{"id":5051,"date":"2012-02-29T01:12:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T08:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=5051"},"modified":"2012-02-29T01:12:29","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T08:12:29","slug":"judy-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/02\/judy-collins\/","title":{"rendered":"JUDY COLLINS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"JUDY COLLINS<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Looking back honestly on the bitter and sweet, in song and otherwise\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Not many lives would include enough excitement for three memoirs, but Judy Collins\u2019 is the exception. She has been a troubadour of the \u201960s folk boom; accomplished composer; interpreter for the likes of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell; founder of her own Wildflower Records label and relentless social advocate. She was famously the inspiration for the Crosby, Stills & Nash classic from which her latest autobiography derives its name: Sweet Judy Blue Eyes<\/em>, which frankly addresses difficult subjects like her struggles with alcoholism and depression, as well as the suicide of her son Clark. We spoke to Collins, 72, about her life\u2019s work and her latest album, Bohemian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Was it tough writing the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a writer, I believe that if you don\u2019t write about it, it didn\u2019t happen. I\u2019ve already written about those issues. Keeping a journal has kept a lot of that drama under some kind of control. You\u2019re not reliving these incidents, you\u2019re telling about them\u2014storytelling is very different from living them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What inspired Bohemian<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s different for every song: I had never really recorded \u201cWings of Angels\u201d properly, and I wanted to give it another try. My mother\u2019s death last year inspired me to write \u201cIn the Twilight.\u201d I found \u201cMorocco\u201d in one of my notebooks when I was looking for songs to finish. I wrote the first line of \u201cBig Sur\u201d in my journal when I was on the coast in 2001. With the songs that I write, I have to find the time to sit and finish them. For those I\u2019m listening to, I keep a wish list of songs that are old and songs that are new. So it\u2019s\u00a0an intuitive process.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How do you choose covers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I still have a long list of songs I\u2019ve always wanted to sing, and I\u2019m always narrowing it down to things that fit. Ultimately it comes down to what sticks with me. I might choose half a dozen songs to work on, and hopefully when I wake up in the middle of the night they\u2019ll be the ones I can\u2019t get out of my mind. I\u2019ve been singing one song on the album, [Michael Veitch\u2019s] \u201cVeteran\u2019s Day,\u201d in my concerts since I heard it a few years ago, and it just wouldn\u2019t leave my head.\u00a0I just had to do it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When you started songwriting in your late 20s, were you intimidated?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not at all. I had never thought of doing it before, but it wasn\u2019t intimidating because I wasn\u2019t about to put anything on a record that I didn\u2019t feel was up to the mark. Well, there was one song that wasn\u2019t up to the mark, and it did make it\u2014but it didn\u2019t survive past that particular recording. (laughs<\/em>)\u00a0But no, you can\u2019t feel competitive\u00a0about that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you make an emotional tie to songs every time you sing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, you can\u2019t do that. Mary Pickford once said she could do a grocery list while she was acting a part in a movie because she\u2019s gone through it\u2014she knows it, she\u2019s been there, she\u2019s emotionally taken that journey. You can\u2019t play a drunk and\u00a0actually be a drunk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How do you reflect on your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes I get a little dazzled by it all. I think about my forebears and all the things they didn\u2019t get to do. Maybe I was chosen to fulfill their ambitions. I feel like Shirley MacLaine, a bit. (laughs<\/em>) Yes, it\u2019s very exciting to have this kind of life and experience these things. I consider myself extremely fortunate. In the overall scheme, I could be doing a lot of things that\u00a0wouldn\u2019t make me happy.<\/p>\n

\u2013Lee Zimmerman<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JUDY COLLINS Looking back honestly on the bitter and sweet, in song and otherwise\u00a0 Not many lives would include enough excitement for three memoirs, but Judy Collins\u2019 is the exception. She has been a troubadour of the \u201960s folk boom; accomplished composer; interpreter for the likes of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell; founder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[3151,2864,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5053,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions\/5053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}