RCM: Along with your recollections of Greenwich Village and that revolutionary era in music, you also write at length about your parents, who come across as remarkable people.

Anyways, the book is a great read and a lot of fun. They were all people who were just starting out - Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Dylan and me. It’s about all those people who we know were there, anybody who was anybody. There’s a great new book out now by Fred Weintraub called Bruce Lee, Woodstock and Me. I was very involved with all those people. You’d have Bill Cosby, Alan Arkin and Lily Tomlin, then you’d have Joni Mitchell, Harry Chapin, Frank Zappa, Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon. Not only did every folk singer in the business work at Fred’s club – with the brick wall, a hundred seats and that tiny stage – but comics worked there too. RCM: There are some great stories in the book about the famous club The Bitter End, the Greenwich Village nightclub run by Fred Weintraub. I’m sure it’s because I’m always writing in my journal and I always try to be as descriptive as possible, so that you really get a feeling of what it must have looked like and felt like to be there. I like to make it a story that you might remember. I would attribute it to my journals and my memory, and the way I have of putting it all together. Your recollections of playing alongside Leonard Cohen, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan in the Greenwich Village scene transport the reader to another time and place. RCM: Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is such a textured and evocative read. Rock Cellar Magazine tracked down the sweet and insightful Judy Collins, who graciously chatted with us at length about her new book, the generation-defining music of the ’60s, and her latest CD, Bohemian. Such nostalgic tales, and other less pleasant memories – such as Collins’ battles with alcoholism and her son’s suicide – make Sweet Judy Blue Eyes a gripping and powerful read. In the book, Collins recounts, among many other musical stories from the 1960s, how Stephen Stills penned the song during a “brilliant romance” when both were “young and innocent.” “Whenever I hear the song – in a grocery store, in an airport, on my own CD player – it resounds like a call from the mystic lakes.” The songstress and human rights activist writes in her new memoir, aptly titled Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life In Music. “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes really is my story…” Judy Collins gets that feeling every time she hears the song Suite: Judy Blue Eyes by legendary folk trio Crosby, Stills and Nash. But then, that song really was written just for Collins. The lyrics resonate as if they were penned by your own personal biographer. Some songs seem as if they were written just for you.

Sweet judy blue eyes my life in music