Judy Collins: The singer-songwriter on going paleo on tour, trashing hotel rooms, and cherishing your demons

Judy Collins, 76, is a Grammy award-winning American singer-songwriter (Getty)

Singing with men is sexy

Two women together is fine, but guys offer something different: the voices are complementary, there is a sexy flirtatiousness and an intrigue. Sometimes I think, what's really going on here between us? So my duet partners for my new album [Strangers Again, featuring artists such as Willie Nelson and Don McLean] are all male. It's such a sensual enterprise – and why I think Leonard [Cohen] always has three backing girls singing behind him.

You have to move like an athlete and live like a Palaeolithic person on tour

You have to eat on the run, stay away from sugar, grains and flour. You may not have to run a four-minute mile, but you have to be up at 4am to fly to the next city. And they're always one-night stands – no dallying in one place for a few days. You have to exercise well and keep healthy.

I trash my hotel rooms very quickly on tour

Everything comes out of the suitcases and gets strewn around: make-up, food, clothes. But I can also clear it up pretty quickly. My husband is Mr Neat – doors have to be closed, drawers shut – but we've learnt a lot from each other: he's learnt to mess his room a little and I've learnt to clean mine. That's why people have to get together.

Drinking was a lot of fun but I don't miss it

I've been sober for more than 30 years, and though it looked great on paper, being drunk and out of it, and sleeping with everybody you think you want, it was extremely dangerous and awful to live through. It's a mental illness. You are not “there” while drinking, and that's a problem.

Don't kill all your demons

You don't know which will inspire you to new heights. Since I've been sober, the drama in my life has plummeted, although my art is in a much better way than it was.

I should have sent my son back to treatment when he relapsed

Maybe he would be alive today if I had. [He committed suicide in 1992.] It would have involved the professionals being unprofessional and coming to me and saying my son needed to go back. My doctor at the time told me not to ride out there on a white horse and try to save him; that he had to learn in his own way how it goes. I would disregard that now and go out on that white horse, and force him into treatment to get sober.

We are a world of greed now

Look at those moguls in the money business who stole billions from us all. We should never have bailed out those derivative traders. The sad thing is that [greedy risk-taking] is happening all over the world now and it's no longer restricted to a certain nation or class. Everyone is in trouble.

The mountains are the most romantic place in the world

I once wrote a song called “The Blizzard”, which came from a real experience. There is a diner on the Berthoud Pass, in Colorado, that I was stuck in due to snow. I met a stranger in the storm and we had a short-lived thing.

I used to love to ski in a blizzard

Zipping down the slope in a storm, I used to be in heaven. But I don't ski any more – I had to give it up a few years ago, as I've had too many injuries, and I couldn't handle another shoulder replacement.

Judy Collins, 76, is a Grammy award-winning American singer-songwriter who gained international prominence thanks to her version of Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides, Now', from the 1967 album 'Wildflowers'. She has recorded more than 30 albums and had a dozen hit singles, including a cover of Stephen Sondheim's 'Send in the Clowns'. Her latest album, 'Strangers Again', is out now.