Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Judy Collins

Transcript

Judy Collins · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond. To kick off our
0:22
Speaker 1: celebration of Women's History Month, we have the great singer
0:26
Speaker 1: and interpreter of song, Judy Collins, who, at eighty two
0:29
Speaker 1: years old, is in the midst of a creative shift
0:32
Speaker 1: in the way she works. Collins made her name during
0:35
Speaker 1: the sixties folk Revival, covering songs by other artists like
0:38
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, using her crisp soprano to
0:42
Speaker 1: transform them. But this year, for the first time in
0:45
Speaker 1: her career, she's released an album written entirely by herself.
0:49
Speaker 1: The album's called Spellbound, in the music feels right at
0:53
Speaker 1: home with some of the best in her catalog. Here's
0:55
Speaker 1: her song When I Was a Girl in Colorado, a
0:58
Speaker 1: sweet ode to the beautiful land of the West. Nestled
1:01
Speaker 1: between soft pedal steel, Judy Collins has managed to retain
1:19
Speaker 1: the vibrancy in her voice that made her a commodity
1:22
Speaker 1: all those years ago in the East Village and has
1:25
Speaker 1: kept pushing the bounds of her creativity. She tells Bruce
1:28
Speaker 1: Hedlam on today's episode about her recent burst of activity,
1:31
Speaker 1: which not only includes this album, but five others. That's
1:35
Speaker 1: six in the last six years. They also discussed her
1:38
Speaker 1: working relationship with Leonard Cohen and how she actually lived
1:42
Speaker 1: the rugged life that peers like Dylan could only sing about.
1:48
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
1:52
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlam with Judy Collins. Since
1:56
Speaker 1: you've turned eighty, you've got your first number one, and
2:00
Speaker 1: you're touring, and you've got this great new album. Everyone
2:03
Speaker 1: should hear. Particularly the version of sending the Clowns with
2:06
Speaker 1: just a piano is so beautiful, good, so beautiful, and
2:12
Speaker 1: such a beautiful ending to that album. This new album
2:16
Speaker 1: coming out, in which I've written all the songs. I
2:18
Speaker 1: do a lot of writing anyway, but I wrote a
2:20
Speaker 1: lot of songs during the pandemic, polished up a bunch
2:23
Speaker 1: that had been hanging around waiting to be looked at
2:27
Speaker 1: and taken seriously. And it was challenging. But I've some
2:32
Speaker 1: some of those songs in concert now and we'll see.
2:36
Speaker 1: I'm very happy with it. That's exciting. When you heard songs,
2:39
Speaker 1: how did you know this is a song for me?
2:41
Speaker 1: I can make this work. Well, that's DNA, that's history.
2:46
Speaker 1: That's what you were like as a child. That's what
2:49
Speaker 1: you heard. That's how you were trained. That's how you
2:53
Speaker 1: learned how to learn all the songs of the Great
2:55
Speaker 1: American Songbook, which my father made our living with singing.
3:00
Speaker 1: Your father was a musician, we should say, yes. He
3:03
Speaker 1: was a wonderful singer. And then I was born in
3:06
Speaker 1: thirty nine. And then he went on to have a
3:08
Speaker 1: radio career which lasted thirty years, and we went from
3:13
Speaker 1: Seattle to la to Denver. I was always able to
3:17
Speaker 1: see him perform and hear him perform, and watch and
3:22
Speaker 1: learn how to do this thing to have a career,
3:25
Speaker 1: and the secret being you show up on time in
3:29
Speaker 1: most cases and you do your work. No matter how
3:33
Speaker 1: much he drank, he always was happy in the morning
3:36
Speaker 1: and clear. And I don't know how he did it,
3:38
Speaker 1: but I learned to do something in my career and
3:44
Speaker 1: not have it be blown apart by my tendency to
3:48
Speaker 1: drink too much, which I really think I learned that
3:51
Speaker 1: from him. You're drinking, which was prodigious, prodigious, Yeah, did
3:55
Speaker 1: it ever interfere? Were their mornings you couldn't perform, or
3:58
Speaker 1: evenings you couldn't perform, Not until the last year, until
4:03
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and then I was canceling right and left.
4:07
Speaker 1: I didn't drink on stage until that year either, and
4:10
Speaker 1: I always would keep the day clear, and then I
4:13
Speaker 1: would drink after the show. I knew by the time
4:16
Speaker 1: it was nineteen that I had a real problem, but
4:19
Speaker 1: I never tried to quit. I mean, who would you know.
4:22
Speaker 1: As long as things were going well, you certainly didn't
4:24
Speaker 1: want to quit. He also had a life in Colorado
4:29
Speaker 1: that was quite adventurous. You. I mean, you got married young,
4:32
Speaker 1: you had a child young, but you cooked at a
4:34
Speaker 1: sort of national park. You always seemed to be climbing
4:39
Speaker 1: mountains and doing crazy things. You had the life that
4:43
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan and a lot of the other people in
4:45
Speaker 1: the village pretended to have. They all pretended to be
4:49
Speaker 1: these rough characters who've been riding the rails and cooking
4:53
Speaker 1: at lumber camps. And you're like, no, no, no, I
4:56
Speaker 1: did that. You didn't do anything. Yeah, I did that.
4:58
Speaker 1: I had started singing for money in March of nineteen
5:03
Speaker 1: fifty nine. I sang at a little club called Michael's
5:09
Speaker 1: Pub Boulder, and then I sang in the mountains in
5:13
Speaker 1: Central City, and then I was hired to sing in
5:16
Speaker 1: Denver and I started traveling back and forth from Boulder,
5:20
Speaker 1: which is where we lived and my husband was in school,
5:23
Speaker 1: to Boulder Boulder Denver Turnpike, dangerous road in those days.
5:29
Speaker 1: We got two offers. I got an offer of six
5:31
Speaker 1: weeks at the Gate of Horn to open four at
5:34
Speaker 1: that point it was Will Holt and my husband and
5:38
Speaker 1: I got an offer to because a lot of our
5:41
Speaker 1: friends were park rangers. We knew the Long's Peak ranger
5:45
Speaker 1: whom we'd met in the mountains in fifty eight, and
5:49
Speaker 1: we'd run the lodge and I cooked on with stoves,
5:53
Speaker 1: and we'd served the lunches to the hikers, and we
5:56
Speaker 1: got to know a whole community of people. I was
6:00
Speaker 1: traveling back and forth, of course, to sing, and we
6:03
Speaker 1: were offered a firewatch. Meantime, I had broken my leg
6:08
Speaker 1: and had a urgery and was in a cast from
6:10
Speaker 1: my toes to my hip. This was in the spring
6:14
Speaker 1: of sixty. They offered us the job, and we went
6:18
Speaker 1: up to Genesee Park it's called. So we went up
6:21
Speaker 1: there for lunch one day and our little boy was
6:24
Speaker 1: about a year and a half old, I think, and
6:27
Speaker 1: we had lunch and we talked about it. What are
6:29
Speaker 1: we going to do. Are we going to move to
6:31
Speaker 1: Chicago so you can do the get of Horn or
6:34
Speaker 1: are we going to take the risk of your being
6:37
Speaker 1: in this cast and take a firewatch at Twin Sisters. Well,
6:42
Speaker 1: I was the breadwinner, so to speak, and I was
6:45
Speaker 1: not going to be very helpful if I could not move,
6:48
Speaker 1: if there was a fire, and I couldn't get on
6:51
Speaker 1: a horse and I couldn't walk in this cast. That's
6:57
Speaker 1: when we decided to go to Chicago. And that was
6:59
Speaker 1: really that moment in my life where I knew that
7:02
Speaker 1: I was not going to live in Colorado and be
7:05
Speaker 1: part of the mountain scene for my adult life, but
7:08
Speaker 1: that is going to go on this and do this
7:11
Speaker 1: career and do this thing that I do. When did
7:16
Speaker 1: you tell your husband that the cast was fake? After
7:22
Speaker 1: I knocked him down the hill? Yeah? What was it
7:27
Speaker 1: like for you when you started writing? The world changed
7:29
Speaker 1: and the sort of curators like Joan Bayes that went
7:33
Speaker 1: out of fashion, and so I think you singer songwriters,
7:35
Speaker 1: did you feel pressure that you had to write to
7:37
Speaker 1: maintain your career? No, no, no, no, I didn't. I
7:40
Speaker 1: mean my career was finding other people's songs and doing
7:43
Speaker 1: them the way I wanted to, and my writing is
7:47
Speaker 1: completely part of my psyche, and no, it was keeping
7:50
Speaker 1: me on the planet is why I write. And ever
7:53
Speaker 1: since I wrote, since you've asked, I've never stopped writing songs.
7:56
Speaker 1: And what was since you've asked about? Well, the title,
7:59
Speaker 1: since you've asked, you know, Al Cooper said to me,
8:02
Speaker 1: why are you not writing songs? And then the answers
8:04
Speaker 1: since you've asked, I'll show you. So what was it
8:08
Speaker 1: like when you you performed all these incredible songs you'd
8:11
Speaker 1: been on stage and then suddenly you're sitting down saying,
8:14
Speaker 1: well can I do this? Did you write it a piano? Yeah?
8:17
Speaker 1: I write everything at the piano, and that's where I
8:20
Speaker 1: grew up, at the piano, so it was a natural thing.
8:24
Speaker 1: It was always there. The whole question of noodling and
8:28
Speaker 1: finding a melody and a lyric did not occur to
8:32
Speaker 1: me until that moment. And I wrote a bunch of
8:36
Speaker 1: songs that were pretty interesting at that beginning. Since you've asked,
8:40
Speaker 1: and my father I wrote that I wrote Albatross in
8:43
Speaker 1: that first I wrote a song called Jay about che Guevera.
8:47
Speaker 1: I wrote quite a number of songs, including eventually, while
8:50
Speaker 1: I took a few months off a couple of years
8:53
Speaker 1: later than didn't tour, so I could just write songs,
8:57
Speaker 1: and that was where I wrote Secret Gardens and a
9:00
Speaker 1: couple of others. But I always have something I come
9:03
Speaker 1: up with, something that I need to put on a record.
9:06
Speaker 1: So usually one of my songs will show up in
9:09
Speaker 1: a collection of other things, except of course, if I'm
9:12
Speaker 1: doing its on time album, yes, or an album of
9:16
Speaker 1: Lennon McCartney, which I've done, an album of Bob Dylan,
9:19
Speaker 1: which I've done. Of those three, the Sondheim, the Lennon
9:23
Speaker 1: McCartney and the Dylan. Doing so many of those songs
9:27
Speaker 1: which surprised you the most when you did it, or
9:30
Speaker 1: what had the most surprises for you when you actually
9:32
Speaker 1: sat down to arrange the songs and to sing them. Well,
9:36
Speaker 1: I knew the Dylan songs very well, and I knew
9:39
Speaker 1: the Beatles songs very well. But I also by the
9:41
Speaker 1: time I recorded the song Time, I knew exactly what
9:45
Speaker 1: I wanted to do, and I'd been working on it since.
9:47
Speaker 1: Probably did it in twenty sixteen, so it was fifteen
9:50
Speaker 1: years later. But I had really absorbed that group of
9:54
Speaker 1: songs that I loved and that I had to sing,
9:57
Speaker 1: and I had to sing them with an orchestra, and
10:01
Speaker 1: they were the most challenging. These are works which have
10:05
Speaker 1: great depths and great demands to make on the voice
10:09
Speaker 1: as well as on the heart. Jimmy Webb says to me,
10:13
Speaker 1: you know, you always record the most difficult of my songs.
10:16
Speaker 1: One of which I have struggled with, but I finally
10:19
Speaker 1: think I can sing it is his song about Gogan,
10:22
Speaker 1: which is one of those mountain climes of a song.
10:26
Speaker 1: But it prepared me actually learning Gogan and singing it
10:31
Speaker 1: in concerts and kind of absorbing it and then recording
10:35
Speaker 1: I think prepared me to do this on time album
10:39
Speaker 1: and it is really satisfying and really exciting material and
10:44
Speaker 1: really brings you up to the point where you have
10:48
Speaker 1: to say, wow, I don't know how I did that.
10:53
Speaker 1: What is it that's challenging about his songs? Is it
10:55
Speaker 1: the leaps? Is it the rhythm? Is there just something
10:58
Speaker 1: about singing them that makes them difficult? They're often some
11:03
Speaker 1: other realm that is not customary in songs from the
11:09
Speaker 1: Great American Songbook, most of which have been taken out
11:12
Speaker 1: of Broadway shows. You don't sing along with son TEI
11:17
Speaker 1: when you walk out of the theater. Pretty much you
11:19
Speaker 1: are given an architecture that is unusual, surprising, very moving,
11:26
Speaker 1: intellectually challenging, and at the same time melodic. He holds
11:30
Speaker 1: the papers he has signed off on, something that other
11:33
Speaker 1: people cannot really copy. I don't think. Do you think
11:38
Speaker 1: you have a talent from making them accessible to your audience?
11:40
Speaker 1: I hope so, and that's really the point. I do
11:45
Speaker 1: think that my ability to clarify and to articulate, to
11:51
Speaker 1: be clear, and to phrase, and that's what you have
11:54
Speaker 1: to do with those songs. You must phrase them so
11:57
Speaker 1: that they are understandable to the listener, and that you
12:01
Speaker 1: use that melody to carry you through to your audience
12:03
Speaker 1: so that they get it and that they are as
12:06
Speaker 1: excited about the song when it comes to an end
12:08
Speaker 1: is you are. I'm wondering if some of that for
12:11
Speaker 1: you comes from your early career. But it was very
12:13
Speaker 1: much traditional folk music, Irish appelation. Yes, that was really
12:19
Speaker 1: the stuff you learned and the stuff you first recorded. Absolutely,
12:22
Speaker 1: but when you perform it it doesn't sound old timey
12:28
Speaker 1: or nostalgic. You make them feel very contemporary. Yes, A
12:32
Speaker 1: song of yours that I love and seems almost like
12:35
Speaker 1: a folk song at times. Is my father? Can you
12:37
Speaker 1: tell me about writing that? It was in April that
12:41
Speaker 1: I wrote of nineteen sixty eight, and he died in May.
12:45
Speaker 1: It was just an easy access. It came very easily.
12:52
Speaker 1: You know. They don't all come so easily, and that's
12:55
Speaker 1: how they get you, though. It took me about forty
12:57
Speaker 1: minutes to write, since you've asked, and the same thing
13:00
Speaker 1: was true as my father. But then in between you
13:03
Speaker 1: have these months and months of struggling with a song.
13:06
Speaker 1: But they hook you by getting you to be able
13:09
Speaker 1: to write my father, And since you've asked, I knew
13:13
Speaker 1: he was sick. In nineteen sixty seven, at Christmas, I
13:16
Speaker 1: had been for the first time. I'd been making some money,
13:19
Speaker 1: and so I gave my parents a trip to Hawaii
13:22
Speaker 1: is a present, and when they got there, he got sick,
13:25
Speaker 1: and he got sick there in the hospital, and then
13:28
Speaker 1: he came back, and for months they didn't know what
13:30
Speaker 1: was the matter with him. But I knew he was
13:32
Speaker 1: in the hospital, and so the song came very easily
13:35
Speaker 1: to me, But he never heard it, which is the
13:38
Speaker 1: sad part of it. I called an old friend, Tom Glazer,
13:41
Speaker 1: and I sang it to Tom on the phone. I
13:43
Speaker 1: would have done that was my father, I'm sure, but
13:46
Speaker 1: it's not something that probably a person who's on his
13:49
Speaker 1: way to dying would want to hear necessarily because the
13:55
Speaker 1: opening of the song it describes your father promising you
13:59
Speaker 1: that you would live in France. Yeah, is that something
14:01
Speaker 1: your father actually did? Well? It was in sixty eight.
14:05
Speaker 1: It was that summer I met Stephen four days after
14:08
Speaker 1: my father's death, and I was writing the song and
14:11
Speaker 1: the first line was my father always promised us that
14:14
Speaker 1: we would live in Spain. I couldn't rhyme it with
14:17
Speaker 1: rain or pain, so I had to change. My fair
14:22
Speaker 1: Lady killed that one for exactly. Yeah, we'll be right
14:28
Speaker 1: back after a quick break with more from Judy Collins.
14:34
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Bruce Headlam and Judy Collins.
14:37
Speaker 1: Can you take me back to sixty four where you
14:40
Speaker 1: were and how the first town Hall concert came about?
14:43
Speaker 1: Because it became a famous album of yours. It did
14:46
Speaker 1: become a famous album, and I signed my contract with
14:50
Speaker 1: Elector in nineteen sixty one on a handshake with Jack Holsman,
14:54
Speaker 1: and he became my champion. And I had opened for
14:59
Speaker 1: theod Quell at Carnegie Hall. So I had sort of
15:03
Speaker 1: broken into the big stages in New York. But now
15:07
Speaker 1: I had a full tell solo concert at town Hall,
15:11
Speaker 1: and that was after my first three albums, and so
15:15
Speaker 1: Jack said, well, let's we got to record this. That
15:17
Speaker 1: was a big deal in those days because there was
15:20
Speaker 1: a big truck outside and a lot of people with
15:22
Speaker 1: a lot of reel to reel tapes going on. I'd
15:25
Speaker 1: found Phil Oakes's song in the Heat of the Summer,
15:29
Speaker 1: and a couple of Dylan songs, primarily the Lonesome Death
15:32
Speaker 1: of Hattie Carroll, which I had heard him sing actually
15:36
Speaker 1: on the town Hall stage in nineteen sixty two, and
15:40
Speaker 1: Billy Head Wheeler song, one of which Cold Too I
15:44
Speaker 1: have sung consistently from then on. It's the best song
15:47
Speaker 1: about people who've been in a job that doesn't exist
15:51
Speaker 1: anymore that I know, So it was really interesting to
15:55
Speaker 1: go back and do that. We did this album in
15:59
Speaker 1: a virtual environment, so there was nobody in town Hall
16:02
Speaker 1: when we recorded it in January, and I didn't actually
16:05
Speaker 1: know they were going to put it on a vinyl
16:07
Speaker 1: and a CD, but they did, which is good. It's
16:10
Speaker 1: good for me. It's good for my fans. If it
16:13
Speaker 1: hadn't been for the pandemic, would you have had a
16:15
Speaker 1: crowd there or not? Oh yeah, oh yes, we should
16:17
Speaker 1: mention that was your album of twenty nineteen, which became
16:22
Speaker 1: your first number one album on the Billboard. Yeah, and
16:27
Speaker 1: you were I think eighty when that happened. That's pretty good.
16:30
Speaker 1: I got a call from Billboard and they said, oh,
16:35
Speaker 1: you've got your number one lifetime and you're in the
16:38
Speaker 1: bluegrass category. And I said, that's fine. I'm very happy
16:41
Speaker 1: to know. But remember I've had all those other numbers
16:44
Speaker 1: to the year. Don't forget about those. Your performances in
16:49
Speaker 1: that are I mean, it's beautiful, but particularly this on
16:53
Speaker 1: time because the album finishes with it, and so it
16:56
Speaker 1: finishes with the line maybe next year. Yeah, yeah, and
16:59
Speaker 1: knowing it was done in the middle of the pandemic,
17:01
Speaker 1: it's very moving. Yeah, it is. When I was listening
17:05
Speaker 1: to the album and I'm listening to you sing both
17:08
Speaker 1: sides now, which is not the easiest song to sing
17:11
Speaker 1: in the world. You sing it in the same key.
17:14
Speaker 1: I know. I always sing it in the same key.
17:17
Speaker 1: A lot of the songs on that album. On the
17:21
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four are very high and I could sing
17:24
Speaker 1: them no problem. Okay, Well, then we need to know
17:27
Speaker 1: your secret, because how can you sing songs like and
17:32
Speaker 1: Winter Sky and Ramblin Boy and all these other great songs?
17:34
Speaker 1: You sing in the same key which a lot of
17:36
Speaker 1: performers over the years have to lower it. So what
17:39
Speaker 1: do you do with your voice that allows you to
17:42
Speaker 1: do that? Well, today I sat down and practice the
17:44
Speaker 1: piano and sang did some exercises that I was taught
17:48
Speaker 1: by my teacher. And if there is a secret, it
17:51
Speaker 1: is what Max Margali's taught me, which is that everything
17:56
Speaker 1: is about clarity and phrasing. If you listen to a
17:59
Speaker 1: singer and you understand the words, it goes a long
18:03
Speaker 1: way to proving that they're singing well. If you don't,
18:07
Speaker 1: maybe not so much. And my whole purpose in life
18:11
Speaker 1: is to tell the stories so that they can be understood.
18:15
Speaker 1: I know some people who have let's say, rugged voices.
18:18
Speaker 1: They're charming, but the real challenge is to keep telling
18:24
Speaker 1: the stories and telling them understandably. You mentioned Max Margolis,
18:29
Speaker 1: he was there vocal coach. Yes, when did you start
18:31
Speaker 1: with him? I started with him in nineteen sixty five.
18:35
Speaker 1: You know, as a pianist trained pianist, I sang in
18:38
Speaker 1: the choirs and the choruses. But when I got stretched
18:42
Speaker 1: out on the road after sixty one, when I began
18:46
Speaker 1: to make records and have to travel all over the world,
18:48
Speaker 1: I would lose my voice all the time. And so
18:52
Speaker 1: by nineteen sixty five it was clear that I had
18:54
Speaker 1: to do something about it. And I didn't know anybody
18:57
Speaker 1: in New York who would do that. I mean my
19:00
Speaker 1: friends who were the folk music community. Nobody was taking
19:04
Speaker 1: singing lessons, that's for sure. So I called Harry Belafonde
19:08
Speaker 1: and his somebody who worked with him, and said, oh,
19:10
Speaker 1: Harry says, you have to talk to his guitarist, Ray Boguslav,
19:15
Speaker 1: and you have to call Ray because Ray knows about
19:18
Speaker 1: these things. So I called Ray Boguslav and he said, well,
19:23
Speaker 1: there's only one person that would be worthwhile to work with,
19:26
Speaker 1: and his name is Max Margolis. So I wrote his
19:29
Speaker 1: phone number down. And so at the end of the summer,
19:33
Speaker 1: I was in my apartment on the Upper West Side,
19:36
Speaker 1: and I picked up the piece of paper with the
19:39
Speaker 1: phone number on it, which I had kept, and I
19:42
Speaker 1: called this number and this man answered, and I said,
19:46
Speaker 1: who I was, and I told him who had recommended him.
19:50
Speaker 1: And we talked for a little bit and I said,
19:51
Speaker 1: I'd really like to come and see you and see
19:53
Speaker 1: if you can help me out with this problem. And
19:57
Speaker 1: he said what do you do? And I told him
20:00
Speaker 1: and he said, ah, I'm not interested. You people are
20:02
Speaker 1: not serious. And I said, oh, trust me, I'm serious.
20:09
Speaker 1: And I begged and pleaded, and finally he said all right.
20:14
Speaker 1: He said we'll spend a little time together. You can
20:20
Speaker 1: come and see me. And I said, well, that's wonderful.
20:22
Speaker 1: But where do you live? And he told me, and
20:25
Speaker 1: I walked out my front door on the eighth floor
20:28
Speaker 1: of one sixty four West seventy ninths and I turned
20:33
Speaker 1: right and walked past the elevator and rang his bell.
20:38
Speaker 1: He didn't expect you quite so soon. Now, that's how
20:42
Speaker 1: right on these two folks were. That I obviously it
20:45
Speaker 1: was Karmick, and it was met and then I studied
20:48
Speaker 1: with him for thirty two years until he died. And
20:51
Speaker 1: the last thing he said to me at Roosevelt Hospital
20:54
Speaker 1: when he was dying was don't worry. As long as
20:59
Speaker 1: you know that it's clarity and phrasing, you're going to
21:02
Speaker 1: be fine. How do you practice clarity and phrasing? Well,
21:06
Speaker 1: you think about clarity about the words. You know, my
21:09
Speaker 1: husband will say to me, you've got to be clearer
21:11
Speaker 1: on that song. You know it's a new song and
21:13
Speaker 1: you're not finding your way into it. It's not understandable
21:17
Speaker 1: to me. So that'll do it, you know every time.
21:21
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Judy Collins. After
21:24
Speaker 1: a quick break, we're back with the rest of Bruce's
21:30
Speaker 1: conversation with Judy Collins. One of the things reading your
21:34
Speaker 1: autobiography that I found fascinating. You lived in the Upper
21:37
Speaker 1: West Side, but you were really part of the Greenwich
21:39
Speaker 1: village scene, and how quickly you got to know seemingly everybody.
21:45
Speaker 1: When you had trouble with your voice, you phoned Harry Bellefonte.
21:49
Speaker 1: What was it about the village at that point? I
21:54
Speaker 1: know there are a lot of talented people there, but
21:56
Speaker 1: everybody seemed to intersect so many times. Was it a
21:59
Speaker 1: small community, Was it that everybody was drinking together, or
22:03
Speaker 1: what was it that made it so connected? You know,
22:07
Speaker 1: when you think of the village, it's a very small
22:10
Speaker 1: area of physical area. It's only a few blocks. You
22:13
Speaker 1: would think of it as this huge place, and yes
22:16
Speaker 1: we drank together. It was very much a social club.
22:19
Speaker 1: But when I got to the village, it was nineteen
22:21
Speaker 1: sixty one, and there was a kind of a word
22:24
Speaker 1: of mouth around the whole country. The people around the
22:27
Speaker 1: clubs would say, to another person who ran a club
22:30
Speaker 1: in Chicago, maybe she sold tickets, and they would hire me.
22:35
Speaker 1: I was there for six weeks at a time, or
22:37
Speaker 1: sometimes a month and a half two months. In that way,
22:41
Speaker 1: the venues got to know that you were doing business,
22:44
Speaker 1: so they would hire you. And I went to New
22:46
Speaker 1: York for the first time since I was a teenager.
22:50
Speaker 1: I went to Greenwich Village and I was the opener.
22:54
Speaker 1: I was the headliner at Gurtis Folk City in April
22:58
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty one. Dylan had been when he was
23:03
Speaker 1: called roberts Eyman. He had been in Denver and he
23:06
Speaker 1: was hanging out there. He was homeless there. He was
23:08
Speaker 1: sleeping on the couches of people who sang at the Exodus,
23:12
Speaker 1: which is a club that I sang. I opened for
23:15
Speaker 1: Bob Gibson, who discovered Joan Bias, and then he called
23:19
Speaker 1: Jack Holsman and said, I think I've found your Joan Bias.
23:25
Speaker 1: It was a very tiny community, although we were stretched
23:28
Speaker 1: out very sin all over the country. But that's really
23:32
Speaker 1: the way it was. The night that I opened as
23:35
Speaker 1: the headliner at Gertie's Folks, that everybody was there that
23:40
Speaker 1: I had ever seen in the record stores, and Pete
23:43
Speaker 1: Seeger was there, and Peter Paulumer was there, and Dave
23:46
Speaker 1: ren Ronk was there. In Ramblin, Jack Elliott was there
23:48
Speaker 1: because my opener was a thirteen year old named Arlo Guthrie.
23:53
Speaker 1: So they had come to see what Woody's kid was
23:57
Speaker 1: going to do. And I've known Arlo for sixty years.
24:01
Speaker 1: I was fascinated that this sort of dominant, slightly fearsome
24:05
Speaker 1: character for you when you went there was Joan Bias.
24:08
Speaker 1: Wasn't Dylan. He was still a kid. Joan was the
24:11
Speaker 1: one that everybody kind of gravitated to, and she seemed
24:14
Speaker 1: to be the charismatic one. Oh and she became a
24:18
Speaker 1: friend very early on and her sister. I was embedded
24:21
Speaker 1: with this group of people, including people like Phil Oaks,
24:25
Speaker 1: who one day he knew that I was recording in
24:29
Speaker 1: the heat of the summer was a wonderful song by him,
24:32
Speaker 1: and so he knew I was going to be recording
24:35
Speaker 1: that month in sixty four, and so he brought Eric
24:40
Speaker 1: Anderson over. I didn't know Eric at all, So he
24:43
Speaker 1: brought him over, and Eric brushed me aside, raced to
24:46
Speaker 1: the bedroom, sat down, finished writing the words to the song,
24:49
Speaker 1: and then came back and sang me Thirsty Boots and
24:53
Speaker 1: I said, oh, that's great, I'll record that tomorrow too.
24:57
Speaker 1: So things like that were always happening. It just they
24:59
Speaker 1: seemed to happen so rapidly. That's right. Odetta's husband was
25:04
Speaker 1: my manager for a while. I don't know if you
25:06
Speaker 1: know that. I didn't know that, but you guys played
25:09
Speaker 1: a very particular role which you don't find in pop
25:13
Speaker 1: music anymore. Before you started writing, you were almost like
25:16
Speaker 1: the curators of what was happening. You know. You sang
25:20
Speaker 1: Dylan songs before Dylan was popular, and he wouldn't have
25:22
Speaker 1: had a career without John Byas and Odetta sang everybody's songs. Yeah,
25:28
Speaker 1: you became this interpreter of these songwriters people hadn't really
25:33
Speaker 1: heard of. I want to just talk about a few
25:34
Speaker 1: of them because the list is so impressive. How did
25:37
Speaker 1: you first meet Ian and Sylvia? Well, they were recording
25:41
Speaker 1: for Electra, and they were charming. They had a place
25:45
Speaker 1: in the village, and you know, Electra was a family
25:49
Speaker 1: and Jack Holton and his wife Nina used to do
25:53
Speaker 1: these big parties when you had a concert somewhere and
25:56
Speaker 1: we'd meet everybody. Or I'd go to hear Ian and
25:59
Speaker 1: Sylvia sang somewhere at some club. Or I'd go hang
26:01
Speaker 1: out at the gaslight and listen to Dave van Rogue
26:05
Speaker 1: and there would be Phil Oaks singing and Peter Lafar.
26:09
Speaker 1: There was always something going on. I listened to the
26:12
Speaker 1: songs and I would pluck out the ones that I
26:15
Speaker 1: knew would work for me. And I went to see
26:17
Speaker 1: Dylan and it must have been sixty two. It was
26:20
Speaker 1: very early on. It was town Hall and he sang
26:23
Speaker 1: Masters of War and I just flipped out, and also
26:26
Speaker 1: fairthe Well, and I said, I have to record this guy.
26:28
Speaker 1: So then I came back to the East and moved
26:31
Speaker 1: straight into the village just where I knew I had
26:33
Speaker 1: to be, and I just had to be there in
26:35
Speaker 1: a way. Everybody found a way to get into that
26:38
Speaker 1: recording studio with Elector and make a record. Sometimes they
26:42
Speaker 1: didn't stay all that long. I did, But I did
26:46
Speaker 1: get to know people because of that, because that social
26:49
Speaker 1: life that kind of swirled around Nina and Jack Holsman.
26:55
Speaker 1: And how did you meet Leonard Cohen? You may be
26:58
Speaker 1: the only person not to have had an affair with
27:00
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen. Yes, I'm the only person who didn't. Yes,
27:03
Speaker 1: the only girl in the room left inning. I had
27:06
Speaker 1: a couple of friends. Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner were
27:10
Speaker 1: friends of mine in those old days in the village.
27:13
Speaker 1: And I had a friend named Linda Gottlieban. She and
27:16
Speaker 1: I and Mary Martin would have dinner, The four or
27:20
Speaker 1: five of us would have dinner. Mary Martin worked for
27:23
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers and she was a Canadian and we would
27:27
Speaker 1: go out to dinner and she would talk about her
27:29
Speaker 1: life in Canada, and she would talk about this guy
27:32
Speaker 1: named Leonard and she would say, Leonard's a wonderful poet,
27:35
Speaker 1: and we all love him. We all grew up in
27:37
Speaker 1: the same neighborhood. That's also where Nancy Bacall came into
27:40
Speaker 1: my life too, a little after that, and she said,
27:44
Speaker 1: we're also worried about him because he's a brilliant person.
27:47
Speaker 1: He gets some books published and we go to his
27:49
Speaker 1: little readings in Montreal. But we don't understand these poems
27:54
Speaker 1: that all, they're so obscure. So this went on for
27:57
Speaker 1: a couple of years, in and out of various spots
28:01
Speaker 1: where we'd have dinner or lunch or whatever. Then in
28:05
Speaker 1: sixty six she called me one day and she said, well,
28:08
Speaker 1: you will be surprised, but he's writing songs and he
28:13
Speaker 1: wants to come to see you to record his songs. Now,
28:16
Speaker 1: by that time, of course, I had had the hand
28:18
Speaker 1: in a number of careers, many many artists. I suppose
28:23
Speaker 1: it was known that if you could get me on
28:28
Speaker 1: a record on electro, because I was recording every year,
28:31
Speaker 1: it would be a good thing for your career. I
28:34
Speaker 1: said to Leonard, you know, Mary told me that you
28:36
Speaker 1: write songs, and I'd love to hear some, if that's
28:39
Speaker 1: okay with you. He said, okay, i'll come by the
28:42
Speaker 1: next day. So the next day he came by the
28:45
Speaker 1: apartment and he said, I can't sing and I can't
28:48
Speaker 1: play the guitar, and I don't know if this is
28:50
Speaker 1: a song. And he sang me three songs. He sang
28:53
Speaker 1: me the Stranger Song, which I've never recorded yet, but
28:56
Speaker 1: I will someday, and he sang me dress Rehearsal RAG,
29:01
Speaker 1: which is the story of a rehearsal for a suicide,
29:05
Speaker 1: which I thought was great, and then he sang me Suzanne.
29:09
Speaker 1: Now Michael got it right away with Susannie said, oh,
29:14
Speaker 1: that's it, and I said, I'm not so sure. So
29:17
Speaker 1: it wasn't until a day or two later that it
29:19
Speaker 1: sunk in. That was when I called Jack. We had
29:22
Speaker 1: been working on In My Life, which was my fifth album,
29:27
Speaker 1: fifth or sixth, and it was a huge departure from
29:31
Speaker 1: everything I'd ever done because now there were no guitars,
29:34
Speaker 1: there was no Dylan, there was no phil Oaks. It
29:38
Speaker 1: was songs from the Marsade, songs from the Pirate Jenny.
29:42
Speaker 1: It was a huge departure, and in my life a
29:45
Speaker 1: Beatles song. We should just back up. This was a
29:47
Speaker 1: famous theater production Peter Brooks and the story of the
29:52
Speaker 1: Marquis de Sade, a fantastic production, and the music was
29:58
Speaker 1: not distinctly song. So I took the whole soundtrack and
30:02
Speaker 1: I had them put it on a reel to reel
30:04
Speaker 1: for me, and then I edited it with my own
30:07
Speaker 1: razor to put the thing to together so that it it
30:09
Speaker 1: would make a complete kind of text as a song.
30:13
Speaker 1: And then we said, let's get Josh to do this.
30:18
Speaker 1: Let's get Josh Rudkin to orchestrate these things, Pirate Jenny,
30:22
Speaker 1: the music of the mar It Saw in My Life, etc.
30:26
Speaker 1: And so we'd done all this material. We went to
30:28
Speaker 1: England actually to record so we could get the folks
30:30
Speaker 1: who sang for the mar Itsad recordings. And we were
30:35
Speaker 1: out there, you know, we were having a very good time.
30:37
Speaker 1: Nobody knew what we were doing and nobody understood why
30:40
Speaker 1: we were doing what we were doing, and so we
30:43
Speaker 1: were very happy with it. But Jack said to me,
30:47
Speaker 1: it's missing something. And that was when Leonard came along.
30:50
Speaker 1: I called Jack a couple of days later and I said,
30:52
Speaker 1: I think I found them missing something. I had Leonard
30:57
Speaker 1: play Suzanne for him and he said, Ah, that's it,
31:01
Speaker 1: that we're done. It's amazing to me at that point
31:06
Speaker 1: that you'd had five or six records by that before
31:10
Speaker 1: you did In My Life, and they had done okay,
31:14
Speaker 1: but you didn't have a breakout hit on Eddie of them.
31:17
Speaker 1: You were touring a lot. A musician today would not
31:20
Speaker 1: get six kicks at the can with they didn't have
31:22
Speaker 1: Jack Holsman on their side. Do you think that was it? Oh? Yeah.
31:26
Speaker 1: He was a believer, you know. He said to me
31:28
Speaker 1: when Bob Gibson had called him from Denver and said,
31:32
Speaker 1: I have found your Joan Baias. That was in fifty
31:35
Speaker 1: nine and Bob said, I think you have to come
31:38
Speaker 1: out here to Denver and hear her. And he did,
31:40
Speaker 1: but he didn't introduce himself to me. And two years
31:43
Speaker 1: later he came to see me at Gertie's Folk City
31:47
Speaker 1: and said, you're ready to make a record. And years
31:50
Speaker 1: later he said I didn't know that he had come
31:53
Speaker 1: out to Denver, And then he called after Sammis had Gertie's,
31:57
Speaker 1: he called Bob Gibson and said, I have now found
31:59
Speaker 1: my Judy Collins. And he told me this maybe five
32:04
Speaker 1: years ago. I heard the story from him. He saves
32:07
Speaker 1: these little nuggets for me, tells me decades later. I
32:11
Speaker 1: was saying, he hung onto that one for a long time.
32:13
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I said, why didn't you introduce yourself?
32:16
Speaker 1: He said, because I heard you and I thought she's
32:19
Speaker 1: very good. But then he thought I did not know
32:22
Speaker 1: if you were serious, And I said, well, you could
32:24
Speaker 1: have asked me. I was always very serious and he said, well,
32:28
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, but you see, he had a heart,
32:30
Speaker 1: also has integrity, and he knows that it takes time
32:33
Speaker 1: to build an artist. I would do want to ask
32:35
Speaker 1: about two more songwriters you champion very early, Randy Newman,
32:40
Speaker 1: How did that song come to your time? Somebody sent
32:42
Speaker 1: me somebody from his camp sent me that song when
32:46
Speaker 1: I was on the verge of recording in My Life album.
32:50
Speaker 1: He had recorded it and I heard it and I said,
32:54
Speaker 1: I'm putting this on the album. That's what made the
32:57
Speaker 1: decision in his mind that he was going to be
33:00
Speaker 1: a songwriter and not go the route of most of
33:04
Speaker 1: his relatives who wrote music for movies. As you know.
33:07
Speaker 1: That was what did it. That I chose the song
33:10
Speaker 1: and I sang it, and of course it's a great
33:12
Speaker 1: and the song is great. Yeah, rain today. I think
33:17
Speaker 1: it's going to rain to the pin today. Just an
33:19
Speaker 1: amazing song. But I didn't know him. Somebody brought the
33:24
Speaker 1: song to my producer, to Mark Abramson, and kind of
33:27
Speaker 1: threw it on his desk. And how did you first hear?
33:29
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell. Another one of those miraculous moments. I was
33:34
Speaker 1: in the village I was hanging out recording, traveling, and
33:39
Speaker 1: I became friendly with al Cooper, who started blood, sweat
33:44
Speaker 1: and tears. Then sixty seven. I was passed out, I'm
33:49
Speaker 1: sure one night and it was about three in the morning,
33:52
Speaker 1: and I got this call from al Cooper and I said,
33:55
Speaker 1: why are you calling me? What is going on? Is
33:58
Speaker 1: something wrong? And he said, no, no, no, no no.
34:00
Speaker 1: I followed this girl home and she was good looking,
34:04
Speaker 1: and she said she was a songwriter, and so I
34:06
Speaker 1: figured I couldn't lose, so I followed her home and
34:09
Speaker 1: when she got there, she started singing these songs and
34:13
Speaker 1: I said, to her, hold everything, I have to call Judy.
34:21
Speaker 1: So he called me and I said, why are you
34:24
Speaker 1: calling me in the middle of the night, And then
34:26
Speaker 1: he said, I have a surprise for you. She does
34:29
Speaker 1: write songs and you are going to love them. And
34:33
Speaker 1: then he put her on the phone and she sang
34:35
Speaker 1: me both sides Now she sang that on the phone. Yeah,
34:37
Speaker 1: did she play guitar? When she was playing the guitar
34:40
Speaker 1: and singing into the phone with al Cooper sitting next
34:43
Speaker 1: to her, and you thought what I thought, Oh my god,
34:47
Speaker 1: I'll be right over and I took Jack with me
34:52
Speaker 1: the next day and I said, this is it, and
34:55
Speaker 1: he said, you're right, and that was it. I did
34:59
Speaker 1: Michael from Mountains to which I don't sing in concerts,
35:02
Speaker 1: but it is a great song. And then you later
35:05
Speaker 1: did a couple other big songs of hers. I did
35:08
Speaker 1: Chelsea Morning, Chelsea Morning. It was a hit for you,
35:11
Speaker 1: and then President Clinton and his wife said they named
35:14
Speaker 1: Chelsea Morning after listening to my version of the song.
35:18
Speaker 1: But that's a big song that I do. I love
35:20
Speaker 1: that that song a lot. Did you maintain a relationship
35:23
Speaker 1: with her over the year. Not really. You know, we've
35:26
Speaker 1: grown apart, and we also live in different parts of
35:30
Speaker 1: the country and she doesn't travel so much. I mean,
35:33
Speaker 1: she has had her physical issues, but we have had
35:37
Speaker 1: some very nice times. Clive Davis got together a couple
35:40
Speaker 1: of years ago. She was still in a wheelchair, but
35:43
Speaker 1: she came to the Grammy party that he has before
35:46
Speaker 1: the Grammys and I sang both sides now with a
35:49
Speaker 1: wonderful band for her, and so that was very special. Okay, Well,
35:53
Speaker 1: I'm so happy you could fit us in. Oh you
35:57
Speaker 1: maybe the busiest person I know. What a treat for me.
36:01
Speaker 1: I've loved every second of it. Thank you so much
36:03
Speaker 1: for coming down. Thanks that Judy Collins for taking a
36:09
Speaker 1: roll down memory Lane with Bruce. You can check out
36:11
Speaker 1: a playlist of all of our favorite Judy Collins songs
36:14
Speaker 1: and songs inspired by Judy Collums at broken Record podcast
36:18
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel
36:21
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where we
36:24
Speaker 1: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
36:27
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
36:30
Speaker 1: at help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Bentaladay, Eric Sandler,
36:34
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our
36:37
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production
36:42
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others
36:44
Speaker 1: from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is
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Speaker 1: a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad
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Speaker 1: free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for
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Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like
36:59
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us
37:02
Speaker 1: on your podcast app. For the music Spychannic Beats, I'm
37:05
Speaker 1: justin Richmond four