By George Varga / The San Diego Union-Tribune
Judy Collins had an instant and deeply emotional response when Stephen Stills first played her an early version of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” the classic 1969 Crosby, Stills &Nash song he wrote about their doomed love affair.
“I lost it!” recalled Collins. “The song was so beautiful. But it was also clear that our relationship was not going to work.”
Now, nearly half a century later, the two have reunited for a joint album, “Everybody Knows,” which is due out Sept. 22. It is being preceded by a summer and fall tour by Stills and Collins.
Their final encore each night?
You guessed it. “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.”
“It’s hysterical, really,” Collins said. “Talk about an impossible dream!”
This improbable scenario, worthy of a Hollywood screenplay, prompted her to giggle with delight several times during a recent phone interview that lasted nearly an hour.
Collins burst into laughter when asked if “Everybody Knows” has had the longest incubation period — almost half a century — of any album in pop-music history.
“Yeah, it certainly has!” she said, laughing again.
“For years, we’ve been texting each other about the songs we might sing, sending long emails about what we might do, and asking: ‘Should we do this?’ This started about 10 years ago. Over the last two years, we got serious about (discussing) what we’ll sing together. Now that we’re on tour, we’ll add more things now as we go along.
“We just didn’t have the time to do it, until now. It’s more fun than I can imagine having. But I don’t have to imagine it, so that’s good.”
Collins and Stills’ two-year love affair imploded in 1969, after she left him for actor Stacy Keach.
But the two musicians rekindled their friendship and sustained it over the intervening decades. Their comfort level with each other is so great that they now go on double dates together with their respective spouses — Stills’ third wife, Kristen, and Collins’ second husband, Louis. Both marriages, by coincidence, took place in 1996.
Who picks up the tab when the two couples go out for dinner together?
“Oh, we always split it,” a chuckling Collins replied. “We go Dutch.”
Collins was already an established folk-music star when she met Stills, then a member of the pioneering Los Angeles rock band Buffalo Springfield, in 1967. He soon achieved superstardom in Crosby, Stills &Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash &Young.
Collins, meanwhile, became one of the most prolific and versatile singers around. She has recorded 44 albums, eight of them live, and at least 11 compilations. She has stood out whether performing folk, pop, torch ballads, spirituals, jazz standards, country or classics from the Great American Songbook.
While she and Stills rarely worked together until now, they did collaborate in 1968, not long after meeting and becoming a couple.
The first song the two recorded together, the Sandy Denny-penned “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” was the title track for Collins’ 1968 album of the same name. A new version appears on their upcoming “Everybody Knows,” which will be jointly released by Cleopatra Records and Collins’ own Wildflower label, which she launched in 1994.
The new album mixes songs by Stills and Collins with classics by other artists, including Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country,” the Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle with Care” and Leonard Cohen’s remarkably wistful “Everybody Knows.”
Also featured are “Houses,” the 1975 song Collins wrote for Stills, “Questions,” which Stills wrote for Buffalo Springfield’s 1968 swan song, “Last Time Around,” and the shimmering “River of Gold,” which Collins wrote specifically for “Everybody Knows.”
“The criterion for picking songs was that we love them. That’s the only (approach) that worked,” said Collins, speaking recently by phone from “a car driving somewhere, I’m not sure where!”
The album and ongoing concert tour have been a discovery process, she noted, for both of them.
“You learn as you go along what to do, and what not to do,” Collins said.
And what do Stills, 72, and Collins, 78, want to do?
“Mostly to have fun,” she replied.
“The best part is that it’s been wonderfully surprising. I love being the second guitarist in a rock ‘n’ roll band. I don’t remember having done anything like that before. Actually, I was always doing something similar — guitar-wise — it’s just in a different context now.”
The teaming of her and Stills is a dream come true for their most devoted fans, especially those familiar with the short-lived yet fiery romance the two had back in the late 1960s.
Collins guffawed when asked how she would have reacted if, 50 years ago, anyone had told her she and Stills would make an album together and go on tour in 2017.
“I probably would have laughed. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible — or desirable,” she said. “Perhaps I’ve always dreamed about it: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if … ?’
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
