Stills said he was intent on having fun with it. Stills’s attitudes toward the larger society will come later in the set, most pointedly, perhaps, when he reaches back to 1967 and “For What It’s Worth.” The song’s lyrics - invoking “paranoia” that “strikes deep” and warning listeners to “look what’s going down” - suggest, he said, “all the foreboding of what we face in our lives.”ĭespite the song’s serious themes, Mr. Stills said, “because it’s demanding to get your mouth around those syllables.”Ī glimpse into Mr. Stills said, “Helplessly Hoping” simultaneously “wakes you up” and “puts the butterflies to sleep.” The song’s lyrics, though largely limited to the personal realm, illustrate his fondness for alliteration (“her harlequin hovers nearby” follows the title line, for starters).

27, said he would probably open his set with “Helplessly Hoping.” Like “Judy Blue Eyes,” that song appeared on both “Crosby, Stills and Nash,” which won a Grammy in 1969, and “Just Roll Tape,” a collection of demolike performances released in 2007, nearly 40 years after they were recorded.Īs a set opener, Mr. Stills, who will appear with a three-piece band on Oct. And the best of them, enjoying the kind of ubiquity in their day that today’s fragmented media landscape does not allow, became touchstones for a generation of fans who remain eager to hear them. The songs of the 1960s and early 1970s often reflected both the lives of those who made them and the turbulence of the times. It’s a heartbreaking song, but it’s a lasting song.” Collins said, “including free love, therapy, women wanting to have their own lives, and their being troubled and confused and heartbroken. “It has to do with a lifetime of once-upon-a-time romance, which turned into a phenomenal social statement of all kinds of things,” Ms.

Collins, in a recent conversation, grew animated when discussing the song. Stills wrote about it - “ Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” - retains its hallowed place in the canon.

FOR music lovers of a certain age and inclination, the late-1960s love affair between Judy Collins and Stephen Stills remains an epic tale, and the piece Mr.

Stephen stills and judy collins