Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 21, 1992                   TAG: 9203210060
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: BETTY WEBB COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SINGER CREDITS SPIRITUAL SELF WITH REGAINING LIFE'S BALANCE

Collins dismisses all this as irrelevant. Her life, the singer insists, is about her works - not her looks.

This firmness is to be expected from someone with Collins' classical education. Always a hard worker, she began playing piano at the age of 5 and made her professional debut at the age of 13, playing Mozart. She discovered the world of folk music two years later.

"My father, a musician himself, was my first major influence, " she said in a recent telephone interview. "He inspired me tremendously, and so much of what I am all about came directly from him." In fact, one of Collins' most poignant songs, "My Father," is about her relationship with Chuck Collins. But that relationship was as turbulent as it was inspiring.

Chuck Collins, a Seattle radio personality, was blind and overcame his handicap with a will of iron.

In her autobiography, "Trust Your Heart," Collins says one of her earliest memories was of him crawling along the bathroom floor, looking for pieces of his glasses which had fallen and shattered.

"I know that he cannot see me, with or without glasses," she writes. "I often felt not that he was blind, but that I was invisible."

His uncompromising strength helped push his daughter into stardom. But with the singer's stardom came great pain.

Collins is frank in her autobiography, chronicling serious illness - polio and tuberculosis - drug use, alcoholism, bulimia, and the loss of her son, Clark, in a bitter custody fight with her ex-husband, Peter Taylor.

But Collins - as did her father - managed to overcome every obstacle put in her way. She cleaned up her act, regained her health and got her son back.

"I've always had a very strong spiritual center in my life, which is reflected in my music choices," she says. "That's why I recorded `Amazing Grace,' the center point of the Bill Moyers movie for PBS." And because of that spiritual core, Collins remains involved in human rights and environmental issues.

Through sales of her most recent recording, "Fires of Eden," she is sponsoring reforestation efforts in Colorado and other states.

"Whenever you can plant a tree, either in your yard or in a forest or park, the air is sweetened and the cycle of regeneration begins."