{"id":861,"date":"2018-04-21T15:55:53","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T19:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/?p=861"},"modified":"2018-04-21T15:55:53","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T19:55:53","slug":"with-judy-collins-and-stephen-stills-there-were-sparks-right-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/with-judy-collins-and-stephen-stills-there-were-sparks-right-away\/","title":{"rendered":"With Judy Collins and Stephen Stills, ‘There were sparks right away’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Judy<\/a>

Judy Collins first met Stephen Stills when Collins was recording her seventh studio album \u201cWho Knows Where the Time Goes” in 1968.<\/p><\/div>\n

Judy Collins and Stephen Stills were driving around one day in Malibu, California, when Stills had an idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018You know, we need another song on this album,\u2019\u201d Collins says.<\/p>\n

It was mid-1968 and Collins was coming off the success of her sixth studio album \u201cWildflowers,\u201d which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Pop Albums charts after its release in October 1967. The album featured Collins\u2019 Top 10 hit cover of Joni Mitchell\u2019s \u201cBoth Sides Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stills\u2019 band Buffalo Springfield had just broken up in May, 1968. When Collins and producer David Anderle were planning the next album, \u201cWho Knows Where the Time Goes,\u201d they decided to record it in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an opportunity to go to California and I was thrilled to be able to do that,\u201d Collins says. \u201cMy producer said, \u2018I want to bring you to California to make sort of a live album.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderle then put together a top-notch band in Los Angeles that included musicians with whom Collins had not previously worked. Among them were Buddy Emmons \u2014 who played with the Everly Brothers, Roger Miller and Ernest Tubb \u2014 on pedal steel guitar; James Burton \u2014 who recorded and played with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard \u2014 on dobro and electric guitar; Chris Ethridge \u2014 who would go on to play with Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers \u2014 on bass; Jim Gordon \u2014 a session drummer who backed the Everly Brothers \u2014 pianist Mike Melvin, who performed on the Beach Boys\u2019 \u201cPet Sounds\u201d album in 1966 and Frank Sinatra\u2019s \u201cThat\u2019s Life\u201d album, also in 1966; Van Dyke Parks, a songwriting collaborator with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, on piano and electric piano; and Stills, fresh off the Buffalo Springfield gig, on guitar. (Collins has said in other published interviews that she believed Anderle had asked Stills to work on the album only to find out later that it was the other way around.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where Stephen and I first met,\u201d Collins says. \u201cStephen was somebody that I had never worked with before, so that was exciting. I didn\u2019t know him and I really wasn\u2019t aware of the Buffalo Springfield. I knew who they were but I didn\u2019t know who the individual artists were. So it was a great surprise for me to meet him. And of course he\u2019s a genius, so that was good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only that, but the attraction between Collins and Stills was there from the first moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, there were sparks right away,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"There<\/a>

There was an immediate attraction between Judy Collins and Stephen Stills when they first met.<\/p><\/div>\n

So when Collins and Stills were driving around Malibu taking a break from recording sessions for \u201cWho Knows Where the Time Goes,\u201d Stills shared with Collins his idea about a song he thought they should record for the album.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Let\u2019s do \u201cSomeday Soon.\u201d\u2019 So that\u2019s what we did,\u201d Collins says.<\/p>\n

Canadian singer-songwriter Ian Tyson, who with his wife Sylvia had formed the duo Ian and Sylvia in 1961, had written and recorded \u201cSomeday Soon\u201d in 1964 but had not released it as a single. Collins was friends with Ian and Sylvia when they all lived in Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to hang out together. I had heard all of their songs,\u201d Collins says.<\/p>\n

So Collins didn\u2019t need much convincing to record \u201cSomeday Soon\u201d for the \u201cWho Knows Where the Time Goes\u201d album, and the song helped propel the album to No. 29 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart after its release in November 1968. The song itself would go on to become one of Collins\u2019 signature songs.<\/p>\n

Although the 1960s romance between Collins and Stills inspired Stills to write \u201cSuite: Judy Blue Eyes\u201d for his then-new band Crosby, Stills and Nash in 1969, Stills won\u2019t be featured in these two shows.<\/p>\n

And even though the two are no longer linked romantically, they are still making music together. They toured as a duo in 2017 and plan to do so again in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve remained friends all these years,\u201d Collins says. \u201cAnd I always thought that maybe someday we\u2019d do something together, but we had no idea what that would be.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was always so deeply involved with Crosby, Stills and Nash and at the time, there wasn\u2019t very much room at the table for anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two did finally make an album together, titled \u201cEverybody Knows,\u201d which was released in September 2017. The album features an updated version of the Sandy Denny-written \u201cWho Knows Where the Time Goes,\u201d and a new Collins song called \u201cRiver of Gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was thrilling to have a new song on board for that album,\u201d Collins says. \u201cStephen and I are going out again on tour this year in May and June. It was so much fun. We want to work on some more new songs together if we can find the time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judy Collins and Stephen Stills were driving around one day in Malibu, California, when Stills had an idea. \u201cHe said, \u2018You know, we need another song on this album,\u2019\u201d Collins says. It was mid-1968 and Collins was coming off the success of her sixth studio album \u201cWildflowers,\u201d which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Pop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[141,244],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tvdbook","tag-judy-collins","tag-stephen-stills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}