‘Joni Mitchell sang Both Sides, Now over the phone to me’: folk music legend Judy Collins on her 87 remarkable years

As she continues her farewell tour, the US singer-songwriter answers your questions on romance with Stephen Stills, friendship with Carly Simon and how folk underpins all pop

How did you come into Joni Mitchell’s orbit and how did you end up recording Both Sides, Now before she did? Steve-bayley I’m 48 years sober, but in the old days I drank. One night in 1967, I was passed out and the phone rang at about 3am. It was my friend [the musician, songwriter and producer] Al Kooper. He said he’d been at a club and had run into this woman, Joni, who wrote songs. He put her on the phone and she sang Both Sides, Now over the phone. It was brilliant. I said: “I’ll be right over.” I recorded it the next day and it became a huge hit.

I don’t think Joni was too happy that I was the first to record it, but she was very generous and I’ve since recorded many of her songs. She was unknown then, so I’m proud that I was able to help introduce her to the world. She’s one of the great writers of all time.

What is your favourite memory of Leonard Cohen? viennesewaltzer In 1966, a friend at Atlantic Records who always talked about this guy Leonard rang up and said: “Leonard wants to see you. He wants you to sing his songs.” He came in to my apartment and said: “I can’t play guitar. I have a terrible voice and I don’t know if this is a song.” Then he played me Suzanne. I said: “Leonard, that is a song and I’m recording it tomorrow.” Which I did – and it became a huge hit. After that, he said: “Now you’ve made me famous. I don’t know why you’re not writing your own songs.” I went straight to the piano and wrote Since You Asked in 40 minutes. That was the beginning of my writing. Leonard was my guru, in a way.

I first encountered the song My Father via This Mortal Coil’s version. Is it autobiographical? mbleeze It’s very autobiographical, although my father wasn’t a coalminer in Ohio and didn’t promise to take us to France. I had to make it rhyme and make sense, but it’s really about the ethereal idea we have of our parents and how they inspire us. My father was blind from the age of four, but he never used a dog or a cane. He went through the world determined to conquer. He went anywhere he wanted – through the city, upstairs in the bus – guided by the sound of his heels on the pavement.

Then, by himself, he became a great radio personality in three cities. He sang the Great American Songbook and Irish and Scottish folk songs and had books in braille piled up to the ceiling, which he could read to us in the dark. His determination was such that he believed we could achieve anything, which is kinda what the song’s about.

After five superlative traditional folk albums, you got together with [the arranger] Joshua Rifkin in 1966 to produce the groundbreaking album In My Life, in which you treat contemporary song [the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Donovan] with the seriousness usually reserved for classical song. How did you come to do that? hcir321 I’d done Dylan songs before, but for In My Life I’d actually gone back to the songs written in Germany by Brecht and Weill. Once I’d done Pirate Jenny – [sings] “You gentlemen can watch while I’m scrubbing the floor” – I thought it would be interesting to take songs from Berlin from the 1940s and put them with this wonderful music the Beatles and others were doing, so the contrast was really interesting. I was always searching.

Stephen Stills wrote the epic seven-minute masterpiece Suite: Judy Blue Eyes about you on Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut. Is it your favourite song by the band? raphph When we were making Who Knows Where the Time Goes [with Stills on guitar and bass], we had an affair that lasted four months, but I didn’t like California. He didn’t like New York, or therapy, and I was in both. After we split up, I was in California doing a show on my birthday and he brought me flowers and sang Judy Blue Eyes to me. We were both in tears and I said: “Oh, it’s beautiful, but it’s not going to get me back.” I’d launched into another affair with someone else, but Stephen and I have been friends for 60 years.

After my wonderful husband, Louis, died in 2024, we played a song together and on stage Stephen said: “She married the right guy,” which was so touching – they were buddies. Stephen also wrote Helplessly Hoping about me and I wrote Houses about him. All his songs were incredible, but I’m calling my tour the Sweet Judy Blue Eyes farewell tour and he doesn’t mind that.

How much of the broadening of your repertoire in the 1960s and early 1970s was due to the environment at Elektra Records and to [the label owner] Jac Holzman in particular? Delverie Jac was – is – so brilliant and so cooperative and such a great partner in having things to say about what I was doing and what I was writing. He was always there, for 25 years, and Elektra was a very eclectic label, from Carly Simon to the Stooges. When Jac went to Los Angeles and brought the Doors on to Elektra, he called me first and said: “I want you to know that I’m embracing the Doors as an artist and I want you to hear them.” I fell in love with them and told him they were great. Jac’s still working at 95 and we talk often.

What is at the heart of the sub-genre of folk music that you do? What is it exactly that people are connecting with? eamonmcc I learned all the gorgeous old songs from the Denver Folklore Society – Maid of Constant Sorrow and the like. The folk music genre connects to everyone and everything because they’re stories about people’s lives, their joy and pain. I was lucky enough to find the originals and then the new ones, like Leonard Cohen and the Doors, and they all melded together and became the music of the time, and it’s lasted and is still big everywhere. Inside every great pop song, there’s a folk song.

My favourite album of yours is Who Knows Where the Time Goes. How did you come across the great title track, at the time a completely unknown composition by Sandy Denny? goringgull We were closing up for the day when this guy pulled up to the studio on a motorcycle, raced inside and threw this cassette on the desk of my producer, David Anderle. He said: “You have to record this song.” We played the cassette and I said: “Oh my God, of course, we have to do it.” It’s a beautiful song and I’m so grateful that I got to know her and spent time with her in England and New York. We drank together and it was a time of wonder. An amazing woman. I still have some little flowers that she gave me that I keep in my studio.

Who was the first singer who lit the fire in you? SarahCG An American singer called Jo Stafford, who was very big in the popular arena. When I heard her singing: [sings] “’Twas in the merry month of May when the green buds a-swelling, a young man on his death bed lay for the love of Barbara Allen,” she touched my heart. I told my father I had to have a guitar and that set me on my journey. I never met her, but years later I was very glad to be asked to do the liner notes for a collection of her best songs.

I have about 30 of your albums; which do you consider your best – and why? Cloudberry2021 The most recent, Spellbound, consists of 12 songs that I wrote. It’s the first time I’ve done that and it was nominated for a Grammy, so I’m very happy about that one. I’m writing for another project now and have never lost that thrill of writing songs and working out how to do them.

What led to the collaboration with [the Manchester band] Puressence? axolotly They recorded a beautiful version of Che, a song about Che Guevara that took me four years to write. Nobody else had ever recorded it, but I thought their version was one of the best things I’ve ever heard. So I was intrigued. I found them, met up with [the singer] James Mudriczki in England, we got to know each other and I ended up singing on their album [2011’s Solid State Recital]. James is wonderful.

You did Fisherman’s Song with Carly Simon on her 1990 album. How did that collaboration come about? Micktrick Carly sang a song of mine that Dolly Parton also sang, so I’ve accomplished something I thought would never happen. I’ve known Carly since she was in the Simon Sisters with her sister Lucy years ago. All her sisters were friends of mine, then Carly and I were in Greenwich Village in the 60s when it was a hive of talent. You’d walk down the street and bump into Tom Paxton and he’d say: “I’ve written this song,” and I’d record it.

I met Bob Dylan in that time, but I’d first met him in 1959 and 1960 at a little club in the mountains called the Gilded Garter and we’d get drunk together. He was doing old Woody Guthrie blues then, so when I saw this song written down as “by Bob Dylan” – “How many roads must a man walk down” – I thought it must have been a mistake. I soon realised it wasn’t and started recording his songs. Lately, Masters of War has been too frightening for me to sing, but I’ll try again, because it’s a magnificent protest song and it should be heard.

1939 [when Collins was born] was a long time ago. How do you embrace the magnitude? EdinKyo My mother was married to a blind man whom she met on a bus in Seattle and they raised five kids and we learned the history of our country and what was precious to our founders. Now, we have AI and it’s a very different world, but the fundamentals don’t change. We’re still making art and music and we’re trying to save the planet. We meet people, get together with our families, get into an airplane and fly to another place. We get through our tragedies and we learn. The way I feel is that if we’re still on the planet, we still have things to do.