Judy Collins Discusses New Album “Spellbound”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now to a singer/songwriter whose decades long career continues to flourish at 83. Judy Collins is up for another Grammy award for her latest album “Spellbound.” It’s her first record that’s made up entirely of all her own material, from working with Leonard Cohen, to sinning for President Kennedy. She tells Walter Isaacson about the personal and musical journey that has got her to this moment.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Christiane. And, Judy Collins, welcome to the show.

JUDY COLLINS, SINGER AND SONGWRITER, “SPELLBOUND”: Thank you so much. I am so glad to be here with you.

ISAACSON: It’s been 60 years of a storied career. You’ve had, I think, 29 albums this — earlier this year. “Spellbound” came out, your new album. And yet, at age 83, you are forever young. Tell me how it feels to have such success after all six decades.

COLLINS: It is an amazing thing. I am sure that you’ll identify with this. Today is as good as it gets. And I woke up today and I was actually alive and ready to roll. And so, that’s really the price, I guess you would say, because there were many times during my career when that wasn’t true. And so, I am so lucky today because I’ve got my house, my home, my husband, my career, my adventures, the things that I want to do next. And so, it feels like the road is clear and I am on it.

ISAACSON: You talk about times when that wasn’t the case and that’s reflected in this new album. Tell me about some of those times.

COLLINS: Well, I have written about, oh, for instance, Arizona. One of the songs on the album is really kind of a meditation on being in lockdown in Tucson, Arizona when I was diagnosed with tuberculosis. I was — it was 1962, and I was in big trouble. I was having a terribly gurgle my lungs and I didn’t know what was wrong. And I wouldn’t go to a doctor because I didn’t want to slow down the train, you know. And I had just come back from doing Carnegie Hall, opening for Theodore Bikel, my friend Theodore. So, it’s up and down. Then you get on the plane after New York at Carnegie Hall and go to Tucson to the Ash Alley and there were two kids that ran that Ash Alley. And when I sang that night, they said to me, I think we’re going to take you over to the doctor. So, from my wild ride across the country and into what I was looking at, it was 50 more shows, I was in the long wing at the end of this tunnel at the end of this hospital looking out at the hills and the beautiful colors of Arizona, and that is where I wrote this song.

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ISAACSON: Let me quote a lyric from the song you just talked about, “Arizona.” When you talk about you healed all of the wounds that were hidden and left them for all to be seen. I think you were fighting not only tuberculosis, you’ve had alcoholism, you had some family issues. Tell me how that song now, this son now, helps you process all that and how did you process it back then?

COLLINS: I had a — you know, I wasn’t — I was literally in lockdown. But my marriage was in trouble and I was on my way to a divorce anyway. But I had my journal, which I’ve kept pretty regularly for all these decades. And so, I was able to write and sync and be by myself and be focused on this glorious outdoors, the gold and the red and the blue and the birds. It was spectacular. So, it was very healing to me. And every time I sing it and I said, you know, that was a lucky break that I got. I got it exactly at the time that I needed it. And that’s always true when I sing it as well. It gives me the break I need to reflect.

ISAACSON: Well, as you say, you didn’t write songs at first and you’re well known, of course, for covering songs by everybody from Bob Dylan to Leonard Cohen to, you know, Joan Baez. This album is the first one, right, that is all original songs you wrote. Why did you make that pivot?

COLLINS: I started recording in ’61. And then, in 1966 — and I had made five albums by them, of other people’s songs and a lot of traditional things. And then, I met up with Leonard Cohen and he said, I don’t understand why you’re not writing your own songs. Everybody else is, why aren’t you? And I raced home and wrote a song called “”Since You’ve Asked,” what I give you since you’ve aske is all my time together. And that was my first song. And I’ve written — in these past 60 years, I’ve written about 60 songs. I’ve recorded them on albums with songs from other artists, of course, everything from “Both Sides Now” to the “Northwest Passage.” When 2016, I started writing a lot of poetry and to be sort of the feeder for the songs. And I said to my husband, I’m going to do any poems to 90 days and he said, well, why don’t you do 365 days? And then, by the end of the year, you’ll have a year’s worth of poetry and probably some songs. So, I did that, and I harvested out of that 365 days a lot of songs. And when I came to the end of the year, I thought, you know, you were right. And I’ve got a ton of songs and I went on writing. And by the time the COVID locked us down, I said, oh, this is life changing. You know, after the plague came the renaissance.

ISAACSON: When you jumped on that folk music train and it comes out of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, they tend to be protest songs. They tend to be political songs. And that was true throughout the 1960s. Why did folk sort of become the soundtrack of the ’60s politics?

COLLINS: Well, it’s a good question, but it was a natural scent because previous to that, in the ’50s, you needed a big band. You needed a big dress. You needed a big name. You needed a lot of noise. You needed to be very expensive and hot and get it done, but it was hard. And so, there was a kind of a growing underground of the folk singer with the one instrument, with the one song and with a message which was quite often beautiful. I am a maid of constant sorrow. That was my first album — my first song in my first album, or perhaps the Irish songs about, then tell me Sean O’Farrell, tell me why you’re hurrying. So, there was a mixture of political music, traditional music, old, old, old songs, brand- new songs. Dylan was starting to write and writing things like “Tambourine Man.” But he also wrote “Masters of War.” So, it was a combination of exotic, esoteric beauty and, you know, get down, get to it, protest music. ISAACSON: But you and Pete Seeger in the 1960s could turn things that you wouldn’t normally think of as a protest song. And just by the way you did it, it would feel that way in particular, I remember, turn, turn, turn to everything. There’s a season.

COLLINS: Yes.

ISAACSON: Tell me about that one. You did it with him, right?

COLLINS: So true. It had — it comes from the bible. He wrote it out of one of the verses in one of the bible chapters. And it has —

ISAACSON: Wait. Give me a few lines of it.

COLLINS: To everything turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn. So, I guess it gives you a feeling of surrender and acceptance, but also you know, that you have to go on and you can’t just accept the fact that you may have done something right today, but tomorrow will come and you’ll have to do it again. Aren’t we seeing that of late?

ISAACSON: The soundtrack, I think of my early years was your cover of “Both Sides Now.” And there is a wistfulness to that song. And yet, when I heard “Spellbound,” this new album, it was almost capture the same way in that song. So alive, we were young together once upon a long last time. Tell me about those two songs and wistfulness and seeing life from “Both Sides Now.”

COLLINS: My sister called me after she heard “So Alive” and she said, who is that about? Because there’s a line in there about you always left by dawn. We slept in a single bed and you always left by dawn. And I said, I think it’s about a young singer who’s unfortunately gone at an early age. His name was David Blue and he had a single bed and he always left by dawn. You know, that was — those were the days. When I moved to New York in 1963, I was divorced. I had come straight from the hospital in Denver. I — first I was in Tucson for a couple of months and then, they moved me to the National Jewish Hospital in Denver, which is my hometown, so to speak. The first thing that I did out of a hospital bed from Denver was to go to Washington and to sing for President Kennedy at the dinner for the president, which was a (INAUDIBLE) event, which they have. I think they have it on a regular basis, and I was lucky enough to be invited to the 1963.00 event.

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ISAACSON: You wrote and recorded most of these songs during the pandemic. And I think you did it in person, right? Tell me about that experience.

COLLINS: Well, we had — the first recording session we had was in 2019, before this all broke out. And I did — I recorded a couple of songs. I recorded the “Arizona” song, which, of course, is on the album. And I recorded “Grand Canyon,” I Believe, and perhaps one other song, “A Girl from Colorado,” probably. Then we moved into the pandemic, but we found a studio in — I think it was in Astoria, which was open during the pandemic. So, sometime in March or April, we went off and did a recording session there. And we got — you know, we all wore masked except when we were singing, so to speak. So, it worked out fine. There was a lot of help during the pandemic enough for me to get my work done. Thank goodness.

ISAACSON: Tell me about your writing process and how you decide on things.

COLLINS: My first way of learning songs is to make a tape. For instance, Leonard used to send me songs every — about every 18 months he would send me —

ISAACSON: Leonard Cohen, yes.

COLLINS: Leonard Cohen. He would send me another little tape with a bunch of songs and he’d say, figure out what you want to sing. So, I would play them, I would play a bunch of songs. And then, when one stuck in my mind and I heard it sort of in real-time and I know it was for me. Now, the finding of songs is that when I hear it, I know it. I’ve had a lot of magical situations come into my life. For instance, one night I was sound asleep. I was actually probably passed out. It was 1967. So, that would have been — that was the life then. And I was still drinking. By the way, I am now 45 years sober, which is a miracle. And I thank you and everybody in the world who helps me to stay. Sober. And I woke up at 3:00 in the morning, and it was Al Kooper on the phone. He was a friend of mine. And he said, I have a surprise for you. He had been to a party at one of the clubs and where the Blood Sweat and Tears was playing. And he ran into this girl. She was a girl then, she was young. And she said, I write songs. And he said, oh, and are they any good? And she said, yes. And he said, can I hear them? And she said, why don’t you come home with me? And I said, well, she was good looking. So, I went on with her and it was Joni Mitchell, and he put her on the phone with me at 3:00 in the morning and she sang me “Both Sides Now.”

ISAACSON: And then, you did that great cover of “Both Sides Now.” Sing a little of that force, if you would.

COLLINS: Oh, well. It’s very easy because everybody knows it because it was such a big hit. Bows and flows of anger hair.

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COLLINS: You’ll hear and you’ll know it, you know, because you’ve heard for century now.

ISAACSON: Tell me about the auto accident you had when you were 17 and how that affected you.

COLLINS: Oh, God. I finally wrote about it in this album. I wrote about it. For years, I wrote about it. It’s called “”Hell on Wheels.” I was working at one of the mountain resorts in Grand Lake. It was wonderful. It was called Jenny Lemons Lodge. And I was there the summers of — when I was 16 or when I was 17. When I was 17, I had a driver’s license, a learner’s license, but I didn’t have a car. But I decided that I would try to borrow a car and go over to the Stanley to visit a friend of mine who was working and living in Estes Park. And so, I got in that car, drove over, had lunch with her. And we had, you know, a couple of drinks. I don’t know. Enough for me to be not behind the wheel, but I was young, I was crazy. And so, I got in the car and took off and I hit a dirt road in — on my way back to Grand Lake. And suddenly, I found myself stuck between a fence and a road. And down on the road to my left. sitting by the road were two little babies sitting on this little blanket. They were fine. But I had missed them by a mere a few feet. And their dad came running out of the house and screaming at me and saying, you know, I’m going to call the cops on you and I’m going to get you out of here. I’m going to get a rope and pull you out. Well, he went to do that and I rocked my car back and forth and got out of the mess and sped away. But it has haunted me ever since. And so, one of the songs on the album is called “Hell on Wheels,” which already has helped me to finish. I finally pulled it out after years are mulling over the lyric and trying to figure out how I could make it work.

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ISAACSON: The folk music of the ’60s and ’70s was driven by protest, politics, other things. I get the feeling now, and correct me if I’m wrong, that folk music has lost some of that energy or drive or urgency. Is that right?

COLLINS: Not in me. Not in my life. Not in my writing. Not in what I wanted to hear. And how I can see through the mist of the dust that was coming up around us, how I can see how the clarity of what we saw and did is appropriate today and still must be paid attention to.

ISAACSON: Judy Collins, thank you so much for being with us.

COLLINS: God bless you. Thank you so much.