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A vivid, highly evocative memoir of one of the reigning icons of folk music, highlighting the decade of the ’60s, when hits like “Both Sides Now” catapulted her to international fame.

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is the deeply personal, honest, and revealing memoir of folk legend and relentlessly creative spirit Judy Collins. In it, she talks about her alcoholism, her lasting love affair with Stephen Stills, her friendships with Joan Baez, Richard and Mimi Fariña, David Crosby, and Leonard Cohen and, above all, the music that helped define a decade and a generation’s sound track.

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes invites the reader into the parties that peppered Laurel Canyon and into the recording studio so we see how cuts evolved take after take, while it sets an array of amazing musical talent against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent decades of twentieth-century America.

Beautifully written, richly textured, and sharply insightful, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is an unforgettable chronicle of the folk renaissance in America.

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About Judy Collins

JUDY COLLINS has recorded more than forty albums over her illustrious career. With several top-ten hits, Grammy nominations, and gold- and platinum-selling albums to her credit, she has also written several books and has her own music label, Wildflower Records.

Editorial Reviews

“…a fascinating and even harrowing musical and personal reflection.” –Kirkus

“Collin’s improbable and utterly charming tale of assuming iconic status as a popular music star from the early 1960’s onward also proves a tremendously valuable chronicle of the early folk music scene…[A] forthright, radiant work.” –Publisher’s Weekly 

Reader Review

First, there are those riveting blue eyes on the cover, surely as famous as those of Paul Newman. The photograph is by Francesco Scavullo and similar to one that appeared on the album “Judith.” Then the title SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES, a play on the words of the song Stephen Stills wrote for her, draws you in; and you are by that time taking the book to the counter to purchase. For the next several hours you are reminded of all the things you have always loved about this great performer, her superb talent, her sense of style, her grace, her commitment to civil rights, peace and diversity. But there are surprises. Judy Collins is totally candid about her struggle for many years with alcoholism and other very personal aspects of her life including several affairs– she names names– before she met Louis Nelson, her partner now of over thirty-three years, and got sober.

What is so refreshing about this book is that Ms. Collins, even when she is being so brutally honest about her own shortcomings, is always gentle with most of the many people she has known in her long career spanning over fifty years. On Joan Baez, that other great female folk singer and her contemporary: “I never felt that competitiveness was helpful or warranted. . . But if she was Ceres. . . I was Diana. . . And the forest is a big, thriving place, chock-full of gods and goddesses.” While she does not understand what happened to her friendship with Joni Mitchell, who of course wrote “Both Sides Now,” one of Ms. Collins’ biggest hits, she nevertheless, “can say thank you. She [Mitchell] gave me a beautiful song, and sometimes that is all one can expect–or, should I say, more than anyone has any right to expect.” Bob Dylan, after his early success, “Sometimes. . . seemed to take up all the air in the room,” but he is “of course, a genius.” Leonard Cohen, whose music Collins first sang in the U. S., is a person she is grateful she did not fall in love with the way she fell in love with his songs. “I adored Leonard, but thankfully it wasn’t the kind of passion that got me into trouble. Instead, his songs would let me fly.”

Ms. Collins is not so kind to her several therapists– nor should she be– many of whom gave her bad advice while being well paid. Her long-time therapist Ralph Klein, for instance, told her that when they got to the bottom of her emotion problems, that her drinking would become “manageable.” He even suggested it might stop. “I realize today he had not one single clue about alcoholism. I did not drink because of my problems. I had problems because I drank.”

Ms. Collins’ descriptions of her bigger-than-life father, for whom she wrote the beautiful song “My Father,” will break your heart. Totally blind since the age of five but fiercely independent– he never needed the assistance of a dog or cane– Chuck Collins was also an alcoholic but both loving and lovable when sober. She says of their relationship: “I think I have been trying all my life to get my father to see me.” Ms. Collins, however, got her passion for liberal politics and her belief that music can change the world from her father, certainly a rare gift for any child to receive.

It is always a delight to witness Judy Collins’ way with words. Her mother Marjorie had big eyes “in which I used to say I saw pieces of fruitcake.” Josh White she describes this way: “He seemed to carry the sun around with him, and if you were anywhere near him you felt that warmth.” Eric Weisberg “has a smile that is usually slow in coming but is worth waiting for.”

Finally, in addition to the four and twenty other reasons to love Judy Collins, add one more when you learn that she keeps the ashes of her seven “beloved” cats on the window sill of her New York apartment. – H. F. Corbin, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Legendary Gaze Burns Through Time and Trouble

The New York Times Book Review – November 13, 2011 (Excerpt)

Albert Grossman, who had put together Peter, Paul and Mary as a folk-singing trio, once suggested to Judy Collins that she become part of a trio too. She would sing with two other women, Judy Henske and Jo Mapes. “We can call you the Brown-Eyed Girls,” he said.

The problem with that idea is apparent both on the cover and in the title of Ms. Collins’s lilting new memoir of a great musical career, five decades old and still going strong: she has the most transfixing, otherworldly blue high-beams ever seen above an acoustic guitar. She has eyes so blue that her onetime lover Stephen Stills once put them in a song title. Some combination of her eyes and voice once prompted Richard Fariña, the poet, songwriter and hell raiser who was her great friend, to write about her with the words “If amethysts could sing. …” Anybody who has ever heard Ms. Collins — and it’s hard to imagine anyone who has not — knows exactly what he meant.

As she writes in “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” (a play on Mr. Stills’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” which became a hit for Crosby, Stills and Nash), Ms. Collins decided against wearing brown contact lenses and singing with two partners. She had a strong sense of her own identity, even during the troubled and tumultuous times that her book describes. [Read the full article...]

Judy Collins: Sweet Soprano

The New York Times Book Review – December 2, 2011 (Excerpt)

“Gentle voice amid the strife” is how Life magazine described the folk singer Judy Collins on the cover of its May 2, 1969, issue. The label accompanied a photo of a young woman whose distant, blue-eyed gaze hinted at strife of her own. Just months before, Collins had scored a top-10 hit with Joni Mitchell’s pained lament “Both Sides Now.” The record broke through in an age of Vietnam protesters and social revolutionaries, out to save the world but often floundering personally; of young Americans caught between the conformity of their parents’ generation and the pressure to rebel. Collins spoke to the lost soul in all of them when she sang, in Mitchell’s words, “I really don’t know life at all.”

A few joyful songs appeared in her repertory, notably “Amazing Grace,” the 18th-century hymn that she took to the charts in 1970. But one didn’t listen to Collins to feel good. Hurt was etched into her voice: a soprano with an earthy sweetness, floating forlornly like a stray balloon. Onstage, she ventured with her guitar to places that few folk singers went. She voiced the cries of French revolutionary peasants in a medley from “Marat/Sade,” a 1965 Broadway production; she walked the gangplank to suicide in Leonard Cohen’s “Dress Rehearsal Rag.” Later Collins recorded “Send in the Clowns,” an actress’s archly formal swan song from Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” and made it the unlikeliest of disco-era hits. At the piano she delivered her original songs, full of lush storybook imagery and longing for the unreachable. “Albatross” asked, “Will there never be a prince who rides along the sea and the mountains / Scattering the sand and the foam into amethyst fountains?” [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Product Description

Following the celebration of his 40th year as a Columbia artist in 2007 and coinciding with his induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in March 2008, Cohen thrilled his fans by announcing his first tour dates in 15 years. He’s gone on to play the most prestigious and beautiful venues in virtually every corner of the globe, mesmerizing and charming audiences with performances that were hailed as some of the best of his career. When legend Cohen takes to the stage, raved Ireland’s The Independent (June 2008), it’s no less than a cultural event of Biblical dimensions.

One dozen of Leonard Cohen’s most famous songs from those recent world tour performances at auditorium halls, festivals, arenas, and stadiums from Tel Aviv to London, from across Europe to the California desert and his native Canada are now collected on Songs From the Road. The 12-song program filmed in high definition and recorded in 5.1 surround sound will be issued in three separate packages: CD+DVD in a beautiful softpak with a 12-page book, Blu-ray, and 2-LP 180-gram audiophile vinyl in a gatefold jacket.

Review

After the release of “Live in London” in March of last year, and “Live at the Isle of Wright 1970″ in October of last year, Leonard Cohen has just released another, yes ANOTHER, live album/DVD combo. I have to admit that my first reaction was “money grabbing move!!” I mean, last year’s “Live in London” 2CD/DVD combo is a fantastic document from his on-going (never-ending?) world tour.

“Songs From the Road” (12 tracks; 66 min.) brings a collection of tunes recorded all over the world during the 08-09 world tour. Upon reviewing the set list closer, I was pleasantly surprised that there is only a 4 song overlap (Bird on a Wire; Suzanne; Hallelujah; Closing Time) between this and the “Live in London” album. Testament to the depth of Cohen’s catalogue, for one. There are some really great songs on here, including “Lover, Lover, Lover” (one of my all-time favorite Cohen songs), but also “Famous Blue Raincoat” and some lesser-known songs like “Heart With No Companhion” and “That Don’t Make It Junk”. The DVD brings the same 12 songs and some bonus backstage footage filmed by Cohen’s daughter. Of course, considering that the capacity of a DVD is about 3 hrs, the DVD is under-used. At the same time, the quality is a step up from the “Live in London” footage.

Incredibly, there is also a track on here (“Hallelujah”) from the set I saw Leonard Cohen do at the Coachella music festival last year. Cohen’s set, which happened just as the sun was setting, was one of THE highlights of the entire festival for me. So immediately this became a must-have for me, period. So it may be there a hint of “money-grabbing” by releasing this collection, but in the end, who would begrudge the legendary Leonard Cohen? – Paul Allear, Amazon Customer Review

He called her on the road
From a lonely cold hotel room
– Lonestar, I’m Already There

Whenever I hear Lonestar’s song on the radio I can’t help but yell, “You gotta turn off that air-conditioning!”, very much to the dismay of my wife, who loves country music. Now, she can’t listen to the song without thinking about air conditioners, which is even worse.

My comment has also tagged me as hating Country & Western. The truth is, I love Country music when I hear it live, as I did so many times when I traveled in Texas, Ohio, and California. I just don’t care to listen to it on the radio.

As I am writing this, I am sitting in a warm, yet still lonely, hotel room in Hannover, Germany. I miss my wife and my son, who are waiting for my return to Greenfield, Massachusetts. Without them I don’t have the energy to go out and explore. I’m just sitting here and I have only two words for life on the road: Bor ring! (Hey, just copying a quote from Wings, still my all-time favorite sit-com)

Add Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel #2 to my current mood, and I am ready  to decide between suicide and getting drunk. Getting drunk usually wins. Don’t get wrong, I love Leonard Cohen, but you should only listen to him when you’re mentally stable or in a really good mood, and even then you should only take small portions.

So, now that my rant is finished, I feel much better, and I forgot what I wanted to write about originally. Maybe I will go out and have a glass or two of good German beer.