Twisted Tales: Singer-Songwriter Judee Sill Torn Between Jesus and Demon Drugs

Posted on Sep 18th 2009 5:00PM by James Sullivan
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When the tiny Oakland label American Dust releases 'Crayon Angel,' a tribute to the late songwriter Judee Sill, with covers by Beth Orton, Ron Sexsmith and Grizzly Bear's Daniel Rossen, among others, even discerning music fans might scratch their heads: Who the heck is Judee Sill?

Judee Sill was the first artist to record for rising mogul David Geffen's Asylum label, ahead of Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. She had fans in groups including the Turtles and the Hollies, both of which covered her songs. Warren Zevon was an admirer; so are Fleet Foxes.

But when Sill died of an overdose in 1979, there was no obituary. She had fallen so far in her turbulent life that many music-industry friends didn't hear about her death until years later.

Her hymn-like songs, inspired by Bach and Mahalia Jackson, were at once of a piece with the gentle Laurel Canyon sound of early 1970s Southern California, and nothing quite like any popular music of that (or any other) era. Sill's creative search for spiritual grace seemed completely at odds with the bleak circumstances of her life.

Born in California in 1944, she began playing piano in public as a child in her parents' seedy barroom in Oakland. After the death of her hard-drinking father, her mother married a 'Tom and Jerry' animator whom the singer recalled as a mean drunk who "beat dogs." By her later teen years, she was on the streets of Los Angeles, working her way from LSD to heroin abuse and falling into a life of petty crime and prostitution, which landed her in reform school. By the end of the decade, her mother and brother were both dead, and Sill was on her own.

Her ethereal talent almost saved her. After working as a salaried songwriter and attracting interest from the Leaves, the Turtles and other L.A. groups, she began performing her own material, landing a supporting gig on tour with David Crosby and Graham Nash. Her self-titled Asylum debut, featuring an unabashedly Christian single, 'Jesus Was a Cross Maker' (produced by Nash), was greeted with enthusiastic reviews. But her 1973 followup album, 'Heart Food,' despite similar notice, was a commercial failure, and Sill dropped off the scene.

Known to friends as a notoriously bad driver, Sill had a series of accidents that left her with chronic back pain. Given her drug history, doctors were reluctant to prescribe painkillers, so the singer began to seek her own. As early as 1974, Graham Nash was hearing mistaken rumors of Sill's death by overdose. Her body was discovered five years later in her apartment in North Hollywood; the cause of death was cited as "acute cocaine and codeine intoxication."

In her lifetime, Sill sought redemption through her music. Thirty years after her death, the music itself has been resurrected. Producer Jim O'Rourke oversaw the 2005 release of 'Dreams Come True,' a two-disc set built from previously unreleased demos for a proposed third album. Rhino Records soon reissued her Asylum recordings, and that was followed by a collection of BBC recordings.

Sill often acknowledged her own weaknesses, calling LSD the "white peace" and heroin the "dark peace." In her 35 troubled years, she seems not to have gotten much peace at all, though her deceptive music tells another story.