The couple lived in Las Vegas for a time, but both developed crippling heroin addictions within months. When Sill moved back to California, she resorted to sex work, scams, and check forgery to support her habit. A string of narcotics and forgery offenses sent her to jail, and she learned that her brother Dennis had suddenly died of a liver infection. When she got out, she immediately set to work as a song composer. Music career Sill encountered Graham Nash and David Crosby and toured with them for a time as their opening act. After some initial interest from Atlantic Records, David Geffen offered her a contract with his new Asylum label. She sold her song "Lady-O" to the Turtles, and was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone. Harris worked on her first album and was involved with the Turtles (which led to his short stint as keyboardist with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention in 1971). Graham Nash produced her first album's first single, "Jesus Was a Cross Maker", released to radio on October 1, 1971. The album Judee Sill was released on September 15, 1971. It featured Sill's voice in multiple overdubs, often in a four-part chorale or fugue. She worked with engineer Henry Lewy, noted for his work with Joni Mitchell throughout the 1970s. The album was not a commercial success. In January and February 1973, she was the support act on a tour of the UK by Roy Harper. Sill took over the orchestration and arrangements on her second album Heart Food, which included "The Donor". Heart Food was released in March 1973 and was critically acclaimed, but sold poorly, leading to the end of her association with Geffen and Asylum Records. Sill's friends have said that she lacked the resilience to cope with poor album sales and bad reviews of her work, and that she was dropped after she refused to perform as an opening act, a task she disliked. According to another source, Geffen pulled support for Heart Food and refused to release any more of her records after Sill, frustrated over what she perceived as his lack of support for her career, publicly referred to him by using a homophobic slur (she either called Geffen "fat fag" on stage or referred to his "faggoty pink shoes"). She continued to write songs, and in 1974, began to record new material for a planned third