Joni Mitchell Sang Both Sides, Now by Phone at 3am, Judy Collins Says
Folk singer Judy Collins says Joni Mitchell sang Both Sides, Now to her over the phone around 3am in 1967, and she recorded it the next day. In a Q&A during her farewell tour, she also recalls Leonard Cohen, her father and Stephen Stills.
Joni Mitchell sang Both Sides, Now over the phone to folk singer Judy Collins at about 3am in 1967, Collins said in a reader Q&A published on November 12, 2026. Collins recorded the song the next day.
The US singer-songwriter is on her farewell tour. She answered questions on romance, friendship and the songwriters she championed.
The 3am phone call
Collins said she is 48 years sober, but in the old days she drank. One night in 1967 she was passed out when the phone rang. It was her friend Al Kooper, the musician, songwriter and producer.
Kooper told her he had been at a club and run into a woman, Joni, who wrote songs. He put Mitchell on the phone, and she sang Both Sides, Now. "It was brilliant," Collins said. Her reply: "I'll be right over."
She recorded it the next day, and it "became a huge hit".
"I don't think Joni was too happy that I was the first to record it, but she was very generous and I've since recorded many of her songs," Collins said. She added that Mitchell was unknown then, and called her "one of the great writers of all time".
Leonard Cohen and a first song
In 1966, a friend at Atlantic Records told Collins that Leonard Cohen wanted her to sing his songs. Cohen came to her apartment and said he could not play guitar and had a terrible voice. Then he played Suzanne.
Collins said she told him it was a song and that she was recording it the next day. It also became a huge hit.
Cohen then asked why she was not writing her own songs. She went straight to the piano and wrote Since You Asked in 40 minutes. "Leonard was my guru, in a way," she said.
A blind father
Asked whether My Father is autobiographical, Collins said it is "very autobiographical". Her father was not a coalminer in Ohio and did not promise to take the family to France. She said she needed the lyric to rhyme and make sense.
He was blind from the age of four but never used a dog or a cane. He became a great radio personality in three cities and sang the Great American Songbook and Irish and Scottish folk songs. Braille books were piled to the ceiling, and he could read them to his children in the dark.
In My Life and Stephen Stills
For her 1966 album In My Life, made with arranger Joshua Rifkin, Collins said she went back to songs written in Germany by Brecht and Weill. She put them alongside music by the Beatles and others so the contrast was interesting. "I was always searching," she said.
Stephen Stills wrote Suite: Judy Blue Eyes about her. While they made Who Knows Where the Time Goes, with Stills on guitar and bass, they had an affair that lasted four months. She did not like California, she said, and he did not like New York or therapy.
After they split, she was doing a show in California on her birthday. Stills brought her flowers and sang Judy Blue Eyes to her, and they were both in tears.
