Interview by Barney Hoskyns
Barney sat down with Elliott Smith in New York City in 1998. This was shortly after Smith’s memorable performance at the Oscars. Hear the full 43-minute interview on RocksBackpages.com.
The Animated Transcript
Barney Hoskyns is an author and is the editorial director of Rock’s Backpages, the online library of pop writing.
Oh, definitely. Yeah, there’s a bunch of Elvis Costello records that like… when I was in high school, just made all the difference between feeling like a total freak and feeling like … only a freak. A freak among other freaks.
Tell me how your very distinctive, soft vocal style kind of emerged.
I didn’t like how I sounded singing in my band, but it was hard to sing like how I wanted to because playing live I had to just be at the top of my lungs all the time, and it made me sound like I had a really bad cold or something. It sounds really hoarse and macho and weird. [laughs] I mean I’ve been doing four-track songs by myself since I was like a teenager, where I’d sing in a way that I … I just didn’t think other people would like it, so I didn’t play it for them but eventually I got over that, which I’m happy that I did, because it’s kind of a drag to be playing a kind of music that you don’t really like as much as another kind.
Obviously some people have given you some sort of folk music tag and it just seems to be to be pretty off the mark.
That really bothered me right at first, when I first started playing, people would be like, “Paul Simon.” I’d be like, “I don’t feel like I’m anything like Paul Simon.”
How much of your writing about, let’s not call them addicts, let’s call them dependents, how much of that is based on subjective experience and how much is just based on being an observer?
I’m definitely in them, but on the other hand it’s not like a diary or anything. But, yeah, it’s good to call them dependents, because that was the point, as opposed to them being songs strictly about drugs or… There’s lots of ways people can be dependent, on another person, or drugs, or… I think everybody has that… Those two irreconcilable …
Impulses.
Constant… Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks, but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else. People are so… seem so chaotic internally, but being filtered through some form, like making a record, sort of filters it down into something that can be understood. It’s hard to represent chaos, or like an absence of something. It’s much easier to represent the presence of something or a situation. People can be chaos but it’s hard to fit it into some creative piece that you made. It’s hard.
Listening to Either/Or, I was kind of struck by how well it does manage to juggle sweetness and pain. Is it too easy to say these songs are kind of melancholy, there’s a lot of sorrowful quality to Elliott Smith’s music?
Yeah, they don’t make me sad or feel sorrowful to me, but on the other hand I’m not… a lot of people are kind of depressed. I’m happy some of the time, and some of the time I’m not. But like when I see a movie, for example, that I really like, that moves me or whatever, it’s usually happy and sad at the same time. Certain songs just feel a way that’s hard to put into words and it’s not happy and it’s also not really sad but I couldn’t say what it is.
You lived in these very different parts of America. Dallas, Portland, Brooklyn, is a kind of interesting triangle, there.
Actually, I’ve been thinking about moving somewhere, out of the US, maybe, just to get out of here.
Whereabouts are you thinking of going?
I don’t know, I have no idea. Somewhere where people aren’t so mad would be nice, but I don’t know if there is anywhere like that. Who knows?
Was Elliott Smith Murdered?
Jennifer Chiba [Smith’s girlfriend{ said she heard a scream on October 21, 2003. She went into the living room of the apartment and found Smith with a kitchen knife sticking out of his chest. Despite emergency surgery, Smith was pronounced dead 20 minutes after arriving at hospital.
Rumors swirled after Smith’s death that he hadn’t committed suicide–despite reports Chiba found a Post-It note from Smith that read, “I’m so sorry, love, Elliott. God forgive me”.
The coroner’s report helped fuel the fire:
While his history of depression is compatible with suicide… and the location and direction of the stab wounds are consistent with self-infliction, several aspects of the circumstances (as they are known at this time) are atypical of suicide and raise the possibility of homicide. More
Remembered in Silverlake
The cover for “Figure 8,” the final album Smith released before his death, was shot outside Solutions Studios in Los Angeles.
After Smith died, fans turned the wall into a makeshift memorial/tribute to him, covering it with messages and graffiti, and leaving candles, notes, and other ephemera in remembrance. The wall has been at the center of controversy several times over disagreements in the community over how it should be maintained.
Credit: Lux Than Zero
Elliott Smith sings, Paul Thomas Anderson directs
Director Paul Thomas Anderson directed this pilot for the ‘Jon Brion Show’ for VH1 back in the late 90’s. The show never actually aired, but we do have this footage of Elliott Smith covering John Lennon and Big Star, plus some of his own songs.
Listen to more Smith covers
The Beatles – “Waterloo Sunset”
Hank Williams – “Lost Highway”
Elliott Smith’s Final Album
From a Basement on the Hill was a 15-song collection released after Smith’s death. He was working on the album at the time of his death, and it was completed posthumously with oversight from his estate.
Listen to him play “King’s Crossing” live.
CREDITS
Executive Producer
David Gerlach
Animator
Patrick Smith
Audio Producer
Amy Drozdowska
Music
Elliott Smith
“2:45 A.M.”
“Between the Bars”
“Either/Or”