JUDEE SILL IN THE U.K. (1971–1973)

Search up the American singer-songwriter Judee Sill on YouTube and the first two hits will probably be her appearance on BBC2's Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973. It was her second time on the show and Judee is singing two songs from her second (and, as it turned out, last) album, Heart Food: The Kiss and The Pearl, introduced by 'Whispering' Bob Harris. Here they are.

I love these clips. It reminds me what an important show Whistle Test was, back in the days when there was so little decent music on television beyond the pop charts. But also because this is pretty much the only surviving footage of Judee performing. Anywhere. Yes, there is some grainy black and white film of her playing somewhere in America. But this is in the studio and in colour. And it was in London.

So who was Judee Sill? Her story is breathtaking and tragic. Read it here or better still go see the movie documentary Lost Angel if you can. 

"Judee is probably this year's reigning queen of the non-stars" 
Stereo Review, February 1974

"The long-forgotten Judee Sill"

Record Mirror, 1978

If she is a cult artist now, back in the early Seventies Judee was beyond cult. Her first album, released on Asylum in October 1971, received good reviews in the pop press, but I doubt many record buyers in the UK knew her name when she first appeared on Whistle Test the following spring. Or if they did, most would soon forget it.

So what was she doing in London? I set out to discover more and found out that Judee actually played a handful of gigs during three visits to the UK. This is my run-down of those appearances. I don't claim this to be complete: there may well be others I am unaware of.

Despite the research, Judee Sill remains frustratingly just out of sight. There are few mentions of her in gig listings or reviews and, apart from the valuable BBC recordings, as far as I know, no footage, no photos and no audio recordings remain of her performances here.

But let's rewind to 1971...

4 December 1971 - Royal Festival Hall

In October 1971 it was announced that Judee Sill would be the support act for a London concert by David Crosby and Graham Nash at the Royal Festival Hall, on 4 December 1971. Judee had already travelled round the US with the breakaway CSN&Y duo and by the time she played the London gig, her album had been out a couple of months. I have been unable to find any reviews of this gig.

It was reported that Crosby & Nash also intended to play five provincial gigs in the run up to the London appearance, although the only one that actually took place, as far as I can see, was two days earlier, at the Manchester Odeon and there is no evidence that Judee took part in that concert.

The following spring, Judee was back on British soil for a full-blown tour in her own name.

18 March 1972 - Royal Festival Hall

The month-long tour kicked off on 18 March 1972 with a return visit to the Royal Festival Hall, this time opening for the soft-rock trio America, with whom Judee shared a manager and whose Horse With No Name was galloping up the singles charts. There is audio of America's set, compared by John Peel for the BBC, but sadly nothing of Judee's performace seems to have been kept. 

In their review of the gig, the NME proclaimed Judee to be a 'rather strange sort of girl with a woebegone expression'. Disc considered her album to be 'quite remarkable' but decided that she 'did not come over so well as a live solo artist'. The main problem was that she 'requires a more intimate setting for her extremely complicated lyrics and her somewhat detailed explanations as to why she had written each song'. Disc concluded that 'although her style is pleasant it lacks impact and a few musicians behind her could probably solve that problem.'

Despite her half-hearted reception at the RFH, Judee was booked into the BBC and the Sunday Mirror ran an interview with her, outlining her noteworthy biography and describing her music as 'Western spirituals'.

21 March 1972 - BBC Old Grey Whistle Test

23 March 1972 - BBC Paris Theatre for In Concert

5 April 1972 - BBC Aeolian Hall for Bob Harris session (broadcast 17 April)

Although Judee criticised the BBC in the Mirror interview for 'making the mistake of thinking that I'm trying to sell some sort of hot gospel [and] fighting shy of playing the disc that boosted my career in America', Judee made three BBC recordings of her own during the tour: for the Old Grey Whistle Test, Radio 1 In Concert and a session for Bob Harris, in which she recorded five songs. 

Appearing with her on BBC2's Old Grey Whistle Test was the band Audience. Footage survives of Audience but sadly not of Judee, whose performance is captured only in a viewer's audio recording. She played Jesus Was a Crossmaker and Enchanted Sky Machines, preceded by a repeated plea for people to buy her album (thanks to Bob Claster for uploading these to his site).

Two days later she was at the BBC's Paris Theatre to tape the In Concert appearance, broadcast on Radio 1 on 31 March and nine months later on BBC2. This live recording and the Bob Harris session were released 30-odd years later on the Live in London CD. Also on the CD is an interview she gave 'Whispering' Bob: 'I think people here like my music more than in the States. The general public seem to be more sensitive to the music'.

24 March 1972 - Country Club, Kirklevington

Before recording the Bob Harris session, Judee travelled 250 miles up the M1 for a gig at the most unlikely of places: a venue in rural Teesside called the Kirklevington Country Club. Despite its distance from London, 'the Kirk', capacity 400, could boast fondly-remembered appearances from some major stars in the Sixties, from George Melly and Jimi Hendrix to Rod Stewart and Traffic. No one seems to recall Judee's appearance though. In her inteview with Bob Harris on the Live in London CD she alludes to the gig as being 'not too good'.

Teesside Live / Evening Gazette / Stan Laundon

27 March to 1 April - Music Workshop

After Kirklevington, Judee returned to the capital for a brief residency at the Music Workshop in Mason's Yard, SW1. Until the previous month, this small basement club at the end of an alley had been the Scotch of St James's, a well known Sixties hangout. Anyone who was anyone on the London scene met here. The Beatles apparently had their own table at the Scotch and it was here that Jimi Hendrix first wowed the famous and not so famous alike, when he took to the stage to perform with the house band. 

In February 1972 the Scotch was relaunched as the more perfunctory Music Workshop and sensitive singer-songwriters such as Tim Hardin and Christopher Neil were booked to play to its sophisticated crowd. The Stage magazine nodded approval: 'Here is a club, ostensibly a discoteque, that seems to have acquired itself an educated, quiet and listening audience.' Perfect for Judee!

Also on the bill with Judee at the Music Workshop was the American guitarist David Elliott, who had appeared on Whistle Test a fortnight before Judee and whose album on Atlantic was arranged by Robert Kirby, fresh from his work with Nick Drake. These days, David recalls Judee as 'real easy to get along with. I loved her music'.

9 April 1972 - Brunel University

15 April 1972 - Manchester University

16 April 1972 - 'Implosion' at the Roundhouse, London

21 April 1972 - Van Dike Club, Plymouth

22 April 1972 - Loughborough University

After the Music Workshop gigs, Judee went back out on the road to play some universities, with a brief detour back to London for a gig at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, as part of their Sunday afternoon 'Implosion' promotions.

The following week Judee was again many miles from London, down in Plymouth, for a booking at the Van Dike Club. Prior to this appearance she was interviewed on Devon local television news. In the book Van Dike: The Life and Times of a Plymouth Club, 1968-1972, one viewer, John Tozer, recalls catching the TV show and being captivated by Judee's performance of Jesus Was a Crossmaker: 'not because of the song she had just sung, but because I saw she was playing a Martin guitar.' Such guitars were expensive and not so common in the UK in 1972. 

Judee would have been playing the Martin D-28 given to her by Graham Nash. Determined to get a closer look, John Tozer called up the station while the programme was on air and even got to speak to Judee. 'She told me she was playing a gig at the Van Dike club later on that evening and said she could meet me there'. A few hours later John found himself in the proprietor's flat above the venue, with Judee and her small entourage, to witness Judee rehearsing.

Plymouth Herald

The final gig of the tour appears to have been Loughborough (whose pronounciation must have puzzled Judee). She then returned to the US to walk her basset hound and work on her second LP.

1973 - The Roy Harper tour

How much of a wider audiece the 1972 tour brought Judee is debatable, but it probably helped the album to notch up sales of 40,000 worldwide (according to Asylum).

The following year, Asylum released her second LP, Heart Food, and booked Judee for a return visit to the UK. This time it was as a support act again. The British singer-songwriter Roy Harper would be touring his latest album Lifemask, promoted by Frederick Bannister (who would soon be organising major rock events such as the Knebworth festivals) and Judee would be the opening act each night. Harper was, accoring to the NME, 'a bit screwed by the pairing', on the assumption that Judee's religious views were at odds with his own. 'Sill is the one who should feel shafted,' wrote Jonh Ingham in the NME. 'She's singing to Harper's audience.'

The tour kicked off in Birmingham and ended a month later, in Oxford. Ticket prices were as low as 40p.

23 January 1973 - Birmigham Town Hall

24 January 1973 - Liverpool Philharmonic

4 February 1973 - City Hall, Newcastle

5 February 1973 - Usher Hall, Edinburgh

11 February 1973 - Colston Hall, Bristol

Due to illness, Judee was unable to make the Bristol gig. She was battling drug addiction and some days earlier had written in her journal: 'Last night I had bad nightmares and threw up.'

12 February 1973 - Royal Albert Hall

This was a big deal and by far the biggest gig Judee would play in the UK. However, by most reports, it did not go well. Her intimate, intricate songs and the folk-baroque arrangements were lost in the cavernous auditiorium of the Albert Hall. In his review of the gig in The Times, Robert Shelton reported that 'the programme was started by Judee Sill, an American songwriter, guitarist and pianist. Unfortunately, she was working under a cloud of reticence and introspection which prevented her from breaking through to an audience that obviuosly belonged to Mr Harper'.

15 February 1973 - Golders Green Hippodrome, for BBC Radio 1 In Concert

18 February 1973 - Palace Theatre, Manchester

20 February 1973 - Town Hall, Leeds

20 February 1973 (broadcast date) - BBC Old Grey Whistle Test

22 February 1973 - New Theatre, Oxford

I have found no reviews of the remaining gigs on the tour, but the footage of her appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test has been widely viewed since and her In Concert recording for Radio 1 has been re-aired on BBC 6Music and is included on the Live in London CD.

Judee Sill never played the UK again. She might have been perceived as 'difficult' or not a natural solo performer, at least for the venues she was booked to play. The pairing with Roy Harper was, in retrospect, perhaps not ideal. There was a story that she made a defamatory comment about her manager, David Geffen, from the stage at one British gig. Her second album sold less well than the first, despite its brilliance, and she was ultimately dropped by her record label. 

The years that followed were, by most accounts, characterised by drug dependency and broken dreams. She died of an overdose in 1979. The coroner put her untimely death down to suicide, but this is disputed by those who knew her. 

Top photo of Judee in London by Gijsbert Hanekroot

Thanks to David Elliott and Stan Laundon for help with the research

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