“I am yours, you are mine”: Stephen Stills’ odes to Judy Collins
For as long as people have been writing songs, they have been putting themselves and their former lovers into them. Just ask Stephen Stills.
From the explosion of singer-songwriter albums in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and especially among artists based in the Laurel Canyon and San Francisco Bay Area, so many songs were written about lost loves and relationships gone bad. To make matters worse, plenty of those tunes were written about ex-partners who also happened to be singers and songwriters themselves and who could respond in kind.
In this sense, you could hear both sides of an argument in real time on a record or alternately hear two halves of a failed relationship singing the same songs of heartbreak about each other. Songs which had previously been tender and loving took on new sadness, such as Carole King’s rendition of ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’ which was featured on Tapestry and had been previously written with ex-husband Gerry Goffin, or the duet of ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ between Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge from a few years before their divorce.
The list goes on. Leonard Cohen immortalised his fleeting affair with Janis Joplin in his classic ‘Chelsea Hotel #2’, while Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours famously cover all angles of the crossed relationships between the band members. Joni Mitchell wrote ‘That Song About The Midway’ in breaking up with David Crosby and went one further following her split from his band-mate Graham Nash by writing a lot of the songs on her seminal album Blue about their time together.
It doesn’t seem that the Canadian poet ever turned her pens attentions towards the middle member of Crosby, Stills and Nash (she has also written a song about Neil Young of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, although it was not in the wake of a romantic fallout), but Stephen Stills did write his fair share of songs about a singing ex-lover of his own.
Which songs did Stephen Stills write about Judy Collins?
Tracking all the stages of his relationship with Judy Collins, his triumvirate of ‘You Don’t Have to Cry’, ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ and ‘So Begins the Task’ chronicle the courtship, relationship and, ultimately, breakup of the pair. ‘You Don’t Have to Cry’ started out life as a love letter to Collins, whom Stills had had his eye on but who was based in New York and keen to stay there to focus on her career, while Stills was living in the West Coast and equally reluctant to move.
‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ was written when they had finally gotten together and were trying to make things work. Stills has said the track, “started out as a long narrative poem about my relationship with Judy Collins. It poured out of me over many months and filled several notebooks. I had a hell of a time getting the music to fit!” The song – a long, hazy, meandering burst of light, chaotic and carefree love – became the opening song on the groups eponymous 1969 debut album.
By the time that Crosby, Stills, Nash (and now, Young) were working on their second album, Déjà Vu, Stills and Collins had been together for around a year, but the distance between the two artists, which had kept them apart in the first place, was starting to take its toll on the relationship. Collins visited the group at the Wally Heider studio where they were working in Hollywood and was blown away by the music they were making, but even still, Stills couldn’t make her change her mind and stay there in LA. She returned to the East Coast, and before long, the pair had split up.
‘So Begins The Task’, written in response to their break up, completed the courtship-relationship-breakup trilogy of Stills’ songs about ‘Judy Blue Eyes’ and was originally slated to be included on the band Déjà Vu album, but the rest of the group didn’t think it fit thematically. Eventually, the song turned up on Stills’ solo 1972 record Manassas.
In 2017 the pair re-united once again to release the album Everybody Knows, featuring covers of songs by Bob Dylan (‘Girl From the North Country’ and ‘Handle With Care’), Leonard Cohen (‘Everybody Knows’), Tim Hardin (‘Reason to Believe’) as well as their own songs. Together they sang Collins’ ‘Rivers of Gold’ and ‘Houses’, as well as Stephen Stills’ ‘Questions’ and, appropriately, ‘Judy’.
