http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/57882/
By Tim Murphy
Published Jul 12, 2009
Judy Collins is walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art when a
Monet landscape makes her think, in a roundabout way, of Woodstock.
Yes, she was there, of course she was, but she never got a chance to
perform. "I didn't sing because Bill Graham," who helped book the
acts, "was not a fan," she says. "He hated me. I was a New Yorker and
he was the West Coast, and Joni and all of that…" she trails off.
"The Jonis…" She means the other two points in the folk-goddess
trinity, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell.
Are she and Mitchell, whose songs helped make Collins famous and who
then got famous herself, friends? "We're certainly civil to one
another. I write her notes saying, 'You're brilliant, you're
brilliant, I love you, I love you, thank you, thank you, thank
you.';" And what did she think of Mitchell's most recent album,
released by Starbucks in 2007? "Excuse me, but I hated that." Why?
"Well, I don't know. I'm very locked into those early years of hers."
Collins, raised in Colorado, still seems like a lady of real canyons,
despite having lived the past 46 years in Manhattan, most of them
with her husband, designer Louis Nelson. In May she celebrated her
70th birthday while performing at the Carlyle (a return engagement is
set for the fall). And on July 26, she'll sing on Governors Island.
The Met, for her, has always been a sanctuary from all this workand
a spur toward more of it. "I allow it to seep in. You owe it to
yourselfI call this an artist's dateto go by yourself to a movie or
museum or play and really let the art feed you" She breaks off, eyes
darting away, when we near some Georgia O'Keeffes. "Just look at this
section!" Is she an O'Keeffe fan? "As a woman, she had to work very
hard to make her own statement. I identify like mad with that."
Magritte is another artist with personal resonance. "I got very
interested in Magritte after my son died … when that happens to you,
you focus on people whose lives had been influenced by suicide."
(Clark Taylor, Collins's only child, took his life in 1992, at age
33, after years of battling depression and addiction.) "Magritte's
mother walked into the sea when he was young and drowned herself,"
she continues. "There was a big Magritte show at the Met shortly
after Clark's deathand I could see it. I could see it all." Collins,
who has been sober for three decades, has since become an advocate
for suicide survivors. "He informs my life all the time. I dream
about him quite a bit."
Downstairs, in the lobby, people begin to smile at her. Three
middle-agers approach. "We love your music," one says. "Judy Collins,
right?" She unleashes a flurry of thank-yous.
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