In the wake of Elliott's death, I spent quite a few days digging back a few years in my memory, remembering live shows, the first times I heard his music, how much I loved Either/Or (the first album of his I bought), how many times I had recommended his music to people, as recently as a couple of months ago... In short, a lot of things I had nearly forgotten about. I submerged myself in a lot of nostalgia, this bigger picture around the core fact that Elliott was now gone. And from that, the idea to make a webpage surfaced. Here it is: a little personal collection of photos, reviews and news articles. I just kinda wanted a place to collect all of it together and share it with fellow fans. I hope you enjoy it.
Contents:
Music Millennium, Portland - September 11, 1998
The Melkweg, Amsterdam - April 5, 2000
Willamette Week story and photos
Music Millennium in-store appearance - September 11, 1998
Elliott appeared at the 23rd Ave. Music Millennium in Portland to support the release of XO. By now, his popularity had reached such a level that the record store handed out priority-entrance wristbands a day or two before the appearance because they expected so many people. Since Portland was an hour drive away for me, I wasn't able to get a wristband, so I thought getting in was a grim hope. In fact, I almost didn't go at all because I was in a bum mood and didn't know if I felt like driving all the way up to Portland to then not even get in. But I went and through a stroke of luck managed to get a good spot and was able to take a few photos, even though they didn't turn out very well. And I was so happy I went because the music was brilliant. I especially remember him playing "I Didn't Understand", replacing the a capella voices on the CD with acoustic guitar and it came out quite lovely.
Afterwards I waited in line to get his autograph, chatted with a friendly guy
behind me and finally met
Janice.
It was just one of those experiences that oozes with so much wonderfulness
that you can hardly stop smiling.
And
on the way back to my car, I found this scratched into the sidewalk and it was
just one more nice little thing to add to the day.
Live at the Melkweg, Amsterdam - April 5, 2000
This
is one of the only times I can think of that I've taken photos at a live concert. I think I mostly did it because I happened to
have black and white film in my camera at the time, and I wanted to see how it
would look. These are the only two photos I took that didn't come out really
blurry. My review of the show and the setlist are
here on Janice's
Elliott show reviews page.
Dealing with the news - October 22, 2003
This is what I wrote on a music website's forum on the day I found out that Elliott had died:
This morning, my boyfriend woke me up at
about 9 with the news, which he had come across by chance when he visited Sweet
Adeline. I was hardly awake when he told me, and I can remember my consciousness
fading in and I re-realized what he had told me. I thought, this is what it felt
like for all the Nirvana fans when Kurt died. I hated realizing how this whole
section of my CDs was suddenly made very precious. I laid in bed trying to catch
a bit more sleep, and an Elliott song starting going through my head, but I
didn't want it there at all. It was Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which I wouldn't even
think is one of my favourite songs, or one of his best, but it was in my head
all day.
Just last night I was reading the Incendiary
interview with Domino and was looking at the photo of Elliott, a nice smiling
one, which has now been used in many of the news stories. It's hard to imagine
that already at that moment, he was probably already dead.
I wonder how it is back in Portland, when everyone who knew him and worked with
him found out the news and what happened, if they all gathered at someone's
house to console each other. I haven't seen one Portland news source yet that's
mentioned it, but places like the Guardian had a story about it. It doesn't feel
right. And with the slow way the news came out, it doesn't feel very real
either.
I did very much feel like the news wasn't quite real, or I couldn't start dealing with it properly, until I heard the news from Portland. It just didn't seem right to be reading about it first on the Guardian or Rolling Stone website. I was especially waiting for the following week's Willamette Week to come out because I felt what they said would reflect how I was feeling. As it turned out, they made the news the cover story and had a section of thoughts from people who knew Elliott and worked with him, as well as a part talking about how connected Elliott and Portland are. I had my mom mail me a paper copy of the issue, which I was very glad to have since it had some little bits and photos that the online version didn't have. Here are some of the photos from that issue of Willamette Week, including a very preppy-looking high school yearbook photo. =)
Below is the story that appeared in The Oregonian:
Ex-Portland songwriter Elliott Smith dies at
34
The influential folk-punk singer, known for
his dark, achingly intimate songs, apparently stabs himself at his Los Angeles
home
10/23/03
MARTY HUGHLEY
Elliott Smith, the former Portland songwriter
whose gorgeous but angst-filled music earned him a passionate following and an
Academy Award nomination, died Tuesday of an apparently self-inflicted knife
wound to the chest.
Smith was found Tuesday afternoon by his
live-in girlfriend at their Los Angeles apartment, and he was pronounced dead
shortly afterward at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California
Medical Center. He was 34.
A statement from DreamWorks, Smith's record
label, summed up his gift succinctly: "He was perhaps his generation's most
gifted singer/songwriter. His enormous talent could change your life with a
whisper."
Smith's visibility within the music world had
declined since his last major release, the album "Figure 8," in 2000. In the
interim, rumors had circulated online and among the musician's friends in
Portland about erratic performances and recurring problems with drug use. But
more recent reports suggested that Smith was once again healthy and productive,
putting the finishing touches on "From a Basement on the Hill," his sixth solo
album.
An interview in the June issue of Under the
Radar magazine quoted Smith talking about battling alcoholism while living in
New York City in the late 1990s and about undergoing an unconventional drug
rehabilitation program in the summer of 2002.
"I'd thought I was going to get this call a
couple of years ago," said producer and recording engineer Larry Crane, whose
Jackpot! Studios Smith helped build in 1997. Crane recently spoke to Smith for
the first time in a year and a half, and he was to have flown to Los Angeles
next month to help finish the album the singer had been working on the past
several months. "He sounded a little shaky, but fine," Crane said.
"It's a horrific loss," said Luke Wood, the
executive at DreamWorks Records who worked closely with Smith. "It seems naive
to say I'm shocked, but I am. Elliott was very focused in the past year and had
exorcised the demons that had haunted him for years. He'd come to understand
that if he wanted to make great records, he had to take care of himself."
Smith not only made great records, but he
also affected the way a lot of other artists have made records during the past
several years, helping to foster an appreciation of a softer, more emotionally
direct sound, both within the rock underground and the pop mainstream. The
conspiratorially hushed approach of his mid- '90s albums "Elliott Smith" and
"Either/Or" recalled the graceful melodic appeal of the Beatles and the
compelling melancholy of Nick Drake, the British folk singer who died of an
antidepressant overdose in 1974.
Smith emerged from the Northwest's punk-rock
milieu, first gaining attention with the Portland band Heatmiser, which landed a
major-label deal with Virgin Records in 1996. But it was the aching and intimate
pop sound of his solo work that brought him mainstream attention, primarily
through the song "Miss Misery," featured in Portland filmmaker Gus Van Sant's
"Good Will Hunting." The tune was nominated for an Academy Award in 1998. The
Oscar telecast featured a memorably incongruous moment: the shy,
self-deprecating, determinedly unglamorous Smith, decked out in an expensive
white suit, stepping onstage arm in arm with glitzy showbiz star Celine Dion.
"His lyrics were always sort of cryptic to
me," said Van Sant, who had considered using Smith's music in "To Die For," one
of his earlier films. "I knew there were songs about drug addiction, and I knew
because of his attitude that he had suffered from depression.
"He was happy that 'Good Will Hunting' was a
popular movie and thought it was odd for him and me to be associated with it,"
Van Sant said. "It was one of the times that his mom could say, 'This is what my
son does,' because his music wasn't the sort of thing she would listen to. So he
was really happy to be part of something mainstream because of his mom."
Smith was born Steven Paul Smith on Aug. 6,
1969, in Omaha, Neb. He adopted the name Elliott while in high school,
reportedly because his given name seemed "too jockish." He spent his childhood
near Dallas, Texas, where he began his musical training at age 9, winning a
local award for original composition at age 10. As a high school sophomore, he
moved with his father to Portland and attended Lincoln High School, where he was
a National Merit scholar.
Smith later attended Hampshire College in
Amherst, Mass., where he majored in philosophy and political science and met
Neil Gust, with whom he formed the band Heatmiser after returning to Portland.
Smith began releasing solo albums, beginning with 1994's "Roman Candle" on
Portland's Cavity Search label. Attention for his solo work soon eclipsed that
for the band, which broke up in late 1996.
Smith moved to New York in 1997 but was seen
frequently in Portland for a few years. He moved to Los Angeles when he began
working on "Figure 8."
For Pete Krebs, who met Smith in the early
'90s when Krebs' band Hazel and Heatmiser both started, Smith's passing in a
sense marks the end of the fertile '90s Portland rock scene.
"It's heartbreaking in that it's the end of a
chapter for a lot of people," he said. "Usually you measure that by small things
like, 'Wow, you're married now!' Or 'I can't believe you have two kids!' Or
'What's it like living in Nashville?' But something like this removes any shadow
of a doubt."
Smith's death, though, will be felt beyond Portland, by anyone who was -- or
will be -- drawn into the dark yet redeeming world of his music.
"Like most great artists, he saw the world as
both a beautiful and a brutal place," said Wood, the DreamWorks executive. "He
found a way to explore the space in between those. Obviously, it's all the more
tragic in that his songs were a dialogue between love and loss. And in the end,
he didn't get the upper end of the conversation."
Smith is survived by his parents, Bunny Welch
and Gary Smith, a sister, a half brother and a half sister. Funeral arrangements
are pending.
Staff writer Shawn Levy of The Oregonian and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sweet Adeline - The Official Elliott Smith Site
Kill Rock Stars (who wrote my favourite description of Elliott's music, to describe the Speed Trials 7" in their catalogue: "Light years more sincere than 'folk' & way past the power of 'punk'. This is nonreligious gospel for the disbeliever.")
A great interview with Elliott from March 2003 that appeared in Under the Radar. Be sure to click on the link at the end that goes to the quotes that didn't make it into the article.
Margaret Cho remembers Elliott
Created December 14, 2003
Last update: March 21, 2006