I was in the beginning period of a thriving, satisfying, exhausting career. My love life was going nowhere, but I was working hard at therapy, still drinking, rushing around the world, and trying to forget what I had lost.
And to appreciate what I had been given.
Chapter Twenty
Blue Strangers and Blue Friends: Dick Fariña, Mimi Baez Fariña, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen
The ponies run
The girls are young
The odds are there to beat
—LEONARD COHEN, “A Thousand Kisses Deep”
ON New Year’s Day 1966, Simon and Garfunkel’s single “The Sound of Silence” reached number one on the music charts. The haunting words of the opening verse—“Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again”—had been written, I knew from talking with Simon’s friend, Al Gorgoni, as a sort of adagio for our lost president, JFK. It poured from every little bodega on the Upper West Side, every cab I took, every record store I visited, and every party I went to.
The song moved me deeply as Johnson roared further into the darkness of Vietnam. It seemed a fitting way to start a new year. I hoped it could fuel the peace movement in a new way. In some ways it was the catalyst for my involvement in co-producing an album to raise money for Women Strike for Peace, a powerful antiwar group in New York. Ethel Raim, one of Walter’s ex-wives, and I put the album together, gathering our friends to create Save the Children—Songs from the Hearts of Women. The list of women participating is impressive, even today: Odetta, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Mimi and Joan Baez, and Janis Ian, among others.
Save the Children was my answer, for that moment, to the question the war always raised: what could I do?
ON my trip to Australia during 1965 I told my new friend Tina Date that she could stay at my New York apartment when she came to visit at the beginning of 1966, as I would be going to London for a series of shows. She said I should call her old boyfriend, Michael Thomas; They had split up, she said, but he was a good friend and I would like him. I should have known she was still carrying a torch.
In February, Tina arrived in New York as I headed to London.
I called Michael out of good manners, really. I expected nothing, and invited him to the party Elektra was putting on for me to celebrate my latest album. He was very good-looking. We talked for a couple of hours as the party swirled around us, and then found ourselves hand in hand, walking to the Strand Hotel, where I was staying. By morning, we were sleeping together in the spoon position while Tina was taking care of my cats and watering my plants back home.
I had a magical interlude with Michael in London: trips to Portobello Road where he bought me a tie-dyed skirt; visits to the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate; seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace; eating lemon curd on toast at his little apartment off King’s Road; walks along the river near Westminster Abbey; and plenty of wild sex. At the end of my trip Michael took me to the airport and said he would see me soon, and as wonderful as our time had been, I assumed our mad fling would never amount to more than an enchanting memory.
But a few days later, Michael arrived on the doorstep of my Upper West Side apartment in New York, bearing books and typewriter, clothes for a year, jars of lemon curd, presents from Harrod’s, and a big, loving smile. His arms opened wide, and like the song says, he took me inside. He was there to stay.
Tina was still in my apartment, and we all wound up sleeping in the same bed that night; although I would have some exotic sexual experiences in the future, there was no sharing that night. By the next day, Tina had moved out and Michael had moved in.
Michael and I settled into our lives in New York like a young married couple. He met my mother and father in Colorado and received their approval; got drunk many a time with my brothers and my dad; went horseback riding with us and learned the secrets of the family. In July, John Lennon of the Beatles famously declared, “We’re more popular than Jesus now,” and Michael, in his intense English way, decided he had to go home to see how England was dealing with the band’s newfound status that trumped, as he put it, the Holy Lamb of God. Doing research for his new book, he then continued around the world, searching for answers. He visited the rock critic and my friend Lillian Roxon, who was back in Australia. He went to see Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India and brought me back a sitar, the quintessential gift of love in 1966. We smiled as the first thing our cat, Moby, did was to make himself comfortable in the sitar case.
We got along well and continued to have a great sex life, enlivened by reading The Story of O. Although it was a time of open marriage and open relationships, Michael was devoted to me, and I was as devoted to him as I had ever been to anyone. I trusted him.
I never doubted Michael’s love for me or my son, Clark, and we had something wonderful together for a long time. But I never seemed to know when I was in the right place until it was over, and by then I was always someplace else.
I ADORED Dick Fariña. Mimi later said she thought that there was something else going on with us, since we fell over laughing and took walks and talked together about everything. But she was wrong. My friendship with Dick was like my friendship with my old pal John Gilbert in high school—purely platonic.
Dick was one of the funniest, most intelligent people I have ever known. His mind was quick, his humor was effervescent, and I always felt he saw the bright side of things rather than drifting into intellectual despair about the world. I always felt loved and appreciated by Dick and was never sexually attracted to him. With Dick there was an intellectual connection, one that soared during the five years we knew each other. I craved the buoyancy he brought when he entered a room, the whiff of adventure in his stories, the feeling that all of life was coming at him and he couldn’t wait to meet up with it.
When Dick and Mimi lived in Boston I would stay over at their place and take morning runs along the Charles River with Dick and their German shepherd Lush. Dick thought I should assume custody of Clark, keeping him with me the next time he came to visit. He knew it would cause legal problems, but Dick felt it would be worth it; I should just let the chips fall where they may. He said he and Mimi would help me, and I was sorely tempted. But I know now it would have destroyed my relationship with my son.
In the spring of 1966, Dick had finally finished his long-awaited novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. Mimi’s twenty-first birthday coincided with the publication of his book, and he and Mimi and a crowd of friends were having a triumphant party in Carmel to celebrate. I had been invited but had a show in Colorado that night, so had to say no.
Later in the evening, with everyone well lubricated, Dick jumped onto the back of a friend’s motorcycle. Before the two of them drove off, Dick, with that wild smile on his face, handed Mimi the keys to their car, which she had never driven. The crowd remaining at the party heard him shouting with pleasure as they peeled off on the dirt road, heading toward Carmel. He never came back. The bike flew around a corner on the dirt road, spun out, and threw Dick fifty feet into a fence post. The blow to his head killed him instantly.
When Nina Holzman called and gave me the terrible news, I simply couldn’t accept it. I was in Denver with my family and flew to San Francisco in a daze, driving down the coast to Carmel, where I met up with Mimi, who greeted me with tears in her beautiful eyes. Nancy Carlin, who was a close friend of the Baez family, was there, as was Pauline, Mimi’s older sister. All of us spent three days in Carmel after the accident. We huddled together, rehashing every moment of Dick’s last days. We would become hysterical, then sober, then despairing again. Joan was in Europe with her mother, doing a concert tour. Mimi, Pauline, Nancy, and I took Lush for runs on the beach, and we gave Mimi’s hair an inexpert trim; we did anything that would get us through the next minute and the next hour.
At the ceremony for Dick we threw roses onto his grave while someone spoke the lyrics to “The Swallow Song,” one of Mimi and Dick’s beautiful creations—lyrics o
nly, no music, as the earth thudded onto his coffin. Willow trees bent to watch us wander back up the hill.
We were not supposed to cry, Mimi said. But back at the home of the Fariñas’ neighbors, somebody played the guitar and then played Mimi and Dick’s recordings. All at once we lost it and were in tears. I sang something, too, and cried all the way through the wake and then on the plane back home. It was one of the saddest days. I remember looking back over the ocean from the window of that plane and seeing Dick’s grave on the hillside in Carmel.
The end of a friendship, of an era, of a beautiful, promising life. The end of the bright dreams Mimi and Dick had of continuing their soulful writing.
Come wander quietly and listen to the wind
Come near and listen to the sky …
LILLIAN Roxon, the legendary rock and folk critic from Australia, was a doll—funny, bouncy, sexy. She was often called the “mother of rock-and-roll journalism.” She was ten years older than most of us, the oldest child of a Jewish family who had fled Poland when the Nazis rose to power. After her graduation from the University of Sydney she became involved with the left-leaning, freewheeling “Sydney Push,” a sort of avant-garde social and sexually hip group of young artists and writers in that city. Lillian began writing for the Sydney Morning Herald and moved to the States in 1959 to become their New York correspondent. She introduced me to her friends Linda McCartney and Helen Reddy and inspired Helen’s “I Am Woman.” She wrote about the Beatles and the Rolling Stones for Oz magazine. We shared a host of New York acquaintances, including my close friend Linda Liebman. I used to go with Lillian to Max’s Kansas City in New York when rock was nearing its heyday. Lily Tomlin was a friend of Linda’s and Lillian’s, and we enjoyed our evenings of music and revelry.
Mary Martin was also in that group. Born in Canada and a powerhouse in the music business, she would convince Bob Dylan to record with the Band, help get Emmylou Harris a record contract with Warner Brothers, and try to persuade Warner to sign Jimmy Buffett (they passed). Mary was a good friend to all of us, a musical and artistic tastemaker. She worked for Albert Grossman, mogul of moguls. And she introduced me to Leonard Cohen, her Canadian friend. She really just wanted to help him find a way to get his songs to some singers, and he had said he wanted to meet me. When I met Leonard Cohen for the first time, at the end of May 1966, after Dick Fariña’s death, Mary had been talking about Leonard for years. I believed her when she told me that Leonard was talented.
“He is a poet,” she would say, “and he has been published and has written a couple of novels. He reads poetry at these little clubs in Montreal and Toronto, but he thinks he has written some songs, and he wants you to hear him.”
Leonard’s novels, Beautiful Losers and The Favorite Game, were branded “defiant” and “uninhibited” by Canadian reviewers. In later years Leonard called them an homage to his misspent youth. Mary brought me copies of his books and I was enchanted, but none the wiser about his songwriting skills.
I was in the midst of recording my sixth album, In My Life, for Elektra and had already put together a session with Dick and Mimi Fariña before Dick’s death, recording “Hard Lovin’ Loser.” I had fallen ill with mono and hepatitis, which landed me in the hospital. When I was released, Mary arranged for Leonard to come to New York.
I answered the door and found a good-looking, slightly stooped figure, his handsome face wreathed with a smile—a sweet smile, an engaging smile, a rare smile. It was the smile of an intelligent and sensitive artist. I knew in an instant that he was special, and knew that I didn’t care if he couldn’t write songs!
We embraced, already friends in a way, since we were friends of Mary’s. Michael and Linda Liebman were there, and I offered drinks. Leonard asked for a glass of wine, and we talked, getting to know each other. His shyness, I now realize, was probably what kept him from playing his songs that night. Or perhaps he was hoping to seduce me before he allowed me to hear his songs. Well, he had done that, in the first moments we met.
I wasn’t expecting a lot, really. It was a shot in the dark. The songs I heard from unknown writers might be fine, but the songs that I took for my own were few and far between. I suppose I had agreed to meet Leonard, really, for Mary’s sake, to get her off my case. But what I wasn’t expecting was not to hear any songs at all that night!
We wound up going out to dinner, laughing and having a lovely time, but still no music. I was curious. Who was this writer who had written songs but did not need to play them? Unusual, that’s for sure, in a time when everyone had a guitar and was likely to throw you down, sing their songs, and leave before you even managed to say hello. This reluctance was captivating.
I invited Leonard to come back the next day, which he did. Leonard said he didn’t know if he had written songs at all, but that night, with just Michael and me there, he sang them. And what songs they were! He sang “Suzanne” and it was magical.
Then came “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” a dark, brutal, authentic song about the contemplation of suicide, the thought of death at one’s own hand wedging its way into the place between the eyes and the gut. I knew it, too, belonged on my new album.
I have always been grateful that I did not fall in love with Leonard in the way that I fell in love with his songs. I could have, certainly. He had that charm, that glint in his eyes, that secretly knowing air that always attracted me to the dangerous ones—men who had fantastic sex appeal, were terribly smart and funny, and seemed to slip in and out of other women’s lives. I adored Leonard, but thankfully it wasn’t the kind of passion that got me into trouble. Instead, his songs would let me fly.
Having already made five albums by the time I met Leonard, I had my pick of songwriters for In My Life. Sometimes, as in the case of Tom Paxton, I would hear a song and record it before the actual composer got a record deal and could record it. Many songwriters, including Leonard, Joni Mitchell, and others, would try to build a following for their songs by singing them in clubs, but few had the power of the song-selling machine that throbbed behind Carole King’s music and that of other writers in the Brill Building stable. I recorded “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” Leonard’s career took off, and he signed a contract with Columbia.
People have labeled me a folksinger for most of my career, but the eclectic nature of my choices was present in my third album and has continued to this day. Most of the songs I had already recorded by 1966 fell into the category of the unusual, from William Butler Yeats to Bob Dylan, from Pete Seeger to old sea chanties. They would, I hoped, reach my listeners’ hearts as well, but I have always chosen for myself first. Leonard Cohen’s songs magically combined elements of all those genres and pointed toward the new direction I wanted to take—songs that were more dramatic, with a depth and dimension that were going to make this album stand out from my previous work. Many of the songs were written by composers outside the folk tradition.
Both “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag” appeared on In My Life, and I recorded one or two of Leonard’s songs on almost every album I made well into the 1990s.
Leonard was naturally reserved and afraid to sing in public. Later he would complain to his lawyer, Marty Machat, that certain people had told him he could not sing.
“None of you can sing!” Marty famously replied. “When I want to hear singing, I go to the Metropolitan Opera!”
But still the nagging feeling that he could not perform well as a singer plagued Leonard. I knew he could sing. He just had to get his feet in the water and do it.
A few weeks after I recorded “Suzanne,” I invited him to join me at a benefit I was doing. Jimi Hendrix was going to make an appearance, along with a number of other New York City artists. Leonard was terrified, but I convinced him that even though he had never performed his songs in public, he was going to be fine.
The concert was for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy at Town Hall on April 30, 1967. I asked Leonard if he would sing “Suzanne.”
“I can’t sing. I wouldn’t know what to do out there. I am not a performer,” he said. I assured him I would introduce him and be nearby. By this time my recording of “Suzanne” was out on In My Life, and people knew the song.
Leonard’s first public singing appearance was festive and historic. He was nervous, and as I introduced him and brought him onstage in front of the enthusiastic full house, I could feel his hands shaking. But when he began to sing, the shaking left his voice and he steadied, and people began to revel in the beauty of “Suzanne.” About halfway through the song, blaming what he later said was a broken string, he stopped and walked offstage. I went back on with him and we finished the song together. People went wild.
Leonard never broke my heart, but his songs have, every time I sing or hear one of them. As Leonard says, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”
Chapter Twenty-One
In My Life
There are places I’ll remember
All my life though some have changed.
—JOHN LENNON AND PAUL MCCARTNEY,
“In My Life”
MANY nights, after drinking so much, my suicidal thoughts returned. I often called Ralph to say I was afraid I was going to do myself harm, and ask him to put me in a hospital. He refused every time. He told me to think positively, that I was surely going to feel differently in the morning. I did, in fact, feel differently; for another day, or another week, or another month, the thoughts would go away. But they always came back.
Ralph and I were lucky. The excitement and the journey were too wonderful to give up, but the dark thoughts, coming around the corners of many a lonely night, were never far away. I didn’t know it was the booze, always the booze, that brought on the darkness.
Judy Collins Page 19