who certainly didn't have the right to have a child. Anyway, a couple of years later I got got full custy. But even though that happened, I was always he was Peter was always generous with everything about I mean, I could have he could have lived with me, actually if I hadn't had the tour.

But he was very good. He's a good guy. He was always a good guy. Okay, so take us back. You know, we're in the early days. You're talking about the folk scene. So suddenly you could play with the guitar, you didn't need a complete orchestra and play out how that scene goes. It was amazing. It was just amazing. I landed. I knew that I had to be in New York. I knew that the village was the hotbed of all the writers and all of the extraordinary music

that was coming out into that world. And I didn't. By the way, one of the pieces of this which I've which I think is fundamental to my career, and to my fortune, the good fortune that I've had is that my skill. I was never a great guitarist, please, but I did know how to choose songs. My father had really taught me that. My mother always reminded me. She would say, you know, you didn't invent this. He

taught you how to how to choose a song. And I had that innate ability to to to know when I heard the right song that it was right for me, and if it wasn't, I didn't go near it. And so there I was among people a lot of whom were writing songs, but many of whom didn't have contracts. So quite often I would be the first person to record the songs of an artist to who I would help to launch. I would help because I had the

recording contract. How did I get the recording contract? When I started singing in Colorado, I was I moved from Michael's Pub to the Gilded Garter in Central City, and then I went to Denver to a place called the Exodus, and that was a very, very fundamental club to the folk movement. There were clubs like that all over the country. They were hugely influential for anybody who was playing the guitar and singing songs. I opened for Josh White, I opened for the Terriers. I opened for a guy named

Bob Gibson. Bob Gibson played the guitar, played the banjo, and sang and was a recording artist with Electra. A number of those artists had recorded with the Elector, including the Terriers and and Josh White. And Bob Gibson had been the one who heard Joan Bias in Boston and called p Seeger and Uh, the fellow who started the Newport Festival, and said, I have found your star. I'm going to bring her to the Newport Festival, which he did. That was September of fifty nine August of fifty nine.

He then came to Denver and I opened for him. He called Jack Holsman and said to Jack Holsman, who was president of Elector, I have found your Joan Bias and Jack and I only found this out two years two years later, two years ago. I mean I only found this out how much? At least sixty years later?

Jack went to Denver, but he didn't He listened, but he didn't introduce himself and he didn't show himself to me and when he told me this a couple of years ago, he said, you know, I went and I heard you, and I said, you know she has talent. That he said, I didn't know if you had the mileage you, if you had the commitment in you. I said to him, you should have asked me. I was

in for it from the very beginning. And when I was in New York two years later in sixty one, when I opened at the at Gurneys, Folk City, which again was one of these clubs which was a um what do they call it, a magnet for artists of all kinds, starting with with Dylan. Dylan worked there and so many many artists worked there, and I worked there. And the clubs were scattered, as I said, around the country. In in the on the West Coast, there was a Troubador.

There was that place I never worked in um I can't remember who started. There was the Hungry Eye in San Francisco. In in Chicago, there was the Gate of Horn, where I worked in nineteen sixty for weeks on end I opened for the Terriers there again I opened for I met O'Dell to there. I met Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee there everywhere there was this burgeoning gathering storm, so to speak, of singer songwriters and of all kinds, of all all sorts. The old blues singers used to

show come to the to the Newport Festival. Uh, the the religious bands from from New Orleans would come. Uh, all of the pickers and fiddlers from Boston, you know, the New York City ramblers would come. There was a gathering as I it is like a gathering storm, but of the good kind. And so by the time I got to New York in sixte I was booked to do a couple of weeks or three weeks I think at gurnie S Folks City, and then I went across the street to the gate of the village gate and

I did a movie. I did a recording there for a film, and the Clancy brothers were in it, and Josh White, uh not Josh Pa. Theodore McCall was in it, and the and a girl named Lynn Gold was And when it was finished, Jack Holsman, president of Electra, walked up to me and said, dear, you're ready to make a record. So he had waited those two years to find out what would happen with me. Where I would be going and so on a handshake, and John Hammond called me a week later and said, would you like

to sign with Columbia? Said, I just made a deal with Jack Holseman on a handshake, So I'm sorry I have to pass. Okay. So now you have a record deal. You cut a record that separates you from so many in the village. Okay, So you start to make records forgetting the inner scene of the people in New York. Uh. After you make a record to what to We? Does

that change your career? Change your life? It helps because it's a calling card in a way, and it opened up, uh further the stream of clubs and by sixties and I would make a record basically throughout my career, I've made a record either every year or every year and a half, every eighteen months or so pretty much regularly. Uh. And because I started, and because it was the time that it was. If you made a record, you didn't have to sell a million records to make an impression.

And you also didn't have to sell a million records to to um convinced your record company to keep putting money in you. You know, I I have had my own record label now for a few years, and I understand I signed a lot of artists that I really care about, but I understand what record labels were up against. They had they had to be sure if they signed an artist that the artist was going to tour, because there was no other way to sell records really, And so I was a touring I was a queen of

the touring. I loved it. I did it. I wanted to do it. I knew I was going to be able to make a living that way, and that impressed me a lot that making a living was possible, and so it was helpful. And also it meant that I could go on. And of course, because I didn't write my own songs, I was gathering together the songs of many artists who couldn't get a record. As you said, you know that everybody didn't have a record record deal in those days. So I was one of the first.

I even was the first person to record Brandy Newman. Strangely enough, it's a it's a great somebody sent us a copy. I mean, this happens in my career many times, the little bit slower. So how did you get the song? I was about ready to record an album called In My Life, and I had sort of jumped the fence with that album because I had already made five albums and uh, the last one was called the fifth Album.

I think we didn't have a name for it, and somebody sent us then my my producer, Jack Mark Abramson and I and I think Jack had something to do with it. To Jack was always involved completely. He's like the chef who goes into the kitchen all the time and checks out all the recipes and make sure you're doing it right. And he had great taste and has great taste, and Uh, it's a great fellow to know

and be with. And we decided, Okay, enough guitars, enough Bob Dylan, enough, Tom Paxton, enough, even Richard Frena, enough Pete and Woody. We're going to jump the fence and do things that are from a whole different point of view. So I wanted to record songs from Uh. I wanted to record Pirate Jenny. I wanted to record the songs from Mark the Maratsad and have them orchestrated by Josh Rifkin. And Josh Rifkin was a part of the Electric family because he did a lot of things for None Such.

He found that Scott Joplin rags and he translated them and started playing them. He orchestrated handle he put wonderful, wonderful music together for the None Such album, and he he was our friends. So Mark and I said, oh, okay, let's get Josh to record and orchestrate the things from

the uh marasad pirate. Jenny and we actually went to England to record, and we got a choir that we liked over there, and we were just about finished with the album when uh somebody came to our door and dropped a tape off and it was a tape of Randy Newman singing Broken Windows and Empty Star Wars, and we said, oh my god. So we put the album together and we recorded that song, and Randy heard it and he said, oh, I see, I'm not gonna spend my life doing music for movies. I'm going to be

a singer's all writer. He says that he did that, that he knew that I had recorded it and put and I had been doing that with a lot of artists whose material, as you pointed out, was getting out when they didn't have record labels, and by that time I was sort of I was paying the bills at Elector, I was working, I was selling albums. I was courting artists that would become very, very very famous, and in a way I was contributing to this folk music revival

in in my Own Way. And the next album was On On On The On, The in my Life album was when I had discovered No. I didn't discover him. Leonard Cohen found me, and he found a little bit slower. Tell us how we found you. I had a friend in the city that I would have dinner with. There were a bunch of us, Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner and my friend Linda. Oh this is long before laughing. Yeah, how do you know Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner Because they were friends of my friend Linda Gottlieb Linda. I'll

think of her name in a minute. Anyway, they were They were just social friends that I met and somehow we bonded and we would have dinner once in a while. And Mary Martin was one of these women. She was working in the music business. She was working for Warner Brothers, and she was working for um Al Grossman Albert who also owned the club I had sung it in Chicago. He owned the Gate of the Gate of Horn. Yeah, and so and so we would go out for dinner.

I go out to dinner with the girls. And we would just hang out and have dinner and go to the various clubs. And Mary would talk about Leonard. She'd say, you know, there's this guy. I went to McGill with him, I grew up with him in Montreal, and he's just a brilliant poet. He's a wonderful guy. But we're also really upset because he's not He really is not going anywhere. And I would say, well, that's too bad. You know, I didn't know him, I never met I said, that's

too bad. I said, why do you feel this way better? And Mary said, you know these poems that her sow. He gets published and we buy his books and we go to the readings, but you know the problem is that they are so obscure. Nobody knows what he's really talking about, and so we're worried. I said, well, sounds like a sad story to me. Then one day in sixties six, she called me up and she said, guess what, Leonard wants to come and see you. He wants to sing you his songs. So I said to her, are

they obscure? And she said, oh yes, oh yes they're obscure. That's we'll see. But he's coming to see you. He wants to see you. So he came, you know, and I thought, I opened the door, and I thought, I don't care if he doesn't write songs. He was very good looking man and very smart and very charming, darling, absolutely wonderful man and amazing man. And he came in and he said, I can't sing and I can't play the guitar, and I don't know if these are songs.

And then he sang me the Stranger Song and dress rehearsal rag and Suzanne, and I said, these are great, these are wonderful. I said, I'll record them tomorrow. And I did two out of three. I didn't do the Stranger song. I still will have to have the Stranger song somewhere on an album. I'll do it. And so that's how we became friends. That's how I recorded his songs.

And after I recorded Susanne on my fifth fifth album, on my sixth album, in my Life, he said he called me up and he said, you've made me famous. And I said, well, that's wonderful. That's good. It's good for you, good for us. It's a great song, Susanne, it's a great song. And uh, he said, but there's one thing I don't understand, which is I don't understand why you're not what writing your own songs. And I didn't have any answer. Dylan had always said to me,

you should. You know people who say that you should do such, and you don't want to ever listen to those people. And but it was the way that the way that Leonard asked it was different. There was the difference between some kind of socratic method and the other way. I don't know what the difference is exactly, but it's not it's not the same as saying you should. And he said, I just don't know why you don't. So

I came home. I already had my Steinway. I had already moved uptown because I needed more room because now I had to have custody of my son. I had to have a bigger apartment, and I had my Steinway, and I sat down and I started fiddling around, and I wrote a song called since You've asked. That was the first. Now you know, my books and my study are filled with attempt, some of which have made it to the stage. And so I've been writing ever since then.

So what is your technique today for writing a song? It's twofold. First of all, I have to practice every day. That's essential. And when I finished with my hand and my charny and my exercises, I can usually listen to something or read something while I do hand and charny, and thank god I can do that. So then I put that aside, and then I take the copies of poetry that I've written in the past day or day or two or week, and I put it up in front of the piano. Wa wa. The poetry is that

something you write on inspiration? Is it something you force yourself to write? How does the how do the words come to be? Well, it's both. It's a chore and a pleasure, but it's also a responsibility. Is if I don't write things down. I've written a number of books over the years, and I've written a lot of songs that some of which have been recorded in some of which have, you know, sit there waiting for more attention. Sometimes it is I have a friend who says that

writing is like is like laying pipe. If you don't do it every day, you're not going to be there when the muse comes through the window. At least that's true for me. Some people it doesn't matter. They can write any time of day or night, it doesn't matter. There are me, I have to find the time in the day to get it done, and then when it's done, it's done, and then I can look at it and

listen to it. I also have times when I'm able to do what I did in the early years, which is to sit a noodle at the piano until something comes through. It's not necessarily something that is going to make it, but if there are a few lines and a few melody, and sometimes it's the melody, sometimes it's the lyric, it's the hook. But sometimes it will tighten itself up into a song actually while you're sitting there

at the piano. And sometimes you'll write something that I have made it u For instance, in I wrote a poem every day, and so at the end of the year had three poems, a number of which made it into song form. Most you know, two thirds of the poems have wound up in the poem patch, so to speak, but some of them make it make it to the piano, and they make it through the test of whether this

is really singable or workable. Now, I've got a whole batch of new songs on this album that's coming out in uh twenty two, probably the early part, and they're all kinds of subjects. It's it's very interesting. It's uh you know, there's me about language and being able to hear language, and writers who hear language in songs have a great gift uh lingua franca. They used to call it.

It's the common knowledge of people around you and the phrases that they say that are memorable and jump right off the page, and something that will jump right into a melodic structure easily and lead you to then finish the story. But it is a job. It's not I don't think for most people. I don't think you can say that it's something you do. It's like falling off a log. No, it's a job. You have to do it every day. Okay, So you work and you get

more notoriety having covered Susanne? How do you end up knowing Joni Mitchell and doing both sides? Now, another miracle coming through the window, an angel at the window. I it was I had, of course recorded Nerd and anyway, I loved the Canadians. I recorded and worked worked with and recorded songs by Fred Ed mccurty. At the beginning

UM Last Night, I had this strange dream. I recorded him very early on Ian and Sylvia Canadians of whom from whom I learned some day soon, which I would do on my UM who Knows Where the Time Goes album? So I loved I loved Canadians and Gordie Lightfoot I recorded him on that fifth album, and so Canadians were.

There was something fresh and different about the way they wrote, probably the wide open plains or something, or the English influence, I don't know, maybe, But then Leonard came along, and Leonard Leonard blew my mind and of course started my writing. So the next year, in in sixties Heaven, I'm asleep one night and I get the phone rings and it's three in the morning, and it's my friend Al Cooper. Now I knew Al Cooper because he was hanging around

the village. I was hanging around the village. I would always go I loved blood, sweat and tears, so I'd go down to hear them play, and I think I was half half in love with I forget the guitar player. Uh. And so he knew my phone number by by heart, and it was him on the phone at three in the morning. And I and I had no romantic involvement with al. I just knew him and liked him and

hung out with him. And so he called me up, and he knew I was recording, and he knew that I was involved with the new with the new album, and that I had started to write my own songs. I had written since you've asked, I'd written Albatross and another song which died in early deserved death. And so he said, Hi, how are you? And I said, I'm fine,

how are you? It's three in the morning. Well, it could have been in those days I could have been up still or getting ready because I could have been drunk. I probably was surprising that I woke up. But he said, you know, I ran into this girl. She came to the show and she's I think she's in love of the drummer and she was hanging out and I asked her what she did and she said, I'm a songwriter.

So he said she was good looking, and so I decided to follow her home, but he said When I got here, I thought, oh my god, Judy has to hear this. So then he turned the telephone in the direction of Joanie and she sang me both sides now, and I said, oh my god, what a song. Oh be right over, So I was. I went to her house at three in the morning. No, I didn't go right over. I went over the next day. I called Jack.

I said, you have to meet me Joni's apartment, and you have to hear the song, because I'm telling you this is it. And I we got there and she played the song and we recorded it and Josh, Josh Rifkin, made a beautiful, wonderful arrangement. And you know he's the one. We were sitting in this studio in New York, the Columbia, the big fat Columbia Orchestra recording studio. We had a nice sized orchestra. But then Josh said, you know, I need a harpsichord. I said, what do you need a

harpsichord for. You have a whole orchestra here. He said, no, there's something here in this orchestra that needs to come out in a different way. So it's that do that and that's where we did it and how we did And then of course I got to know Jony in California. First I hung out with her here and listened to her sing her songs to me, and she's just the

most splendid writer. She's got an for that thing we were saying about the lingua franca, that that that that sense about saying things that are in the conversation, things that are unusual language that's unusual. It's partly it's partly Canadian, it's partly a thing that's a twist that they have on communication. It's different than ours and charming and fresh and very powerful. Okay, suddenly the stars aligned and both

sides now is a gigantic kit. You're recording for years, but this How does your life change when suddenly you have a worldwide hit. I'd like to say that the big change was that everybody answered my phone calls. They really did, They really did. That That was a big change. I didn't. I mean, I started to make some money

at that point. I gave my mother a trip, my mother and father trip to uh to Hawaii that Christmas, and so you know, that was I had a little money, not a lot, but I've never had a lot of money, so that's not a big miss. But it did help. It certainly helped was my working because then I could pretty much work wherever and did and and have and will. But it was a huge thing to have a hit

in nineteen sixty. You're a single woman with a recording contract with history, with a hit record, your upbeat, you're talkative, you're beautiful. I would think that you'd be fending off men over their basis. I'm also very picky. Well, there are two separate issues here. What has been approaching. The other issue is whether you open the door or not men Even to this day, you know, an attractive woman, never mind successful with a personality and optimism, you know,

men are very aggressive. I yeah, well I've been lucky, was guys. I'm also you know, the thing that we haven't talked about is that I'm a recovering alcoholic. And I was starting in nineteen starting in in uh. When I first started, I already knew I was an alcoholic, So I figured that that also was a job. The job was to drink and to work hard. And if I worked hard and I was successful, I had the right to drink. Don't you think. So I felt that way about it, and I, of course I didn't know

I had a choice anyway. I didn't have a choice, because an alcoholic, an addict who is in their cups and in their addiction does not have a choice that they know about until they finally know about it, and then they have a choice. So this went on for the years. All these years were talking about I was drinking like a fish all the time, but I showed up on time. I did exactly what my father did. He never missed a job. He was always on time.

He was a professional. And that was me. That's where I learned to do that, you know, working alcoholic and as it was pretty I was pretty much a blackout drinker also, So I managed throughout that horrible part of it was horrible, But I do know that I developed something and I think now that I might have been a snob. I think that probably explains my uh situation with men. I was very picky. I was also very I was always um, very aware of the space that I was in a I don't know what happened when

I was in blackouts. It was very dangerous territory to me. For for anybody who's who's a blackout drinker there there. We are vulnerable in every way because we don't know what we were doing, we don't know who we're with, we don't know what happened last night. I would call friends and they would say, you know, you told me that last night at length, so I don't need to hear this again this morning. And uh, but luck was with me and I was with a couple of guys.

I mean, of course, Stephen, Stephen such an angel, and we had one of those angelic kind of uh stories, which is that we remained friends after the affair, even though Sweet Jut Blue Eyes was such a huge hit, and that, of course came after I recorded both sides Now and it was the album that followed that album. And that was when I met Stephen. I didn't know

he was a fan. He was a and he used to go home at night and play my records after he'd been to all the basket clubs in the city and come home, like Elaine May would say, you know, the the the basket wouldn't even come back. Not only did it not come back with money, it didn't come back at all. And he put on Judy Collins records and would put him to sleep, which is I'm not sure if that's a compliment, but it helped him get through some of these nights. And so David Anderley, who

was my producer on Who Knows Where the Time Goes? Um, he came and played on that album. That's how we met, and we fell in love and had this affair, and uh, you know, he's one. He's wonderful. He's such a incredible musician. And then of course it was heartbreaking because the song was so beautiful and it was played every time I turned around. I couldn't get away from it. It was like a shield of armor in a way. It just

kind of prevented my movement in any direction. And I had in a long affair with Stacy Keach for a few years, and then with a couple of other people short lived, and then on the brink of losing my mind and my career and everything else, I met Lewis and I met him, uh four days before I went into treatment for alcoholism in nine and with the I don't know, some fortunate piece of luck, I went to the right place. I was finished, I was done, I was wiped out. I had no money, I had no

way to work. I couldn't sing, I couldn't do anything but collapse into the arms of a A and gets over, which I did and which I've done. And so then the second half of my life actually started. When was the first time you heard Sweet Judy Blue Eyes? I heard it in a hotel room in May of sixty nine. We had we had split up. Well, you know, he lives in l A. I live in New York. He we had one big, two big problems. He didn't like l A and he didn't like therapy, and I was

in both. I was not about to stay in l A. I couldn't. I couldn't handle it. It was really too much for me. Hell a, as I said, I would be deentified lived there. I really would. I have been too much. So so I heard it. He came to UH. I was doing a concert in Santa Monica, and he came to the hotel some place on on the beach, and uh he brought me a birthday present of a beautiful Martin guitar, which I have still, and a bunch of flowers, and then he said, I have to sing

you a song. And then he sang me Sweet Judy Boys, and we were both sobbing, and when it was finished, I said, it is so gorgeous, but it is not going to get me. However, we made we've made it a point of staying friends and being friends. We liked each other, not just having an affair, but we liked each other, and we liked each other's music. I like his music as well as I liked anybody's music in

my life. It's spectacularly. He's a spectacular writer and performing what a guitar player doesn't get his due unfortunately anyway, they don't talk about it a lot, but he is. He's one of the best. So we remained friends all that time. Every once in a while we see each other or we talk, or we have a long back back and forth. He'd be in China or Japan or something and we'd be texting each other and in in about I think about seven years ago, we were we

were both on a big show in Orlando. It was an a a RP huge festival show at the theater out there and uh it was unfortunately, um the last show, live show that Richie Havens did, So he was on that. Richie was on the show c S and n was was. I don't think Neil was, I'm not sure, C S C. Crosby Stills and Nash was on and we were on, and when it was finished, we looked at each other and we said, what's the matter with us? Are we chopped liver? We should be out there doing our thing together.

So it took a lot of doing, but in six we did a hundred and fifteen shows together over a period of a year and a half. They were well. Steven says they were the top of his career, that they were the best time he ever had on stage. And you know, most of the time, if you go to a show with two artists, it'll be a half and half thing, and then if you're lucky, you'll get a song at the end. But maybe not, not if they don't not if the artists don't know each other

too well. So we were on the stage for two hours solid together. We each had a solo, but other than that, we sang everything together. And each night I would be listening to this extraordinary guitar player, unbelievable, and I was a girl singer in a rock and roll band. I mean, just think of that, as I mean, that's the top of the world. I always wanted to be a rock and roll singer. I just couldn't play that electric guitar. I could not get that together. Okay, will

it happen again? I don't think so. For me. Yes, anytime, any time he has said, well we will see, we'll see. Life is long and uh. Anyway, we had a dreamy time at best time ever, incredible, incredible time. Okay. Now, another interesting thing in your career is you know Bob Dylan had all the success and he had the Woodstock years. Then he took a left turn with Self Portrait and then regained his form with New Morning, which was a great record. But you recorded Time Passes Slowly from that album,

which I love, before that album came out. How did that come together? If you remember? I don't know. I think maybe UM our mutual lawyer, uh, David Braun, who was my lawyer from the first Electra uh contract in

David represented Dylan for a long long time. In fact, when when David Braun went to UM Polygraph, David Brown represented everybody, represented Barbara streisand he represented Neil Diamond, he represented Bob Dylan, he represented me and but he got a job with Polygraph, being the president of polygraph, big mistake. All the artists left him, but Dylan stayed, and I stayed. And I think Neil over the year's state. I mean

Neil was at his funeral. I think Neil stayed. But David always had an end on what Dylan was recording, and I'm sure that that's where it happened. I think I had a you know, elite costy. This may be a left turn, but what Dylan has been been as successful without Albert Grossman as his manager, I don't know. I loved Albert, and I think Albert was a brilliant man. Is wasn't brilliant man. Unfortunately he's not with us anymore. But Dylan, Dylan, He's NonStop. I think this this last

album is one of the best things they've ever done. Uh. The song about Kennedy's murder is really one of the finest pieces of art that I've run into in a long time. That's pretty that's pretty damned impressive to come around that circle. I did an album of of Dylan songs and I listened to everything. This was in ninety two. I listened to everything you ever made up to that point, and uh, you know, in chronicles he writes about why he had those ten years of writing those incredible songs,

and he doesn't know how it happened. He doesn't know why it stopped. He doesn't know why it started. I have a clue though about it, and I'm not sure what he has said, probably said some things about it. But when he got to New York and when he changed his name to Dylan and he was still homeless, he spent a lot of time sleeping on people's couches. And I mean Dave En Ronks and and probably David Blues and probably who knows, certainly Jack Ramlan, Jack Elliott.

So he was exposed to people's libraries in a way that is not always possible if you're sleeping on somebody's couch and there bookcase. And it's interesting in times of zoom, you look at people's bookcases behind there, their pictures, newscasters, people who are coming in with opinions, and they often have book book libraries behind them, and you always peer around and look, you know, what's That's why I don't do that here. But I think he read a lot.

I think he I think he was exposed to things he hadn't seen, and things ideas he hadn't heard, and I think something wild and wonderful got stirred up that hadn't been stirred up. And I'm not saying that there was anything less about being homeless in Colorado and sleeping on the bed of one of our folk music lights in those days, but I think it was different. I think it jogged him. And do you you mentioned you stayed in touch with Steven Stills, those people who haven't passed.

Do you stay in touch with the writers of the songs you've done or that was a moment more of a momentary thing. Oh. I've always had relationships with most of the people that I've that I've who's material i've I've I've worked on if they're on, if they're living, uh, And I've had I had a wonderful relationship with with Leonard. I mean it was he was so generous and he was so kind, and you know, he'd calling read me fifty verses of a song before he'd settled on the

ones that he liked. I I'm a great fan of of Jimmy Webb, for instance, who's a good friend and just an amazing writer. I have such respect for him, and I'm always so moved by his writing. It's tremendous and most of the singer songwriters that I've known, I certainly knew Joni in the early years much better than I do today, but I knew her well and uh and people like Farina was a great friend of mine. I just was devastated by his death. And you know, it's kind of it's dangerous to get too close to

people because they do leave the planet. Going back to the early days, did you feel in competition with Joan Baias, Oh God, No, I was very friendly with the whole family. You know. Mimi was a good friend her mother. I have more I often choked joked to her about this. I have more letters from her mother, from big Joan fan letters, and I do from her although she's wonderful. She came. I sang at her seventy fifth at the Beacon, and then she came to my eighties birthday party a

couple of years ago. We had a great time, great time together. No, we love each other. We laugh. Mimi was the laugher Memi was hysterical, and she and Dick were good friends of mine, very good friends. Well. I loved the book that down so long it looks like up to me, he really made a huge impact upon me. You're so forthcoming and so many aspects of your life that therefore you talked about Steve and you talked about alcoholism. That a touchy subject for me, but maybe he is

not for you. You know, your son took his own life. You also say that he said he had alcohol issues and depression issues. You've also gone on record that you've had depression issues. Can you talk a little bit about that. Well, this gene that was in both of our families. My father was an alcoholic, of course, and his his background, his his own father's father took his life. I don't say that because I think that that means that if

it's in the family, then you you'll get it. It's not that, but the gene for addiction is certainly in the d n A, and we do get it at birth, and if we have any luck, it gets into our behavior or our behavior brings it into fruition. Perhaps. But Clark, when when he when he would turned ten eleven years old, I knew there was something off. He was a d d H D or he was um. They used to have different words for it. Uh. Anyway, he was antagonized. He was, he was short tempered, he was, but he

was brilliant and his his focus. He was a wonderful musician. And he would have a short focus at times. But

I knew he was. I knew in those days in seventies, seventy one seventy two, when he first got to New York, when he first was exhibiting the tendencies that I now associated with alcoholism and getting into trouble, and the schools that followed, you know, places like windsor Mountain up in Lennox, where the headmaster would say, oh, you know, we really we really focused on the drug issues and the substance issues. And then two weeks later he'd be in the hospital

with an overdose. So I mean it was classic alcoholism. And had it happened in a later time, most people would be saying, and doctors included, you know, this kid needs to be in rehab. And I was not sober yet, I still had some years to go. So he was nineteen when I got sober, and he had actually cleaned his life up and and gone. He and his girlfriend both had had gotten clean, and they were both both at Colombia, and they decided to move up to Ristie and they were at school up there, and he was

in very good shape. And then he came back to New York and he sort of fell apart. And I went into treatment in seventy eight and he was in bad trouble. So it was six years before he came and said to me, I okay, I give up or I surrender and win, which is actually the way we look at it. And he went into treatment in in at Hazelden and he was sober for seven years. What

a life, you know. He had a little girl, He had a wife who is now my my daughter in law still, who's a widow, but she's still my daughter in law, and the mother of my granddaughter who is now in her forties. No whore now in her thirties. Forgive me, Hollis. And so his his his suicide just about destroyed me. And when I say that, because I'm giving you the background, because it shouldn't really have almost destroyed me, because suicide if you're an alcoholic and you're active.

But he wasn't active. He was sober, and he relapsed and he called me, he said, you know, I'm I'm having trouble. I said, I know, and he went into another couple of rounds of of going to their retreat up there at Hazelton. But they said it they let him. I say, they let him loose. But he was an adult, he was thirty three years old, so mom really couldn't

ride in on a white horse and fix it. And he drank, and in the conclusion of his life, he did the same thing as grandfather on his father's side, that he went into a car and turned on the engine. And you know, Joan Rivers called me about four days after Clark's death and she said, I know what you want to do. You want to close your life down. I had started to cancel concerts and she said, you can't do that because if you do that, you're not

going to heal. And as you know, she had lost her husband to suicide a few a couple of years before, and she said, there are no guilts in suicide, which I knew on an intellectual basis, but you have to talk to other people about it, which I did and I got some important, important help from a lot of people. And I decided to write a book about suicide, which I did. Uh what is it called? I don't remember gratitude and grace, I think. But I wanted to get

down everything that I knew about suicide. Having been an attempter at the age of fourteen, I tried to do myself in It was all those pills and and I was very determined. And I don't I still don't know, except that they made me sick at my stomach and that I was not going to I was perfectly happy dying. I was not happy being sick of my stomach. Um, So I think what we need to do. When Clark died, there were only two books that really were positive. There

were no books that were positive except one. The other one was called The Savage God, which I would never read. I never would have read it until this happened. And of course it's all about silly plast's suicide and it has not one ounce of solution in it. And the other book was by Irish Bolton, who whose book is full of solutions, and it's a marvelous book and it was very healing. And then I read everything I could

get ever that it's ever been written. I think about suicide, and A wrote about it because I needed to get it out of my system. And I think that's really the secret to this, you know, suicide. I often say that suicide is fascinating if it's not happening to you. But on the on the positive side, you go you cannot go over it. You have to go through it. So you have to go through the feelings, you have to go through the experiences. It's it's a it's an

opportunity to completely overhaul your ideas about what's happened. And you can't take it personally because it's not personal. It's a universal as as as um Cock. It's not Cocktau. It's another writer that starts with a sea who says that it is a universal human conundrum because we can all get off the planet if we want to, and so then the question is do we want to stay? And if you haven't had a suicidal thought in your life,

you're living on some other planet. I think. Well, put now, subsequent cleaning up with alcohol, do you still have issues of depression? No? No, alcohol is a depressant. Funny, but that's the truth. Now, I know you were you a drinker before you got to New York and got really heavily into the musical lifestyle. Oh yes, I always drank. I drank from the age of fifteen, and I drank

for twenty three years solid, you know I was. And did you have other than personal bad experiences, meaning you know, you woke up where you didn't know you were black out whatever. Did you ever have people who disconnected from you, were business opportunities that fell away because of your the whole use? Well, I don't know. I was very protected in a lot of ways. I had a very strong career, I had strong management. I do think that I was distancing, but I don't think that that was no. I was

just getting sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker. And it wasn't anybody else's problem but mine. The last year of my drinking in seventy seven, I and someone said this to me recently. They the guy who wrote um Vincent what's his name? Don said to me, you know, I was in l A during those years. That year I saw a big poster that said that you had canceled concerts that year, and yeah, that's a career killer you. You canceled forty five shows, so the industry, but it

was me. I couldn't sing, and in a way that was my That was a blessing that that was the problem, because if you can't sing, you can't show up. So it's not your alcoholism that's in the way. It's the fact that you can't think, so you have to cancel. And people understand that in the music business, they don't get terribly upset. If it doesn't go on for years, they don't get upset. If if it had, they do

get upset. But if it happens for one season or two seasons, it's a whole summer, it's a whole spring. It's that's not unusual. So thank god that was the end of that, because then everything was canceled. And then I went into treatment, and then I couldn't work, I couldn't sing, and but eventually, slowly, but surely, it all came back. Okay, So what was the final straw? Who or what got you to go to rehab? I went. I had what we call an s gamo I. There was a guy in New York who was a very

big drinker. He's very famous actor, and he was always drinking. In His picture would be on the on the daily news, falling out of some bar somewhere with blood splashing all over his face. He'd been in a big fight, and that happened a lot, and I would sit and I didn't know him personally, but I thought, oh, that's it. He's, you know, somebody's carrying on the tradition here, somebody. And I got to know his wife through an exercise class

that I was in. I didn't know him personally, but I knew her, and so one day I said to her, Um, what happened. I don't see him, he's not I don't see these photographs in the time, in the news or the post. What's going on? She said, well, he got sober, and I thought, oh, dear God, that's terrible news. Some police give up the fight. And she said, would you

like to talk to him? I said yes, and he drink again, and so I I was at the end of my rope, really, and so I already I was already trying to go to meetings, but I was too drunk to really do much about it. So I called him.

He was on he was on location somewhere in Arizona, and he called me back and we spent a couple hours on the phone, and he said, I should go see this doctor, dr get Low, and I should go to these places, these meetings, and so on, and so I went to get low and that's how it happened. He I sat there and told him my sob story and uh he said. He was laughing, and he said, well, there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you except you're an alcoholic and there is a solution to this,

and I will help you. And so he got me. He want me to call this place where I went for treatment at chit Chat. It's called it's called the Care and Foundation now and it focuses well, people go there and get sober, but it also focuses on the family because it is a family illness, and if you're in a family with alcoholism, you have it, whether you drink or not. It's about the isms, it's about powerlessness.

It's about about trying to tell somebody else what to do and getting nowhere, because you can't get anywhere with somebody who's using. You can't keep saying you, look at you, you'd be so much better if you didn't do X, Y and Z. You just can't do it. It's also a self diagnosed disease, and that's the difference. That's why the a m A has such a hard time with it. And of course, I'm very Doctors know a lot about

building bridges and bone cures. I mean not the not the one that takes bis phosphonates, but putting them back together. They know a lot about that. They don't don't know squat about most emotional things. And one of the first things they don't know is that alcohol is a depressant, and that many of these medications that they hand around so freely, the uh, you know, the pills for sleeping.

I had a lot of those, the pills for sleeping and the pills for feeling good, and they often have different reactions to different people that are not good at that are not healthy, that are not up there with clean and sober living. So how do you stay sober day to time? You just do it one day at a time, and you go to meetings every day and you have a miracle happen, and it's happening all around us, all around us. Okay, what are your two favorite songs

to sing? My favorite song of all is the most recent one that I've written, and a Jimmy Web song called the Highwayman. Okay, And in the time you have left on the planet, anything specifically you want to do whether it be career wise or just personal, go someplace you know that you haven't been before. It looks like I'm going to go to China, which I've never been to in all these years. And I want to go back to Japan where I was with Mimi and Arlo and uh Bruce Langhorn in nineteen sixty six. And I

wanted to take a walk in the park today. Okay, And you mentioned you know finances, So how are your finances. They're fine, They're wonderful. Okay. So you are working primarily to work, You're not working for the money is always good, but it's not like you literally need the money to live. Well, that doesn't matter. There's nothing embarrassing about working. I think we're working for a living is one of the highest

achievements one can have. I don't believe in retirement. I think it was invented after the Industrial Revolution so that the top end of the management could make it all and send the rest of us home. So I don't believe in it. And I don't think many artists stopped working when they can continue doing their artistic adventures. And that's what I'm honest, an artistic adventure, which involves going in front of audiences and recreating and creating what makes

them happy. And I think being part of art is part of what keeps the planet awake. I don't know why anybody would stay on the planet without art and music. I don't know why any of us would stick around. You're speaking my language. I feel the same way. You know. It's all these people work at these jobs they hate so they can watch to go to the movies tonst without that. And you know that I don't want to

get on a soapbox myself. But the fact that we live a country where there's no money for the arch's no music in the schools is you know, the priorities are not right. No, they're not right. And the teachers don't get paid enough, and the the the workers in the hospitals don't get paid enough. Our educators don't get what they should have. And and we have all of this abundance, and we cannot take care of the homeless, we cannot take care of our medical costs. We what

is the matter with us? We need to have a rejuvenation. Well, you know you're you're speaking my language. Unfortunately, I'm more of a glass half empty person than you, But I am not optimistic about where we're going. I'm optimistic about today, and I'm optimistic about doing the things you know I had. And I'm friendly with the Molly John Fast. I don't know if you know who she is, but she's she's she's my friend Erica's daughter, and I've known it for

a long time and were talking the other day. I said, what do you suggest? What are the two since all this trouble is going on, and since we've we're up against this incredible wall of greed, insanity, misbehavior. Uh, people who are living in some foul dream that they're trying to shove on us. You know, they attack the capital and call it tourism. What is the matter with us? What? What is? What do we do? Individually? She said, Well,

the first is subscribe to a great newspaper. Well, you and I probably do that, Bob, And three or four or more get get get a good newspaper into and also run for office. And so I am not going to run for office, but I'm gonna be as vocal as I can, which I've always been anyway, about what's going on, to take action. Get a goddamn facts scene, for instance, you know you're preaching to the converted. You know,

I subscribe to four newspapers. I know you know what you're going But the frustration I have we grew up in a different era where there was a level of cohesiveness. Everyone tuned into one of the three networks for the news. If you're a news junkie, maybe get newspapers. In addition, now you cannot penetrate the other side. You can write the truth all day long. So I was of the belief that once they got rid of abortion, America would revolt. Now the truth is in a number of Southern states

essentially there is no abortion. You know, there's one, you know, one clinic whatever. So the question becomes, what is the spark we saw last year with Black Lives Matter? You could have a lot of free flowing feelings and emotion. One spark can set it off. And it's not like I want. You know, maybe I'm a child of the sixties, but we're going to need a revel luction if things

keep going in this way. And the question becomes, you know, will that it's so far it's just the minority on the other side rising up, Whereas listen, the vaccine thing is just insane. It's like I have I got the vaccine. It didn't work for me because I have this take this medication. I'm still home waiting for the medication last for two years, but six months intensely, and so it has to wear off so I can have B cells, so I can get the N bodies. But without being

making it a personal thing that I'm still home. If you follow this BuzzFeed and they reprinted it in the week and CNN people are dying, the delta variant spreads faster and your number could come up. And it always happens. Oh if I if he knew, we would get a vaccine, and you know, it's just it's just I don't understand it. It's not to be understood. It's not to be understood.

But we have to do our work. We have to believe in the present and take the actions that we can, and we have to let go the anger that comes up when we want to smash the windows in and trip up and poke into the spikes of the bikers on the street that are gonna kill me because they don't pay any attention to anything or anybody. I mean, let's start with that. You know, the person on the scooter last week. Absolutely, I think you know, uh, living

in southern California where bird scooters started. On a raw physics level, it's got a very small wheel, so if you hit anything, you're gonna fall and you're gonna get injured. Forget, forget somebody else. This is not a good situation for a society at large. It isn't. It isn't solutely because you can't see. You know. It was one thing to go to London and have to look both ways. Right now, I'm in New York City enough I look up. I'm

still in trouble. Listen. Everybody thinks they're in violent until it happens to them. And that's another thing, you know, you know, Paul Krugen said, the difference between the right and the left is the left believes in a social welfare and safety net, but bad things ultimately happen to everybody. You sit there and you say, well, that's not me. You know, they're giving all those people that money, or they're doing this whatever. One day, it's gonna be you

and you're gonna be glad. It's like that building that collapsed or Florida. Right there has to be something going on, buildings just don't collapse. So we live in a country where they keep saying we want less and less regulation. No, we want regulation. Generally speaking, the buildings don't fall in the United States because of regulation. Rex Chillerson, who worked for Trump and was the head of the big company.

In one of the general waters, he said, it's so much easier to deal with foreign countries where there are dictators because they don't have any rules. You can get a lot done. Well, you know, staying on the same point, because I think, you know, I think authoritarianism will ultimately triumph for one simple reason. It's easier. Yeah, they had a story in the news last week than in China they built a ten story building in a day. In China they can get things done. We have complete gridlock.

I mean. And you as a world traveler. Though they keep saying America the greatest country in the world, I've bet a lot of places where it's really damn good. Not that we don't have some great things in America, but never mind. Free education, that's a good thing. Okay. We could go on about this, and I would like to, but we're all at length. Judy, you're wonderful. I mean,

you know, it's knowing you only from Afar. It's just fascinating to actually talk to you because my impression was a someone more stayed or not exactly snobbish, but more stayed. And then to talk to me, we could literally talk all night. You're right, You're absolutely right. Well, I love it that you're you're on your your proper paths doing what you do because we need you. And it's a light that comes out of this kind of work that you do that helps everybody get through the rest. Don't

forget that. Well, listen, you help me out in the nature of being a writer, especially because I'm home, you're alone a lot, and sometimes you write something or you do something and people are talking about it externally, but you're in the eye of the hurricane, so you're unaware. So when you tell me that, and there are other things you said through the podcast that really resonated certainly relative to continuing to do the work. So you're open

when the inspiration. Absolutely, when the inspiration comes, you know you have the tool you'll be able to execute. Will I be able to write this? What's the first word? It's just flows right out. Absolutely, Thank you. It's been great. Till next time, My dear, have a beautiful I have a friend to says, you know, have a beautiful day. Unless you had other plans. Well, hopefully it'll be beautiful. Yeah. Good, Okay, Well you've got three hours more than I do in

your life today. Absolutely well, i'b surely you've had the experience of you know, flying over the International dateline. You lose two days going that way and you left. Oh yeah, that's right, and I'll have that again soon. I'm sure. I can't wait. That's what everybody's talking about. I get from people here, from people over the world. I can't wait to get on a plane to Pace with good thought. It's a good thought, all right, thanks again, until next time. This is Bob left Sex m