God of sun and moon, God of ocean tides,
You who drive the stars, you of perfect light
Teach me how to sing.
—JUDY COLLINS, “Singing Lessons”
IT’S a Sunday night, and I am traveling from Hartford to New York City, heading in from a show. Rain pours down, and the driver of my sedan is battling the storm like a captain of a schooner in white waves. Thoughts of my life flow like the water around us: years of life, love and anger, rage and hope; the songs I have sung; the men and women I have loved.
“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” is playing on the radio, softly, but I hear it through the steady sound of the rain and the hiss of the tires on the road. Unmistakable, Stephen Stills’ voice floats above the harmonies of David Crosby and Graham Nash. Stephen’s guitar cuts into my heart like an emotional arrow. Whenever I hear the song—in a grocery store, in an airport, on my own CD player—it resounds like a call from mystic lakes. It pierces the heart of this girl and all the other grown-up girls who think it tells their story. All great songs make you feel that way, as though they were written especially for you.
But “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” really is my story. Stephen wrote it for me when we were both young and innocent, during our brilliant romance. The song never fails to transport me back to that thrilling and terrifying time we call “the sixties,” when so many great songs proclaimed our grand, noble visions. We were reckless dreamers, hell-bent on finding our own personal happiness, determined to elevate all of humanity above the anger and violence of the past.
There is an old saying that every time you sigh, a drop of blood falls from your heart. It seems I sigh more now than I ever did, and that probably means my heart has lost many tear-shaped drops. I have lived my life, as we all do, between these sighs, between these drops of blood.
My life has taken me from innocence to rage and back again. Those precious early years seem oddly clearer to me now, at seventy. The people I knew and loved and the drama of that diamond-bright time move closer as they slip farther away.
Sweet Judy Blue Eyes will tell many stories I’ve never fully told, demons I have battled, and tragedies I’ve endured. In fifty years in the music business, there are also the blessings and grace I have found through it all.
I will tell how I found my way to my marriage to Louis Nelson and more than thirty-three years of living with a man who is my partner, my friend and lover, my solace and companion, whom I met when I thought I had lost everything that mattered.
I will talk of faith and money, sex and drugs and rock and roll, about learning to sing and tour, through all the days of shining sun as well as pouring rain. I will tell of my ongoing quest to become—and to remain—an artist.
With the passage of time, I am able to talk about circles that have been completed and old friends with whom I have reconnected. Many have died, each spiriting away a unique impression of me that no one else will ever have, each leaving a ghost of himself behind in my memory. These memories are my treasures—memories of singers and poets, rabble-rousers and rebels. The closest of friends, the dearest of lovers, family members who were a part of me. There are so many, including Marjorie, my mother, Chuck, my father, and Clark, my son.
Robert Richardson writes of the philosopher William James, “Trouble was for him a precondition for insight.” I can only hope that the same is true for me, and that I have learned at least some of the lessons born not only of my own troubles and of those close to me but also of the people for whose causes I have marched and rallied, raised money, and gone to jail, and for whom I always, always sing.
I will speak of the wars of an emotional nature, against addictions, against suicidal depressions, against alcoholic drinking; these are not wars with fire and steel, but they are wars just the same, often with terrible prices to pay. No antiwar protest, no action against prevailing prejudice, ever was fought harder than these.
Through all these years, I have been eternally grateful for the gift of music. There are times when the sounds of the voices in my audiences, singing along with the old sweet melodies, are, for me, all that stand between despair and joy. When we sing, we can do anything—change the world, bring peace, be our best selves at last.
When we sing, our hearts can lift and fly, over the troubled waters and over the years.