The Turtles Cover Judee Sill's "Lady-O" (1969)/Flo & Eddie Interview Lou Reed on the Midnight Special/Turtlesmania

Is the Turtles cover of "Lady-O" not one of the best pre-solo Sill covers out there and a great early promo film to boot (what ranch is that?). Flo & Eddie in the early 70's were on such a great roll: Mothers, T.Rex (Slider, Electric Warrior), Alice (Billion Dollar Babies) and their own 1973 lp with a GREAT Small Faces cover ("Afterglow"). I recently came across the Lou Reed connection again which I had forgotten about with the barn archive Bottom Line clipping and the Midnight Special interview (a sceen capture for you as well!). Also digging the Turtles "Outside Chance" with one of the best "Taxman" lifts outside of "Start."

Are Those Iggy Stooge - Judee Sill Rumors True?/"Kinda Chipmunky"/"Where I Came From I Was a Legend" [repost from March 2011]

I had never really given it much thought, but I guess we can thank the alignment of Judee Sill and Iggy Stooge with providing the title of the Dead Boys' debut "Young, Loud & Snotty." Is it some mere coincidence that Iggy provided the phrase in early 1973 and one of his biggest disciples - he of the apocryphal peanut butter handling and rated second only to Jim Morrison as rock vocal stylist by Mr. Pop - usurps the term for the lp. Maybe Cheetah Chrome can confirm that the phrase was from Iggy - I'm guessing in a contemporaneous interview it may say so. [ed. - thank you Cheetah for confirming back in 2011]. And to think Judee Sill triggered it in a contemptuous putdown, possibly by the very OGWT performance posted here a few months back. Time machine me back to the double bill of Roy Harper and Judee.

Psyche Pscene News/The Kaliedescopic Eyes of Alice Cooper/FM Classic Rock

Last month in LA I found Psyche Pscene News out of Chicago which billed itself as "Chicago's First 'Rock' Newspaper." Says so right on the masthead so it must be true. None other than 1971 "Love It To Death"-era Alice stares at you on the cover.

Psyche Pscene News grew out of Psyche Pscene which started at least as early as 1968. Psyche Pscene claimed that it was "for and about Young Chicago" and covered your usual head bands of the day. Apparently editor Joe Gino (also one of Tiny Tim's favorite photographers), either founded or owned the Chicago area rock club Elysian Fields.

Looking at the listings for Chicago in January of 1972, did I know that Judee Sill opened for Bread? Was Sonny Sharrock still playing with Herbie Mann into 1972? The Allmans are a no brainer as are "Fireball/Machine Head" era Deep Purple and the Hag.

Does Ian really claim that "Highway Star"is going to be our opening number for the next year or two? Deep Purple toured the US four times in 1972!

Nothing really out of the ordinary with Psyche Pscene News. The Faces review is dead on if you like the Faces. Recently finished Arthur Kane's GREAT autobiography "I, Doll" on the founding and first few years of the Dolls and he gives his unqualified Dolls approval to the Faces. Steve Jones played many tracks off this album on his radio show with some great teenage anectdotes. Bangs' Stewart book made me buy all the Faces lps when I was a teenager and I still like to think that he wouldn't have disowned his opinions on those lps in the end even with the horrid background to the writing of that book.

Though it ain't Rock Marketplace or Who Put the Bomp, Psyche Pscene News did try to have a historical column like the one here on Fairport Convention. Man, did Fairport have great taste in covers early on! Richard and Mimi, Tim Buckley, the Merry-Go-Round etc etc. Iain Matthews is the one who really kept up that kinda taste in Southern Comfort and his early solo lps. Digging that first Fairport lp without Sandy and seeing Thompson doing his best Avalon Ballroom/Filmore/JA styled modal soloing. Yes, Lydia, Television were kinda like the Dead or JA with haircuts but whoever said that was a bad thing. Enjoy, Sandy performing solo from the timeless The North Star Grassman and the Ravens which is from around the same time. There is a longer clip from the same session well worth tracking down. Following on the Fairport Merry Go Round cover, some solo Emitt as well.

Judee Sill/The Outside Man/Weisberg 4/Hit Parader

Not many people bridge our love of Masque-era punk and the golden age of the Los Angeles singer-songwriters. Judee Sill did that via her fleeting relationship with Brendan Mullen in 1975.* I remember reading Mullen’s first hand account of his brief affair with Sill several years ago (before her recent critical reappraisal, reissues and popular ascendency), and it really registered with me. The perfectly formed music almost mathematical in its construction coupled with crystalline religious/personal lyrics – nearly the only religious lyrics I can stomach in popular music outside of born-again Dylan - made by what Mullen likened to a huge, reptilian "serpentine cadaver" into Rosicrucian manuscripts and Aleister Crowley's "Snowdrops." Mullen could be describing a seduction right out of the Jimmy Page 70's playbook? And no, I am not even considering your private press, thrift store, religious lps or xian psych records. Forget the late night, “higher key” gold, “Ladies of the Canyon” folk singers. Start naming those lps and who recorded two back to back that hold up with such a consistency? I can recall not so long ago when you could still find the Sill lps in the fifty cent bins of record stores. What other Asylum artist (other than perhaps the first J.D. Souther and Clark’s “No Other”) warrants your hard earned dollars in 2010?

But I am getting ahead of myself here. I have been working on a biopic script of Sills life. The casting I have pitched so far includes Warren Ellis and Seth Rogan as Flo and Eddie (for "Lady-O" era Turtles) and James Franco as David Geffen. Ricky has decided I will play Graham Nash based upon my current resemblance to "Wild Tales" era Nash and my propensity to collect and take photographs. The role of Sills is the tricky proposition. I do know that whoever plays Sills will likely score Oscar gold. The story has such a tragic element to it and for me personally, the locales are all so familiar: the San Fernando Valley, bank robbing arrogant junkies, reform school musicians, prostitution, the Association and the Turtles, Encino, Echo Park, the Trobadour, Souther, Geffen, Mama Cass, Nash, Crosby and a pit stop at the Source. Think "Cisco Pike" meets "Dusty and Sweets McGee" with a sideswipe at Jacques Deray's "Un Homme est mort" (the Outside Man).

Speaking of “The Outside Man/Un homme est mort,” the Jesus freaks of Hollywood Boulevard in the early 1970’s were real and slipped into popular culture worldwide via the then current music and films. "The Outside Man" has some of the best footage of 1971 Los Angeles outside of "Cisco Pike" and "Dusty and Sweets McGee." Starring Ann-Margret, Roy Scheider, Jackie Earle Haley, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Angie Dickinson, the film goes from downtown to LAX, Beverly Hills to Hollywood Boulevard, Santa Monica to Ventura Boulevard. The still below, right there at Hollywood and Vine, shows Jean-Louis Trintignant unknowingly picking up a cartoonish, Jesus freak hitchhiker clad in all denim not long for this life.



How prevalent were these folks on Hollywood Blvd, Santa Monica Blvd and the Sunset Strip? So prevalent that Bernie Taupin after EJ’s Troubadour run latched onto it with the lyrical turn that you couldn’t keep off the radio in 1971: “Jesus freaks out in the street/handing tickets out for God/ Turning back she just laughs, the boulevard is not that bad." Of course, you won’t admit knowing those lines (though Alice Bag might), but they are from “Tiny Dancer" from “Madman Across the Water." Did Geffen think that Sill could clean up with a whole lp of similar lyrics for the jesus and junk crowd?

By chance I recently read a fascinating and wide-ranging 1973 interview with David Geffen and Elliot Roberts in Hit Parader, the sister publication of Rock Scene, and was struck by the image above of Judee Sill, which I don’t think I have seen reproduced since. Seeing that image in the barn archive is what inspired the whole post really. The photo of Sill above is captioned as a Geffen signing for Asylum with no mention of her in the article at all though Geffen in the interview has some harsh words for Grand Funk Railroad and already has dollar signs in his eyes for Frey and Henley who were finished with work on their sophmore lp. GFR deserves their own post for "owning" the rock and roll world along with the Coop circa 1972-73 but are also written out of the history books or derided as mere cartoon rock. Here is a gratuitous scan of my euro 45 from the barn archive:





Then I finally finished Fred Goodman's "The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce," which is highly recommended for an insight into those artists and at other times a nauseating mash note to some of the Boss' handlers. Great Dylan anectdotes and a fuller picture of Landau, John Sinclair and “Back in the USA.” I kept asking myself where the hell was Judee Sill. She's not even mentioned at all in connection with Asylum or Geffen-Roberts management which only merits mention of Young, Henley, Frey, Souther, Jackson Browne and Ned Doheney. While Goodman's tome is highly recommended for those interested in how we get from Albert Grossman to Geffen to the producer credits on "Avatar," the book by now is already totally outdated by the developments in the record industry (a footnote even discusses the profits of the consolidated dinosaur industry where the suggested retail price was $15.98 for a cd - where was Tom Petty when that price was laid on us!) Sill captured the zeitgeist of that time like few others ("Raw Power" among others). She meant it man and she lived it. The records didn’t sell, and as Goodman recounts without mentioning Sill, Geffen was mostly into personally marketing his pretty boy Eagles and Browne, rebuffed her personally as we know and the downward slide to 1979 began. Sill is also absent in the semi-recent "definitive" tome on Laurel Canyon. Where the hell is Judee Sill? Everyone pays homage to her now but she is erased until the recent reissues.

For Sill completeists here is a leftfield source. A&M recording artist and flautist Tim Weisberg is not someone I thought I would give any spotlight to on this page, but nevertheless, he had Sill and Mr. Tommy Pelteir appear on Weisberg 4. Watch how these records disappear from the 25 cents bins. What a beatific glow off that hair and backlighting!!

Not looking unlike the Jesus freaks out of The Outside Man," these folks allowed Sill onto their record. The results clearly speak for Sill as auteur. She owns these tracks and they sound like instrumental interludes off "Heart Food." Enjoy:









Just a couple of extras. Sill on the OGWT 1973:



Two covers of "Jesus Was a Crossmaker." I guess Graham still had some pull with the Hollies on the "Romany" lp and then there is Mama Cass:

As soon as I can rip a version off the Hollies lp I will post it here as it is the superior cover version.

* Mullen's account has been removed from the net in recent years. Hoskyns quoted from it in his 2007 Sill profile in the Guardian. Another individual who links the Masque and the LA introspective singer-songwriter is Beck Hansen. His own work and his grandfather naming the Masque and witnessing his dad record the likes of the Screamers and the Controllers will be the subject of our future interview with Beck .