The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Leonard, Marianne, and Me: Magical Summers on Hydra by Judy Scott

Episode Date: July 10, 2021

Leonard, Marianne, and Me: Magical Summers on Hydra by Judy Scott Leonard, Marianne, and Me chronicles forty years of Judy Scott's frequent summers on the Greek island of Hydra with a diverse artistic community and her friendship with singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen and his legendary muse Marianne Ihlen. This memoir, based on Scott’s notebooks and journals, includes incidents in their lives and their relationship to one another—at a point when it was changing forever—that have never been discussed before. As Cohen himself observed of this book when Scott sent the manuscript to him for his approval: "I particularly admire the detail and honesty of the piece." One of the more unique features in this recounting is the emerging acknowledgment the author confronts of her own sexuality, as she writes: "It did not take long for Leonard to recognize that I was more attracted to Marianne than I was to him, though I came to love him too in the end." The book also describes Hydra in the early 1970s in great detail—a unique place filled with astonishing physical beauty and an incomparable atmosphere of serenity and peaceful energy. The island contained a small foreign community of like-minded creative souls, artists, musicians, writers, and their supporters and admirers. As Scott explains, "Hydra in the late '60s and early '70s was at its creative zenith. Like Paris in the '30s, Harlem in the '40s, Greenwich Village in the '50s, San Francisco in the '60s—Hydra in the '70s was the place to be." The memoir, though it centers on Scott's most important, most impactful interactions with Leonard and Marianne, also contains several portraits of other Hydra habitués, all members of the same small ex-pat community, all close friends (and occasional lovers) of Leonard and Marianne, all uniquely interesting in their own right. Leonard, Marianne and Me is a story of a special time, place, and cast of characters—a travelogue of an enchanted island as it was back then and still is to this day, backlit by the glow of Leonard Cohen and his muse, Marianne.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here of course we always have the most amazing authors if you get a chance go to the chris voss show.com go to in. Thanks for being here. Of course, we always have the most amazing authors.

If you get a chance, go to thechrisvossshow.com. Go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss. Go to all the different platforms we have and different groups we have on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places where you can see all the brilliant authors we have on the show. You can go to our Goodreads at goodreads.com for just Chris Voss. See what we're reading and reviewing over there as well. Today we have an amazing author. It just amazes me every time.

We come on the show. I come on the show every day, sometimes twice a day. And they go, there's another amazing author on the show that's brilliant and written this beautiful piece of work. And you're going to get a chance to get front row to ask this person questions, find out the brilliance in their book and learn so much and make your life and your mind expand. She is the author of the new book that's coming out July 1st. So you still have the ability to jump in, pre-order this baby so that you can be the first one on your block to say you read it. You can be like, tell your book cubs, I read the book first. Leonard, Marianne, and Me, Magical Summers on Hydra by Judy Scott.

Judy is joining us today, and she's going to tell us about this wonderful book and document that she's put down as to her life and some of the other people's lives that are in it. She was born and raised in New Jersey. Judy Scott now lives in Los Angeles with her spouse, Monica. Scott worked for many years at the highest level of the independent film production and distribution business while raising her daughter, Tori. The project she was associated with garnered numerous awards. And in 2005, Scott helped launch the first ever LGBT cable TV network as Senior Acquisitions and business affairs executive. Welcome to the show, Judy. How are you? I'm fine. Thank you very much. Awesome sauce. Awesome sauce. Give us your plugs

so people can find you on the interwebs. Okay. I don't have a website. I'm on Facebook a lot and can be located there. The book is in pre-order on Amazon. It's also on all the Amazon sites in Europe, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, of course, England. And it's also on Barnes and Noble, their website.com. It's also on Target.com and on Walmart.com. And I like to encourage people, even though it counts a lot for me if they order on Amazon, but I really support local bookstores. And I like to encourage people, if they do patronize a bookstore, they will order it for you.

And local bookstores are really hurting. So I like to give them a plug as well. There you guys go. Local bookstores, patronize them as well. With the coronavirus, everyone's been hurting. So it's important we support our Main Street businesses. So give us the idea, Judy, what motivated you on to write this? I kept journals when I lived on Idra. I first went there in 1973. So yeah, I'm older. And I went there to write specifically. And along with some other writing that I did, poetry and a couple

of screenplays that didn't get produced. I also kept journals and diaries. And I was approached in 2016 by some other people. Idra, first of all, when you live there, it's called Idra, which is the pronunciation that differentiates us from the tourists because the tourists always say Hydra. But I was approached by some of the other expats. There are a lot of writers, a lot of painters, artists, very popular on Hydra because it has no cars or automated transportation. The air is very clear and very pure. In fact, the light is called Greek light and it's real notorious in the artist community around the world because it is so pure and just realistic. Anyway, so I was approached by some of the other writers who were putting together a compendium of stories, of recollections, of memoirs. And they asked me if I would contribute.

They knew that I had one. And before I decided whether I was going to do that, when I first met Leonard Cohen, and Leonard Cohen, who was probably best known for Hallelujah, but also for Bird on a Wire and Suzanne and several other folk songs that became very popular in the late 60s, early 70s. In any case, I met Leonard on Idra. He owned a house there and we became very friendly. And as I did with his first woman, who he described as his muse, Mariana, and he said, you're absolutely welcome to join us whenever you like, but just do one thing. Promise me you won't write about me and i said okay i will do that and when i was approached by this author kevin mcgrath he teaches at harvard to contribute to what he was putting together i thought i've always stayed in touch with leonard loosely i've got to let him know that i might be

doing this and i sent him an email. I explained what was proposed. And I said, you were so kind to me and you told me not to write about you. And for 35 years, I haven't done that. But I would seek your permission if you have time to just look at this. And I sent him the manuscript. It was about 100 pages at that point. And I was astonished and so edified. The next next day he wrote me back email and said, Dear Judy, thank you so much for sharing this very fine piece of work, for which I have no objections whatsoever. It was really so poignant to see some of our old friends because I talked about other people on the island. And I really admire the honesty and detail of the work.

I thought, I might have something here and something that I might want to do something with more than just a contribution of 30 or 40 pages. So I started working on it. I was fortunate enough to get an agent, a literary agent uh like who say and who also lives uh the summers on idra and and we went shopping i it probably went through as all books do five or six different editions editorial comments editorial changes

but we finally got it sold to backbeat books, and it will be out July 1st. Yeah, and Backbeat is a label of Roman and Littlefield, which is the largest independent book distributor in the country. And you got it out and told your story. Yes, and so now it's actually, look, I have a copy of it. So, yeah, it's gotten some very good attention. So I'm really happy with it. That's exciting.

Congratulations on the new book. Now, it's not a travel memoir per se, and it feels like there's characters in it. Can you tell us about the island? Give us a description of what it's like there. Sure. us about the island give us a description of what it's like there sure i actually have described idra the island as a character in the book because there's a lot of information about it history and the people and and the just incredible physical beauty of the place and the fact that there's no cars so it is actually a character in the book i think that's why they put the picture on the cover. I had nothing to do with the cover, but it's a gorgeous cover.

Oh, yeah. And I got there by sheer accident. I knew nothing about Leonard Cohen being there. I was a big fan of his already, but I was actually on my way with a group of travelers from youth hostels, college kids, on my way to Istanbul. And when we got to Athens, some of the others that I was traveling with said, let's just try and find one more island, Greek island to visit before we go on to Turkey. And I said, okay, let's try and find something close by because I don't want an overnight ferry ride again. And we went off to the Greek travel office and they gave us brochures

and said, this is the one you really want. This is a beautiful island. And so, and it's three hours by ferry boat. So off we went for three nights. We booked three nights at a little pension on the harbor. And I was very lucky to run into a taverna where there was this party of foreigners. I thought they were all foreigners. One of them was a Greek man who is actually the person I dedicated the book to. Very good friend for life of mine. His name is George Lealios. He's passed on now. But he also was a very good friend of Leonard Cohen's. And he invited me to come and stay at his house. And I did. And the very day that I moved in, knock came at the door

and this lovely Norwegian woman came in to use the phone. George had the only phone on the island that was accessible to foreigners. And it turned out to be Mariana, who was Leonard's first really long term, serious relationship. And he has described her many times as a muse. He has said she's given me many songs and she did. So we chatted and I told her I was on my way to Istanbul and she said, no, you know what? This is a really special place and you belong here. You should stay. And so I did. I just, I told my friends, guess what? I'm not going to Istanbul. I almost titled the book.

I never made it to Istanbul. I think this is brilliant. The serendipity of life is really interesting, how things turn out and how sometimes we put ourselves in places or stretch ourselves a little bit to go to places maybe we aren't comfortable. Like you had plans to go to Istanbul and you're like, let's try one more place. You could have been a stick in the mud and went, no, I have plans in Istanbul. I was going there. And you would have missed all the serendipity.

And yeah, I've had so many of those moments in my life where I'm like, wow, if I hadn't pushed that door open and let whatever came come to me, I would have never experienced some of the beautiful things. Sometimes one little moment has been a life you can map the split, the fork in the road of my life that goes completely to a different place between the movement of one person's influence. When was the first time you visited? When was that? How old

were you? It was in May of 1973. Wow. And you've been going there like ever since? Pretty much every two years or so. I was last there in 2019. Was going to go last year, but of course, no travel. Yeah, that was really sad. So is it a bit of an artist colony there? Oh, very much so. Very much so. There's a very famous, world-famous artist named Bryce Martin who owns three houses there. New York Times listed him in the top 20 living masters.

Oh, wow. And I knew him and I knew his wife, Helen, quite well. There's a number of other pretty notable artists. I have a little bit of an art collection from Idra artists. Because of the light and just because of the environment, it's a very peaceful environment, but it's also a very stimulating environment. So it covers all bases. That's one of the things I've always loved about Catalina Island. Now there are cars on Catalina Island, but they're inherited cars. It's really So it covers all bases. People just maybe integrate better or there's more of a human sort of aspect where people are really getting to know each other and interacting instead of like L.A., just driving in a car on a freeway all the time. Right.

No, absolutely. I've been to Catalina twice, and there's a real resemblance. It's very intimate. Idra only has about 3 000 people and about 300 of them are foreign many of them live there year-round a lot of them just come for the summer and fall months but it's a really nice community everybody's friendly everybody's accessible unlike some of the bigger islands like mykonos and Central, which are totally promoted by hotels and tourists. Idra has very few hotels. It has a lot of dayboats, what we would call dayboats,

tour boats that come in. They do a three island chain, Idra and Poros and Spiros. And then they leave. And so at night, it's really just the residents. Very few permanent tourists or long-term tourists. And that makes it really like a nice community. Wow. That's awesome. You get accepted into Leonard Cohen's family. You get to know all these people. That just must be surreal.

Maybe a little bit, huh? It was. At one point, Mariana said to me, it's not just a relationship between you and me. By the way, I'm gay. We did have an emotional relationship more than anything else. But you're like a member of the family. Her son, Axel, was 13 at the time and very close to Leonard. Leonard helped to raise him, sent him to schools, to Summerhill and to a very, she, Swiss boarding school and bought him whatever

he needed, whatever he wanted. So it was just the four of us. I would have dinner with him every night, spend a lot of time with Leonard, just total fortunate that we sang together. I was always a good singer. At one point, Leonard said to me, you sing as good as any

backup singer I've ever worked with, and I can send you to Clive Davis if you like. And to this day, I don't know why I said, oh, no, that's OK, Leonard. I think I have to make it on my own. Well, you know. I think it partly was because I have a really bad stage fright. Being in his room that he has a studio, a writing studio, singing with him and one guitar was very comfortable to me. But doing an audition in front of Clive Davis,

I think I would have just fainted on the spot. Well, you're now a producer. Do you have a favorite Leonard Cohen song? One of my very favorites is not one of his big hits. It's a beautiful song, and it's called the window. And, and, and the chorus lyric goes,

frozen love. Oh, chosen love. Oh, tangle of matter and ghost of darling of angels, demons, and saints, and the whole broken hearted host.

Gentle. This soul. What beautiful lyrics. It really is beautiful. It really is beautiful. It really is beautiful. And I knew the window. You knew the window. And there's another window that looks out onto the path, which is where Bird on a Wire

came from. Mariana and I were looking at it one time and she said, the problem, the way that he got to Bird on the Wire, and and i really she felt i really inspired him was we were living on an island with no electricity so they had oil lamps and candles basically and they put in a telephone pole right in front of his studio window and strung electric wires and he watched that and he said to her okay now, now we'll get, we're going to have to move. We're going to have to go to another Island. He didn't like modern conveniences.

And as they were speaking, a bird came and landed on the wire. And Mariana said to him, Leonard, if the bird can get rid of, can get used to the wire, you can get used to the wire. And then he wrote the song.

So she said, that's always been my favorite because I really felt like that was when I gave to him. That's really beautiful. You were so close with Leonard and Mary Ann at the time of their death in 2016. Did the three of you stay in touch or how did the three of you stay in touch over the years? We did stay in touch for quite a long time.

I had several phone conversations with Leonard after he returned to Montreux. We exchanged some correspondence. I sent him some poetry that I had been writing, inspired by Idra and by Mariana and him. And eventually it got down to emails, happy Hanukkah, happy birthday, things like that. He always answered. And I never kept a written correspondence. I did keep my written correspondence with Mariana. And I was very lucky, as I mentioned, that her estate gave me written permission to publish her letters to me. Oh, wow. So they're in the book? Yeah, from the author. And they also returned, she kept everything. They returned all my letters to her back to me. So the whole correspondence is in the book.

That's amazing. What did Leonard and Miriam teach you about yourself and about life? I think what they really gave me was a sense because I just felt like a nobody. I just felt like this little hippie girl who was traveling around with aspirations of writing and singing and stuff like that. And I was so embraced by them. I was treated like an equal. And that really gave me a sense of self-confidence, I guess, and a more enhanced self-image, I guess, because they seemed to think I was pretty neat. That changed how I felt about myself. Wow. That's amazing. They knew that I was gay, or at least at that time, bisexual. And that had absolutely no implication, no bearing at all on the way that we interacted with one another.

It's interesting how other countries are just more open-minded about this sort of stuff. And back in the day of the 70s when you first started going there, of course. And it's such a beautiful cover. It makes me want to go there now. I might abandon Catalina Island for this because it just sounds amazing. Especially since there's no cars. I've always loved the Greek culture. I've always loved Greek food.

Don't get me even started on Greek food. But I think I've got Greek stuff in the fridge right now. Some Greek cheese, I think it is. The name escapes me. But I've always loved Greek culture. I've always loved, who's that great actor who is the greek actor who's just just tremendous larger than life guy i forget his name but he started in the he started with some movies in greece or a big movie in greece and it was just beautiful to watch the

landscape especially since back when it was done i think it was black and white or are you talking about zorba yeah zorba yeah that actor That actor was Anthony Quinn. He wasn't? He was an Irish. Wow. I just learned something new today. He did a tremendous job of interpreting Katzenzakis, who is a very famous Greek writer, wrote Zorba the Greek. And Anthony Quinn did a marvelous job of portraying him. This is one of the reasons I have brilliant authors like you on

the show, to teach me new things and educate me. All this time, I thought he was a great actor, but I always loved him. He was always larger than life, like Jackie Gleason or somebody. He was always big in life. So this is really wonderful. Anything more you want to tease out on the book or offer readers? One of the things that I've gotten a lot of response to has been the lyric from Hallelujah. And I think that's the one that's most well-known internationally and even the younger people. I know that America's Got Talent finally took that song off their playlist because so many of the contestants used it. Like, OK, that's enough. We need new songs.

Wow. It's just an incredible song to sing in that kind of venue where you're building and building to a big crescendo at the end. And there are actually two books out just on Hallelujah. One is called The Holy and the Broken, which is a lyric. I forget the other one, but just on that song, because it has had such an amazing impact worldwide. It's been covered by over 200 artists. Wow. I was looking through some of the correspondence when they returned it to me.

In one of my letters to Mariana, I said, hair's getting really long here in LA, and I wish you were here to give me another haircut. And that made me remember when she did give me a haircut on Idra, and what she told me about Leonard, which references a lyric, a kind of mysterious lyric in Hallelujah. She told me that he would never let her cut his hair, and always went to the Greek barber. And I said, why? You're a good beautician. And she said, he told me that his mother used to cut his hair when he was a kid, and he didn't like the way she did it. And so when he got older, he would try and run away, and she would take one of his father's neckties and tie him to a chair in their kitchen. Wow. Yeah. And so the lyric goes, she tied me to a kitchen chair.

She broke my throne and she cut my hair. And from my lips, she drew the hallelujah. And that's where I'm pretty sure that's where it came from. But nobody except her and me, I guess. That's amazing. And you have all these insights in the book as to some of the lyrics and life of him and all that sort of good stuff. That's just amazing. That's just amazing. Give us your plugs.com so people can look you up on the interwebs and where they can order the book. Okay. It's entitled Leonard, Mariana, and Me, subtitled Magical

Summers on Idra. I've spent quite a few. And it is available in pre-order right now on Amazon. It's also available on all of the worldwide Amazon websites, France, Germany, New Zealand, England, and Australia. Only in English, English language. And, of course, here. It's available on BarnesandNoble.com. It's available on Target.com and on Walmart.com. And it comes out July 1st. There you go.

This week. Yeah, it's really exciting. Yeah, order it up. Wow, it's July 1st. There you go. This week. Yeah, it's really exciting. Yeah, order it up. Wow, it's July 1st already. Isn't that amazing this year? So let me ask you this one last question. If next time I go to Greece, is this the one place I should go first? I should skip everyone?

Okay, there you go. There you go. I mean, Yoko Ono and John Lennon were there. Mrs. Kennedy Onassis was there. It is a little bit of a jet set island, but again, it's just because of its beauty and because of its atmosphere, it attracts everybody. Wow. I've got to definitely go check that out.

So sorry, Catalina Holland, I may have to leave you for Idra. Thank you, Judy, for spending time with us. We certainly appreciate it today. It's been wonderful to have you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Moniz, for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, Forge Has Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Go follow all of our groups on LinkedIn,

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