Judy Collins - Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music

Copyright 2011 by Judy Collins

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, Judy, 1939
Sweet Judy blue eyes : my life in music / Judy Collins.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Collins, Judy, 1939 2. SingersUnited StatesBiography.
I. Title.
ML420.C65A3 2011
782.42164092dc22
[B] 2011014414

eISBN: 978-0-307-71736-8

All photographs are from the authors private collection unless otherwise credited.

JACKET PHOTOGRAPHY BY FRANCESCO SCAVULLO

v3.1

For my mother,

Marjorie Lorraine Byrd Collins Hall

(19162010)

Authors Note

I have made every attempt to quote the conversations with people in this book correctly. If I have failed to be exact, Ive attempted to convey the sense and the meaning. At times I have also quoted letters, and those are verbatim.

In all cases, it is my memory of an event that supersedes the memories of other participants who might have been at the same party. There are no accidents in memory, for memory has its own reasons and its own logic. What I remember is what happened to me as I best recall it.

The Parade

How exhilarating it was to march

Along the great boulevards

In the sunflash of trumpets

And under all the waving flags

The flag of desire, the flag of ambition.

So many of us streaming along

All of humanity, really

Moving in perfect sync,

Yet each lost in the room

Of a private dream.

B ILLY C OLLINS

God of sun and moon, God of ocean tides,
You who drive the stars, you of perfect light
Teach me how to sing.

J UDY C OLLINS , Singing Lessons

I TS a Sunday night, and I am traveling from Hartford to New York City, heading in from a show. Rain pours down, and the driver of my sedan is battling the storm like a captain of a schooner in white waves. Thoughts of my life flow like the water around us: years of life, love and anger, rage and hope; the songs I have sung; the men and women I have loved.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes is playing on the radio, softly, but I hear it through the steady sound of the rain and the hiss of the tires on the road. Unmistakable, Stephen Stills voice floats above the harmonies of David Crosby and Graham Nash. Stephens guitar cuts into my heart like an emotional arrow. Whenever I hear the songin a grocery store, in an airport, on my own CD playerit resounds like a call from mystic lakes. It pierces the heart of this girl and all the other grown-up girls who think it tells their story. All great songs make you feel that way, as though they were written especially for you.

But Suite: Judy Blue Eyes really is my story. Stephen wrote it for me when we were both young and innocent, during our brilliant romance. The song never fails to transport me back to that thrilling and terrifying time we call the sixties, when so many great songs proclaimed our grand, noble visions. We were reckless dreamers, hell-bent on finding our own personal happiness, determined to elevate all of humanity above the anger and violence of the past.

There is an old saying that every time you sigh, a drop of blood falls from your heart. It seems I sigh more now than I ever did, and that probably means my heart has lost many tear-shaped drops. I have lived my life, as we all do, between these sighs, between these drops of blood.

My life has taken me from innocence to rage and back again. Those precious early years seem oddly clearer to me now, at seventy. The people I knew and loved and the drama of that diamond-bright time move closer as they slip farther away.

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes will tell many stories Ive never fully told, demons I have battled, and tragedies Ive endured. In fifty years in the music business, there are also the blessings and grace I have found through it all.

I will tell how I found my way to my marriage to Louis Nelson and more than thirty-three years of living with a man who is my partner, my friend and lover, my solace and companion, whom I met when I thought I had lost everything that mattered.

I will talk of faith and money, sex and drugs and rock and roll, about learning to sing and tour, through all the days of shining sun as well as pouring rain. I will tell of my ongoing quest to becomeand to remainan artist.

With the passage of time, I am able to talk about circles that have been completed and old friends with whom I have reconnected. Many have died, each spiriting away a unique impression of me that no one else will ever have, each leaving a ghost of himself behind in my memory. These memories are my treasuresmemories of singers and poets, rabble-rousers and rebels. The closest of friends, the dearest of lovers, family members who were a part of me. There are so many, including Marjorie, my mother, Chuck, my father, and Clark, my son.

Robert Richardson writes of the philosopher William James, Trouble was for him a precondition for insight. I can only hope that the same is true for me, and that I have learned at least some of the lessons born not only of my own troubles and of those close to me but also of the people for whose causes I have marched and rallied, raised money, and gone to jail, and for whom I always, always sing.

I will speak of the wars of an emotional nature, against addictions, against suicidal depressions, against alcoholic drinking; these are not wars with fire and steel, but they are wars just the same, often with terrible prices to pay. No antiwar protest, no action against prevailing prejudice, ever was fought harder than these.

Through all these years, I have been eternally grateful for the gift of music. There are times when the sounds of the voices in my audiences, singing along with the old sweet melodies, are, for me, all that stand between despair and joy. When we sing, we can do anythingchange the world, bring peace, be our best selves at last.

When we sing, our hearts can lift and fly, over the troubled waters and over the years.

Chapter One

Ruby-Throated Sparrow

I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are.

S TEPHEN S TILLS , Suite: Judy Blue Eyes