Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 25, 1993 TAG: 9302250047
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: JON PARELES NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
LONG MEMORY FORGET JUDY COLLINS? BILL CLINTON HASN'T, AND NEITHER HAS THE RES
Judy Collins advanced on her visitor, long, gleaming knife in hand. She was wearing a tawny velvet dress and, over it, an apron. "Do you like garlic?" she asked. "Wonderful!" She began to chop with a double-time wrist action that bespoke long experience at the cutting board."Garlic is a very good thing to have under all conditions," she said, moving on to onions. "I always imagined that garlic doesn't smell on me. I like to keep to that illusion."
Collins, the unofficial First Folk Singer, was whipping up an impressive little lunch in the narrow kitchen of her Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, a comfortable home with river views and paintings that fill nearly every bit of wall space.
"I've discovered," she said as the shiitakes sizzled, "that all you need to make life really pleasant, at some moments anyway, is some onions, some mushrooms, some oil, a little garlic and a short memory."
But for the moment, Collins, 53, was enjoying the benefits of long memories. In the 1992 presidential primary campaign, Bill Clinton let it be known that Collins ranked high among his favorite singers; he told People magazine that the album he would save if his house were burning down would be Collins' "Colors of the Day," a compilation released in 1972. And he let it be known that Chelsea Clinton was named for "Chelsea Morning," a Joni Mitchell song that Collins recorded in 1969.
"It's not that I ever went away," Collins said, pouring Perrier and sitting down to eat. She reminded her guest that she had toured and recorded throughout the 1970s and 1980s; that her autobiography, "Trust Your Heart," was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1987, concurrent with an album of the same name. "But this is a kind of global memory starter. People all know you and love you, and then suddenly they know you and love you right now. They look at you on the street in a very different way. Everybody kind of catches up, and goes: `Oh, right! You're still here - and not only that, you're working harder than ever."'
Collins has had numerous ups and downs since the 1960s, including battles with alcoholism, allergies, hepatitis and bulimia that are discussed in her autobiography. Her son, Clark Taylor, the offspring of an early marriage, committed suicide last year in his early 30s, a topic she does not discuss. But she has survived the vagaries of a recording business that made her a star in the 1960s and 1970s, nearly ignored her in the 1980s and may be coming around to hear her anew.
Her last album, "Fires of Eden," was released in 1990 by Columbia Records. It was a largely forgettable soft-rock collection, though it did include Collins's own "Blizzard," an impressionistic song with rich Debussy-like harmonies. After the album sold poorly, Columbia dropped her. She has now signed with Geffen Records, where her first project will be an album of Bob Dylan songs. She also tours constantly, and will perform Sunday at Alice Tully Hall here.
While her pristine soprano seems to hark back to some rural Eden, Collins is no folk purist. In the early 1960s, she made her name performing traditional folk songs. But with her classical piano training and the example of her father, Chuck Collins, a pop singer, Collins didn't stick to the folk repertory.
As early as 1964, she began expanding her repertory to what she calls "written songs" by the likes of Bob Dylan. By the late 1960s Collins was using orchestras as well as her lone guitar and was gathering songs from new writers like Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen, from the theater, from European cabaret and from any place else that sounded promising. Her 1967 hit, "Both Sides Now," was by Joni Mitchell, then unknown.
Collins was also beginning to write songs herself, beginning with the tender vows of "Since You Asked." Commercially, Collins had two unlikely hits in the 1970s: a 1970 version of "Amazing Grace" that sold a million copies and, in 1975, one of the first pop renditions of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns." She has been accompanied by humpback whales and rock bands, by huge choruses and her own solo piano. "I wasn't meant to just sing many versions of `Both Sides Now,"' she said. "It has always been, how do I get to what's really me? It's been a struggle with record companies, it's been a struggle with myself, it's been a struggle with getting permission somehow to do it."
Although Collins doesn't sing protest songs, she has followed the route of many performers who came of age in the 1960s by playing innumerable benefits for candidates and causes. She met the president-to-be in 1991, when she was performing at a conference on women's issues in Chautauqua, N.Y. He and his wife came backstage after the concert. "You can always tell the difference between people who are there just for business and those people who really love the music," Collins said.
They met again in June 1992, when by coincidence both Collins and the Clintons were staying at the Miramar hotel in Santa Monica, Calif.