The untold story of Judee Sill, folk-rock’s forgotten genius finally getting her flowers

When singer-songwriter Judee Sill overdosed in 1979, aged just 35, no obituaries were printed. A re-evaluation of the musician has introduced her folk-rock country music to a new generation, as a new documentary sheds light on a life of crime, addiction, and abuse. Jim Farber speaks to the film’s creators and Sill’s friends, including Graham Nash and Andy Partridge of XTC, about her astounding legacy

New fans are discovering the music of Oakland musician Judee Sill (Greenwich Entertainment)

At the start of the 1970s, no label seemed hipper or more tasteful than Asylum Records. Co-founded by David Geffen, the imprint helped spearhead the singer-songwriter movement by releasing seminal works from Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Warren Zevon, Tom Waits, and the Eagles, who the label had helped form. Before Geffen inked any of them, however, he made his first signing to Asylum an unknown singer-songwriter named Judee Sill. “I want to be a big star,” Sill recalled telling Geffen in a diary entry she wrote at the time. “How big?” he asked. “I want to be a bigger star than has ever been before,” she responded.

Sadly, just the opposite happened. The two Judee Sill albums Asylum released in 1971 and 1973 barely drew a cult, causing the label to drop her, exacerbating a pattern of sad circumstances and desperate decisions that had plagued Sill since she was a child growing up in Oakland. Penniless and in pain, she died of a drug overdose in 1979 at age 35. No obituary appeared anywhere at the time, small wonder since her albums had, by then, vanished from the bins.

In 2006, however, a re-evaluation began, fuelled by the internet’s ability to disinter even the most deeply buried treasures. The albums Sill recorded in her lifetime – marked by a sui generis mix of folk-rock, classical music, and country – were re-released, followed by a live album of performances she gave for the BBC. Then, in 2009, a tribute album to her work appeared featuring covers by stars like Beth Orton and Ron Sexsmith.