Hearing 'The Gypsy Rover' Changed My Life - Judy Collins in Leeds
Legendary American folk singer Judy Collins is touring right now, which, at 82 would be impressive enough, but she also tells me she’s working on a new album. She is a pioneer singer song writer, and is playing our own Leeds City Varieties on Saturday 12th November.
Collins was gracious, elegant and insightful when we met by video call, smiling and chatting in a sunlit room in her New York apartment, seated front of a pale green Welsh dresser full of pretty plates. Her elfin haircut, supernaturally pale, and her fine, slender face are as youthful as her voice. After 60+ years in music, she remains bright and full of good humour.
Collins’ 29th studio album Spellbound, released in 2022, has been well received and features glorious piano runs as well as Collin’s magical voice. The album is a wistful autobiographical work - Collins has much to look back on after a long life and a career that has seen her work with Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen and many more. Her back catalogue includes a wonderful Beatles tribute album which might make you look quite differently at those songs. Without Collins, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen might not have achieved such fame, as Collins was the first to record their songs, creating hit versions of Cohen’s Suzanne and Mitchell’s Both Sides Now in ’66 and ’67.
British audiences probably know Judy Collins best from her smash hit recording of Send In The Clowns released in 1973, but she is an accomplished and versatile musician with a background as a classically-trained pianist and a lot to offer. Collins enjoyed her classical training when younger but gave it all up when she discovered folk music. She doesn’t regret it. We talk about the relationship between folk and classical music.
“There is a kinship between the two” says Collins, “often composers will dip into traditional melodies to find themes, many composers do this. My teacher used to say that when the great opera composers need three minutes to stay in the in mind of the audience they write something beautiful and appealing, a melody, and I think it’s useful to know that quite often that, because those traditional tunes stay in the mind and stay in the memory because they are ancient - people have played them for centuries.”
“During my childhood, we often used The Great American Songbook, and my father, who sang to keep us in socks and shoes, would sometimes sing Danny Boy, and that connected everything together for me. When I first heard The Gypsy Rover sung by a gentleman from Ireland, it was in an Alan Ladd movie called The Black Knight, it was maybe 1955 and I was in the middle of practicing Rachmaninov. Hearing that song changed my life; I threw over the piano for folk music.”
I ask how it’s possible after such a long career to select a set list of songs for a concert. Collins laughs, “It's very hard to narrow it down. I love to do things that are familiar, Send In The Clowns, Amazing Grace, Girl From Colorado, people like that a lot, it’s accessible. For the show in Leeds, I’ll travel from the beginning, me and the guitar and piano. I have a song called Hell on Wheels, people in Europe are liking that. It’s a personal story about when I almost ran a group of children over. We all have moment where we think, what was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking.”
“You are lucky to be having me in Leeds. I’ve been resting a while because I broke my elbow in an airport accident and I’ve had to cancel a few shows, but by the time I get to Leeds I hope I’ll be fully functional and play Spellbound on the piano.”
We are certainly lucky to have her. The tour takes in Edinburgh, London, Birmingham, Cardiff and Manchester, and Judy Collins lands in Leeds at the City Varieties on 12th November.