Judee Sill is one of rock's more interesting and lesser-known stories. Because of her troubled family history she was looking for an escape from reality. After surviving a heroin addiction and a brief stint as a bank robber, Sill turned her rather intense passions to music. She released two albums and partially completed a third album before her death in 1979. Sill's music was complex, elegantly crafted and yet completely devoid of pretension or overwrought melodrama. Unfairly lumped in with other female, proto-adult contemporary songwriters like Joni Mitchell or Carole King, Sill was much closer in spirit to Brian Wilson, Nick Drake, or one her idols, J.S. Bach. She had a gift for making very complicated things sound simple, beautiful. The second album Judee Sill made, proved to be her last. Instead of using an outside arranger for the strings for her album Heart Food (as she did on her previous album Judee Sill, Sill did all of the work herself.
