In only a few years, Elliott Smith was interviewed quite a lot and many of his answers have been quoted by fans, magazines. They just paint a picture of who he was, his regard on the world of music and the world in general, and if this is a side of him that is only known by fans, many things he said are really worth mentioning.
Several of his quotes were of course on songwriting, about which he had precise answers and clever ideas. For Elliott, songs were like dreams, moods, abstractions, invisible metaphors, and less personal than we may think:
‘I’m really glad they like (the songs), I get super-attached to other people’s songs, too.
But there’s only so much you can know about someone based on the songs they sing, or a painting they made. You can know a little bit about someone if they tell you about the dream they had last night. You still don’t know what they’re like during the day.’
‘Metaphors work a lot better when you don’t draw attention to the fact that they’re metaphors.’
‘My songs aren’t a journal or a diary. They’re just moods.’
‘I think the suggestion that all my songs are personal is insulting because that assumes that I have a bunch of issues that I feel the need to unload on strangers. That is not the case. It also assumes that I just talk about myself the whole time which, again, is not true.’
‘I just think of them [songs] as being real. I look for songs that are sort of happy and sad at the same time, that have conflicting feelings coexisting. I think there should be more words that represent that kind of combination. Melancholy is the only one that people really use, and that one has a huge stigma. It’s essentially used to mean dark, when I think what it’s actually supposed to mean is that combination. What’s the point in a one-dimensional song? There’s gotta be a certain amount of darkness so the happy parts pop out. It’s like a bright color. It won’t look so bright surrounded only by other bright colors. It would just sort of be hard on the eye.’
‘There’s a humor and a ‘fuck you’ insistence in those songs which is also a weird kind of optimism, but people only seem to hear the darker tone.’
‘I liked short pop songs that conveyed a great intensity, even if they were not loud and fast. My goal, even with acoustic sounds is to find that energy again, the energy of punk.’
‘I just try and make connections between things. I’m not so interested in telling complete stories anymore – now I like it better if the songs are like abstract movies… The song won’t complete itself without someone activating their imagination. The music is supposed to do that. A lot of my favorite songs are ones that aren’t complete without me finishing them in my head.’
He said he did not pay too much attention on music critics, but he was taking the art of songwriting very seriously:
‘Everybody’s an expert when it comes to music. If it was a painting, they’d have to go ask somebody else who knew something about painting. But since it’s pop music, everybody feels in a position to criticize people. It really bothers me when I think about it. So I don’t think about it very much.’
‘Those are the two big enemies. Bitterness and style. If I can escape both, then I’ll be happy.’
Inevitably, he had to confront the preconceived idea he was a depressed songwriter writing sad music:
‘There’s a difference between ‘real’ and ‘depressing’, and if real equals depressing to somebody then that’s too bad.’
‘There’s such a pressure to be happy and successful and for everyone to be a winner in America. That’s such a joke. And you’re meant to project that image at all times otherwise you’re a loser. Then if you complain about the cult of the winner, people assume you are espousing the cult of the outsider.’
‘I’m not interested in trying to make depressing music for the sake of it. There’s a difference between depressing and real. You’re not necessarily depressed just because you don’t agree with the contrived happiness of TV culture. I was attracted to the dark side because I didn’t hear it on the radio. All I heard was false pop bullshit cult-of-the-winner crap and i reacted to that. But if I could come up with a joyous song like Smokey Robinson or Stevie Wonder, I’d be really happy.’
‘I think a lot of fuss was made about whether I’m personally happy or not, what difference does it make? just because somebody doesn’t go around singing jubilant songs doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily more happy or unhappy than anybody else. It’s like if you have a bad dream, does that mean you’re not a happy person? Dreams are the same place that songs come from.’
On creativity, he had this to say:
My problem is that I have too much free time. Writing songs isn’t a full-time job… so I ruminate. I truly hope the future will give me something to be nostalgic over, because at the moment, there aren’t a lot of things i can remember with warmth. To kill worry, I write. I try to maintain my brain activity, constantly thinking about my songs. Because if I worry, I begin to drink… I must always battle against this idleness.
‘The creativity is inevitably the result of a problem. There is certainly a lack in my life. But my songs aren’t depressive, that I find all people and life depressing. If my writing is found so sad, it’s maybe because, in rock, writers cheat, we feign a bit. When I call myself shit in a song, it’s something I regularly tell myself: it’s not depressing, just honest. Why forbid the accessibility of these kinds of feelings in songs? I do music, and some other people earn money from it. When the well ha
s dried up, they will throw me in. But I won’t cry, I never need compliments. But people aren’t ever fair. I’ve been ill treated, but I’ve lived. I’ve come to the point where I just hang on.
s dried up, they will throw me in. But I won’t cry, I never need compliments. But people aren’t ever fair. I’ve been ill treated, but I’ve lived. I’ve come to the point where I just hang on.
You could tell his craft was reflecting his philosophy about life in general, and some of these quotes translate a real existentialist point of view about life.
‘Is music supposed to be a tool to get you somewhere else? No, it’s just worth doing on its own.’
‘I just like the idea of figure 8, of figure skaters trying to make this self-contained perfect thing that takes a lot of effort but essentially goes nowhere.’
‘I think there’s ways in which, even in pretty desperate situations, there’s little micro victories inside them. And if you can highlight those..’
‘I think no one ever lives up to their potential, and that’s not a negative thing, though it sounds like that in my songs. I mean it does burn me out sometimes. But it’s impossible to live up to your potential in this world because if you can, potential itself is not worth very much. People are infinitely more capable than what they end up showing.’
‘Playing things too safe is the most popular way to fail’
‘Hell is like really posh restaurants full of winners. I hate winners.”
‘I think that’s a Western notion of demonizing inactivity. No one can be productive all the time’.
‘When I hear people sing about things that might reveal something of them, I take it as a sign of strength.’
Honesty was his thing, and he had a unique and genuine way to look for a real optimism and some meaning of life in unexpected and unconventional places.