“Joni Mitchell sang Both Sides, Now on the phone”: folk music legend Judy Collins talks about her remarkable 87 years | Judy Collins

How did you get in Joni Mitchellthe orbit of and how did you end up recording Both sides now before her? Steve Bayley

I’ve been sober for 48 years, but I used to drink. One night in 1967, I passed out and the phone rang around 3 a.m. It was my friend (musician, songwriter and producer) Al Kooper. He said he went to a club and met this woman, Joni, who wrote songs. He put her on the phone and she sang Both Sides, Now on the phone. It was great. I said, “I’ll be right there.” » I recorded it the next day and it became a huge hit.

I don’t think Joni was very happy that I was the first to record it, but she was very generous and I have since recorded several of her songs. She was unknown at the time, so I’m proud that I was able to help introduce her to the world. She is one of the greatest writers of all time.

What is your favorite memory of Leonard Cohen? Viennese waltz

In 1966, a friend from Atlantic Records who always talked about this guy, Leonard, called me and said, “Leonard wants to see you. He wants you to sing his songs.” He came into my apartment and said, “I don’t know how to play guitar. I have a terrible voice and I don’t know if this is a song.” Then he played Suzanne for me. I said, “Leonard, it’s a song and I’m recording it tomorrow.” Which I did – and it became a huge success. After that, he said, “Now you’ve made me famous. I don’t know why you don’t write your own songs.” I went straight to the piano and wrote Since You Asked in 40 minutes. It was the beginning of my writing. Leonard was my guru, in a way.

I discovered the song for the first time My father via This Mortal Coil release. Is it autobiographical? mbleeze

It’s very autobiographical, even though my father wasn’t a miner in Ohio and didn’t promise to take us to France. I had to make it rhyme and make sense, but it’s really about the ethereal idea we have of our parents and how they inspire us. My father was blind since he was four years old, but he never used a dog or a cane. He traveled the world determined to conquer it. He went wherever he wanted – across the city, upstairs on the bus – guided by the sound of his heels on the sidewalk.

Then, single-handedly, he became a major radio personality in three cities. He sang the Great American Songbook and Irish and Scottish folk songs and had braille books stacked to the ceiling that he could read to us in the dark. His determination was such that he believed we could achieve anything, and that’s kind of what the song is about.

After five superlative traditional folk albums, you got together with (the arranger) Joshua Rifkin In 1966 to produce the groundbreaking album In my lifein which you treat contemporary song (the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Donovan) with the seriousness usually reserved for classical song. How did you end up doing this? hcir321

I had performed Dylan songs before, but for In My Life I returned to songs written in Germany by Brecht and Weill. Once I did Pirate Jenny – (sings) “You gentlemen can watch while I mop the floor” – I thought it would be interesting to take songs from Berlin from the 1940s and put them with this wonderful music that the Beatles and others were doing, so the contrast was really interesting. I was still looking.

Stephen Stills wrote the seven-minute epic masterpiece Next: Judy with Blue Eyes about you on Crosby, Stills and Nash’his beginnings. Is this your favorite song from the band? raphph

When we were doing Who Knows Where the Time Goes (with Stills on guitar and bass), we had an affair that lasted four months, but I didn’t like California. He didn’t like New York or therapy, and I was into both. After we broke up, I was in California doing a show on my birthday and he brought me flowers and sang Judy Blue Eyes to me. We were both in tears and I said, “Oh, that’s beautiful, but it’s not going to bring me back.” I had embarked on another adventure with someone else, but Stephen and I have been friends for 60 years.

After my wonderful husband, Louis, died in 2024, we played a song together and on stage Stephen said, “She married the right guy,” which was so touching – they were friends. Stephen also wrote Helplessly Hope about me and I wrote Houses about him. All of his songs were amazing, but I call my tour the Sweet Judy Blue Eyes farewell tour and he doesn’t mind.

How much of the expansion of your repertoire in the 1960s and early 1970s was due to environment Electra Discs and to (the owner of the label) Jacqueline Holzman especially? Delverie

Jac was – is – so brilliant and so supportive and such a good partner in having things to say about what I was doing and what I was writing. It was always there, for 25 years, and Elektra was a very eclectic label, from Carly Simon to the Stooges. When Jac went to Los Angeles and brought the Doors to Elektra, he first called me and said, “I want you to know that I accept the Doors as an artist and I want you to hear them.” I fell in love with them and told him they were awesome. Jac is still working at 95 and we talk often.

What is at the heart of the subgenre of folk music that you make?? What exactly are people connecting to? eamomccc

I learned all the wonderful old songs from the Denver Folklore Society – Maid of Constant Sorrow and others. The folk music genre connects to everything and everyone because they are stories about people’s lives, their joys and their pains. I was lucky enough to find the originals and then the new ones, like Leonard Cohen and the Doors, and they all coalesced and became the music of the time, and it lasted and is still everywhere. In every great pop song, there’s a folk song.

My favorite album is Who knows where time passes. How did you meet the big title track, at the time a completely unknown composition by Sandy Denny? goring gull

We were closing for the day when this guy pulled up to the studio on a motorcycle, ran inside and threw this tape onto my producer, David Anderle’s, desk. He said, “You have to record this song.” “We played the tape and I said, “Oh my God, of course we have to do this.” » It’s a beautiful song and I’m very grateful to have gotten to know her and spent time with her in England and New York. We drank together and it was a moment of wonder. An extraordinary woman. I still have a few small flowers that she gave me and that I keep in my studio.

Who was the first singer who lit the fire in you? SarahCG

An American singer called Jo Stafford, who was very important in the popular field. When I heard her sing, “It was in the joyous month of May, when the green buds were swelling, a young man on his deathbed lay for Barbara Allen’s sake,” she touched my heart. I told my dad I had to get a guitar and that started me on my journey. I never met her, but years later I was very happy to be asked to write the liner notes for a collection of her best songs.

I have about 30 of your albums; what do you consider your best – and why? Chicouté2021

The most recent, Spellbound, consists of 12 songs that I wrote. This is my first time doing this and it was nominated for a Grammy, so I’m very happy with it. I’m writing for another project now and I’ve never lost that joy of writing songs and figuring out how to make them.

What led to the collaboration with (the Manchester band) Puressence? axolotly

They recorded a beautiful version of Che, a song about Che Guevara that took me four years to write. No one else had ever recorded it, but I thought their version was one of the best things I’d ever heard. So I was intrigued. I discovered them, I met (singer) James Mudriczki in England, we got to know each other and I ended up singing on their album (Solid State Recital in 2011). James is wonderful.

You did Fisherman’s Song with Carly Simon on her 1990 album. How did this collaboration come about? Micktrick

Carly sang one of my songs that Dolly Parton also sang, so I accomplished something I thought would never happen. I’ve known Carly since she was in the Simon Sisters with her sister Lucy years ago. All of her sisters were friends of mine, and then Carly and I were in Greenwich Village in the ’60s, when it was a hive of talent. You’d be walking down the street and run into Tom Paxton and he’d say, “I wrote this song” and I’d record it.

I met Bob Dylan around that time, but I had first met him in 1959 and 1960 at a little club in the mountains called Gilded Garter and we used to get drunk together. He was playing old Woody Guthrie blues then, so when I saw this song written as “Bob Dylan” – “How Many Roads Does a Man Gotta Travel” – I thought it must be a mistake. I quickly realized that wasn’t the case and started recording his songs. Lately, Masters of War has been too scary for me to sing, but I’m going to try again, because it’s a beautiful protest song and should be heard.

1939 (Collins’ birthday) was a long time ago. How to understand the scale? EdinKyo

My mother was married to a blind man she met on a bus in Seattle and they raised five children and we learned about the history of our country and what was valuable to our founders. Today we have AI and it’s a very different world, but the fundamentals don’t change. We continue to make art and music and we try to save the planet. We meet people, get together with our families, get on a plane and fly to another place. We overcome our tragedies and…