Biography
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Born
20 August 1937
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Born In
Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah, United States
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Died
25 June 2009 (aged 71)
Born Richard Marsh in Salt Lake City, Sky Saxon rose to fame for two years with hits like "Pushin' Too Hard" as the lead singer of the seminal garage rock band from Los Angeles, The Seeds.
After failing to become a teenage pop idol in the early 60's, Marsh and some friends founded this band that was highly trippy two years before psychedelic music had a name and raw and trashy a decade before the punks. After leading The Seeds from 1965 to 1972, he joined the Family Sorce, a spiritual community of followers of a middle-aged restaurant-owner-turned-guru knows as Father Yod and later YaHoWa. Saxon changed his name to Sunlight and dedicated himself to Eastern mysticism, respecting Earth, not eating meat nor letting love become carnal. In the community he took part of one or two of the dozen of unusual psychedelic recordings they used to make in the mid 70's.
Although Sky Sunlight Saxon never abandoned his new faith, the group
of hippies got loose after the death of mentor YaHoWa, and Sky Sunlight Saxon moved away and recorded with a number of short-lived bands, including Seeds reunions twice and side musicians who had been in bands like Steppenwolf and Iron Buttlerfly. He kept performing sporadically through the 80's, 90's and 00's, never changing his garage psychedelic approach that much, until he died of heart and liver failure on the 25th of June, 2009. But the legacy he left as a cult hero, eccentric old hippie, pioneer of psychedelia and precursor of punk rock remain untouched.
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