Judy Collins Read online

  My anxiety attacks had begun to reappear when I moved to New York, and I had called a doctor (recommended by Harold), who prescribed Miltown, a fashionable drug in those years. Sometimes it worked, but more often it didn’t and for the next twenty years I would keep that, along with Dexamyl and the various other uppers and downers I would acquire from this and other doctors in New York, in my purse along with my keys, my money, my makeup, the notebook where I wrote the lyrics to new songs I was learning, and my address book. I used these drugs sparingly, thank God. I was afraid they would interfere with my drinking!

  But from time to time I would simply spin out of control, regardless of whatever mixture of medications the doctors had provided. I used alcohol to medicate anxiety, but that, too, was becoming unmanageable. And I began to struggle with food, dieting and bingeing and starving myself, the first signs that there was another addiction beginning to rule my life.

  One week I tried to stop drinking for a few days, but somehow it only made the situation worse, and I began drinking more than ever. I was trying to lose weight and had started to exercise, bending and stretching and eventually making the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises a regular part of my routine.

  I remember one summer afternoon wearing a white cotton Mexican wedding dress, weeping, and talking to my new doctor, Dr. Marchand, on the phone. I told him I thought I was being poisoned. He prescribed some more pills for my anxiety, and then he said I should try to find a therapist.

  I knew Walter had a therapist. It was one of the first things I had learned about him. I talked to Walter about the depression I was feeling one day when we were in a taxi. My anxiety was such that I had forgotten where we were going, or why.

  “Why don’t you go see Ralph Klein?” Walter suggested, referring to a therapist he knew. “Ralph has helped Bob [a singer we both knew] with his drinking. Maybe he can help you.”

  Bob was a big man, and kind of a famous drunk. I had sung on jingles with him and knew he could be obnoxious and unpleasant, missing lines when he was drinking and giving the other singers a hard time. He had had a bitter battle with booze, but lately he was looking thinner and drinking only beer.

  I got Ralph’s number and trekked uptown from the Village to my first session at his apartment on the Upper West Side. I don’t know what I expected, but Ralph would prove to be just what I needed at that moment.

  I needed to talk about my depressions, and about the suicide attempt that I had made when I was in my teens, and about my father. Most of all, I needed just to talk.

  I told Ralph in our first session that I knew I was an alcoholic. I had known before I was twenty. By now I was rather proud that I could drink grown men under the table and drive better when I was plastered. Ralph said he felt that when we got to the bottom of my emotional problems—why I had tried to kill myself, and why I was depressed—my drinking would become manageable. He even suggested it might stop. I realize today he had not one single clue about alcoholism. I did not drink because of my problems. I had problems because I drank. It would take me twenty-three years to figure that out.

  But I could talk to Ralph about everything. I hadn’t even realized how badly I missed that in my life, really being able to confide in someone. I had always been able to talk to Peter—until our lives began to fall apart. I would see Ralph professionally for seven of my many years of therapy. From the first session I began feeling better, and looking better.

  I experienced classic symptoms of transference with Ralph, having visions of him throwing me across the couch and having his way with me. Although he invited me out to his house in Amagansett that winter, I found myself sleeping alone in his guest room. Ralph and I had great conversations, but the sex never materialized. I was crushed, but he helped me get over it, talking to me about my overzealous expectations.

  Ralph and a number of like-minded therapists were in a group that called themselves Sullivanians, after Harry Stack Sullivan, the psychoanalyst. Their leader was Saul Newton, who with his wife, Jane Pearce, wrote The Conditions of Human Growth, a book this group essentially adopted as their bible and made required reading for all of their patients. Newton and Pearce had worked at the William Alanson White Institute, which had been co-founded by Sullivan, but after Sullivan’s death they broke with the institute to pursue their own practice. Saul had some radical ideas about the relationship with the traditional family; he said the family was itself a contributing factor to mental illness. He and his group encouraged individuals to let go of custody of their children, to practice a communal and sexually promiscuous lifestyle, and to drink alcohol as a treatment for anxiety and “nerves.”

  In the beginning of my sessions with Ralph, all I knew was that I was getting help. The extent of the group’s philosophy was not clear. Only later, after I had left them, did I realize I had fallen under the spell of a cult.

  After Ralph I moved on to Julie, another therapist in the group, for five years; my son had counseling with Mildred Antonelli; and later I was in treatment both with Saul Newton and briefly with his wife, Jane Pearce.

  Ralph referred me to Saul (whom the group called “Father”) for occasional sessions when Clark was beginning to show signs of (untreated and undiagnosed) drug addiction. I found Saul Newton to be a tyrant, the star of his own soap opera. He was very good-looking and charming. We talked politics as much as we had therapy. He had fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, had been a union organizer, and was bright, cultured, and ambitious.

  I did not adhere to some of the Sullivanians’ concepts. I did not live in their commune, and I followed my own path in most areas of my life. I was closer to my family than my shrink might have liked. But I sure got a lot of mileage out of the Sullivanian belief that alcohol was good for anxiety and that having multiple sex partners was a political statement and a healthy lifestyle.

  Married couples were told they must live apart for the mental health of their children, so the kids were likely to be raised by nannies or babysitters; parental visits were limited to one hour a day and one evening a week. When you look at it now, these rules sound very much like the habits of the elite from another century! Saul was a little overbearing, and frankly, anyone who tried to tell me what to do was going to run into a wall.

  But certain revolutionary ideas Saul Newton and Jane Pearce practiced were attractive to an already liberal girl working her way into a career in the arena of music and social justice. At the time, everyone in my peer group was espousing free love. Communal living, group parenting, and sharing the wealth were sixties ideas, too.

  But the Sullivanians went too far and in the 1970s were accused of kidnapping children to get them out of the clutches of their parents. In later years Newton would face legal battles and professional condemnation from his peers.

  Having said that, and in spite of their pushy social beliefs and knowing that they enabled my alcoholism, I am still grateful to the Sullivanians for the way they helped hone my creative process. They encouraged a set of habits that had begun in my family and tied my work and my studies—singing, piano, cello (short-lived!), even making pottery—to my dreams and my values. That was essential to my growth as an artist, a performer, and a person. They helped make it possible for me to earn, with only one year of college under my belt, what amounted to a Ph.D. in my profession.

  Sex continued to be a pleasure I sought out, and I talked to Ralph about all of it. There was plenty of it to talk about, more so now that those little white pills took pregnancy out of the equation. I believed I was doing nothing more than any of my peers were doing. I explored sex with the same curiosity and enthusiasm that I explored everything else in life.

  There were a few women with whom I had more than friendly relationships. One friend told me that if she were a lesbian, I would be the woman she would choose to be with. Another woman with whom I had a yearlong sexual relationship reminded me that I was not up to intimacy with a person of the same sex after dawn or while sober. Explorati
on was fine, but falling in love never seemed to happen. And I was probably too square myself to engage enthusiastically in an affair with a woman that would entail any kind of commitment. In fact, any real emotional commitment seemed impossible for me, regardless of the other person’s gender.

  My explorations with women did confirm that I was really attracted to men. Men made me more comfortable. But the drinking and the sex were inextricably connected. Sex was, for me, a political statement as well as a personal one, and according to the Sullivanians, having a free attitude about sex was also about being artistically free as well.

  But the truth is that I often blacked out by the time the act itself occurred.

  My drinking increased, and now I seemed to have less control than ever. I told myself that the booze blurred the pain, but really the booze caused the pain and sustained it. I was often nursing an awful hangover, but I did not think anything of it; I never felt any guilt. Should I have? I was certainly taking advantage of most sexual opportunities that came my way.

  Ralph Klein made one very interesting observation: he called my father’s confiding in me about his affairs a kind of incest. I insisted on calling it a kind of trust; I said that my father needed to talk to someone about everything, and that I was all right with it having been me.

  I still feel that way.

  AS therapy continued and I began to settle into my New York life, my career seemed to be shifting into a higher gear. I had more work than ever before, my records were selling well, and I was making a little money. I missed my son but grew optimistic, even enthusiastic, about the outcome of the custody case.

  Every other weekend, as the judge had agreed, I tried to have Clark come to the city. I would often pick him up at our meeting place at Howard Johnson’s. The exchanges with Peter were painful and tense. Clark must have felt it, that boy whose eyes were just like mine, whose face was freckled by the summer sun. His life was torn into two pieces, and the poor boy became lost somewhere between his father’s life in Storrs and his mother’s in the city. He would ask me why he couldn’t stay with me, but I had no answer. I had to wait for the court in Connecticut to decide our fate. The lawyers continued to reassure me that no mother loses her child in a court of law.

  But the odds against me were getting higher each day. I, who was my own worst enemy, needed a best friend. I thought booze was my friend. I did not know I was in a fight—not just with my lawyers, not just with my husband, but also with my disease. I didn’t know I could not win this one on my own, that it would take years, and a change of mind and heart, to win the battle with an opponent I could not even see.

  Now, like my father before me, I would have to find the radar to make my way through the darkness around me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Judy Collins 3

  It ain’t the leavin’

  That’s a-grievin’ me

  But my true love who’s bound to stay behind.

  —BOB DYLAN, “Farewell”

  MY new life in New York took on every appearance of flourishing even as I spiraled deeper into the abyss. I was surrounded by exciting people, and there seemed to be a stream of new opportunities. In late 1963, I began hosting a radio show on WBAI. Artists would come by for an hour, I would put a bottle of whiskey on the table, the engineer would turn the dials, and we would be off to the races.

  Some of the guests included Tom Paxton, Pete Stanley, the Freedom Voices, and the band Koerner, Ray and Glover. We would talk music and often politics, as the two seemed to always go hand in hand in those days. The McPeake Family also came to do the show. Pete Seeger had “discovered” them and suggested they tour the States, which they would do in 1965.

  I kept in touch with the McPeakes after they sang on my radio show. A few years after I recorded their beautiful song “Wild Mountain Thyme,” I made a trip to Belfast, where I was singing in concert. The whole family came to see me, and then I visited their home. The patriarch of the McPeakes was in his eighties by then. Everyone called him “Da,” and he had helped bring the Irish harp back into fashion. He was a lovely, gentle Irishman who was not getting around very well at his age, and sat in his rocker on an early winter’s night.

  From their little house in Belfast, two of the brothers and I walked to the neighborhood bar, where they stood me to something called a Black Velvet. I think it was Irish magic mist, some concoction of dark beer and powerful whiskey. I have never had one since, but I will never forget it. My eyes were crossed as we walked back to their house, where we all sang “Wild Mountain Thyme” in glorious harmony. They had to see me to my hotel.

  I was exposed to all kinds of new issues and new ways of thinking. One night I would meet the playwright Lorraine Hansberry at her home in the Village, where she was holding a fund-raising luncheon for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which was becoming a major voice in the civil rights movement. Lorraine was also a big supporter of SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

  I would run into Suze Rotolo at Izzy Young’s Folklore Center, Dylan following like a mangy puppy dog. I remember seeing them as they appeared in Don Hunstein’s photograph on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, with Bob in those rough-out boots of his, his hair tousled, his shirt still wrinkled, his smile crooked and charming. Suze’s warm and open smile is one we would all come to know well. The fact that they were in love shows everywhere in that picture. Arms entwined, their faces full of the carefree innocence of two young people, the photograph captures a precious moment before all the electricity and power of fame paradoxically drained some of that miraculous energy. He was twenty; she was just seventeen. It is a touching photograph, and timeless.

  That summer, Jac and Elektra had begun to branch out, and there, too, I was along for the ride, in the company of so many new musicians and writers. The label moved uptown to Broadway and West 61st Street, and Jac attracted all kinds of musicians and groups. In the coming years, Phil Ochs, The Incredible String Band, Paul Butterfield, and eventually Harry Chapin, Carly Simon, and the Cars all came to the label.

  Jac was open to all kinds of music, relying on his impeccable taste and an ear for unique, gifted artists. He was a one-man think tank about talent and how to find it. Many times he was simply in the right place at the right time, as he had been with me.

  THINGS would change quickly in popular music as the 1960s rolled in. The timeless moon-June-spoon lyrics of Rodgers and Hart standards would be joined on the radio, in clubs, and on records by the words of the newly minted singers and writers who poured out their passions, both personal and political, in song. Inspired by artists such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Tom Paxton, and Bob Dylan, they ushered in a new musical era. The opinionated, the determined, the angry, the oppressed, the ones with the searing, searching points of view, took center stage.

  I think of Bob Dylan, who was writing those breathtaking songs, sifting through the embers of earlier fires, making new images, creating fresh visions in his lyrics. All around us there was an awakening social consciousness—against the war in Vietnam, against segregation, about labor concerns, about the union-busting that had been a problem for decades, and about immigration—as well as a desire to speak of personal issues. These concerns inspired artistic expression and political engagement. The Beatles gave a heart-lifting backbeat to the changing times, and Dylan put the fire in our bellies. The music we loved and sang in those smoky little clubs all over the country was becoming the pop music of an entire generation.

  The times, they certainly were a-changin’.

  I WAS fortunate to have found Elektra, or rather, to have had Jac Holzman find me. The right record label meant the world to a recording artist, and sometimes represented the difference between success and obscurity. Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and I benefited from the owners of Vanguard, Asylum, and Elektra, who had reputations for making a commitment to each of their artists. They put promotional muscle behind each new release, and they had the heart t
o stay with an artist through the ups and downs of a recording career. In that era, before so many record labels were gobbled up by huge media conglomerates, each label had a distinct personality and direction.

  Long-term relationships in the record business, however, were still rare. I couldn’t have seen ahead to the nearly fifty years during which I would remain with Elektra and Rhino, Elektra’s distributor of my back catalogue. But I did know that I was in a safe place, with people who believed in what I was doing. And now I would begin my third album for the label.

  Walter—no longer my lover but still my musical director—took me on a quick plane trip out to Las Vegas in the summer of 1963 to hear Bobby Darin at the Flamingo Hotel. Walter wanted me to meet Jim McGuinn, a young guitar player and singer who was working with Darin, to see if he might be a good match for the new album.

  We got dressed up for dinner and were shown to a table next to the stage, where we ordered drinks and settled back to watch a master perform. I had not been to a club like this since going to see Tempest Storm, and I felt very out of my depth. The folk clubs I was playing did not have waiters in black tie and drinks in frosted glasses, but I soon settled in with a martini of the right size—extra large—and got comfortable.

  I was unprepared for Darin’s sophistication, his down-to-earth humor, and his wonderful voice. He came onstage, dark haired, slender, almost like a boy, and showered us with gentle banter between songs and a light touch in his manner. He was dressed in a shirt and trousers, no jacket, and his manner was very personal and direct. He acknowledged Walter with a nod before breaking into his first song, with a kick-ass band behind him. Walter pointed out Jim McGuinn, who sat prominently near the front of the band, dressed in clean-lined black pants, shirt, bare-headed, his banjos and guitars at the ready.