I don’t want to.” David McConnell, who worked with Smith on and off for two years, producing, engineering and collaborating on ‘From a Basement on a Hill’ (completed and released after Smith’s death) offers an insight to this period working with Elliott. “He was upset with the experience with Jon… [Smith had just had recording sessions severed with Jon Brion – apparently Brion struggled to deal with the level of drug abuse taking place - Ed]… but he was upset with so much in life at that time.We saw revitalisation and positive outcomes in the new approach but of course there were hiccups along the way. Usually it was something like a disagreement on something meaningless and we wouldn’t speak for three days, then it would be back to work. He was definitely self aware and wanted to reach for the positive outcome but it was such a challenge for him. “He was meticulous with the music,” McConnell elaborates,“not so much with communication, although he had his bright moments. He was shy if you weren’t close to him. After we got close he basically talked my ear off sometimes and I would have to leave the room to get some space. He also had a great sense of humour. Super silly sometimes which I liked because I could join right in with that.We even had little late night skit kind of things where we would do impersonations and stuff for laughs.” The emphasis on Smith’s humour is one that reappears over and over again whenever I speak with people. His wry, quiet smirks and softly spoken cracks lie in stark contrast to the doom and gloom often on offer. Russell Simins from the John Spencer Blues Explosion was a friend and collaborator and remembers a playful, animated side to their introduction. “Our tour manager was a really good friend of Elliott’s and she brought him around to a few shows of ours when we were out in the Pacific Northwest and there was Elliott on the side of the stage grooving to our music, moving, bopping, pretty much dancing unabashedly throughout our set. The first of these shows he came to and danced on the side he introduced himself to me and said he was a huge fan of our band and my drumming. He said on more than one occasion that I was one of his two favourite drummers, the other being Steven Drozd (who appeared on ‘From a Basement on a Hill). Man, that was something else to hear that from someone I admired so much. And he would follow that up with one of the reasons he loved our band was because it always made him wanna dance. It was both really touching and just funny coming from someone like Elliott. His honesty and brashness was something else.”. Benjamin Nugent, author of Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing also had his viewpoint changed during the process of researching and writing his book. “I think I started with an image in my head of a guy in a bar in Portland falling off his stool and crying,” he tells me, “which was a side of Elliott Smith you hear in his music, but not the centre of who he was.” While friend and collaborator Pete Kreb says,“My memory of Elliott isn’t of a stupid junkie shadow of his former self. I remember the guy who was always cracking jokes.” Luke Wood, who worked with Elliott at Dreamworks (The label he moved to after Kill Rock Stars, the indie that launched him) once offered, quite astutely, “To Elliott, life was a very beautiful and brutal place, and his songs were that ground in between.”
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mith released five LP’s in his career – ‘Roman Candle’, ‘Elliott Smith’, ‘Either/Or’, ‘XO’ and ‘Figure 8’ – and on those records he moved from the early-day rudimentary – almost entirely acoustic – musings that held an eerie, forceful power, tantamount to listening to the gust and roar of an orchestra filtered through one singular voice and gliding guitar pick to bolder, occasionally sweeping, full-band productions that swung between full-on pop realisations in homage to his childhood heroes The Beatles and ones that almost seemed set out to undermine those same artistic inclinations. “Playing things too safe is the most popular way to fail,” he said. Perhaps it’s the fragility in his voice that leads to so much presumptuous despair about his music. It’s simultaneously softer and harder than a whisper. It sails like the wind but wobbles like a tree shaking in the power of a gale. Did Elliott Smith spend evenings sat alone, propped up at bars, crying into whiskey glasses while filling up his notebook? Supposedly, yes, he did. But was he also someone who would pop off his shirt and sing drunkenly along to the Stooges? Also, apparently so. Lou Barlow of Dinosaur Jr and Sebadoh remembered Smith touchingly in 2003, offering a firsthand glimpse into the misplaced complexity and charm of the man. Said Barlow: “I was in Reykjavik when I called home and Kath told me what had happened. I responded with tears ‘why’d he have to go do that?’, but I knew why, he’d been suffering for a long time. “I first met Elliott on my birthday in Boston years ago, mid ’90s, he was playing in town that night. I had heard a record, the self-titled one; I was captivated, intrigued and jealous. Someone had come along with
‘Th e b i g g e s t m i s c o n c e pti o n i s th at E l l i ott w a s a s a d-s a c k f o l k a rti st’
songs so sad and beautiful – the nervous guitar, the whisper voice, it sounded like what I was after but never quite reached. My friend Ramona dragged me backstage; he and I talked and got on well. Soon enough Elliott Smith was opening for Sebadoh – the ‘Harmacy’ tour. Lots of people heard him for the first time then and lots of people talked right over him. Funny thing is, he preferred it that way, when the crowds were quiet it made him uneasy. I related to that back then.We did a drive from Phoenix to San Diego, the two of us in his rental car; we talked the whole way. I was beginning to reach the uneasy conclusion that Sebadoh needed a new drummer, he talked about leaving Heatmiser and continuing alone, the difficult decisions we were making and the reality of hurting friends, the implications of changing. Elliott had a lot of insights that helped me gain perspective; he was a very intelligent guy.There was a darkness to him as well, but beautiful. “I saw him off and on after that at shows, he moved to LA a little while after I did. He had become famous, was under incredible pressure, touring and recording constantly – he fell back into drugs. I went to a small get together for his birthday this summer at a local bar, I talked to him a little, he seemed younger, softer, more childlike. It was a change from the person I had met. I had noticed it before but now it really struck me, everything had taken a toll on him. I wasn’t surprised when I got the news, he did seem happier lately but you never know. I’m sad he didn’t make it, I’m sad for the people that loved him. I’ve been remembering things about him: he taught me to play croquet, he was fucking good at it too; we didn’t know each other at the time but we both lived in Northampton, circa ’89 and he worked in our favourite supermarket – we loved the bakery, turns out he worked in the bakery. Elliott Smith made delicious blueberry muffins; he did ‘13’, a Big Star song during a sound check on the Sebadoh tour and brought me to tears, the first time a peer’s voice made me cry; I watched him sing along with ‘Raw Power’ (by the Stooges). I believe he took his shirt off, we had drunken, excited plans for a ‘Raw Power’ tribute band. Elliott on vocals, of course.” Re-reading quotes, articles, reports, memories and reflections of someone who died so atrociously has been testing and emotionally battering, and I’m not even someone who has been harassed into speaking about it over and over again for the last 10 years. It is an article that I wish I had never proposed writing. Despite many positive responses to my angle of questioning and intent from interviewees, 10 years on, the death of Elliott Smith remains as tragic and heartbreaking as ever, just as it will in another 10 years, but it’s not just a story to be told and re-told that is devoid of feelings, nor should it be an excuse to pitch an article, book, film or documentary to tie in with something you can make money from. I, for one, will be leaving the memory of Elliott Smith well and truly alone from here on in. His records can offer me more than I can ever offer in return, and I leave these closing words to close friend Sean Croghan, who laments on the liner notes of Smith’s posthumous LP ‘New Moon’ incredibly movingly. “I feel both lucky and distraught that I knew him so well. Lucky that I was privileged to get that close to genius, distraught that everyday I miss my friend and I can’t find him in the night no matter how hard I look.”