Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, welcome back to the Bob West Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today he is the one to know me, Judy Collin,
Speaker 1: you'd be glad to have I'm thrilled to be here, Bob,
Speaker 1: thanks for inviting me. Okay, you actually played a gig
Speaker 1: last night at City Winery. How did that come together? Well?
Speaker 1: It was wonderful. I'm an old City Winery performer, and
Speaker 1: so I've already performed twice since uh, March or April
Speaker 1: May one, I guess May first. So it's been wonderful
Speaker 1: to get back. And I was also in New Jersey
Speaker 1: last week at a wonderful engagement in Eatontown. So I'm
Speaker 1: back on the boards and my book is full again
Speaker 1: of all those dozens and hundreds of concerts that were
Speaker 1: booked last year when we went into lockdown, and so
Speaker 1: they're all coming up now like Roses. Uh. So what
Speaker 1: do you do during lockdown? I practice the piano, I
Speaker 1: made lunch and dinner for the most part, looked for movies,
Speaker 1: had had zooms with friends and with various business enterprise.
Speaker 1: Started my own podcast called Since You've Asked, which is
Speaker 1: coming into being I think in July July, the eight
Speaker 1: and I have interviewed a number of people that I
Speaker 1: have enjoyed being with. It's it's you know, I think
Speaker 1: you will agree. I think I'm very attracted to your
Speaker 1: podcast and to your wonderful array of exploratory talks with people.
Speaker 1: And it is kind of a way of socialize, don't
Speaker 1: you think, among other you know, I talked to my
Speaker 1: shrink and I say, listen, I'm in a bad I'm
Speaker 1: in a bad mood. And all of a sudden, no
Speaker 1: matter what moods I start to podcast, it completely changes one.
Speaker 1: It changes your mood. It's wonderful. So it's good to
Speaker 1: be back on the wards and uh so that's what
Speaker 1: I did in the in the lockdown here in New York.
Speaker 1: We were here, I think we have I'm I'm terribly
Speaker 1: unhappy about the losses and the deaths that we've had here,
Speaker 1: and I know you've had them there, and I have
Speaker 1: to say that we've in that in the light of
Speaker 1: that that was going on, we've had a very privileged lockdown.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've had a rest. I haven't had a
Speaker 1: rest in about sixty years, so except for being sick
Speaker 1: a couple of times. So it's been a real strange
Speaker 1: kind of a gift for me. I've worked on all
Speaker 1: my own songs which are going to come out soon
Speaker 1: in an album, probably next year. So that's been very
Speaker 1: totalizing to me. Wow. So, uh, he's not very busy,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm busy. Okay, So what kind of movies
Speaker 1: did you watch during the lockdown? Oh? Everything you can
Speaker 1: think of the favorites. We just watched thirty episodes of Yellowstone. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm a Western girl, so I love Kevin Cosner, I
Speaker 1: love the rodeos, I love the mountains in Montana, I
Speaker 1: love the Indians. I love the fights about land and
Speaker 1: water and uh so that was a big part of it.
Speaker 1: We watched all of a couple of big We watched
Speaker 1: The Queen. We watched What's What's the early series about
Speaker 1: King Henry the eight and the guy who played in
Speaker 1: was very sin so it was distracting for a while.
Speaker 1: We have one of our favorites, which I really recommend
Speaker 1: to everybody, is called The Night Manager, and it's I
Speaker 1: think six or eight episodes and it's a John Lacarae
Speaker 1: book of course, taken into the into the theater of television,
Speaker 1: and it is superb. I must say that was one
Speaker 1: of our favorites. I would go back and watch. In fact,
Speaker 1: we did, I think watched that twice. We had a
Speaker 1: whole year, and then we went back and picked the highlights,
Speaker 1: and we're giving them another run. I even watched my
Speaker 1: I even watched my own movie. I can't listen to myself,
Speaker 1: so good credit for that. Let me ask you something,
Speaker 1: you so so upbeat invaluable. I'm kind of stunned. Is
Speaker 1: this your normal personality? Yes, this is me. This is me,
Speaker 1: you know. I was born an optimist, and my sister
Speaker 1: always accuses me of taking on that that costume at
Speaker 1: all times, not taking it off very often. No, I
Speaker 1: have to be well. The first thing that you have
Speaker 1: to do as a singer. I think the practicing is
Speaker 1: initially the daily routine has to be done once a
Speaker 1: day because you're a pianist, so you have to keep
Speaker 1: the fingers in shape. You have to keep doing your
Speaker 1: chair and doing your motort, and you have to keep
Speaker 1: writing because if you're writing poems, you might see that
Speaker 1: one or two of them come out as a sound,
Speaker 1: so sometimes they are poems and they won't fit into
Speaker 1: the lyric quality that has to be there for a song.
Speaker 1: So they then you have to eat well. You're breathing
Speaker 1: when you're singing, so that's good. That keeps your spirits up.
Speaker 1: And I have to keep my My routine involves having
Speaker 1: to exercise at least five times a weekend, usually uh
Speaker 1: three or four miles of walking, sometimes five. So it's
Speaker 1: the exercise and I eat well. I can't eat junk.
Speaker 1: I don't Oh, we don't smoke anymore. I don't drink anymore.
Speaker 1: So what's left but to have fun. Let's go back
Speaker 1: a chapter. You say you're a Western girl. You certainly
Speaker 1: grew up in the West, but you know, having you
Speaker 1: pretty much lived in the city since then, is your
Speaker 1: mind in the Western? Do you actually go visit the West?
Speaker 1: For years, I have visited. I've gone on ski trips,
Speaker 1: I've gone hiking ventures. I usually go to Colorado. That's
Speaker 1: the place that my heart lies, and I've and I
Speaker 1: have so such strong pull to Colorado a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of my writing. I just wrote a new
Speaker 1: called new song called Girl from when I was a
Speaker 1: girl in Colorado, and I think it's going to actually
Speaker 1: be very strong piece in the album. I'm starting to
Speaker 1: do it in public now and a few other things.
Speaker 1: So yes, I live in the city. I've lived in
Speaker 1: New York since nineteen sixty three when I moved here,
Speaker 1: and I've been in the same apartment here in New
Speaker 1: York for fifty years. But people associate me, Oh, I
Speaker 1: love Los Angeles. I have roots there too, certainly musical roots.
Speaker 1: And I've done a number of recordings there. And so
Speaker 1: I think the ocean and the West. Uh, the West
Speaker 1: in all its glory, has a great pulp. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you there's nowhere. There's nowhere like New York. Yesterday
Speaker 1: night before last, we went to Monday night, we went
Speaker 1: to an opening of a Renaissance exhibition of the Medici paintings,
Speaker 1: portraits really and the The few days before that, we
Speaker 1: went over to the met and we wandered for a
Speaker 1: number of hours through the Asian Wing, which is one
Speaker 1: of the great treasures of this city. And of course
Speaker 1: I have friends here. I have roots here. I know
Speaker 1: all where all the good restaurants are, and some of
Speaker 1: them are still open by God, and so that's been
Speaker 1: a treat um I have. I have all kinds of friends,
Speaker 1: you know, in l A. Well, the truth is, I
Speaker 1: didn't move to Los Angeles I did work there. I
Speaker 1: had an affair there was a very important affair with
Speaker 1: Steven Stills. But I never moved there. I think I
Speaker 1: would be dead if I'd moved there. I'm too susceptible
Speaker 1: to the rhythms there. And it was the age of
Speaker 1: drugs and overdoses, and I would have been right there
Speaker 1: in the middle of it. And I in New York.
Speaker 1: I had my therapist, I had my my lovers, and
Speaker 1: my husband now of well, my my life partner, but
Speaker 1: and my husband and my life partner of forty three years.
Speaker 1: So New York is where it's at for me. There's
Speaker 1: nothing like it. It's stimulating. My friends are not all decisions.
Speaker 1: Some of them are painters, some of them are writers.
Speaker 1: Some of them are just weird. So you know, Colorado,
Speaker 1: Denver's in the flats and then in the mountains. Are
Speaker 1: you more of a mountain girl or do you like
Speaker 1: to see the mountains in the distance. I'm a mountain girl.
Speaker 1: I had when I was a teenager. I was living
Speaker 1: in Denver, of course, and when I was starting to
Speaker 1: have those summer jobs, I started out working at a
Speaker 1: place called Sportsland Valley guest Ranch over on the other
Speaker 1: side of birth it well, I started skiing. Of course,
Speaker 1: my brother's skied all the time. I had to practice,
Speaker 1: so I was not up on the slopes as often
Speaker 1: as they were. So I'm not as great as skiers there,
Speaker 1: but I'm a very I'm fifty five or sixty years
Speaker 1: of skiing, and you know, it does teach you how
Speaker 1: to ski. So I'm a mountain girl and working in
Speaker 1: in the mountains, uh at at guest ranches, and then
Speaker 1: after I got out of high school and went to
Speaker 1: college for a year, had a job in Rocky Mountain
Speaker 1: National Park running running a wilderness site in the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain National Park which was called Friend Lake Lodge. It
Speaker 1: was a lodge which had been in existence since nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: and when we got there, we were the first people
Speaker 1: to run it for a couple of years because nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to live there without electricity, which we didn't care.
Speaker 1: And I can live by starlight or moonlight or firelight anytime.
Speaker 1: And it was really the event of a lifetime. Really.
Speaker 1: I had to bake pies and bread on a wood stove,
Speaker 1: and I got by the end of the summer, We're saying,
Speaker 1: you know, you really can't get a decent meal without
Speaker 1: cooking it in a was so so I'm very I
Speaker 1: very much romanticized the Rockies. Yes, things have changed. I
Speaker 1: tried to buy that place, but the government had started
Speaker 1: Operation sixty four, which was intend to move all of
Speaker 1: the commercial quotes commercial enterprises out of the National Park.
Speaker 1: So we lost that and I would have wound up
Speaker 1: working for the parks. I was probably if I hadn't
Speaker 1: started singing songs for money. So when was lost? Time
Speaker 1: you skied? I'm a big skier in Colorado. I love
Speaker 1: I love skis, you know. I I skied pretty much
Speaker 1: every year either either Veil or Aspen or Winter Park
Speaker 1: and primarily those places. And about four or five I
Speaker 1: have I decided that I really had to give it
Speaker 1: up because I couldn't afford to have another injury, frankly
Speaker 1: because of my schedule, because I'm on the road. Because
Speaker 1: I just couldn't do it anymore. It's too dangerous. It's
Speaker 1: a dangerous sport. And I have I have a um
Speaker 1: A replacement shoulder, I have lots of pins in my legs.
Speaker 1: And uh, I really said to myself, it's after the
Speaker 1: last big one. And I went back after the show
Speaker 1: to replacement, and I skied for a few more years.
Speaker 1: But I love it, love it, love it. But I'm
Speaker 1: not going to ski across country. It's there's no no
Speaker 1: fair comparison. And I like the speed and the wind,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't agree more. The freedom. You know. The
Speaker 1: great thing about skiing, I'm like tennis or something. At
Speaker 1: any ability level, you can reach your limit and both
Speaker 1: enjoy it and be scared. Right exactly, So these injuries
Speaker 1: were all as results of skiing. Yes, but that's why
Speaker 1: I think so. Yes, I'd like to go back, and
Speaker 1: who knows? I may, I may, I may go back
Speaker 1: because I have a brother who's a ski instructor still
Speaker 1: at Veil, and oh yes, Dave has hung in there.
Speaker 1: You know, Dave's life consists of getting injured in the
Speaker 1: winter and then spending the summer rehabbing. That's his life.
Speaker 1: He's in another one. They've taken one of his shoulders
Speaker 1: apart three or four times. They're giving up trying to
Speaker 1: find place, think places to put all this gear that
Speaker 1: has to go back there when he gets an injury.
Speaker 1: But he's still at it Veil and he still has
Speaker 1: has clients. I mean, he's got to be seven years
Speaker 1: younger than I I am. I thinking I made it too.
Speaker 1: So he's whatever that is, seventies something. But he also
Speaker 1: works all the time because he's a great builder. He
Speaker 1: built about ninety of the maybe you know them, the
Speaker 1: pine Um houses in Veil in the early sixties, and
Speaker 1: then he went off to went off the tracks for
Speaker 1: one then he came back and they all they all
Speaker 1: have to keep Dave Collins on board because he knows everything,
Speaker 1: you know, he has the he's like being a national
Speaker 1: treasure in Japan. He knows all the things to do
Speaker 1: with all the building tricks and all the things that
Speaker 1: people need to have done when they're building or rebuilding.
Speaker 1: And so he promised me that maybe next year he
Speaker 1: is going to retire, but I don't believe it, and
Speaker 1: certainly not from skiing. Okay, so you say that you're
Speaker 1: eighty two. We live in a world where every but
Speaker 1: he's lying about the rangel though now you can look
Speaker 1: at you're so upfront. So how do you feel about aging? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a fortunate journey because you could get off anywhere
Speaker 1: along the way, and I haven't. I I like what's
Speaker 1: going on in my life a lot. I like it
Speaker 1: I am always willing to say that somebody might be
Speaker 1: right instead of wrong. So I'm open to improvement, and
Speaker 1: I think that's never ending. Learning is never ending, and
Speaker 1: curiosity is never ending. And I live in a very
Speaker 1: interesting world which we all do challenging, certainly as challenging
Speaker 1: as the sixties world, though, I mean, nothing nothing comes
Speaker 1: up to Vietnam. Nothing does. There was a big piece
Speaker 1: in the Times, I don't know if you saw it
Speaker 1: last week about it was. It was about ten pages,
Speaker 1: well pages, uh, and about the big report that was
Speaker 1: came out in nine one about all of the lies
Speaker 1: and all of the horrible Anyway, nothing really beats Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and frankly, we'll never get over paying for it. I
Speaker 1: said all the time as we were marching against the war,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, this is this comes with the price.
Speaker 1: This it's not just the people that are dying, both
Speaker 1: in Vietnam and our American soldiers. It's it's it's a price,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna it's gonna come to one of these days. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how is your health other than these physical injuries
Speaker 1: with h you know, the shoulder, etcetera. Perfect for a
Speaker 1: check out. Okay, So you could you can live for
Speaker 1: another twenty years? Twenty years is what I'm counting on.
Speaker 1: Maybe I come from also a line of people who
Speaker 1: live a long time, and I have an aunt who's
Speaker 1: a hundred now, and some of my mother's aunts and
Speaker 1: uncles from uh the Bird line, in the Cope line
Speaker 1: of her family. The Birds and the Copes live a
Speaker 1: long time hundred and four hundred and five. So who knows. However,
Speaker 1: I'm getting I'm in the game for today. That's plenty
Speaker 1: for me. Well how do you feel, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: fourteen years younger than you and I'm experiencing it. How
Speaker 1: do you feel about your friends and people you know? Passing?
Speaker 1: I hated, I hated. I lost a couple of friends
Speaker 1: to the COVID Dynamic. Wonderful writer named Patty Bosworth was
Speaker 1: a very close friend of mine. She was one of
Speaker 1: the first to could leave. She was finishing a book
Speaker 1: on UH Paul Robeson. I'm hoping that it's coming out.
Speaker 1: I think her publishes. Her publishers said in her oh
Speaker 1: bit that she was that it was ready to roll.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any announcements about it. And that was
Speaker 1: a year ago that she died A little over a
Speaker 1: year ago. But of course, yeah, it's terrible. I mean,
Speaker 1: people die and the ones you don't expect to die,
Speaker 1: and you know, only the only the young die young. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: needless to say, just talking about the music business, it's
Speaker 1: completely changed from the sixties and seventies from today. And
Speaker 1: one of the big things is stars were much bigger
Speaker 1: back then. Without going into all the technology, why does
Speaker 1: this affect your outlook? It's like, okay, you have all
Speaker 1: this visibility in the sixties and seventies and nobody has
Speaker 1: that level of visibility or do you just put your
Speaker 1: eyes forward and keep going. Well, the work is what
Speaker 1: it's all about, of course, the contact. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: during the pandemic I did too viral full fully operational shows.
Speaker 1: I went to UH September twenty three. We got in
Speaker 1: the car in our masks and we drove to We
Speaker 1: were driven to Norfolk, Virginia, where I sang to an
Speaker 1: empty theater. It's called the Chrysler Theater, gorgeous theater. And
Speaker 1: we stayed in a hotel. There was a hilton there
Speaker 1: was full. Fully, we didn't eat any food there. We
Speaker 1: took all of our food with us, but we had
Speaker 1: a wonderful time, and I sang into this gorgeous, gorgeous theater.
Speaker 1: I don't have a problem with that. I love my audiences.
Speaker 1: But frankly, after all the years of television and recordings
Speaker 1: in recruit recording studios where you don't have an audience,
Speaker 1: and I'm a radio girl. I grew up my father
Speaker 1: was in the radio. He had a radio show for
Speaker 1: thirty years, and so I was on the show and
Speaker 1: I listened to the show, and I was used to
Speaker 1: I'm used to singing wherever it is that I am,
Speaker 1: with or without an audience. Then I did a big
Speaker 1: town Hall show which I just signed about a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty posters from that show, which I did here
Speaker 1: at town Hall in January, again empty theater. Well, I've
Speaker 1: been in town Hall since nineteen sixty four. I've been
Speaker 1: singing there, and town How asked me, would I repeat
Speaker 1: some of the material that I did in nine, which
Speaker 1: involved a number of songs by Tom Paxton, Billiatt Wheeler,
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, and so we did a repeat of a
Speaker 1: number of those things. Of course, we mixed in the
Speaker 1: current some of the current songs, but it was fantastic
Speaker 1: and of course, town Hall is a gorgeous theater with
Speaker 1: or without people in it, and it's historic, and it
Speaker 1: sort of resonates. It gave me a chance to talk
Speaker 1: about to change, to sort of upgrade my my spield,
Speaker 1: you know my spield. I'm funny on stage. I take
Speaker 1: the time and the energy to be funny. I have
Speaker 1: done this for a long time, and to tell stories,
Speaker 1: because it came through working at the Carlisle in New
Speaker 1: York a lot and having that weekly you know, seven
Speaker 1: six or seven days, six days a week, going in
Speaker 1: and talking while you're working. And of course I have
Speaker 1: a lot of stories having lived all this time and
Speaker 1: known a lot of people, and had a lot of lovers,
Speaker 1: and and had a lot of strange things happened to me.
Speaker 1: And so I was very comfortable. But I also went
Speaker 1: back through the history of town Hall and talked about
Speaker 1: some of the people. The people that first open town
Speaker 1: Hall in New York was the Suffragettes. They hired the
Speaker 1: theater and they started out in nineteen one. Was it
Speaker 1: twenty one? I think so. And then everybody you can
Speaker 1: think of performed there, saying they're played in the my
Speaker 1: my teacher, Dr Brico, when I say that I watched
Speaker 1: one of my watched my movie during the lockdown. I
Speaker 1: meant it. I made a movie which was nominated for
Speaker 1: an Academy Award in nineteen seventy five, about my teacher,
Speaker 1: Antonio Brico, and she I'm on the stage there where
Speaker 1: I had been in nineteen sixty four, almost fifty years before,
Speaker 1: and she had been on the stage during the war
Speaker 1: because she had her own orchestra in New York which
Speaker 1: played at Town Hall and at Carnegie Hall. So it
Speaker 1: was a wonderful experience, and I'll tell you it's draw
Speaker 1: It was a very successful experience, and it gave me,
Speaker 1: referring to your idea about exposure. A lot of people
Speaker 1: have watched it, and town Halls got very excited. In fact,
Speaker 1: they made not a CD but a vinyl. So I
Speaker 1: just saw beside vinyls and and posters. I mean, can
Speaker 1: it get any better? I don't know. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. You're you know, and some of
Speaker 1: this I know from Wikipedia, as opposed to just living
Speaker 1: and knowing your career from having experienced it. So you
Speaker 1: grow up in Seattle at age four, you move right.
Speaker 1: We moved to to Los Angeles where my dad got
Speaker 1: a job at the CBS radio station in Hollywood. And
Speaker 1: so those years from from already five to forty nine,
Speaker 1: we're in in Hollywood and in the midst of stardom,
Speaker 1: and that's where he met got got all kinds of
Speaker 1: stars that he met. But he also got um involved
Speaker 1: with people who what's the diet guru Gaylord Houser. So
Speaker 1: from then on we ate right, you know, we didn't
Speaker 1: need any white things. We didn't need any any white
Speaker 1: rice or white bread. And he was always on a
Speaker 1: health kick, so that I'm sure that helped everybody. And
Speaker 1: then after Denver, after Seattle and then Hollywood, we moved
Speaker 1: to Denver in n Now, your father was blind. He
Speaker 1: was he was blind from the age of four, and
Speaker 1: he had I think, a stunning career and really life.
Speaker 1: He was He was brilliant, he was funny. He he
Speaker 1: read everything in Braille. He thought, if you hadn't read
Speaker 1: Moby Dick by the time you were seven, there was
Speaker 1: something fundamentally wrong with you. And so I got rid
Speaker 1: the Russians and Ruskolnikov and and Mark Twain, and I
Speaker 1: grew up in a literate and musical household that was.
Speaker 1: There was none like it. And I played the piano
Speaker 1: from the age of about five, maybe four and a half.
Speaker 1: But let's go back at chapter how did your parents meet? Ah?
Speaker 1: They I had my mother right out her a story
Speaker 1: of her meeting my father. And and she was in Seattle.
Speaker 1: They broth in Seattle. She was one of nine kids.
Speaker 1: She was in her early twenties, well I think she was.
Speaker 1: She was twenty two, maybe three, and she was in college.
Speaker 1: And she got on a bus to go home, and
Speaker 1: this fellow was there, she said, dressed nicely, dressed in
Speaker 1: and she noticed he sat down and began pulled out
Speaker 1: a very large book and began running his hands over
Speaker 1: at which at which point she realized he was blind.
Speaker 1: He didn't have a dog, he didn't have a cane.
Speaker 1: So there was only his appearance with the Briale book
Speaker 1: that gave her the clue. And when she got up
Speaker 1: to get off, he got up, got up to get off,
Speaker 1: it's the same spot. And she tried to help him,
Speaker 1: you know, she said, can I give you a hand
Speaker 1: or something? And he brusquely refused that. He said, I
Speaker 1: don't need any help or something. Then it turned out
Speaker 1: that he was walking in her directions, and he was
Speaker 1: going to a club called Kenny's, which was on Queen
Speaker 1: Anne Hill, right near her parents home. And they started
Speaker 1: talking and he said, why don't you come and see me?
Speaker 1: And they did, the family and her sisters and her
Speaker 1: best friend, Eleene. They started to go to Kenny's to
Speaker 1: hear daddy play the piano and say. My father had
Speaker 1: a gorgeous voice, and he sang all the Rodgers and
Speaker 1: heart wonderful hits of the day. And he said to her, now,
Speaker 1: I'm having my radio debut next Saturday night, so I
Speaker 1: hope that you and your friends and your family will listen.
Speaker 1: So Eileen and she and Aline, her best friend, sat
Speaker 1: down in front of the old Pine Emerson Walnut radio.
Speaker 1: You know, the huge thing that you should fill up, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the console. And in the middle of this performance that
Speaker 1: my father did, he was singing, U been so long
Speaker 1: since yo, you went away. I think about you every day.
Speaker 1: My body, my body remember it. Your buddy misses you.
Speaker 1: And my my mother is in tears. And Aline said,
Speaker 1: what is wrong with you? And my mother said, that's
Speaker 1: the man I'm going to marry, and she did. She
Speaker 1: went home and told her parents, I think she told
Speaker 1: her parents before she told my father, and so, so
Speaker 1: then you, uh, you start to take piano lessons. Do
Speaker 1: you like playing the piano? Do you practice? I practice
Speaker 1: all the time. I have to. I practice as I
Speaker 1: once asked my mother if she had to force me
Speaker 1: to to play, to practice, and she said no, I
Speaker 1: had to remind you to wash your hands. Because I
Speaker 1: was also a tomboy. I mean I was out in
Speaker 1: it all the time, you know. I was always a
Speaker 1: running around town. Okay, And when did you start to
Speaker 1: be singing? I sang right away, I have. My first
Speaker 1: performance was in Butte, Montana. My dad was a big
Speaker 1: hit on the radio, and when he lost he lost
Speaker 1: his job on on the on the Seattle radio station,
Speaker 1: but immediately was out on the road with something called
Speaker 1: National School Assemblies, which was something devised by f dr
Speaker 1: Um to accommodate music Asians and communities which needed entertainment,
Speaker 1: and so it was a whole big deal. It was
Speaker 1: something that operated all over the country. But he was
Speaker 1: doing the north western route and so I was in
Speaker 1: the car in the big Buick which my father named Claudia.
Speaker 1: From the age of two and a half or so
Speaker 1: and three and we would drive every place and we
Speaker 1: wound up. I mean, the Northwest goes only so far,
Speaker 1: but we wound up in Butte, Montana. And one night
Speaker 1: he was singing and we came to the intermission and
Speaker 1: he said, do you want to sing something? Because I
Speaker 1: was already singing, he would play the piano for me
Speaker 1: and I would sing. So I said sure. I was
Speaker 1: very excited and I've never been asked to do that before.
Speaker 1: And I said, so what should I sing? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: you should sing something, you know, which is always a
Speaker 1: good idea. So I sang I'll be I'll be hung
Speaker 1: for Christmas. You can count on me. And of course
Speaker 1: it was a big hit. And it was also April,
Speaker 1: but that was the first of my performances and about
Speaker 1: three maybe, yeah, close to three. So you're in school.
Speaker 1: You go to regular public school? Oh yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh the best public schools, by the way, I did
Speaker 1: go to them. Were you known as the singer? Did
Speaker 1: people say, oh that to Judy, she's the singer. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh yes, I sang at the school shows. I sang.
Speaker 1: I played the piano and sang on my father's radio show.
Speaker 1: At my school whatever I was in the choir as,
Speaker 1: the church choir, the school choir. I sang in the
Speaker 1: opera courses I got when I when we moved from
Speaker 1: l A to Denver, my father found me a new
Speaker 1: teacher and it just turned out to be Dr Antonio Brico,
Speaker 1: who was this wildly famous dynamo conductor and pianist. And
Speaker 1: she did, of course, was always doing opera. So I
Speaker 1: was sang in the operas y Poachi and Onyagan and
Speaker 1: so forth. And I played the piano, and I of
Speaker 1: course was going to be a great pianist, she thought.
Speaker 1: And so the first thing I did was the first
Speaker 1: thing she did was to hand me the the manuscript.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, the manuscript, the whatever they
Speaker 1: call it, uh to the Mozart to piano concerto. This
Speaker 1: was when I was eleven, and she said, I want
Speaker 1: you to start memorizing this immediately. And so I played
Speaker 1: with her orchestra two years later and played the Mozart.
Speaker 1: So I had to practice all the time. Okay, but
Speaker 1: when you were practicing, what kind of student were you
Speaker 1: and how did you fit in in school? Were you
Speaker 1: a loner? Were the leader of the group where you're popular?
Speaker 1: I was very popular for lots of reasons. Um, I
Speaker 1: was fun, I had liked people, I got along with people,
Speaker 1: and I was always doing something about me, playing in
Speaker 1: the shows or and I liked my teachers. I was
Speaker 1: not great in algebra, but I was very good in geometry,
Speaker 1: which I think is the clue of why I do
Speaker 1: what I do today, because geometry is really about finding
Speaker 1: your way, and a lot of what I do is
Speaker 1: I travel, and I travel. Of course, I do about
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty shows a year normally, that's my normal,
Speaker 1: uh routine, and I've done that for years, well since
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. Before that, before the crash, I
Speaker 1: was probably se shows a year, and now it's twenty.
Speaker 1: That's because finances have changed in the music business. And
Speaker 1: so I was. But my two friends, my two best
Speaker 1: friends who are still I'm still in touch with, and
Speaker 1: we're all the same age, which makes it easier. But
Speaker 1: they live in different places. Ones on the West Coast,
Speaker 1: ones in Tacoma, ones in Norfolk, not Norfolk, but we're
Speaker 1: all uh, I don't remember, it's a Confederate town and uh.
Speaker 1: And so we've been friends since we were in grade
Speaker 1: school in Denver and then in junior high in high school,
Speaker 1: we formed a group, a trio, and we called ourselves
Speaker 1: the Little Reds. Oh, everybody else called us the Little Reds. Two.
Speaker 1: It wasn't it wasn't political as it would have been
Speaker 1: if we were here in New York. But we were
Speaker 1: called the Little Reds because we did a version of
Speaker 1: Little Red Riding Hood. And I sat at the piano
Speaker 1: and I made up the themes of Red Riding Hood
Speaker 1: and the wolf and the grandmother, and and the girls
Speaker 1: danced the story, and I played it and told it
Speaker 1: on the on the piano, and that's what led. And
Speaker 1: I'm I'm at this late date in my career, in
Speaker 1: my life, I have put together that really it was all.
Speaker 1: The rest of the music was going to be there anyway.
Speaker 1: I was always going to be playing the piano. I
Speaker 1: was now. I was learning rockmaninof to play with my
Speaker 1: teacher's orchestra. And but the girls and I needed a
Speaker 1: new piece of of of we needed a new story
Speaker 1: because we've done this everywhere and done at the all
Speaker 1: the clubs, you know, the Elks Club and the Kawana's Club,
Speaker 1: and the and Lowry Air Force Base and for Simmons
Speaker 1: General Hospital, and we even went to the Brown Palace
Speaker 1: where we met one of those famous movie stars. Can't
Speaker 1: remember his name right now. That's the only thing I
Speaker 1: have to complain about this. Once in a while a
Speaker 1: name slips my mind. It wasn't Tony Curtis. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was Tony Curtis. So we needed some new material and
Speaker 1: I was supposed to be playing this rock mining off
Speaker 1: piano concerto, which I was gonna do with my orchestra.
Speaker 1: I was about fifteen and a half now, and uh,
Speaker 1: but I got up and went over to the radio
Speaker 1: and turned it on. And you know, my father sang
Speaker 1: all of the great American songbook material, but he also
Speaker 1: every once in a while he'd break into, oh oh,
Speaker 1: Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are called. He'd do
Speaker 1: a little Irish or English melody. And I turned on
Speaker 1: the radio and I heard the Gypsy Rover, and I
Speaker 1: heard the next week, I heard Barbara Allen. So those
Speaker 1: two songs locked it into my brain that this was
Speaker 1: the music I was going to go after. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about folk music, or about the folk revival,
Speaker 1: or about any of these people. But down at Wells
Speaker 1: Music when I went to buy this record of the
Speaker 1: Gypsy Rover, which was It was in the soundtrack of
Speaker 1: an Allen lab movie called The Black Night, so it
Speaker 1: was very popular. It was movie great success. And when
Speaker 1: I went into Wells Music, the guy said, well, you
Speaker 1: know what you're looking for? You here it is. I
Speaker 1: have it. Yeah, I have it. So I bought it
Speaker 1: with my babysitting money and he said, we'll see you
Speaker 1: around on the walls. See all these albums this is
Speaker 1: there's the Classy Brothers, and there's Josh White over there,
Speaker 1: and there's Pete Seeger and there's Gene Richie. I said,
Speaker 1: what is that and he said his folk music? And
Speaker 1: I said what he said, it's folk music. And that's
Speaker 1: where I began to see my life opening up before me.
Speaker 1: You graduate from high school, then what do you do? Well,
Speaker 1: this was before that, I understand, but I want to
Speaker 1: get back to that with context, into the full folk music.
Speaker 1: So by the time I had graduated from high school,
Speaker 1: I had, first of all, I been um, my boyfriend
Speaker 1: was this guy that I married, and we've been having
Speaker 1: our love affair for a couple of years already. But
Speaker 1: I had already memorized and learned and gone to the
Speaker 1: gotten that my calluses on my fingers to play the guitar.
Speaker 1: And I had a guitar now, and I went to
Speaker 1: all the folk music meetings in the folk Folklore Center,
Speaker 1: and I met Lingo, the drifter who played all the
Speaker 1: songs of Witdy Guthrie. So I had that in my
Speaker 1: bag of tricks, so to speak, and I sang it
Speaker 1: every place I went. I took the guitar, I sang.
Speaker 1: I went off to a year of college in this
Speaker 1: dreary little well. I shouldn't say that, insulting a college
Speaker 1: in southern Illinois. I don't know how I got there.
Speaker 1: I think my mother got me a scholarship from one
Speaker 1: of her peo groups, some some Unitarian gathering of souls
Speaker 1: who had who got together and got me some sort
Speaker 1: of a scholarship. Anyway, came back from that at and
Speaker 1: that's when I went to the mountains with my husband
Speaker 1: to be, and we got married in the mountains. And uh,
Speaker 1: I just would make bread and pies on a woodstove,
Speaker 1: and then I sit on the porch and play this
Speaker 1: land is your land. So that's how it all began
Speaker 1: to unfold. So how did you get from the mountains
Speaker 1: to the east coast? I had uh when we were
Speaker 1: finished with the mountains, and we tried to buy the
Speaker 1: fernlike Lodge. My husband was now in graduate school at
Speaker 1: the University of Colorado. We moved back down to Boulder.
Speaker 1: We got a little apartment in the basement. I had
Speaker 1: my first my only son, Clark, who was a little baby.
Speaker 1: And I had a job. I worked at the university
Speaker 1: in the filing department. And my husband, of course, was
Speaker 1: in school, and he had a job. He had a
Speaker 1: paper route at four in the morning, and it was February,
Speaker 1: and he said he came in put on his boots.
Speaker 1: It was snowing. Of course, it's always snowing in Colorado.
Speaker 1: And he came in and he said, he looked at me,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, I was going off to
Speaker 1: file papers at the university later that day, and Mrs
Speaker 1: Chingley was going to take care of the baby. And
Speaker 1: he said to me, why don't you get a job
Speaker 1: doing something you know how to do. You've always been
Speaker 1: a musician. You have all these songs. Look, I had
Speaker 1: no clue that you could get a job singing these songs.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was no indications that I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about that world. I knew all those people that
Speaker 1: made records, But I thought records were for learning songs.
Speaker 1: That's what I figured. And so I called my father
Speaker 1: and I said, what about this? Do you know anybody
Speaker 1: up here and Boulder that Do you know anybody who
Speaker 1: knows anything about this? And he said, yeah, let me
Speaker 1: let me make some calls. So people will tell you
Speaker 1: that all the time. Let me make some calls. But
Speaker 1: he did, and he found this friend of ours from
Speaker 1: Denver who knew all about the clubs and Boulder and
Speaker 1: had this connection with a couple of the owners of
Speaker 1: bars and restaurants. And so I got a job at
Speaker 1: Michael's Pub in March of nineteen fifty nine. And I
Speaker 1: came home with a job and a hundred bucks a week,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of money in nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: when I'd been making forty five cents and a bottle
Speaker 1: of Coors beer for working in the college. So I started.
Speaker 1: And in those days, you know this, you know a
Speaker 1: lot about this, this business, Bob. So you know that
Speaker 1: in those days it was really a matter of word
Speaker 1: of mouth. It wasn't even agents or gatherings. It wasn't
Speaker 1: really morse. It was you know, you're saying at the
Speaker 1: club for a few weeks. And the guy who owned
Speaker 1: the club told the next people down the road, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, she we got we sold some tickets since
Speaker 1: she did well, and so on. So that started it.
Speaker 1: And right away I was singing at the Gilded Garter
Speaker 1: in CenTra City. There was Bob Bob Dylan who was
Speaker 1: then called Robert whatever his name is, Zimmerman. He was homeless.
Speaker 1: He was trying to get a job singing at everybody's
Speaker 1: hooting atis. You know, you'd get to sing three songs
Speaker 1: in a row. Uh. And then I when I got
Speaker 1: to New York a couple of years later, he was
Speaker 1: there in New York, same homeless as well. It was
Speaker 1: six one when I got here, so he still had
Speaker 1: not changed his name, and I thought he was pathetic.
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, he's singing these old witty
Speaker 1: Guthrie blues. I thought, badly, badly chosen, badly sung. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. Then one day I opened up the
Speaker 1: Bible of folk music that's called sing Out. It was
Speaker 1: a little tiny pamphlet in those days. Now it's a great,
Speaker 1: big piece of literature. It looks like a life magazine,
Speaker 1: compared to what it used to look like. Anyway, there
Speaker 1: was a song after I have a few drinks with
Speaker 1: him and heard him sing at the hooting Nanny and
Speaker 1: I think he was opening for uh Robert Johnson or
Speaker 1: one of the one of the blue singers. After I
Speaker 1: had closed at Girty's Folk City and uh, so I
Speaker 1: looked at this little book and there was this song
Speaker 1: printed out. It said blowing in the Wind. Nice title,
Speaker 1: I thought, and I read the lyric and I was
Speaker 1: then the Then they printed the melody. I said, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is this is brilliant. And at the
Speaker 1: bottom it said Bob Dylan. And I had known that
Speaker 1: he had changed his name to Bob Dylan, and I
Speaker 1: thought there has to be some mistake here, so I
Speaker 1: wrote him a fan letter, which of course he didn't
Speaker 1: get because he was homeless. But still, but of course
Speaker 1: I became a complete um wreck over his music. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just thought he was and I recorded him right away.
Speaker 1: I recorded well. One of the songs that I sang
Speaker 1: at town Hall in January was the Lonesome Death of
Speaker 1: Hattie Carroll, which when I heard it in sixty two,
Speaker 1: I said, well, I have to sing that song. It
Speaker 1: is one of the great songs of all times, and
Speaker 1: it is, and of course it's as appropriate today as
Speaker 1: it ever was. Okay, let's go back. The folk scene
Speaker 1: has really been lost to time. Most people think popular
Speaker 1: music started with the Beatles, but for those of us
Speaker 1: who were older and you certainly lived through it and
Speaker 1: were part of it and uh before me. But it
Speaker 1: was such a big scene. They even had a show
Speaker 1: on TV hood Nanny, So can he give us a
Speaker 1: feel of what the folk music scene was like and
Speaker 1: how that developed? It was amazing. There was a shift
Speaker 1: in the culture which had to do I sink with
Speaker 1: the guitar and the singer songwriter, and thus because previous
Speaker 1: to that, in the fifties you had to have a band.
Speaker 1: I mean I had a job with the with the
Speaker 1: band singing Rogers and Heart when I was sixteen getting dressed.
Speaker 1: I was under age, so they had to get rid
Speaker 1: of me. But because I had to sing in bars
Speaker 1: and I wasn't able to go in. But before fifty
Speaker 1: nine sixty, before the Newport Festival which started in fifty nine,
Speaker 1: you had to if you if you were going to
Speaker 1: go anywhere, do anything, you had to have a band.
Speaker 1: You had to have a uh, one of the Rogers
Speaker 1: and Hart songs, one of the new songs from the
Speaker 1: shows in New York. And you had to have all
Speaker 1: the accouterments that surrounded you, orchestras, soloists, long dresses, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there's this crop of kids playing
Speaker 1: guitars and singing songs. You remember that Woody Guthrie and
Speaker 1: Pete Seegers started their lives as protesters, as people on
Speaker 1: the edge, on the outside of the inner circle. And
Speaker 1: they were originally writing songs to raise money for the unions.
Speaker 1: And that's what where their hearts were, and that's what
Speaker 1: they were doing. Sometimes people forgot about that in those esoteric,
Speaker 1: pristine years of some of the some of the Newport years.
Speaker 1: Because I even was on the board of Newport. As
Speaker 1: I said, I moved to New York in sixty three.
Speaker 1: Just one second. What was the motivation to moved to
Speaker 1: New York? I had? Um, I was in the hospital.
Speaker 1: My my marriage broke up in sixty two. And what
Speaker 1: happened was that the marriage broke up and I also
Speaker 1: got sick. Just just since we're getting there, why did
Speaker 1: the marriage break up? Um? Well, we were awfully young
Speaker 1: when we met and I think that over the course
Speaker 1: of my growing career and the fact that it was
Speaker 1: very hard on on motherhood and being married, I just
Speaker 1: think we didn't get along anymore and we weren't going
Speaker 1: to stay together. And I left New York to go
Speaker 1: out to Tucson to sing after I opened actually for
Speaker 1: Theodore macall at Carnegie Hall in sixty two in October,
Speaker 1: and then I got on a plane for Tucson. And
Speaker 1: when I got to Tucson, I was working at a
Speaker 1: little club called ash Alley, and I was already having
Speaker 1: trouble breathing. My lungs were gurgling, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do anything about it because I didn't want to
Speaker 1: go to the doctor because I thought that a doctor
Speaker 1: would tell me to slow down and stop running around
Speaker 1: and working. So the people that ran the club also
Speaker 1: were interns at the two on Clinic, and they worked
Speaker 1: for a doctor who was a long specialist, and they
Speaker 1: took one look at me when I got in that night,
Speaker 1: and they said, we're taking you to the hospital tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and which he did, and Dr Schneida took one look
Speaker 1: at me and said, you have TV and you're not
Speaker 1: going anywhere. And so there I was with my guitar
Speaker 1: and my notebooks and a court of kalua and a
Speaker 1: case of of course beer, no it was, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it was a Canadian beer. And there I stayed for
Speaker 1: the beginning of what became five months of hospitalization, and
Speaker 1: my husband came to see me and brought my son
Speaker 1: to Denver, where my mother lived. Then I went from
Speaker 1: Tucson for a month to Denver to National Jewish Hospital.
Speaker 1: I got in there only because because C. Bickell was
Speaker 1: on the board of directors and he got me in
Speaker 1: there or I don't know where i'd be actually, but
Speaker 1: they were great. And I was in Denver with my
Speaker 1: mother and my son was there, which was fabulous, and
Speaker 1: my husband and I broke the knot and said this
Speaker 1: is not gonna work, which it wasn't, and so then
Speaker 1: of course I was stranded in in National Jewish Hospital.
Speaker 1: And when I left National Jewish Hospital, I went to
Speaker 1: New York. New York was the place we had lived
Speaker 1: in Connecticut for a while, and I had worked in
Speaker 1: New York at Gertie's Folk City, driven two or three
Speaker 1: hours back and forth for a while. So that was
Speaker 1: part of probably my health breakdown, was that stress of
Speaker 1: traveling and working and driving and singing and so on.
Speaker 1: So I knew when you moved to New York, where
Speaker 1: are your ex husband and your son? In uh in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: in stores, Connecticut where he was teaching. And you know,
Speaker 1: he was a good guy. I mean, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with him really, except that we didn't mesh anymore and
Speaker 1: that was just the problem. And did you get along thereafter? No? No, No,
Speaker 1: he was he was great. He was great, He was
Speaker 1: very generous. He uh specifically wanted to have custody, and
Speaker 1: I fought him for it. I the custody battle was hard,
Speaker 1: and I lost it, which you know, my lawyer said,
Speaker 1: you can't lose women never lose custody in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: that's out of the question. But I lost custody. I
Speaker 1: was told by my lawyer that the reason that I
Speaker 1: lost custody was that I was in therapy, which is
Speaker 1: the first thing I did when I got to New
Speaker 1: York was to get into therapy, which was the best
Speaker 1: thing I could have possibly done and probably saved my sanity.
Speaker 1: And uh So, nowadays, if you weren't in custody, if
Speaker 1: you weren't in therapy, you'd lose custody. But in those
Speaker 1: days it was so unique that that, you know, the
Speaker 1: judge in Connecticut couldn't conceive of anybody being in custody
Speaker 1: who wasn't totally crazy and who certainly didn't have the
Speaker 1: right to have a child. Anyway, a couple of years
Speaker 1: later I got got full custy. But even though that happened,
Speaker 1: I was always he was Peter was always generous with
Speaker 1: everything about I mean, I could have he could have
Speaker 1: lived with me, actually if I hadn't had the tour.
Speaker 1: But he was very good. He's a good guy. He
Speaker 1: was always a good guy. Okay, so take us back.
Speaker 1: You know, we're in the early days. You're talking about
Speaker 1: the folk scene. So suddenly you could play with the guitar,
Speaker 1: you didn't need a complete orchestra and play out how
Speaker 1: that scene goes. It was amazing. It was just amazing.
Speaker 1: I landed. I knew that I had to be in
Speaker 1: New York. I knew that the village was the hotbed
Speaker 1: of all the writers and all of the extraordinary music
Speaker 1: that was coming out into that world. And I didn't.
Speaker 1: By the way, one of the pieces of this which
Speaker 1: I've which I think is fundamental to my career, and
Speaker 1: to my fortune, the good fortune that I've had is
Speaker 1: that my skill. I was never a great guitarist, please,
Speaker 1: but I did know how to choose songs. My father
Speaker 1: had really taught me that. My mother always reminded me.
Speaker 1: She would say, you know, you didn't invent this. He
Speaker 1: taught you how to how to choose a song. And
Speaker 1: I had that innate ability to to to know when
Speaker 1: I heard the right song that it was right for me,
Speaker 1: and if it wasn't, I didn't go near it. And
Speaker 1: so there I was among people a lot of whom
Speaker 1: were writing songs, but many of whom didn't have contracts.
Speaker 1: So quite often I would be the first person to
Speaker 1: record the songs of an artist to who I would
Speaker 1: help to launch. I would help because I had the
Speaker 1: recording contract. How did I get the recording contract? When
Speaker 1: I started singing in Colorado, I was I moved from
Speaker 1: Michael's Pub to the Gilded Garter in Central City, and
Speaker 1: then I went to Denver to a place called the Exodus,
Speaker 1: and that was a very, very fundamental club to the
Speaker 1: folk movement. There were clubs like that all over the country.
Speaker 1: They were hugely influential for anybody who was playing the
Speaker 1: guitar and singing songs. I opened for Josh White, I
Speaker 1: opened for the Terriers. I opened for a guy named
Speaker 1: Bob Gibson. Bob Gibson played the guitar, played the banjo,
Speaker 1: and sang and was a recording artist with Electra. A
Speaker 1: number of those artists had recorded with the Elector, including
Speaker 1: the Terriers and and Josh White. And Bob Gibson had
Speaker 1: been the one who heard Joan Bias in Boston and
Speaker 1: called p Seeger and Uh, the fellow who started the
Speaker 1: Newport Festival, and said, I have found your star. I'm
Speaker 1: going to bring her to the Newport Festival, which he did.
Speaker 1: That was September of fifty nine August of fifty nine.
Speaker 1: He then came to Denver and I opened for him.
Speaker 1: He called Jack Holsman and said to Jack Holsman, who
Speaker 1: was president of Elector, I have found your Joan Bias
Speaker 1: and Jack and I only found this out two years
Speaker 1: two years later, two years ago. I mean I only
Speaker 1: found this out how much? At least sixty years later?
Speaker 1: Jack went to Denver, but he didn't He listened, but
Speaker 1: he didn't introduce himself and he didn't show himself to
Speaker 1: me and when he told me this a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, he said, you know, I went and I
Speaker 1: heard you, and I said, you know she has talent.
Speaker 1: That he said, I didn't know if you had the
Speaker 1: mileage you, if you had the commitment in you. I
Speaker 1: said to him, you should have asked me. I was
Speaker 1: in for it from the very beginning. And when I
Speaker 1: was in New York two years later in sixty one,
Speaker 1: when I opened at the at Gurneys, Folk City, which
Speaker 1: again was one of these clubs which was a um
Speaker 1: what do they call it, a magnet for artists of
Speaker 1: all kinds, starting with with Dylan. Dylan worked there and
Speaker 1: so many many artists worked there, and I worked there.
Speaker 1: And the clubs were scattered, as I said, around the country.
Speaker 1: In in the on the West Coast, there was a Troubador.
Speaker 1: There was that place I never worked in um I
Speaker 1: can't remember who started. There was the Hungry Eye in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. In in Chicago, there was the Gate of Horn,
Speaker 1: where I worked in nineteen sixty for weeks on end
Speaker 1: I opened for the Terriers there again I opened for
Speaker 1: I met O'Dell to there. I met Sonny Terry and
Speaker 1: Brownie McGee there everywhere there was this burgeoning gathering storm,
Speaker 1: so to speak, of singer songwriters and of all kinds,
Speaker 1: of all all sorts. The old blues singers used to
Speaker 1: show come to the to the Newport Festival. Uh, the
Speaker 1: the religious bands from from New Orleans would come. Uh,
Speaker 1: all of the pickers and fiddlers from Boston, you know,
Speaker 1: the New York City ramblers would come. There was a
Speaker 1: gathering as I it is like a gathering storm, but
Speaker 1: of the good kind. And so by the time I
Speaker 1: got to New York in sixte I was booked to
Speaker 1: do a couple of weeks or three weeks I think
Speaker 1: at gurnie S Folks City, and then I went across
Speaker 1: the street to the gate of the village gate and
Speaker 1: I did a movie. I did a recording there for
Speaker 1: a film, and the Clancy brothers were in it, and
Speaker 1: Josh White, uh not Josh Pa. Theodore McCall was in it,
Speaker 1: and the and a girl named Lynn Gold was And
Speaker 1: when it was finished, Jack Holsman, president of Electra, walked
Speaker 1: up to me and said, dear, you're ready to make
Speaker 1: a record. So he had waited those two years to
Speaker 1: find out what would happen with me. Where I would
Speaker 1: be going and so on a handshake, and John Hammond
Speaker 1: called me a week later and said, would you like
Speaker 1: to sign with Columbia? Said, I just made a deal
Speaker 1: with Jack Holseman on a handshake, So I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: have to pass. Okay. So now you have a record deal.
Speaker 1: You cut a record that separates you from so many
Speaker 1: in the village. Okay, So you start to make records
Speaker 1: forgetting the inner scene of the people in New York. Uh.
Speaker 1: After you make a record to what to We? Does
Speaker 1: that change your career? Change your life? It helps because
Speaker 1: it's a calling card in a way, and it opened up,
Speaker 1: uh further the stream of clubs and by sixties and
Speaker 1: I would make a record basically throughout my career, I've
Speaker 1: made a record either every year or every year and
Speaker 1: a half, every eighteen months or so pretty much regularly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And because I started, and because it was the time
Speaker 1: that it was. If you made a record, you didn't
Speaker 1: have to sell a million records to make an impression.
Speaker 1: And you also didn't have to sell a million records
Speaker 1: to to um convinced your record company to keep putting
Speaker 1: money in you. You know, I I have had my
Speaker 1: own record label now for a few years, and I
Speaker 1: understand I signed a lot of artists that I really
Speaker 1: care about, but I understand what record labels were up against.
Speaker 1: They had they had to be sure if they signed
Speaker 1: an artist that the artist was going to tour, because
Speaker 1: there was no other way to sell records really, And
Speaker 1: so I was a touring I was a queen of
Speaker 1: the touring. I loved it. I did it. I wanted
Speaker 1: to do it. I knew I was going to be
Speaker 1: able to make a living that way, and that impressed
Speaker 1: me a lot that making a living was possible, and
Speaker 1: so it was helpful. And also it meant that I
Speaker 1: could go on. And of course, because I didn't write
Speaker 1: my own songs, I was gathering together the songs of
Speaker 1: many artists who couldn't get a record. As you said,
Speaker 1: you know that everybody didn't have a record record deal
Speaker 1: in those days. So I was one of the first.
Speaker 1: I even was the first person to record Brandy Newman.
Speaker 1: Strangely enough, it's a it's a great somebody sent us
Speaker 1: a copy. I mean, this happens in my career many times,
Speaker 1: the little bit slower. So how did you get the song?
Speaker 1: I was about ready to record an album called In
Speaker 1: My Life, and I had sort of jumped the fence
Speaker 1: with that album because I had already made five albums
Speaker 1: and uh, the last one was called the fifth Album.
Speaker 1: I think we didn't have a name for it, and
Speaker 1: somebody sent us then my my producer, Jack Mark Abramson
Speaker 1: and I and I think Jack had something to do
Speaker 1: with it. To Jack was always involved completely. He's like
Speaker 1: the chef who goes into the kitchen all the time
Speaker 1: and checks out all the recipes and make sure you're
Speaker 1: doing it right. And he had great taste and has
Speaker 1: great taste, and Uh, it's a great fellow to know
Speaker 1: and be with. And we decided, Okay, enough guitars, enough
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, enough, Tom Paxton, enough, even Richard Frena, enough
Speaker 1: Pete and Woody. We're going to jump the fence and
Speaker 1: do things that are from a whole different point of view.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to record songs from Uh. I wanted
Speaker 1: to record Pirate Jenny. I wanted to record the songs
Speaker 1: from Mark the Maratsad and have them orchestrated by Josh Rifkin.
Speaker 1: And Josh Rifkin was a part of the Electric family
Speaker 1: because he did a lot of things for None Such.
Speaker 1: He found that Scott Joplin rags and he translated them
Speaker 1: and started playing them. He orchestrated handle he put wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful music together for the None Such album, and he
Speaker 1: he was our friends. So Mark and I said, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: let's get Josh to record and orchestrate the things from
Speaker 1: the uh marasad pirate. Jenny and we actually went to
Speaker 1: England to record, and we got a choir that we
Speaker 1: liked over there, and we were just about finished with
Speaker 1: the album when uh somebody came to our door and
Speaker 1: dropped a tape off and it was a tape of
Speaker 1: Randy Newman singing Broken Windows and Empty Star Wars, and
Speaker 1: we said, oh my god. So we put the album
Speaker 1: together and we recorded that song, and Randy heard it
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, I see, I'm not gonna spend
Speaker 1: my life doing music for movies. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: a singer's all writer. He says that he did that,
Speaker 1: that he knew that I had recorded it and put
Speaker 1: and I had been doing that with a lot of
Speaker 1: artists whose material, as you pointed out, was getting out
Speaker 1: when they didn't have record labels, and by that time
Speaker 1: I was sort of I was paying the bills at Elector,
Speaker 1: I was working, I was selling albums. I was courting
Speaker 1: artists that would become very, very very famous, and in
Speaker 1: a way I was contributing to this folk music revival
Speaker 1: in in my Own Way. And the next album was
Speaker 1: On On On The On, The in my Life album
Speaker 1: was when I had discovered No. I didn't discover him.
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen found me, and he found a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: Tell us how we found you. I had a friend
Speaker 1: in the city that I would have dinner with. There
Speaker 1: were a bunch of us, Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner
Speaker 1: and my friend Linda. Oh this is long before laughing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you know Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner Because
Speaker 1: they were friends of my friend Linda Gottlieb Linda. I'll
Speaker 1: think of her name in a minute. Anyway, they were
Speaker 1: They were just social friends that I met and somehow
Speaker 1: we bonded and we would have dinner once in a while.
Speaker 1: And Mary Martin was one of these women. She was
Speaker 1: working in the music business. She was working for Warner Brothers,
Speaker 1: and she was working for um Al Grossman Albert who
Speaker 1: also owned the club I had sung it in Chicago.
Speaker 1: He owned the Gate of the Gate of Horn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so and so we would go out for dinner.
Speaker 1: I go out to dinner with the girls. And we
Speaker 1: would just hang out and have dinner and go to
Speaker 1: the various clubs. And Mary would talk about Leonard. She'd say,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this guy. I went to McGill with him,
Speaker 1: I grew up with him in Montreal, and he's just
Speaker 1: a brilliant poet. He's a wonderful guy. But we're also
Speaker 1: really upset because he's not He really is not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: And I would say, well, that's too bad. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know him, I never met I said, that's
Speaker 1: too bad. I said, why do you feel this way better?
Speaker 1: And Mary said, you know these poems that her sow.
Speaker 1: He gets published and we buy his books and we
Speaker 1: go to the readings, but you know the problem is
Speaker 1: that they are so obscure. Nobody knows what he's really
Speaker 1: talking about, and so we're worried. I said, well, sounds
Speaker 1: like a sad story to me. Then one day in
Speaker 1: sixties six, she called me up and she said, guess what,
Speaker 1: Leonard wants to come and see you. He wants to
Speaker 1: sing you his songs. So I said to her, are
Speaker 1: they obscure? And she said, oh yes, oh yes they're obscure.
Speaker 1: That's we'll see. But he's coming to see you. He
Speaker 1: wants to see you. So he came, you know, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I opened the door, and I thought, I
Speaker 1: don't care if he doesn't write songs. He was very
Speaker 1: good looking man and very smart and very charming, darling,
Speaker 1: absolutely wonderful man and amazing man. And he came in
Speaker 1: and he said, I can't sing and I can't play
Speaker 1: the guitar, and I don't know if these are songs.
Speaker 1: And then he sang me the Stranger Song and dress
Speaker 1: rehearsal rag and Suzanne, and I said, these are great,
Speaker 1: these are wonderful. I said, I'll record them tomorrow. And
Speaker 1: I did two out of three. I didn't do the
Speaker 1: Stranger song. I still will have to have the Stranger
Speaker 1: song somewhere on an album. I'll do it. And so
Speaker 1: that's how we became friends. That's how I recorded his songs.
Speaker 1: And after I recorded Susanne on my fifth fifth album,
Speaker 1: on my sixth album, in my Life, he said he
Speaker 1: called me up and he said, you've made me famous.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, that's wonderful. That's good. It's good
Speaker 1: for you, good for us. It's a great song, Susanne,
Speaker 1: it's a great song. And uh, he said, but there's
Speaker 1: one thing I don't understand, which is I don't understand
Speaker 1: why you're not what writing your own songs. And I
Speaker 1: didn't have any answer. Dylan had always said to me,
Speaker 1: you should. You know people who say that you should
Speaker 1: do such, and you don't want to ever listen to
Speaker 1: those people. And but it was the way that the
Speaker 1: way that Leonard asked it was different. There was the
Speaker 1: difference between some kind of socratic method and the other way.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the difference is exactly, but it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the same as saying you should. And
Speaker 1: he said, I just don't know why you don't. So
Speaker 1: I came home. I already had my Steinway. I had
Speaker 1: already moved uptown because I needed more room because now
Speaker 1: I had to have custody of my son. I had
Speaker 1: to have a bigger apartment, and I had my Steinway,
Speaker 1: and I sat down and I started fiddling around, and
Speaker 1: I wrote a song called since You've asked. That was
Speaker 1: the first. Now you know, my books and my study
Speaker 1: are filled with attempt, some of which have made it
Speaker 1: to the stage. And so I've been writing ever since then.
Speaker 1: So what is your technique today for writing a song?
Speaker 1: It's twofold. First of all, I have to practice every day.
Speaker 1: That's essential. And when I finished with my hand and
Speaker 1: my charny and my exercises, I can usually listen to
Speaker 1: something or read something while I do hand and charny,
Speaker 1: and thank god I can do that. So then I
Speaker 1: put that aside, and then I take the copies of
Speaker 1: poetry that I've written in the past day or day
Speaker 1: or two or week, and I put it up in
Speaker 1: front of the piano. Wa wa. The poetry is that
Speaker 1: something you write on inspiration? Is it something you force
Speaker 1: yourself to write? How does the how do the words
Speaker 1: come to be? Well, it's both. It's a chore and
Speaker 1: a pleasure, but it's also a responsibility. Is if I
Speaker 1: don't write things down. I've written a number of books
Speaker 1: over the years, and I've written a lot of songs
Speaker 1: that some of which have been recorded in some of
Speaker 1: which have, you know, sit there waiting for more attention.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it is I have a friend who says that
Speaker 1: writing is like is like laying pipe. If you don't
Speaker 1: do it every day, you're not going to be there
Speaker 1: when the muse comes through the window. At least that's
Speaker 1: true for me. Some people it doesn't matter. They can
Speaker 1: write any time of day or night, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: There are me, I have to find the time in
Speaker 1: the day to get it done, and then when it's done,
Speaker 1: it's done, and then I can look at it and
Speaker 1: listen to it. I also have times when I'm able
Speaker 1: to do what I did in the early years, which
Speaker 1: is to sit a noodle at the piano until something
Speaker 1: comes through. It's not necessarily something that is going to
Speaker 1: make it, but if there are a few lines and
Speaker 1: a few melody, and sometimes it's the melody, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: the lyric, it's the hook. But sometimes it will tighten
Speaker 1: itself up into a song actually while you're sitting there
Speaker 1: at the piano. And sometimes you'll write something that I
Speaker 1: have made it u For instance, in I wrote a
Speaker 1: poem every day, and so at the end of the
Speaker 1: year had three poems, a number of which made it
Speaker 1: into song form. Most you know, two thirds of the
Speaker 1: poems have wound up in the poem patch, so to speak,
Speaker 1: but some of them make it make it to the piano,
Speaker 1: and they make it through the test of whether this
Speaker 1: is really singable or workable. Now, I've got a whole
Speaker 1: batch of new songs on this album that's coming out
Speaker 1: in uh twenty two, probably the early part, and they're
Speaker 1: all kinds of subjects. It's it's very interesting. It's uh
Speaker 1: you know, there's me about language and being able to
Speaker 1: hear language, and writers who hear language in songs have
Speaker 1: a great gift uh lingua franca. They used to call it.
Speaker 1: It's the common knowledge of people around you and the
Speaker 1: phrases that they say that are memorable and jump right
Speaker 1: off the page, and something that will jump right into
Speaker 1: a melodic structure easily and lead you to then finish
Speaker 1: the story. But it is a job. It's not I
Speaker 1: don't think for most people. I don't think you can
Speaker 1: say that it's something you do. It's like falling off
Speaker 1: a log. No, it's a job. You have to do
Speaker 1: it every day. Okay, So you work and you get
Speaker 1: more notoriety having covered Susanne? How do you end up
Speaker 1: knowing Joni Mitchell and doing both sides? Now, another miracle
Speaker 1: coming through the window, an angel at the window. I
Speaker 1: it was I had, of course recorded Nerd and anyway,
Speaker 1: I loved the Canadians. I recorded and worked worked with
Speaker 1: and recorded songs by Fred Ed mccurty. At the beginning
Speaker 1: UM Last Night, I had this strange dream. I recorded
Speaker 1: him very early on Ian and Sylvia Canadians of whom
Speaker 1: from whom I learned some day soon, which I would
Speaker 1: do on my UM who Knows Where the Time Goes album?
Speaker 1: So I loved I loved Canadians and Gordie Lightfoot I
Speaker 1: recorded him on that fifth album, and so Canadians were.
Speaker 1: There was something fresh and different about the way they wrote,
Speaker 1: probably the wide open plains or something, or the English influence,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe, But then Leonard came along, and
Speaker 1: Leonard Leonard blew my mind and of course started my writing.
Speaker 1: So the next year, in in sixties Heaven, I'm asleep
Speaker 1: one night and I get the phone rings and it's
Speaker 1: three in the morning, and it's my friend Al Cooper.
Speaker 1: Now I knew Al Cooper because he was hanging around
Speaker 1: the village. I was hanging around the village. I would
Speaker 1: always go I loved blood, sweat and tears, so I'd
Speaker 1: go down to hear them play, and I think I
Speaker 1: was half half in love with I forget the guitar player. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so he knew my phone number by by heart,
Speaker 1: and it was him on the phone at three in
Speaker 1: the morning. And I and I had no romantic involvement
Speaker 1: with al. I just knew him and liked him and
Speaker 1: hung out with him. And so he called me up,
Speaker 1: and he knew I was recording, and he knew that
Speaker 1: I was involved with the new with the new album,
Speaker 1: and that I had started to write my own songs.
Speaker 1: I had written since you've asked, I'd written Albatross and
Speaker 1: another song which died in early deserved death. And so
Speaker 1: he said, Hi, how are you? And I said, I'm fine,
Speaker 1: how are you? It's three in the morning. Well, it
Speaker 1: could have been in those days I could have been
Speaker 1: up still or getting ready because I could have been drunk.
Speaker 1: I probably was surprising that I woke up. But he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I ran into this girl. She came to
Speaker 1: the show and she's I think she's in love of
Speaker 1: the drummer and she was hanging out and I asked
Speaker 1: her what she did and she said, I'm a songwriter.
Speaker 1: So he said she was good looking, and so I
Speaker 1: decided to follow her home, but he said When I
Speaker 1: got here, I thought, oh my god, Judy has to
Speaker 1: hear this. So then he turned the telephone in the
Speaker 1: direction of Joanie and she sang me both sides now,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh my god, what a song. Oh
Speaker 1: be right over, So I was. I went to her
Speaker 1: house at three in the morning. No, I didn't go
Speaker 1: right over. I went over the next day. I called Jack.
Speaker 1: I said, you have to meet me Joni's apartment, and
Speaker 1: you have to hear the song, because I'm telling you
Speaker 1: this is it. And I we got there and she
Speaker 1: played the song and we recorded it and Josh, Josh Rifkin,
Speaker 1: made a beautiful, wonderful arrangement. And you know he's the one.
Speaker 1: We were sitting in this studio in New York, the Columbia,
Speaker 1: the big fat Columbia Orchestra recording studio. We had a
Speaker 1: nice sized orchestra. But then Josh said, you know, I
Speaker 1: need a harpsichord. I said, what do you need a
Speaker 1: harpsichord for. You have a whole orchestra here. He said, no,
Speaker 1: there's something here in this orchestra that needs to come
Speaker 1: out in a different way. So it's that do that
Speaker 1: and that's where we did it and how we did
Speaker 1: And then of course I got to know Jony in California.
Speaker 1: First I hung out with her here and listened to
Speaker 1: her sing her songs to me, and she's just the
Speaker 1: most splendid writer. She's got an for that thing we
Speaker 1: were saying about the lingua franca, that that that that
Speaker 1: sense about saying things that are in the conversation, things
Speaker 1: that are unusual language that's unusual. It's partly it's partly Canadian,
Speaker 1: it's partly a thing that's a twist that they have
Speaker 1: on communication. It's different than ours and charming and fresh
Speaker 1: and very powerful. Okay, suddenly the stars aligned and both
Speaker 1: sides now is a gigantic kit. You're recording for years,
Speaker 1: but this How does your life change when suddenly you
Speaker 1: have a worldwide hit. I'd like to say that the
Speaker 1: big change was that everybody answered my phone calls. They
Speaker 1: really did, They really did. That That was a big change.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I mean, I started to make some money
Speaker 1: at that point. I gave my mother a trip, my
Speaker 1: mother and father trip to uh to Hawaii that Christmas,
Speaker 1: and so you know, that was I had a little money,
Speaker 1: not a lot, but I've never had a lot of money,
Speaker 1: so that's not a big miss. But it did help.
Speaker 1: It certainly helped was my working because then I could
Speaker 1: pretty much work wherever and did and and have and will.
Speaker 1: But it was a huge thing to have a hit
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty. You're a single woman with a recording
Speaker 1: contract with history, with a hit record, your upbeat, you're talkative,
Speaker 1: you're beautiful. I would think that you'd be fending off
Speaker 1: men over their basis. I'm also very picky. Well, there
Speaker 1: are two separate issues here. What has been approaching. The
Speaker 1: other issue is whether you open the door or not
Speaker 1: men Even to this day, you know, an attractive woman,
Speaker 1: never mind successful with a personality and optimism, you know,
Speaker 1: men are very aggressive. I yeah, well I've been lucky,
Speaker 1: was guys. I'm also you know, the thing that we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about is that I'm a recovering alcoholic. And
Speaker 1: I was starting in nineteen starting in in uh. When
Speaker 1: I first started, I already knew I was an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: So I figured that that also was a job. The
Speaker 1: job was to drink and to work hard. And if
Speaker 1: I worked hard and I was successful, I had the
Speaker 1: right to drink. Don't you think. So I felt that
Speaker 1: way about it, and I, of course I didn't know
Speaker 1: I had a choice anyway. I didn't have a choice,
Speaker 1: because an alcoholic, an addict who is in their cups
Speaker 1: and in their addiction does not have a choice that
Speaker 1: they know about until they finally know about it, and
Speaker 1: then they have a choice. So this went on for
Speaker 1: the years. All these years were talking about I was
Speaker 1: drinking like a fish all the time, but I showed
Speaker 1: up on time. I did exactly what my father did.
Speaker 1: He never missed a job. He was always on time.
Speaker 1: He was a professional. And that was me. That's where
Speaker 1: I learned to do that, you know, working alcoholic and
Speaker 1: as it was pretty I was pretty much a blackout
Speaker 1: drinker also, So I managed throughout that horrible part of
Speaker 1: it was horrible, But I do know that I developed
Speaker 1: something and I think now that I might have been
Speaker 1: a snob. I think that probably explains my uh situation
Speaker 1: with men. I was very picky. I was also very
Speaker 1: I was always um, very aware of the space that
Speaker 1: I was in a I don't know what happened when
Speaker 1: I was in blackouts. It was very dangerous territory to me.
Speaker 1: For for anybody who's who's a blackout drinker there there.
Speaker 1: We are vulnerable in every way because we don't know
Speaker 1: what we were doing, we don't know who we're with,
Speaker 1: we don't know what happened last night. I would call
Speaker 1: friends and they would say, you know, you told me
Speaker 1: that last night at length, so I don't need to
Speaker 1: hear this again this morning. And uh, but luck was
Speaker 1: with me and I was with a couple of guys.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, Stephen, Stephen such an angel, and
Speaker 1: we had one of those angelic kind of uh stories,
Speaker 1: which is that we remained friends after the affair, even
Speaker 1: though Sweet Jut Blue Eyes was such a huge hit,
Speaker 1: and that, of course came after I recorded both sides
Speaker 1: Now and it was the album that followed that album.
Speaker 1: And that was when I met Stephen. I didn't know
Speaker 1: he was a fan. He was a and he used
Speaker 1: to go home at night and play my records after
Speaker 1: he'd been to all the basket clubs in the city
Speaker 1: and come home, like Elaine May would say, you know,
Speaker 1: the the the basket wouldn't even come back. Not only
Speaker 1: did it not come back with money, it didn't come
Speaker 1: back at all. And he put on Judy Collins records
Speaker 1: and would put him to sleep, which is I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's a compliment, but it helped him get
Speaker 1: through some of these nights. And so David Anderley, who
Speaker 1: was my producer on Who Knows Where the Time Goes? Um,
Speaker 1: he came and played on that album. That's how we met,
Speaker 1: and we fell in love and had this affair, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he's one. He's wonderful. He's such a incredible musician.
Speaker 1: And then of course it was heartbreaking because the song
Speaker 1: was so beautiful and it was played every time I
Speaker 1: turned around. I couldn't get away from it. It was
Speaker 1: like a shield of armor in a way. It just
Speaker 1: kind of prevented my movement in any direction. And I
Speaker 1: had in a long affair with Stacy Keach for a
Speaker 1: few years, and then with a couple of other people
Speaker 1: short lived, and then on the brink of losing my
Speaker 1: mind and my career and everything else, I met Lewis
Speaker 1: and I met him, uh four days before I went
Speaker 1: into treatment for alcoholism in nine and with the I
Speaker 1: don't know, some fortunate piece of luck, I went to
Speaker 1: the right place. I was finished, I was done, I
Speaker 1: was wiped out. I had no money, I had no
Speaker 1: way to work. I couldn't sing, I couldn't do anything
Speaker 1: but collapse into the arms of a A and gets over,
Speaker 1: which I did and which I've done. And so then
Speaker 1: the second half of my life actually started. When was
Speaker 1: the first time you heard Sweet Judy Blue Eyes? I
Speaker 1: heard it in a hotel room in May of sixty nine.
Speaker 1: We had we had split up. Well, you know, he
Speaker 1: lives in l A. I live in New York. He
Speaker 1: we had one big, two big problems. He didn't like
Speaker 1: l A and he didn't like therapy, and I was
Speaker 1: in both. I was not about to stay in l A.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I couldn't handle it. It was really too
Speaker 1: much for me. Hell a, as I said, I would
Speaker 1: be deentified lived there. I really would. I have been
Speaker 1: too much. So so I heard it. He came to UH.
Speaker 1: I was doing a concert in Santa Monica, and he
Speaker 1: came to the hotel some place on on the beach,
Speaker 1: and uh he brought me a birthday present of a
Speaker 1: beautiful Martin guitar, which I have still, and a bunch
Speaker 1: of flowers, and then he said, I have to sing
Speaker 1: you a song. And then he sang me Sweet Judy Boys,
Speaker 1: and we were both sobbing, and when it was finished,
Speaker 1: I said, it is so gorgeous, but it is not
Speaker 1: going to get me. However, we made we've made it
Speaker 1: a point of staying friends and being friends. We liked
Speaker 1: each other, not just having an affair, but we liked
Speaker 1: each other, and we liked each other's music. I like
Speaker 1: his music as well as I liked anybody's music in
Speaker 1: my life. It's spectacularly. He's a spectacular writer and performing
Speaker 1: what a guitar player doesn't get his due unfortunately anyway,
Speaker 1: they don't talk about it a lot, but he is.
Speaker 1: He's one of the best. So we remained friends all
Speaker 1: that time. Every once in a while we see each
Speaker 1: other or we talk, or we have a long back
Speaker 1: back and forth. He'd be in China or Japan or
Speaker 1: something and we'd be texting each other and in in
Speaker 1: about I think about seven years ago, we were we
Speaker 1: were both on a big show in Orlando. It was
Speaker 1: an a a RP huge festival show at the theater
Speaker 1: out there and uh it was unfortunately, um the last show,
Speaker 1: live show that Richie Havens did, So he was on that.
Speaker 1: Richie was on the show c S and n was was.
Speaker 1: I don't think Neil was, I'm not sure, C S C.
Speaker 1: Crosby Stills and Nash was on and we were on,
Speaker 1: and when it was finished, we looked at each other
Speaker 1: and we said, what's the matter with us? Are we
Speaker 1: chopped liver? We should be out there doing our thing together.
Speaker 1: So it took a lot of doing, but in six
Speaker 1: we did a hundred and fifteen shows together over a
Speaker 1: period of a year and a half. They were well.
Speaker 1: Steven says they were the top of his career, that
Speaker 1: they were the best time he ever had on stage.
Speaker 1: And you know, most of the time, if you go
Speaker 1: to a show with two artists, it'll be a half
Speaker 1: and half thing, and then if you're lucky, you'll get
Speaker 1: a song at the end. But maybe not, not if
Speaker 1: they don't not if the artists don't know each other
Speaker 1: too well. So we were on the stage for two
Speaker 1: hours solid together. We each had a solo, but other
Speaker 1: than that, we sang everything together. And each night I
Speaker 1: would be listening to this extraordinary guitar player, unbelievable, and
Speaker 1: I was a girl singer in a rock and roll band.
Speaker 1: I mean, just think of that, as I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the top of the world. I always wanted to be
Speaker 1: a rock and roll singer. I just couldn't play that
Speaker 1: electric guitar. I could not get that together. Okay, will
Speaker 1: it happen again? I don't think so. For me. Yes, anytime,
Speaker 1: any time he has said, well we will see, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Life is long and uh. Anyway, we had a dreamy
Speaker 1: time at best time ever, incredible, incredible time. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: another interesting thing in your career is you know Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan had all the success and he had the Woodstock years.
Speaker 1: Then he took a left turn with Self Portrait and
Speaker 1: then regained his form with New Morning, which was a
Speaker 1: great record. But you recorded Time Passes Slowly from that album,
Speaker 1: which I love, before that album came out. How did
Speaker 1: that come together? If you remember? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think maybe UM our mutual lawyer, uh, David Braun, who
Speaker 1: was my lawyer from the first Electra uh contract in
Speaker 1: David represented Dylan for a long long time. In fact,
Speaker 1: when when David Braun went to UM Polygraph, David Brown
Speaker 1: represented everybody, represented Barbara streisand he represented Neil Diamond, he
Speaker 1: represented Bob Dylan, he represented me and but he got
Speaker 1: a job with Polygraph, being the president of polygraph, big mistake.
Speaker 1: All the artists left him, but Dylan stayed, and I stayed.
Speaker 1: And I think Neil over the year's state. I mean
Speaker 1: Neil was at his funeral. I think Neil stayed. But
Speaker 1: David always had an end on what Dylan was recording,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that that's where it happened. I think
Speaker 1: I had a you know, elite costy. This may be
Speaker 1: a left turn, but what Dylan has been been as
Speaker 1: successful without Albert Grossman as his manager, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I loved Albert, and I think Albert was a brilliant man.
Speaker 1: Is wasn't brilliant man. Unfortunately he's not with us anymore.
Speaker 1: But Dylan, Dylan, He's NonStop. I think this this last
Speaker 1: album is one of the best things they've ever done. Uh.
Speaker 1: The song about Kennedy's murder is really one of the
Speaker 1: finest pieces of art that I've run into in a
Speaker 1: long time. That's pretty that's pretty damned impressive to come
Speaker 1: around that circle. I did an album of of Dylan
Speaker 1: songs and I listened to everything. This was in ninety two.
Speaker 1: I listened to everything you ever made up to that point,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, in chronicles he writes about why
Speaker 1: he had those ten years of writing those incredible songs,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know how it happened. He doesn't know
Speaker 1: why it stopped. He doesn't know why it started. I
Speaker 1: have a clue though about it, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what he has said, probably said some things about it.
Speaker 1: But when he got to New York and when he
Speaker 1: changed his name to Dylan and he was still homeless,
Speaker 1: he spent a lot of time sleeping on people's couches.
Speaker 1: And I mean Dave En Ronks and and probably David
Speaker 1: Blues and probably who knows, certainly Jack Ramlan, Jack Elliott.
Speaker 1: So he was exposed to people's libraries in a way
Speaker 1: that is not always possible if you're sleeping on somebody's
Speaker 1: couch and there bookcase. And it's interesting in times of zoom,
Speaker 1: you look at people's bookcases behind there, their pictures, newscasters,
Speaker 1: people who are coming in with opinions, and they often
Speaker 1: have book book libraries behind them, and you always peer
Speaker 1: around and look, you know, what's That's why I don't
Speaker 1: do that here. But I think he read a lot.
Speaker 1: I think he I think he was exposed to things
Speaker 1: he hadn't seen, and things ideas he hadn't heard, and
Speaker 1: I think something wild and wonderful got stirred up that
Speaker 1: hadn't been stirred up. And I'm not saying that there
Speaker 1: was anything less about being homeless in Colorado and sleeping
Speaker 1: on the bed of one of our folk music lights
Speaker 1: in those days, but I think it was different. I
Speaker 1: think it jogged him. And do you you mentioned you
Speaker 1: stayed in touch with Steven Stills, those people who haven't passed.
Speaker 1: Do you stay in touch with the writers of the
Speaker 1: songs you've done or that was a moment more of
Speaker 1: a momentary thing. Oh. I've always had relationships with most
Speaker 1: of the people that I've that I've who's material i've
Speaker 1: I've I've worked on if they're on, if they're living, uh,
Speaker 1: And I've had I had a wonderful relationship with with Leonard.
Speaker 1: I mean it was he was so generous and he
Speaker 1: was so kind, and you know, he'd calling read me
Speaker 1: fifty verses of a song before he'd settled on the
Speaker 1: ones that he liked. I I'm a great fan of
Speaker 1: of Jimmy Webb, for instance, who's a good friend and
Speaker 1: just an amazing writer. I have such respect for him,
Speaker 1: and I'm always so moved by his writing. It's tremendous
Speaker 1: and most of the singer songwriters that I've known, I
Speaker 1: certainly knew Joni in the early years much better than
Speaker 1: I do today, but I knew her well and uh
Speaker 1: and people like Farina was a great friend of mine.
Speaker 1: I just was devastated by his death. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's dangerous to get too close to
Speaker 1: people because they do leave the planet. Going back to
Speaker 1: the early days, did you feel in competition with Joan Baias,
Speaker 1: Oh God, No, I was very friendly with the whole family.
Speaker 1: You know. Mimi was a good friend her mother. I
Speaker 1: have more I often choked joked to her about this.
Speaker 1: I have more letters from her mother, from big Joan
Speaker 1: fan letters, and I do from her although she's wonderful.
Speaker 1: She came. I sang at her seventy fifth at the Beacon,
Speaker 1: and then she came to my eighties birthday party a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. We had a great time, great
Speaker 1: time together. No, we love each other. We laugh. Mimi
Speaker 1: was the laugher Memi was hysterical, and she and Dick
Speaker 1: were good friends of mine, very good friends. Well. I
Speaker 1: loved the book that down so long it looks like
Speaker 1: up to me, he really made a huge impact upon me.
Speaker 1: You're so forthcoming and so many aspects of your life
Speaker 1: that therefore you talked about Steve and you talked about alcoholism.
Speaker 1: That a touchy subject for me, but maybe he is
Speaker 1: not for you. You know, your son took his own life.
Speaker 1: You also say that he said he had alcohol issues
Speaker 1: and depression issues. You've also gone on record that you've
Speaker 1: had depression issues. Can you talk a little bit about that. Well,
Speaker 1: this gene that was in both of our families. My
Speaker 1: father was an alcoholic, of course, and his his background,
Speaker 1: his his own father's father took his life. I don't
Speaker 1: say that because I think that that means that if
Speaker 1: it's in the family, then you you'll get it. It's
Speaker 1: not that, but the gene for addiction is certainly in
Speaker 1: the d n A, and we do get it at birth,
Speaker 1: and if we have any luck, it gets into our
Speaker 1: behavior or our behavior brings it into fruition. Perhaps. But Clark,
Speaker 1: when when he when he would turned ten eleven years old,
Speaker 1: I knew there was something off. He was a d
Speaker 1: d H D or he was um. They used to
Speaker 1: have different words for it. Uh. Anyway, he was antagonized.
Speaker 1: He was, he was short tempered, he was, but he
Speaker 1: was brilliant and his his focus. He was a wonderful musician.
Speaker 1: And he would have a short focus at times. But
Speaker 1: I knew he was. I knew in those days in seventies,
Speaker 1: seventy one seventy two, when he first got to New York,
Speaker 1: when he first was exhibiting the tendencies that I now
Speaker 1: associated with alcoholism and getting into trouble, and the schools
Speaker 1: that followed, you know, places like windsor Mountain up in Lennox,
Speaker 1: where the headmaster would say, oh, you know, we really
Speaker 1: we really focused on the drug issues and the substance issues.
Speaker 1: And then two weeks later he'd be in the hospital
Speaker 1: with an overdose. So I mean it was classic alcoholism.
Speaker 1: And had it happened in a later time, most people
Speaker 1: would be saying, and doctors included, you know, this kid
Speaker 1: needs to be in rehab. And I was not sober yet,
Speaker 1: I still had some years to go. So he was
Speaker 1: nineteen when I got sober, and he had actually cleaned
Speaker 1: his life up and and gone. He and his girlfriend
Speaker 1: both had had gotten clean, and they were both both
Speaker 1: at Colombia, and they decided to move up to Ristie
Speaker 1: and they were at school up there, and he was
Speaker 1: in very good shape. And then he came back to
Speaker 1: New York and he sort of fell apart. And I
Speaker 1: went into treatment in seventy eight and he was in
Speaker 1: bad trouble. So it was six years before he came
Speaker 1: and said to me, I okay, I give up or
Speaker 1: I surrender and win, which is actually the way we
Speaker 1: look at it. And he went into treatment in in
Speaker 1: at Hazelden and he was sober for seven years. What
Speaker 1: a life, you know. He had a little girl, He
Speaker 1: had a wife who is now my my daughter in
Speaker 1: law still, who's a widow, but she's still my daughter
Speaker 1: in law, and the mother of my granddaughter who is
Speaker 1: now in her forties. No whore now in her thirties.
Speaker 1: Forgive me, Hollis. And so his his his suicide just
Speaker 1: about destroyed me. And when I say that, because I'm
Speaker 1: giving you the background, because it shouldn't really have almost
Speaker 1: destroyed me, because suicide if you're an alcoholic and you're active.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't active. He was sober, and he relapsed
Speaker 1: and he called me, he said, you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: having trouble. I said, I know, and he went into
Speaker 1: another couple of rounds of of going to their retreat
Speaker 1: up there at Hazelton. But they said it they let him.
Speaker 1: I say, they let him loose. But he was an adult,
Speaker 1: he was thirty three years old, so mom really couldn't
Speaker 1: ride in on a white horse and fix it. And
Speaker 1: he drank, and in the conclusion of his life, he
Speaker 1: did the same thing as grandfather on his father's side,
Speaker 1: that he went into a car and turned on the engine.
Speaker 1: And you know, Joan Rivers called me about four days
Speaker 1: after Clark's death and she said, I know what you
Speaker 1: want to do. You want to close your life down.
Speaker 1: I had started to cancel concerts and she said, you
Speaker 1: can't do that because if you do that, you're not
Speaker 1: going to heal. And as you know, she had lost
Speaker 1: her husband to suicide a few a couple of years before,
Speaker 1: and she said, there are no guilts in suicide, which
Speaker 1: I knew on an intellectual basis, but you have to
Speaker 1: talk to other people about it, which I did and
Speaker 1: I got some important, important help from a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And I decided to write a book about suicide, which
Speaker 1: I did. Uh what is it called? I don't remember
Speaker 1: gratitude and grace, I think. But I wanted to get
Speaker 1: down everything that I knew about suicide. Having been an
Speaker 1: attempter at the age of fourteen, I tried to do
Speaker 1: myself in It was all those pills and and I
Speaker 1: was very determined. And I don't I still don't know,
Speaker 1: except that they made me sick at my stomach and
Speaker 1: that I was not going to I was perfectly happy dying.
Speaker 1: I was not happy being sick of my stomach. Um,
Speaker 1: So I think what we need to do. When Clark died,
Speaker 1: there were only two books that really were positive. There
Speaker 1: were no books that were positive except one. The other
Speaker 1: one was called The Savage God, which I would never read.
Speaker 1: I never would have read it until this happened. And
Speaker 1: of course it's all about silly plast's suicide and it
Speaker 1: has not one ounce of solution in it. And the
Speaker 1: other book was by Irish Bolton, who whose book is
Speaker 1: full of solutions, and it's a marvelous book and it
Speaker 1: was very healing. And then I read everything I could
Speaker 1: get ever that it's ever been written. I think about suicide,
Speaker 1: and A wrote about it because I needed to get
Speaker 1: it out of my system. And I think that's really
Speaker 1: the secret to this, you know, suicide. I often say
Speaker 1: that suicide is fascinating if it's not happening to you.
Speaker 1: But on the on the positive side, you go you
Speaker 1: cannot go over it. You have to go through it.
Speaker 1: So you have to go through the feelings, you have
Speaker 1: to go through the experiences. It's it's a it's an
Speaker 1: opportunity to completely overhaul your ideas about what's happened. And
Speaker 1: you can't take it personally because it's not personal. It's
Speaker 1: a universal as as as um Cock. It's not Cocktau.
Speaker 1: It's another writer that starts with a sea who says
Speaker 1: that it is a universal human conundrum because we can
Speaker 1: all get off the planet if we want to, and
Speaker 1: so then the question is do we want to stay?
Speaker 1: And if you haven't had a suicidal thought in your life,
Speaker 1: you're living on some other planet. I think. Well, put now,
Speaker 1: subsequent cleaning up with alcohol, do you still have issues
Speaker 1: of depression? No? No, alcohol is a depressant. Funny, but
Speaker 1: that's the truth. Now, I know you were you a
Speaker 1: drinker before you got to New York and got really
Speaker 1: heavily into the musical lifestyle. Oh yes, I always drank.
Speaker 1: I drank from the age of fifteen, and I drank
Speaker 1: for twenty three years solid, you know I was. And
Speaker 1: did you have other than personal bad experiences, meaning you know,
Speaker 1: you woke up where you didn't know you were black
Speaker 1: out whatever. Did you ever have people who disconnected from you,
Speaker 1: were business opportunities that fell away because of your the
Speaker 1: whole use? Well, I don't know. I was very protected
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. I had a very strong career,
Speaker 1: I had strong management. I do think that I was distancing,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that that was no. I was
Speaker 1: just getting sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't anybody else's problem but mine. The last year
Speaker 1: of my drinking in seventy seven, I and someone said
Speaker 1: this to me recently. They the guy who wrote um
Speaker 1: Vincent what's his name? Don said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: I was in l A during those years. That year
Speaker 1: I saw a big poster that said that you had
Speaker 1: canceled concerts that year, and yeah, that's a career killer you.
Speaker 1: You canceled forty five shows, so the industry, but it
Speaker 1: was me. I couldn't sing, and in a way that
Speaker 1: was my That was a blessing that that was the problem,
Speaker 1: because if you can't sing, you can't show up. So
Speaker 1: it's not your alcoholism that's in the way. It's the
Speaker 1: fact that you can't think, so you have to cancel.
Speaker 1: And people understand that in the music business, they don't
Speaker 1: get terribly upset. If it doesn't go on for years,
Speaker 1: they don't get upset. If if it had, they do
Speaker 1: get upset. But if it happens for one season or
Speaker 1: two seasons, it's a whole summer, it's a whole spring.
Speaker 1: It's that's not unusual. So thank god that was the
Speaker 1: end of that, because then everything was canceled. And then
Speaker 1: I went into treatment, and then I couldn't work, I
Speaker 1: couldn't sing, and but eventually, slowly, but surely, it all
Speaker 1: came back. Okay, So what was the final straw? Who
Speaker 1: or what got you to go to rehab? I went.
Speaker 1: I had what we call an s gamo I. There
Speaker 1: was a guy in New York who was a very
Speaker 1: big drinker. He's very famous actor, and he was always drinking.
Speaker 1: In His picture would be on the on the daily news,
Speaker 1: falling out of some bar somewhere with blood splashing all
Speaker 1: over his face. He'd been in a big fight, and
Speaker 1: that happened a lot, and I would sit and I
Speaker 1: didn't know him personally, but I thought, oh, that's it. He's,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody's carrying on the tradition here, somebody. And
Speaker 1: I got to know his wife through an exercise class
Speaker 1: that I was in. I didn't know him personally, but
Speaker 1: I knew her, and so one day I said to her, Um,
Speaker 1: what happened. I don't see him, he's not I don't
Speaker 1: see these photographs in the time, in the news or
Speaker 1: the post. What's going on? She said, well, he got sober,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh, dear God, that's terrible news. Some
Speaker 1: police give up the fight. And she said, would you
Speaker 1: like to talk to him? I said yes, and he
Speaker 1: drink again, and so I I was at the end
Speaker 1: of my rope, really, and so I already I was
Speaker 1: already trying to go to meetings, but I was too
Speaker 1: drunk to really do much about it. So I called him.
Speaker 1: He was on he was on location somewhere in Arizona,
Speaker 1: and he called me back and we spent a couple
Speaker 1: hours on the phone, and he said, I should go
Speaker 1: see this doctor, dr get Low, and I should go
Speaker 1: to these places, these meetings, and so on, and so
Speaker 1: I went to get low and that's how it happened.
Speaker 1: He I sat there and told him my sob story
Speaker 1: and uh he said. He was laughing, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you
Speaker 1: except you're an alcoholic and there is a solution to this,
Speaker 1: and I will help you. And so he got me.
Speaker 1: He want me to call this place where I went
Speaker 1: for treatment at chit Chat. It's called it's called the
Speaker 1: Care and Foundation now and it focuses well, people go
Speaker 1: there and get sober, but it also focuses on the
Speaker 1: family because it is a family illness, and if you're
Speaker 1: in a family with alcoholism, you have it, whether you
Speaker 1: drink or not. It's about the isms, it's about powerlessness.
Speaker 1: It's about about trying to tell somebody else what to
Speaker 1: do and getting nowhere, because you can't get anywhere with
Speaker 1: somebody who's using. You can't keep saying you, look at you,
Speaker 1: you'd be so much better if you didn't do X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. You just can't do it. It's also
Speaker 1: a self diagnosed disease, and that's the difference. That's why
Speaker 1: the a m A has such a hard time with it.
Speaker 1: And of course, I'm very Doctors know a lot about
Speaker 1: building bridges and bone cures. I mean not the not
Speaker 1: the one that takes bis phosphonates, but putting them back together.
Speaker 1: They know a lot about that. They don't don't know
Speaker 1: squat about most emotional things. And one of the first
Speaker 1: things they don't know is that alcohol is a depressant,
Speaker 1: and that many of these medications that they hand around
Speaker 1: so freely, the uh, you know, the pills for sleeping.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of those, the pills for sleeping
Speaker 1: and the pills for feeling good, and they often have
Speaker 1: different reactions to different people that are not good at
Speaker 1: that are not healthy, that are not up there with
Speaker 1: clean and sober living. So how do you stay sober
Speaker 1: day to time? You just do it one day at
Speaker 1: a time, and you go to meetings every day and
Speaker 1: you have a miracle happen, and it's happening all around us,
Speaker 1: all around us. Okay, what are your two favorite songs
Speaker 1: to sing? My favorite song of all is the most
Speaker 1: recent one that I've written, and a Jimmy Web song
Speaker 1: called the Highwayman. Okay, And in the time you have
Speaker 1: left on the planet, anything specifically you want to do
Speaker 1: whether it be career wise or just personal, go someplace
Speaker 1: you know that you haven't been before. It looks like
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to China, which I've never been
Speaker 1: to in all these years. And I want to go
Speaker 1: back to Japan where I was with Mimi and Arlo
Speaker 1: and uh Bruce Langhorn in nineteen sixty six. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to take a walk in the park today. Okay,
Speaker 1: And you mentioned you know finances, So how are your finances.
Speaker 1: They're fine, They're wonderful. Okay. So you are working primarily
Speaker 1: to work, You're not working for the money is always good,
Speaker 1: but it's not like you literally need the money to live. Well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter. There's nothing embarrassing about working. I think
Speaker 1: we're working for a living is one of the highest
Speaker 1: achievements one can have. I don't believe in retirement. I
Speaker 1: think it was invented after the Industrial Revolution so that
Speaker 1: the top end of the management could make it all
Speaker 1: and send the rest of us home. So I don't
Speaker 1: believe in it. And I don't think many artists stopped
Speaker 1: working when they can continue doing their artistic adventures. And
Speaker 1: that's what I'm honest, an artistic adventure, which involves going
Speaker 1: in front of audiences and recreating and creating what makes
Speaker 1: them happy. And I think being part of art is
Speaker 1: part of what keeps the planet awake. I don't know
Speaker 1: why anybody would stay on the planet without art and music.
Speaker 1: I don't know why any of us would stick around.
Speaker 1: You're speaking my language. I feel the same way. You know.
Speaker 1: It's all these people work at these jobs they hate
Speaker 1: so they can watch to go to the movies tonst
Speaker 1: without that. And you know that I don't want to
Speaker 1: get on a soapbox myself. But the fact that we
Speaker 1: live a country where there's no money for the arch's
Speaker 1: no music in the schools is you know, the priorities
Speaker 1: are not right. No, they're not right. And the teachers
Speaker 1: don't get paid enough, and the the the workers in
Speaker 1: the hospitals don't get paid enough. Our educators don't get
Speaker 1: what they should have. And and we have all of
Speaker 1: this abundance, and we cannot take care of the homeless,
Speaker 1: we cannot take care of our medical costs. We what
Speaker 1: is the matter with us? We need to have a rejuvenation. Well,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're speaking my language. Unfortunately, I'm more
Speaker 1: of a glass half empty person than you, But I
Speaker 1: am not optimistic about where we're going. I'm optimistic about today,
Speaker 1: and I'm optimistic about doing the things you know I had.
Speaker 1: And I'm friendly with the Molly John Fast. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know who she is, but she's she's
Speaker 1: she's my friend Erica's daughter, and I've known it for
Speaker 1: a long time and were talking the other day. I said,
Speaker 1: what do you suggest? What are the two since all
Speaker 1: this trouble is going on, and since we've we're up
Speaker 1: against this incredible wall of greed, insanity, misbehavior. Uh, people
Speaker 1: who are living in some foul dream that they're trying
Speaker 1: to shove on us. You know, they attack the capital
Speaker 1: and call it tourism. What is the matter with us? What?
Speaker 1: What is? What do we do? Individually? She said, Well,
Speaker 1: the first is subscribe to a great newspaper. Well, you
Speaker 1: and I probably do that, Bob, And three or four
Speaker 1: or more get get get a good newspaper into and
Speaker 1: also run for office. And so I am not going
Speaker 1: to run for office, but I'm gonna be as vocal
Speaker 1: as I can, which I've always been anyway, about what's
Speaker 1: going on, to take action. Get a goddamn facts scene,
Speaker 1: for instance, you know you're preaching to the converted. You know,
Speaker 1: I subscribe to four newspapers. I know you know what
Speaker 1: you're going But the frustration I have we grew up
Speaker 1: in a different era where there was a level of cohesiveness.
Speaker 1: Everyone tuned into one of the three networks for the news.
Speaker 1: If you're a news junkie, maybe get newspapers. In addition,
Speaker 1: now you cannot penetrate the other side. You can write
Speaker 1: the truth all day long. So I was of the
Speaker 1: belief that once they got rid of abortion, America would revolt.
Speaker 1: Now the truth is in a number of Southern states
Speaker 1: essentially there is no abortion. You know, there's one, you know,
Speaker 1: one clinic whatever. So the question becomes, what is the
Speaker 1: spark we saw last year with Black Lives Matter? You
Speaker 1: could have a lot of free flowing feelings and emotion.
Speaker 1: One spark can set it off. And it's not like
Speaker 1: I want. You know, maybe I'm a child of the sixties,
Speaker 1: but we're going to need a revel luction if things
Speaker 1: keep going in this way. And the question becomes, you know,
Speaker 1: will that it's so far it's just the minority on
Speaker 1: the other side rising up, Whereas listen, the vaccine thing
Speaker 1: is just insane. It's like I have I got the vaccine.
Speaker 1: It didn't work for me because I have this take
Speaker 1: this medication. I'm still home waiting for the medication last
Speaker 1: for two years, but six months intensely, and so it
Speaker 1: has to wear off so I can have B cells,
Speaker 1: so I can get the N bodies. But without being
Speaker 1: making it a personal thing that I'm still home. If
Speaker 1: you follow this BuzzFeed and they reprinted it in the
Speaker 1: week and CNN people are dying, the delta variant spreads
Speaker 1: faster and your number could come up. And it always happens.
Speaker 1: Oh if I if he knew, we would get a vaccine,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's just it's just I don't understand it.
Speaker 1: It's not to be understood. It's not to be understood.
Speaker 1: But we have to do our work. We have to
Speaker 1: believe in the present and take the actions that we can,
Speaker 1: and we have to let go the anger that comes
Speaker 1: up when we want to smash the windows in and
Speaker 1: trip up and poke into the spikes of the bikers
Speaker 1: on the street that are gonna kill me because they
Speaker 1: don't pay any attention to anything or anybody. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's start with that. You know, the person on the
Speaker 1: scooter last week. Absolutely, I think you know, uh, living
Speaker 1: in southern California where bird scooters started. On a raw
Speaker 1: physics level, it's got a very small wheel, so if
Speaker 1: you hit anything, you're gonna fall and you're gonna get injured. Forget,
Speaker 1: forget somebody else. This is not a good situation for
Speaker 1: a society at large. It isn't. It isn't solutely because
Speaker 1: you can't see. You know. It was one thing to
Speaker 1: go to London and have to look both ways. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'm in New York City enough I look up. I'm
Speaker 1: still in trouble. Listen. Everybody thinks they're in violent until
Speaker 1: it happens to them. And that's another thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, Paul Krugen said, the difference between the right
Speaker 1: and the left is the left believes in a social
Speaker 1: welfare and safety net, but bad things ultimately happen to everybody.
Speaker 1: You sit there and you say, well, that's not me.
Speaker 1: You know, they're giving all those people that money, or
Speaker 1: they're doing this whatever. One day, it's gonna be you
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be glad. It's like that building that
Speaker 1: collapsed or Florida. Right there has to be something going on,
Speaker 1: buildings just don't collapse. So we live in a country
Speaker 1: where they keep saying we want less and less regulation. No,
Speaker 1: we want regulation. Generally speaking, the buildings don't fall in
Speaker 1: the United States because of regulation. Rex Chillerson, who worked
Speaker 1: for Trump and was the head of the big company.
Speaker 1: In one of the general waters, he said, it's so
Speaker 1: much easier to deal with foreign countries where there are
Speaker 1: dictators because they don't have any rules. You can get
Speaker 1: a lot done. Well, you know, staying on the same point,
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, I think authoritarianism will ultimately
Speaker 1: triumph for one simple reason. It's easier. Yeah, they had
Speaker 1: a story in the news last week than in China
Speaker 1: they built a ten story building in a day. In
Speaker 1: China they can get things done. We have complete gridlock.
Speaker 1: I mean. And you as a world traveler. Though they
Speaker 1: keep saying America the greatest country in the world, I've
Speaker 1: bet a lot of places where it's really damn good.
Speaker 1: Not that we don't have some great things in America,
Speaker 1: but never mind. Free education, that's a good thing. Okay.
Speaker 1: We could go on about this, and I would like to,
Speaker 1: but we're all at length. Judy, you're wonderful. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's knowing you only from Afar. It's just
Speaker 1: fascinating to actually talk to you because my impression was
Speaker 1: a someone more stayed or not exactly snobbish, but more stayed.
Speaker 1: And then to talk to me, we could literally talk
Speaker 1: all night. You're right, You're absolutely right. Well, I love
Speaker 1: it that you're you're on your your proper paths doing
Speaker 1: what you do because we need you. And it's a
Speaker 1: light that comes out of this kind of work that
Speaker 1: you do that helps everybody get through the rest. Don't
Speaker 1: forget that. Well, listen, you help me out in the
Speaker 1: nature of being a writer, especially because I'm home, you're
Speaker 1: alone a lot, and sometimes you write something or you
Speaker 1: do something and people are talking about it externally, but
Speaker 1: you're in the eye of the hurricane, so you're unaware.
Speaker 1: So when you tell me that, and there are other
Speaker 1: things you said through the podcast that really resonated certainly
Speaker 1: relative to continuing to do the work. So you're open
Speaker 1: when the inspiration. Absolutely, when the inspiration comes, you know
Speaker 1: you have the tool you'll be able to execute. Will
Speaker 1: I be able to write this? What's the first word?
Speaker 1: It's just flows right out. Absolutely, Thank you. It's been great.
Speaker 1: Till next time, My dear, have a beautiful I have
Speaker 1: a friend to says, you know, have a beautiful day.
Speaker 1: Unless you had other plans. Well, hopefully it'll be beautiful. Yeah. Good, Okay,
Speaker 1: Well you've got three hours more than I do in
Speaker 1: your life today. Absolutely well, i'b surely you've had the
Speaker 1: experience of you know, flying over the International dateline. You
Speaker 1: lose two days going that way and you left. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, and I'll have that again soon. I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I can't wait. That's what everybody's talking about. I get
Speaker 1: from people here, from people over the world. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to get on a plane to Pace with good thought.
Speaker 1: It's a good thought, all right, thanks again, until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sex m