This is a very sad story, by now you have probably heard that Peaches Geldof, daughter of singer-songwriter and activist Bob Geldof, died at the very young age of 25 on Monday. No cause of death has been determined yet, but it was reported she struggled with depression and drugs, and her mother Paula Yates died of a drug overdose in September 2000, when Peaches was just 11. However, I wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions, as we don’t know what happened. People also say she had become dangerously thin before she died, she had lost a lot of pounds because of some dangerous diet… so who knows what happened she may have had a heart attack?
But what also drew my attention was this article in Telegraph revealing that Peaches was an Elliott Smith’s fan: ‘The 25-year-old wrote movingly of Elliott Smith, an American songwriter who is thought to have killed himself at the age of 34 in California after enduring years of mental illness and addiction problems.’
Well don’t get me start with that part! But it is unfortunately the way Elliott is perceived in the media, a drug addict with a mental illness, I suppose all these Spin articles and Schultz-type of book have done their damage. No matter how often people will say and write that Elliott was doing much better when he died, that he had been cleaned of drugs for over a year and had no alcohol, no drugs (just a normal dose of antidepressants) in his system the day he died, media will always report this erroneous idea of the depressed drug addict.
And Peaches may have been victim of the same thing, believing too much the media, the book, the caricature: ‘Two weeks ago Miss Geldof posted a photograph showing a battered copy of an Elliott Smith biography by William Todd Schultz, revealing she had obtained a hardback version better able to cope with frequent reading.’ […] ‘Three weeks ago Miss Geldof was asked on Twitter whether she believed her favorite artist had killed himself. She replied: ‘Of course he did.’
No wonder she thought he killed himself after reading this bias book! May be she should have be more careful and more informed, it is so easy to buy this simple idea that Elliott was this sad sack in love with depression (a line from Schultz!!). Peaches loved Elliott’s work, there is no doubt, anecdotes like these demonstrate it:
‘A month ago she wrote a lengthy post on the meaning behind Smith’s song “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands”, which she described as “his most vitriolic song” about friends who sought to rescue him from drug abuse.’
“He speaks as someone who understands depression and drug abuse, someone who lives with it every day, sarcastically praising his sober and mostly happy friends for their failed mission to save him from something they could never understand,” she said.
‘Note to self- maybe consider listening to some other musicians…’ she wrote.
But this will not serve Elliott’s legacy well, once again a depressed young woman who had lost her mother to drug addiction, and may be killed herself directly or indirectly, recognized herself too much in Elliott’s songs…. Would the Telegraph have written such an article if Peaches had admired Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift? No because it would not have fitted their cliché of depressed people liking depressed people, Peaches flirting with drugs and dead at 25 while adoring Elliott who stabbed himself in the heart? This is too good to be true and this is what the media want. Peaches was so young and had two kids, Astala 23 months and Phaedra 12 months, at the end this is a very sad story.