Not many kids can come home from school to witness Andrew Lloyd-Webber tinkling the ivories on their piano. To a young Judie Tzuke, this was her induction into the world of music…
By Ian Woolley
With another new album on the horizon, Judie Tzuke has been very prolific in her songwriting career. After forty years, she knows a thing or two about life…
Judie recalls “I started writing poems about eleven in a diary. I wrote them about that day but I don’t know why. I had a crush on my history teacher who was into Bob Dylan and so I started teaching myself the guitar and then it all went from there.”
Then came “Stay With Me ‘Till Dawn” and the single was greeted with great critical acclaim and substantial airplay at the time.
The album was released in 1979, along with the single ‘Stay With Me ‘Till Dawn’. The song stayed in the UK charts for 16 weeks and commanded three live appearances on Top of the Pops. The track became a classic and is still played regularly on the Radio in the U.K. It has appeared on dozens of compilation albums and regularly appears in lists of all-time most popular songs.
Her first tour was supporting Elton John and in December 1999, he offered to return the copyrights to Judie for her first three albums.
With many of her songs covered by other artists over her 40 years in the business, I asked her did that give her real satisfaction.
“I do kinda enjoy being on stage but I’ve never been comfortable being the center of attention or being looked at really. It’s much easier really being with the four of us really (or the three of us that was) because we share the limelight and that’s easier for me.”
“Touring before has always been a terrifying thing. Because I’m an extremely emotional person, I need to write songs to get all the dark feelings that I have sometimes out of my system. Not just dark feelings but angry feelings even happy feelings. It helps me to write so writing for other people was a new step up for me.”
“Because I’ve been on this planet for so long and had most experiences in some shape or form. I love working with young artists because I can help them. I can connect with people usually because of some of what they are going through and the feeling I’ve been through. So I can make it mine and theirs and it helps me write more songs and they become my muses. They mean as much to me as they do to the artists I’m working with. It’s definitely quite an exclusive situation to be in where I get to talk to people about their lives.”
“On a day-to-day basis, most people very rarely get to talk to anyone like that so I learn so much and made a lot of friends with the people I work with because of that connection. I still write on my own but I do love working with up-and-coming artists that aren’t jaded by the business and who also see it’s all a bit magic. If you write a great song it will always win through. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case I know but I love going into writing a song with that feeling. Something I might say might change someone’s life like Stay With Me ‘Till Dawn.”
“It’s all about the love of music really.”
With her recent successful Woman To Woman UK tour recently, her loyal will be staying with Judie long after dawn.