Observations placeholder
Judee Sill - The Archetypal Man
Identifier
029097
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Sunday 12 December 2004
The Observer - Barney Hoskyns
After driving across America with two girlfriends in the summer of 1964, Judee flunked out of college. Orphaned when Oneta Muse died of cancer in the early winter of 1965, she was now alone in the world and with only a modest income from her mother's shares in a Texan oil company. Soon she was dabbling with heroin in the company of keyboard player Bob Harris, whom she married.
Arrested for forging cheques, Sill was thrown in jail, where she was 'put into a dirty cell to puke my guts out' as she withdrew from smack. In what she called 'the grungy central Hollywood flatlands' she regularly turned tricks for money.
'As a hooker,' she told Rolling Stone , 'my heart wasn't in it ... all I really cared about was getting that needle in my vein, squeezin' off.'
In interviews, Sill said the spiritual hunger that drove her to seek the 'dark peace' also drove her to express her pain in song. Her discovery of religious and theosophical literature, as well as magic, gave her new subjects to sing about, too.
..... Sill informed the NME that her three principal influences were Pythagoras, Bach and Ray Charles. Yet there is something almost mathematically perfect about her best songs.
'My music is really magnified four-part choral style,' Sill told the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. 'It gets to people's emotional centres quickly. That's why all church music is in four-part choral style.'...................
Late in 1966, Bob Harris introduced her to John Beck of LA group the Leaves. Through Beck, Beck's fellow Leaf Jim Pons slowly learnt of Sill's torrid past. But the stories of addiction and prostitution didn't gel with the personable, curious woman he befriended. 'By the time I got to know her she was an intensely spiritual, devout disciple of self-awareness.'
A description of the experience
Judee Sill - The Archetypal Man
Fleeter even than Mercury
he flies inside the walls he calls his own
he came hidin' but now I see
he looks like everyone I've ever known
he comes bearin' a sacrifice
I know him by the rose that's in his hand
I've been listenin' to his advice
I hear the words but I can't understand
His moon mirage is shinin'
Shiftin' the things that he can't endure
But all through the Darkness his pain is pure
Fleeter than even Mercury
He flies inside the walls he calls his own
He came Hidin' but now I see
he looks like everyone I've ever known
He comes bearin' a sacrifice
I know him by the rose that's in his hand
I've been listenin' to his advice
I hear the words but can't understand
His moon mirage is shinin'
Through his veins flows a fool's gold flood
But through the rose in his hand...flows blood