Well-traveled Judy Collins lands at AMSDconcerts for two nights
By Mikel Toombs, SDNN
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Judy Collins has looked at life, and music, from both sides now.
The longtime (47 years) New York City resident has appeared on
"Sesame Street," dueting with Big Bird and performing an aria with
Snuffleupagus, and testified at the trial of the Chicago 7, the
activists who helped instigate the demonstrations outside the 1968
Democratic National Convention (as newsman Walter Cronkite famously
described the resulting scene, "Chicago has become a police state").
She survived the 1992 suicide of her only child, son Clark, who died
at age 33 after battling depression and substance abuse. (Collins
went on to write a book, one of "nine or 10 she's had published,
about coping with a suicide.)
On the positive side, of course, the Colorado-raised, Greenwich
Village-inspired singer became known in the '60s and '70s as perhaps
pop music's finest interpreter of songs written by others, whether
Leonard Cohen ("Suzanne" and a whole album more), Joni Mitchell
("Both Sides Now"), Ian Tyson ("Someday Soon"), Jimmy Webb ("The Moon
Is a Harsh Mistress") or even Stephen Sondheim ("Send in the Clowns,"
from his play "A Little Night Music").
And a couple years back, the San Diego favorite she fondly recalls
her shows at the Wild Animal Park and filmed her "Wildflower
Festival" DVD at Humphrey's who performs Monday and Tuesday, March
22 and 23, at AMSDconcerts, proved that turnabout is more than fair play.
"Born to the Breed," taking its title from a song she wrote about her
son, is an album that finds some of those same performers, along with
the likes of The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde (singing "My Father") and
Joan Baez ("Since You've Asked," reprised by Cohen), paying tribute
to Collins by performing her songs.
"It's very exciting and sort of like the completion of the circle,"
Collins said of the album, released on Wildflower Records ("A Judy
Collins Company"), "because it was Leonard (Cohen) who told me I
should be writing my own songs, and here he is performing one of
mine. So it's very exciting for me. Joan Baez has been an old friend
for a long time, and all these wonderful artists (contributed).
"Actually, it started out because Chrissie Hynde said she loved that
song "My Father." She thought it was one of the top 10 songs ever
written, so that was nice."
Collins' current album is "Judy Collins Sings Lennon and McCartney,"
which finds her fixing a hole in her repertoire (previously, the only
Beatles song she'd recorded was "In My Life") and once again
communing, at least in spirit, with old friends.
"They're great songs. Anybody at any age can sing them," she said. "I
was friendly with Linda (McCartney) and friendly with Paul, and I
went to see him at Madison Square Garden a couple of years ago. He
had never been singing the old Lennon-McCartney songs; he'd always
been singing songs Wings had written and his own new material.
"And I went to see him at Madison Square Garden and he started
singing the old songs, and I just about freaked out. I said, "My God,
I have to do them. They're so delicious." So I had the pleasure of
doing an album of them and I had more fun doing that."
The fun doesn't stop there for Collins, 70. When she's not hiking or
skiing in Colorado, she's working on a new album, "Paradise," which
features contributions from Baez (a duet on "Diamonds and Rust"),
Stephen Stills, Jimmy Webb ("he plays the conch") and Annie Liebovitz
(the cover photo),. The album will include Collins singing "Over the
Rainbow," as she does on a CD insert to her new children's picture
book, also titled "Over the Rainbow."
Collins' next book, her second memoir, will not be for children.
"It's really intensely about the music that I did," she said, "about
my affair with Stephen Stills, who wrote the song about me ("Suite
Judy Blue Eyes"), about my life in New York and my really
extraordinary adventures, and all the people I've worked with."
The book is presently titled "Suite Judy Blue Eyes: Sex, Drugs, Rock
'n' Roll and the Music That Changed a Civilization," although Collins
acknowledged with a laugh that her publisher probably will want to
call it something along the lines of "My Life in Music."
"First of all, it was expressing the individual's point of view," she
said of this civilization-changing music. "And that's the big, big,
big-time change in our generation, because we learned to speak up for
ourselves. The women in this movement were very important; I think
they helped other women realize that they could do something and have
a career if they wanted to.
"I think the whole idea of human rights, civil rights, at least the
cross currents in terms of music and what was going on culturally,
had a lot to do with people standing up and singing about what was
going on in their personal lives, in their political lives, in
their love lives, in their dreams. So I think it was just
fantastically influential on the whole culture."
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Event info
What: Judy Collins
When: 7:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, March 22 and 23
Where: AMSDconcerts, 4650 Mansfield St., Normal Heights
Tickets: $45
--
Judy Collins on finding the right songs to sing
By Mikel Toombs, SDNN
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
"The way I look at it, and this is 50 years I've been doing this:
songs, I don't find them, they find me. They locate me. And the ones
that I write locate me, too," Judy Collins said.
"Sometimes it just takes someone to point the way with a song. For
instance I was very fortunate to do "Send in the Clowns." Even though
"Send in the Clowns" had been recorded by 200 people before me, (my
version) still is the first and only song of (Stephen) Sondheim's
that has reached the Top 10.
"Do you think they asked me to be on his birthday celebration? No
way," Collins added, playfully. (Sondheim turns 80 on Monday.) "No
way are they going to let me be involved with anything, since I made
him so happy and famous and so rich. People are very strange.
"In any case, these things happen, these songs. And that was a weird
situation. I didn't look for that song; that song was sent to me me
by my old friend Nancy Bacal, who is and always has been one of
Leonard Cohen's best friends, and who I met in 1966 when I first
recorded his songs.
"She called me up in 1973 and said, "I think you better listen to
this song." I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know 'Little
Night Music,' I didn't know who Stephen Sondheim was, I was
completely clueless. Even though I lived in New York, I was busy with
other things."
It was then that Collins was informed that "200 people have already
recorded it, including Frank Sinatra. And I said, 'I don't care. I
have to sing the song,'" she said. "These things are very mysterious."
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