Amid the Storm
Oh the prickilie bush
It pricks my heart full sore
If I ever get out of the prickilie bush
I’ll never go in it any more.
—Traditional, “The Prickilie Bush”
THE Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago on August 26–29, 1968, would be one of the last massive expressions of the peace movement in the sixties. Before the convention, I spoke to William Kunstler, the lawyer for my friends David Dellinger and Abbie Hoffman, and asked him what he expected to happen there. Harold, still my devoted manager, was busy arranging my tour schedule so that I could get to Chicago that week but was concerned for my safety. He and I wanted Kunstler’s sense of what to anticipate.
“I expect the worst,” he said, “and pray for the best. The Yippies want to have a presence there, to rally and demonstrate, of course, but the country is so divided on this war.” We met at Harold’s office, where I was sitting in his big captain’s chair. Kunstler leaned over me with his bristly gray hair flying about his face.
“And we can’t seem to get our permits. Mayor Daley is acting as though they are expecting a rebel army in Chicago, instead of these loving kids—these Yippies.” I thought about that table of bright-eyed peaceniks gathered for the press conference in the spring. “I admit, I’m worried about the boys,” Kunstler finished. William was not only a lawyer but also an activist. He knew that the refusal of Illinois to grant permits for a peaceful gathering was an attack on freedom of speech and expression. If the permits didn’t come through, Harold warned me, I would technically be breaking the law as an entertainer performing in a public place without a permit.
A few days before the convention began, I spoke with Abbie Hoffman about all of this.
“If there are no permits,” Abbie said, “they’re going to bash our heads in if we demonstrate.” Allen Ginsberg and a lot of other people, including Harold, had become very uncomfortable about the Yippie plan to go to Chicago anyway. It was clear that the city was not going to welcome the Yippies or any other peaceful demonstrators.
“Daley is spoiling for a fight,” Kunstler added, referring to Chicago’s mayor, “and the rumor is that the National Guard is going to be there with tanks and guns.”
Abbie advised me not to come, and I made the decision: I was not going to go to Chicago if things did not change. I would sit this one out.
Walter Cronkite described Chicago at the start of the Democratic convention as a “police state.” By the time the Yippies and all the delegates got to the Windy City, there were riot squads on the street, National Guardsmen with billy clubs at the ready, and a sense that a war, not a political convention, was about to begin in Illinois.
Phil Ochs and Dave Dellinger went anyway, without permits, and put on a Peace Concert with William Burroughs and a few other artists. And the city of Chicago did its worst. In the footage of Chicago’s expulsion of the antiwar protesters, you can see people running, being beaten bloody, and being hauled off in police vans.
It would be another seven years before the Vietnam War came to an end; ten thousand more men would be dead. The wide-eyed optimism of so many young men and women who devoted themselves to speaking out against the war would be dashed. Many would retreat into silence; many others would become even more radicalized. It was a dangerous, precarious moment for the nation.
DURING late November, I had a two-week gig at the Cellar Door, a folk club in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., where I was sharing a bill with the Journeymen. I loved working the Cellar Door, singing for the political elite who gathered there, and hanging with the charming owner, Sam L’Hommedieu. Five years earlier, when the club was called The Shadows, I had sung there in the somber week following the assassination of JFK.
One day as I was walking past the smart shops in Georgetown, I saw a young man behind a storefront window, hunched over a potter’s wheel. I stood mesmerized, watching him shape elegant bowls and vases, each beautiful in its simplicity. I marched into the store and convinced him to give me lessons on how to throw pots. I spent the next two weeks throwing clay during the day with Jim, the potter, and singing at the Cellar Door at night. By the end of the gig, Jim had me turning out some reasonably decent pots, even if most of them looked a lot like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
When I got back to New York, I went down to the Lower East Side, where I bought clay, a wedging board, a Randall kick wheel, and a small kiln, and I embarked on my new passion. I was still throwing comically misshapen pots that sagged to one side or the other, but I was keeping at it.
One day Stephen rushed into my apartment. Rugged and handsome, he dropped a bunch of roses wrapped in cellophane on the table and started chattering about a business meeting in midtown. Crosby, Stills and Nash’s demo was all the buzz in the music business, and David Geffen, who represented the group, was looking to finalize a contract. I must have looked a disaster in my spattered apron, with bits of clay clinging to my long hair, but Stephen took it all in—the wheel, the kiln, the clay-covered girl, the mess—and smiled. He kissed me on the nose and twirled me about the room, then casually picked up a lump of raw clay from my wedging board, pushed it around for a little while, and put it down. In his hands it had become a sculpted head. His own head, it seemed to me: the nose, the eyes, the tilt, the shape. Beautiful.
We put the sculpted head in the kiln and drank a couple of glasses of wine while the clay cooked. When a bit of clay fell off the side during the firing process, Stephen lost all interest in the now-imperfect head, but I decided to keep it anyway. It was perfect enough for me.
I kept Stephen’s sculpture in the window of that apartment and then my next apartment, where I have lived for nearly forty years now. Perched on the sill next to the purple glass vases and the little crystal pot of porcelain flowers that Sandy Denny gave me were the ashes of my beloved cats, Clyde, Sunshine, Moby, Jam, Midnight, and Ruffles. Also there was that sculpted head, which watched over me through the years as I worked and practiced and struggled to become a writer.
But those loving—and lovely—moments between me and Stephen were becoming few and far between. We spent that winter arguing, via long-distance telephone and sometimes in person, about how we were ever going to make our relationship work if neither of us would give an inch. A sensation of helplessness began to creep into our life together.
THE following year, in 1969, the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman” dominated the airwaves. While much of the world had its eyes on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Nixon began the process of “Vietnamization” in Southeast Asia. In July, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Over the course of that same summer, the great Judy Garland would die after a lifelong battle with alcoholism and drug addiction, and the flower-power generation would produce its defining moment, the music extravaganza of Woodstock.
Nineteen sixty-nine was a triumphant year for me. I spent much of my time writing, not only composing songs but also keeping journals, recording my dreams, trying to capture my life and my thoughts on paper. We celebrated Clark’s birthday on January 8. Clark was taking drum lessons, and I was continuing my own lessons every other day with my neighbor Max.
I was still in therapy, which continued to help me survive my suicidal thoughts, but my alcoholism continued unchecked. I did not know how near the edge I was walking. I only knew that in spite of all the success, I was descending into the nightmare of the booze.
Stephen and I spoke less frequently now, though we still felt the tug of attraction. We talked late into the night about our yearning to be together. But still I resisted. While our love affair was cooling down, Stephen’s new trio was gaining heat. Ahmet Ertegun had signed Crosby, Stills and Nash to a deal with Atlantic Records, and the early buzz on the street was already fantastic. Stephen was busy scheduling and rehearsing for their initial concert tour to coincide with the summer release of the album.
On March 4, 1969, I got a call at home from Joe Papp, the founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival. I had never met Joe, but I certainly knew who he was. Everyone had heard about Joe Papp, the visionary who made Shakespeare accessible to the masses in New York City. His groundbreaking 1956 production of The Taming of the Shrew, starring Colleen Dewhurst and presented at the East River Amphitheater on the Lower East Side, had gained him the support of Brooks Atkinson, premier theater critic for the New York Times. That was all Joe seemed to need to take the next step for Shakespeare in the Park.
New York City gave Joe the use of the Delacorte, a semicircular outdoor amphitheater overlooking Turtle Pond in the shadow of Central Park’s Belvedere Castle. Joe then convinced the city to give him the use of the old Astor Library in the East Village, which was scheduled for demolition, for a dollar a year. He rescued the classic building on Lafayette Street in the nick of time. There he created the New York Public Theater, which would become a world-renowned venue for innovative and exciting work of all kinds for nearly six decades; the building itself was designated a landmark. He also established Joe’s Pub at the same location, which did for music what the Public Theater did for the dramatic acts.
Joe sought to nurture contemporary playwrights at the Public, and support a diverse roster of plays. He always surprised New York with his choices, and now he was turning his hand to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.
Joe already had a hot team putting the cast together. Gerry Freedman was directing; Joe, Gerry, and Bernie Gersten were producing. As I heard the story, they were sitting around the offices of the Public Theater on a bright March day trying to figure out who they could get to sing John Morris’ new songs. Morris had just finished the music for the movie version of The Producers and had written other scores for Mel Brooks’ films. The cast included Stacy Keach for the lead, Olympia Dukakis for Anitra, the witchy, many-armed sorceress, and Estelle Parsons as Peer Gynt’s mother. All they needed was the long-suffering Solveig.
“You know,” Gerry said, “Solveig’s songs sound a little like Judy Collins. Who do we know who sounds like Judy Collins?” Bernie, he knew, could probably find what he was looking for among the thousands of singing and acting ingenues in New York.
Joe went straight to the point. “Why don’t we ask Judy Collins?”
“She would never do that!” Gerry said with absolute certainty.
“We’ll call her and find out” was Joe’s reply.
Of course, Gerry was right—at first, anyway. I said no. I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Who Knows Where the Time Goes had just come out, so there would be concerts to do, and TV appearances. “Someday Soon” had been released as a single and was moving up the charts. I consulted with my friends and my manager, Harold, and they all agreed it would not be a wise move to jump into the theater now, with so much going on.
But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, and after an hour, I called Joe Papp’s office back.
“I wonder if I could hear the songs,” I told Joe.
“You will love them,” he said, “and when you hear them, you will see why you have to do this!” He sent over the four songs written for Solveig. They were love songs, songs of yearning, and they were very beautiful songs. The first real hurdles to my doing Peer Gynt had been successfully cleared, and I agreed to give it a try.
“I knew you would come around!” Bernie told me. “We’ll have a great time, and you’ll love Stacy Keach.” He was certainly right about that last part.
March 10, 1969, I went to the Public Theater on Lafayette Street and met with Gerry, Joe, and Bernie. We talked about the play and the plans for the summer. I would meet the other actors in the rehearsals, which would begin in May. I really didn’t know what I was getting into, but … the Shakespeare Festival? New York? Home, with my son and my friends and my cats? And my therapist? Sounded great to me!
A few days after meeting with Joe Papp, Bill Kunstler called to ask if I would go to Chicago to testify on behalf of my Yippie friends, the boys who were now known as the “Chicago Seven” and who were being tried on charges of conspiracy and inciting to riot. I agreed immediately. The trial was scheduled for September, but Bill wanted to know that he had the witnesses he needed. I told him I would be there. (I would actually not be called to testify until January 1970.)
Somehow, amid all the hubbub, I managed to be in Santa Monica for a concert and saw Stephen. Stephen showed up with gifts at the Holiday Inn where I was staying: a Martin guitar that he had had restored for me and a beautiful song that he had written for me. I heard “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” for the first time: the story of my life, of our relationship, of the ins and outs of my therapy, and our pain together, his and mine. The sweeping seven-minute song told everything one would have needed to feel the heartbreak, to feel both our hearts break. It was magnificent, and we both wound up in tears.
I think it was meant to win my heart. It certainly won my soul.
But I came away from those hours with Stephen with the unshakable feeling that our breakup was inevitable despite our best intentions. I also left California certain in the knowledge that Crosby, Stills and Nash was poised on the brink of stardom, like a loaded cannon waiting only for someone to spark the fuse. The sweet and the bitter, all at once—as usual, I suppose.
I returned to crowded New York, where horns honked and sirens shrieked, where people lived in apartments and there were no backyards filled with swimming pools and no fires in the hills. I was back at my apartment on the Upper West Side. No more glamorous Hollywood types driving their Bentleys and Jags to shop on Rodeo Drive, but back to muggings that kept you out of Central Park anytime after six in the evening.
I was thrilled to be home.
ON May 1, returning from a tour of the Midwest, as I walked through LaGuardia Airport I spotted on a newsstand my face blazing out from the cover of Life. Under the photograph was the headline, lovely and perhaps true in one sense but bitterly ironic in another: “Gentle Voice Amid the Storm.” I had just turned thirty.
The real storm was the one in my head and heart. I would have to wait on fate and time to heal me and to help me find the compass that seemed, at the moment, far off.