"Remember what we've said and done and felt about each other..."

“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” has been hailed as one of the greatest breakup songs in rock. And given the emotions that surge through the human heart as a relationship comes to an end, it’s not surprising that a talented musician such as Stephen Stills would capture the resignation and the anguish so eloquently in a song.

In three songs, actually. Stills told The New Yorker back in 2017 that he originally had three unfinished songs about his breakup with Judy Collins that he had been working on when he realized he could fit them together in a suite. (It was later in the studio with David Crosby and Graham Nash, that the group came up with the “doo, doo, doo-doo-doo” ending.)

In that same New Yorker interview, Judy Collins recalled hearing Stephen play her the song for the first time. She was in Los Angeles for a concert appearance, and Stills came to her hotel carrying a vintage 1920s Martin guitar that he had used to compose “Suite: Judy Blues Eyes.”

As Judy remembered the moment, “you sang me the song. And we both wept. And I said, ‘It’s beautiful, but it’s not going to get me back.’”

And then when Stephen finally said goodbye, he gave her the guitar to keep.

Flash forward nearly 50 years, and the two of them are together again. This time as musical partners. They had stayed in touch over the years. Then in the 2010s, fate brought them together on a stage at, of all things, an AARP convention. The encounter inspired them to make music together instead of separately for the first time in their careers and to create an album and a concert tour to go with it. Which was the occasion for that New Yorker interview in 2017 conducted in Judy’s Manhattan apartment.

Judy was 78 at the time, Stephen 72. She with her hair gone grey and her eyes still blue. He with his hairline receding and his hearing aids plucked from his ears perhaps in a wish to turn back the clock.

You can imagine the years falling away as they talked about old times, spoke about their current tour, reminisced about their relationship…and about the song that Stephen wrote for her…and also about the guitar he wrote it on.

“I have it here,” Judy said at one point and sprang to her feet to fetch the instrument from another room. She brought it back and tuned it and then handed the guitar to Stephen…who held it awkwardly for a moment, touched the strings, and then decisively put the instrument down.

So many years. And so many changes.

“I can’t hear it,” was all that he said.