Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509010012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARLENE AIG ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
She pauses and smiles, her brilliant blue eyes very bright. ``That's why I can't take acid.''
Collins, a folk rock icon for more than three decades, more recently decided there's always room for another novel.
Hers, published in July, is called ``Shameless,'' a suspense romance about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, told by a photojournalist - an odd choice of protagonist for someone who uses a point-and-shoot camera.
Friends helped her with the technical aspects of photography, but the descriptions of the music world, with its parties, rivalries and insecurities, are things Collins knows well.
On a hot summer day, Collins, looking a lot younger than her 56 years, is dressed in black and barefoot, curled on a sofa in her spacious Manhattan apartment that is crammed with photographs of family and friends. Artworks fill every bit of wall space, including a Picasso plate and her own watercolors.
She is on a break from a 28-city tour to promote the book.
But she can't stop talking about her novel and the sequel she's planning. She also wants to talk about the compact disc not coincidentally titled ``Shameless,'' which is her first to contain all original songs. The liner notes link the songs to the novel, which features the emergence of a rock band known as the Newborns.
``I don't think I made a conscious decision to write the novel,'' she says, hugging one of her three Himalayan cats. ``I started it in 1987 and every year there was a different plot. I wrote on airplanes and in hotel rooms, mostly in long hand. ... All along I wrote pieces of songs and lyrics and titles of songs for the Newborns.''
So when someone in marketing at Simon & Schuster, the parent company of Pocket Books, suggested an accompanying CD, Collins was enthusiastic and completed a dozen songs in six weeks.
Jack Romanos, president of S&S Consumer Group, came up with the idea of marketing a two-track, mini-CD within the book, saying, ``OK, we'll have the first book to go platinum.''
The CD was recorded in her home studio, its coziness emphasized by a hand-scrawled ``Do Not Disturb'' sign on lined notebook paper taped to the door.
Without being asked, Collins bursts into the title track:
``Shameless! Shameless! You're tearin' me apart!
``Shameless! Shameless! You're a face without a heart.''
Her voice, once described as a crystalline soprano, is remembered rising pure and sweet at anti-war and civil rights marches of the 1960s and 1970s, echoing with profound serenity as it turned the hymn ``Amazing Grace'' into a pop ballad and winning wider audiences for composers such as Jacques Brel, Stephen Sondheim and Kurt Weill.
One fan is President Clinton, whose daughter's name, Chelsea, was inspired by Collins' rendition of Joni Mitchell's ``Chelsea Morning.''
On one wall outside her office are a dozen framed letters from Clinton. Opposite are framed Grammy nominations, gold records, the recognition for her documentary about conductor Antonia Brico and the Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award she received this year for her work with UNICEF.
For baby boomers, Judy Collins needs no introduction.
Which, she says, is not necessarily a plus.
``When they start calling you a legend, you have to watch out,'' she says. ``The minute they start calling you a legend, they stop promoting your records. And then you have to start fighting for your life, which is what I'm doing, fighting for my life as a recording artist.''
She annually does 50 to 75 concerts, and regularly produces albums, always seeking something new and different.
Her rebellion began in her teens when she abandoned classical piano for the folk-rock scene. She later incorporated songs by Sondheim, including ``Send in the Clowns,'' and Beatles tunes into her repertoire and introduced the lyrical eroticism of Leonard Cohen to the masses.
On this day, Collins is also eager to spend some time with her adored 7-year-old granddaughter, a tall blond child who looks remarkably like her grandmother and who is visiting for the weekend.
``The flower child is a grandma!'' Collins says, agreeing that it's hard to believe, but acknowledging that arthritis is a reminder of age.
Despite Collins' energy about her book and CD, her work with UNICEF and the work of her ``life partner,'' Louis Nelson, one of the designers of the new Korean War Memorial in Washington, there's an underlying sadness, rooted in the 1992 suicide of her only child, Clark, at the age of 33.
``It's the worst thing that can happen to anyone,'' she says, glancing away for the first time and looking at a picture of her son as a child. ``We have losses, but that's one too many losses, the loss of a child.''
Quickly she shifts gears, talking about how she might use her experience to help others through a foundation, a hot line, by writing about it. She herself attempted suicide as a teen-ager.
Someone with her public profile can be helpful because other survivors ``can know you can have a life and be seen and still flourish. ... It's a thing in people's lives. It's not on the moon.''
While Collins' sentences trip over each other on some subjects, she gives succinct answers to others. Her alcohol problem: ``It's not an alcohol problem. I'm an alcoholic and I can never have a drink. That's all.''
But, she says, she's ``mad about life'' and accepts a dictum someone once told her, ``God's will is what is.''
``I'm just getting started,'' she insists, calling herself a late bloomer and an ``opsimath'' - one who comes to learning late.
``I'm singing more, performing more, writing better. ... Just because somebody knows who you are shouldn't stop you from your creative adventure. Life is a creative adventure.''
by CNB