Judith Lynne Sill (October 7, 1944 – November 23, 1979) was an American singer-songwriter and composer. She was influenced by Bach, and wrote lyrics drawing on Christian themes of rapture and redemption. Her father, Milford "Bud" Sill, an importer of exotic animals for use in films, owned Bud's bar in Oakland, where Sill learned to play the piano.

In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Sill described her home life after her mother's remarriage as unhappy and frequently violent due to physical fights with her parents. In 1964, after her mother died, Sill left college and moved out of her stepfather's home. She started taking LSD and other drugs, moved in with an LSD dealer and joined a jazz trio. The couple lived in Las Vegas for a time, and both developed heroin addictions within months. When Sill moved back to California, she resorted to crime to support her addiction, including robbery, sex work, forgery and fraud. She sold her song "Lady-O" to the Turtles, and was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone. Harris worked on her first album and was involved with the Turtles.

Sill took over the orchestration and arrangements on her second album, Heart Food, which included "The Donor". Heart Food was released in March 1973 and was critically acclaimed, but sold poorly, leading to the end of her association with Geffen and Asylum Records. Sill's friends said she lacked the resilience to cope with poor sales and bad reviews, and that she was dropped after she refused to perform as an opening act, a task she disliked. Sill and Geffen's personal relationship also deteriorated, with Judee allegedly camping out on Geffen's front lawn to protest his lack of support for Heart Food. Their relationship came to an end after Sill, who was openly bisexual, By this time, Sill was once again suffering from drug abuse and other health problems, and her music was not regarded as marketable. She also was beginning to lose interest in music and focus on other pursuits, including theosophy and animals. Her 1974 recordings were never finished. Twenty-six years after Sill's 1979 death, the unfinished songs were mixed by Jim O'Rourke and released, along with a collection of rarities and home demos, as the album Dreams Come True on the Water label.

Personal life and death

Sill's personal life was turbulent, and she was affected by the early deaths of her father, mother and brother. Sill said she had been married twice, saying in interviews that she was briefly married either during or just after high school to a classmate, that her parents had the marriage annulled, and that he later died in a rafting accident. Her romance with the singer-songwriter JD Souther, along with the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, inspired her song "Jesus Was a Cross Maker". Souther later wrote the song "Something in the Dark" about her. She had a long-term relationship with the poet David Omer Bearden, who contributed lyrics to Heart Food and toured and performed with her; Sill dedicated Heart Food to him. As Asylum's first published artist, Sill also had a close friendship with David Geffen, and wrote "David Geffen, I love you" in the sleeve for her first album.

Musical style

Sill was classically trained. She combined an appreciation of classical composers such as Bach with seventies California music, a style she described as "country-cult-baroque". In 2004, the British music critic Barney Hoskyns wrote that had Sill been "as male and pretty" as Nick Drake, another songwriter who did not find success while he was alive, her music would now be as popular.

Sill appears on Tommy Peltier's Chariot of Astral Light (featuring Judee Sill), which was recorded in the 1970s but not released until 2005 on the Black Beauty label. She contributed guitar, organ and backing vocals to six tracks on the album and is pictured with Peltier on the cover. Also in 2005, Sill's unfinished recordings, mixed by Jim O'Rourke, were released along with other rarities and unreleased demos as Dreams Come True, a two-CD set on Water Records. Sill's two original albums, Judee Sill and Heart Food, were released that year as individual CDs, each with bonus tracks, on the Rhino Handmade label.

In 2006, Rhino released the compilation Abracadabra: The Asylum Years. The Guardian gave it five out of five, and wrote that "in death [Sill] is slowly finding the audience she always craved". In 2007, an album of Sill's live performances performed for the BBC was released as Live in London: The BBC Recordings 1972–1973. In 2017 the independent record label Intervention Records released 180-gram double 45 rpm LP and SACD reissues of Sill's self-titled album and Heart Food.

In 2022, the documentary film Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill, by Andy Brown and Brian Lindstrom was completed. It was released in 2024. Nine years in the making, it coalesces past reporting on Sill along with including newly unearthed interviews and personal journals.

Discography

Studio albums

  • Judee Sill (1971)
  • Heart Food (1973)

Others

  • Dreams Come True (2005)
  • Abracadabra: The Asylum Years (2006)
  • Live in London: The BBC Recordings 1972–1973 (2007)
  • Songs of Rapture and Redemption: Rarities & Live (2018)

References

  • Judee Sill Biography
  • Observer article
  • Washington Post article by Tim Page
  • UNCUT article on Sill
  • Unreleased recordings
  • "Judee Sill's Posthumous 'Dreams'"
  • Judee's Epitaph