So, you’ve got a wonderful new book of poetry coming out called Sometimes It’s Heaven: Poems Of Love, Loss And Redemption. I’d love to hear about your process when it comes to writing poetry. How is it similar to and how is it different from writing and arranging songs?
JUDY COLLINS: It’s very similar. It’s part of the same process really. I’ll tell you how it started: when I was in therapy starting in 1963, trying to get through all the murky past of an alcoholic family and trying to kill myself at 14. I was dealing with depression, plus I was already well into an eating disorder, so I was in big trouble. So I started talking, and then my therapist said, “The first thing I want you to do is to write down your dreams.” And that was the beginning, and I wrote down my dreams for years, so I was really complying with my friend Julia Cameron’s book. What is it called, anyway? The great book about writing. And so that started my process, and that means that even this morning I woke up and I looked at my computer and I saw that I had started a poem last week, and I finished it off today. That’s how it goes, sometimes it starts years ago with some snippet, and I’ll tell you, when I started I had a book that I kept, I called it “My Secret Black Book.”
It was really the dark pages of my process through depression, anxiety, eating disorder, bad dreams and in 1966 when Leonard Cohen asked me why I wasn’t writing my own songs, I made a date with my friend Bruce Langhorne, the guy who was the inspiration for “Tambourine Man,” by the way. And I went up to White Plains where he lived, and I said, “I want you to look at this.” And I gave him my Black Book, and it was so embarrassing. I went out on the terrace and hid while he read this scary book of mine, and I went back in and he had laid it aside on the couch, and he said, “I’ll tell you what I want you to do: I want you to write five songs about an affair, beginning, middle, and end.” And I went home and I wrote my first song which is called, “Since You Asked.”
I sat down at the piano and it came, it took me about five minutes to write that song, and of course the next song that I wrote, which was about politics, took me five years. That’s how it goes. It’s either short and sweet or long and painful.
When I was reading the poems, there was this element of catharsis to them. You have all of these poems that you dedicate to people in your life, be it your son or your mom or your father or Leonard Cohen or David Crosby, with a lot of strong emotions attached. I don’t like to ascribe too much autobiography to works of art, but there did seem to be a lot of you in these poems, if that’s okay to say?
COLLINS: Oh, yes. Absolutely. Who else would there be? I will say that in the case of Sometimes It’s Heaven, my new book of poetry, my first book of poetry, I’ve been writing all along. I work from the snippets and the buildup of the poem. Actually, a poem is not a lyric, so the challenge is to write and then to swing it around to the shape of a lyric, and that’s not always possible. So in 2016, I started my year on Jan. 1st, and I said to my husband, Louis, who you might know died three months ago — terrible loss. It’s a whole other lifetime of grieving, and it’s despairing and it’s upsetting, but I’m okay today. I’m okay. And so I said to my husband, “I’m going to work on this every day, for 90 days. I’ll do 90 days, and I’ll write a poem or a snatch of a lyric every day.” He said, “Well, why don’t you write 365 poems, and then when you finish, you’ll have a book of poetry.” Well, that’s exactly what I did. Now, I have not written 365 poems a year since that year of 2016, but I did it. I did it on a challenge from him, and the poems that are in Sometimes It’s Heaven are what came out of that. Also, I wrenched a dozen songs out of the poems so they don’t show as poems. They show as songs on my most recent album, Spellbound, and all of the songs on that album reflect the year of writing poetry, and there were other added things along the way. But that was the discipline that went into it, and I dedicated the book of poetry to my wonderful, wonderful husband.
It’s an incredible tribute and good for him for making you do the project. I wanted to ask you about your poem “Chopin,” which I take to be about your training as a classical pianist, which is a well-known part of your biography. I did want to ask you — as a fellow classically trained pianist — a little bit about your piano playing. Did you have a favorite piece that you loved to play, or one that was particularly challenging to you?
COLLINS: Oh, one of the Chopin Ballades. I can sit down now and at least play half of it. I am attracted to, which is interesting — I’m attracted to all of my exercises, the things by Czerny and the exercises that I’ve learned throughout my — what am I? I’m 85, so 80 years of playing the piano, because I started when I was 5, and so I’ve always done my exercises. I’ll sit down when I get to the theater tonight, and I’ll start by sitting down at the piano after I do the sound check on the guitar and the voice, then I’ll sit down and do the voice and the piano, and I’ll probably do arpeggios and a few scales, and another kind of oddball, a Czerny that I like a lot, and that has been the secret of my ability to play the piano always.
Making The Documentary Antonia: A Portrait Of The Woman (1974), Writing Sanity And Grace (2003) & Morning, Noon, And Night (2005)
That’s fantastic that you keep up with those traditional Czerny exercises and maintain your technique. I should do the same. If we could talk just a little more about your piano training: I know that in 1974 you decided to direct and produce a movie about your piano teacher, Antonia Brico, and she was also a famous conductor.
COLLINS: Yes, she was.
I watched it on YouTube, and it’s quite a remarkable movie, and she seems like a very extraordinary woman, so, I can understand why you would want to make a film about her, but you just fearlessly went and you picked up a camera, and said, “Let’s do this.” What was it like making a movie, and how is that different from writing a poem or writing a song?
COLLINS: Well, it’s the same process. I wrote a book after my son died. I wrote a book about suicide. I wrote a book about recovery. This was for Tarcher the publisher, and then I wrote a book about process, about work. It’s called Morning, Noon, And Night, and that’s really what it’s about. What do you do in the morning?
Julia Cameron in her great book about creativity says, you get up in the morning and you do it. It doesn’t matter what it is, it might be a dream, it might be a poem. And the same thing is true, when I realized I had to make a film about Antonia, because her life was exposed to me on a very deep level from the time I was 11, and I started to be her hot pianist, and that’s why she was mad at me when I turned to folk music at the age of 16, but when I was 11 she handed me the score of a Mozart concerto written for himself and his sister Nannerl, when they were 9 and 7 I think. And I had another pianist with me, and by the time I was 13, I played that with her orchestra. That’s the picture on the cover of my new book. When you look at the cover, you’ll see a picture of me in an organdy white dress with the orchestra behind me when I was 13.
So this is how it went. So I knew this life of Brico by heart already, and when I was 35 or 36 I decided, “I’ve gotta make this movie.” The first thing I did was go out and buy a 16-millimeter camera, which I never used, because I don’t know how to use cameras. Today I would’ve done it on my iPhone. And then I called a friend of mine who was a classical pianist, who knew everybody in the offbeat film industry, and he introduced me to this wonderful woman who became my co-director — Jill Godmilow is her name — and she was my co-director.
I produced the movie of course with my own money — always a mistake — but I did and then she and I directed together and co-directed this movie, which was then nominated for an Academy Award, so I’m very proud of that only because it changed Brico’s life. She then began to have a career again, hot off the press. But this is a very serious woman who conducted the Berlin Philharmonic when she was 27 years old, and came here to the States and conducted in San Francisco in the Hollywood Bowl. Then some of her first conductorships were at the big New York Philharmonic. She had two dates with them. They were fabulous successes, and on the third date a singer named John Charles Thomas, whom I regret to say that my father [Charles Thomas Collins] was named after, because his mother was a great fan of John Charles Thomas said, “I will not sing under a woman conductor.”
Oh, wow. That’s terrible.
COLLINS: He’d be slapped around nowadays.
Covering Yaz’s “Only You” (1984)
I’ll say. Okay, so everybody knows your iconic renditions of folk songs, your covers of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the list goes on, but I want to know about your decision to cover Yaz’s “Only You” in 1984 on your album Home Again. Why did you decide to cover a contemporary synth pop song?
COLLINS: You know what happens to us? We start listening to the radio, and then somebody will hook us on a song. That’s what happened with “Only You,” and I decided, “Okay, I can do that.”
You certainly can! It’s a beautiful cover.
COLLINS: I had a good time with that. That was fun. And it was relevant, you know?
Acting In The “Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Pregnant” Comedy Junior (1994)
I totally do — and something that I really admire about you is how you’re unafraid to take on something more contemporary rather than just stay in the folk lane. And any person who starts digging into your catalog will see that you’re so much more than a folksinger. You’ve been on the Billboard charts for pop and for bluegrass. But right now, I want to go back to the subject of movies. You’ve performed on TV shows like Guiding Light and Girls and The Smothers Brothers as yourself, but what I want to know is: How did it come about that you got to act in a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger called Junior where he plays a pregnant man?
COLLINS: [Laughs] I have a friend named Beverly Camhe who has produced many movies, and she called me one day and she said, “I’ve got a good idea for you. I want you to go and have a reading with the guy who was directing the most recent Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.” Now, it was after he made the movie about twins. Do you remember that?
I do.
COLLINS: Twins was a very big movie, so Arnold Schwarzenegger made a movie called Junior in ’94 maybe. And so she called me and she said, “You are going to go and have an audition. It’s called Junior and it’s about Schwarzenegger playing a pregnant man. So I went and I thought, “Oh, well this is a lark.” And so I did the reading and then I thought, “Oh, I’ll never see them again,” and they called me back for another reading. And so I went, and I got the part. So I got to spend a week in Carmel at a beautiful, what used to be a winery with Arnold Schwarzenegger and his assembled crew, and the other stars and it was just a fabulous experience. I loved it.
Oh, that’s great, and you actually were in scenes with Schwarzenegger?
COLLINS: Yes, I was, and he was lovely. I’ll tell you a funny thing. He was accused in later years of coming on to women, and I thought, “He never came on to me, what am I? Chopped liver?” He was a gentleman and a scholar, and an amazing, amazing person. I had such a good time with him.
Let me ask you this, since we’re talking about movies, you’re in a unique position to answer this question. Did you see A Complete Unknown, the new Bob Dylan biopic with Timothée Chalamet?
COLLINS: I’m beginning to watch it. You understand that I was there.
Oh, I know. That’s why I was going to ask you how you felt about Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Dylan?
COLLINS: Oh, I think this whole cast is amazing and perfectly, perfectly chosen. The guy who wrote this script, you probably know his name.
Jay Cocks?
COLLINS: Yes. Anyway, he’s a film critic and he did a wonderful review about Antonia when it came out, and I will never cease thanking him for that. He did a fabulous, fabulous review.
