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GP sits down with Judy Collins to discuss 'Everybody Knows,' her ever first collaboration with Stephen Stills.
“Playing a big 12-string feels like having an orchestra with you,” says folk icon Judy Collins, whose history with Martin Guitars and Stephen Stills is the stuff of legend. She has been playing Martins longer than Guitar Player has been a magazine, and her late-’60s love affair with Stills was immortalized in one of the most popular acoustic endeavors of the rock era—Crosby, Stills, & Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.”
Collins and Stills have started a new era with their first-ever collaborative album, Everybody Knows [Wildflower/Cleopatra]. The title track is a tribute to its composer and close Collins associate, Leonard Cohen, who passed away on November 7, 2016. Throughout much of the album, Stills plays reverb-drenched electric leads with signature phrasing instantly recognizable from classics such as “Wooden Ships.” But on an album with a lot of great moments, the most intriguing song is “Judy.” Penned by Stills in 1968 [Stills confirmed to GP that the song was actually a prequel to “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”], the backstory on “Judy” is nearly as epic as its inspiration’s lifelong acoustic love affair.
What were the songs and instruments that inspired you to pursue an acoustic-guitar path?
I started out as a pianist, and then when I found songs such as “The Gypsy Rover” and “Barbara Allen.” I convinced my dad to rent a guitar—I believe it was a classical guitar. I began to look around, and I found an old National resonator lap-steel. That was my first guitar, and, of course, the technique is very different using the slide bar over the top of the neck. I got a Martin 6-string around 1962. I