It's startling to hear Judee Sill speak on Live in London. She's been gone nearly 30 years, and the circumstances of her death-- an overdose that may or may not have been accidental-- play into her cult as surely as do the circumstances of her life. She had an unsettled upbringing, turned to prostitution to feed her drug habit, and then went to jail, where she experienced a type of epiphany and so began writing songs and living up to her vast musical talent. She wrote for the Turtles, signed to David Geffen's Asylum Records, and became something of a legend in the Los Angeles of the late 1960s and early 70s. Her redemption through music would seem too easy and too pat were it not for the fact that she wrote luminous folk-gospel songs whose intricacies never lessen their impact. Nevertheless, today she lives on almost solely through her music, thanks largely to Water Records' reissues of her two proper albums, the odds-and-ends Dreams Come True (with its ecstatic opener "That's the Spirit"), and now Live in London: The BBC Recordings 1972-1973, a compilation of three live radio performances.
Sill speaks so differently than she sings. Explaining the origins and meanings of her songs, she rambles and peppers her speech with "um's" and awkward pauses; her jokes rarely hit their mark, which she seems to foresee about halfway through, so that the conclusions are rushed and self-conscious. She sounds like neither a star nor a cult figure, but simply a woman who is a little nervous in front of an audience or perhaps a little too self-serious. In her interview with the BBC's Bob Harris, she consistently misinterprets his questions, giving half-answers or taking off on barely relevant tangents. When she sings and plays guitar or piano, however, that unease falls away. She's perfectly at home in song.
For her contemporary audience, however, this is one of very few opportunities to hear her speak. Furthermore, it's one of the few opportunities to hear her talk about herself. Despite her tumultuous life, which could have fueled countless autobiographical songs, Sill rarely wrote confessionals, instead penning spiritual inquisitions. "Jesus Was a Cross Maker" and "The Kiss" both consider the intersections between holy love and worldly love, and "Enchanted Sky Machines", she explains, is about flying saucers rescuing the sensitive people at the end of the world. Appropriately, she sounds liveliest when she's at her piano (which she learned at reform school), pounding out galloping gospel licks for "The Donor" and 50s r&b rhythms on all three versions of "Down Where the Valleys Are Low".
Sill's three appearances on the BBC were recorded within a year of each other, which meant she was pulling from the same pool of songs. As a result, Live in London is heavily repetitive: of the seventeen tracks (not counting the interview), there are only ten different songs. This might have made historical sense if the compilers had kept each set distinct and chronological, especially given that Sill's mood seems to change dramatically from one appearance to another. Instead, the sequencing is out of order, interrupting one set with songs from another even as it enables the strong opening of "Jesus Was a Cross Maker" (from her first appearance) and "Lady-O" (from her second). This might seem like a negligible matter, but in blurring the timeline, it takes the timid, endearing Sill out of her true context and muddies what could have been a truly revealing artifact.
