How did we end up here?
Yesterday I posted a cut and paste job off spinner.com about Elliott Smith fans being upset over the re-mastering of two of Elliott Smith’s best albums by the Smith’s producer, friend, and the executor of Smith’s musical archives, Larry Crane. I refered to Smith as a suicide and I compared the remastering as potentially the equivalent of editing the end of James Joyce “Ulysess”
Crane wasn’t particularly impressed with the post and that’s fine but the first line read: “Speaking of cleaning up, your facts on Elliott’s passing are incorrect”.
So I looked into it further and while I have no interest in conspiracy theories as such, Smoking Gun have the police department calling the manner of Smith’s death inconclusive.
I posted a retraction and I posted the smoking gun report.
This morning our old friend Anonymous advised us that Larry Crane has not yet gone on the record as to having doubts as to whether Smith’s death was a suicide.
So we have come from uber-fans and crackpots, to Smoking Gun, to one of Smith’s closest friends now shedding doubt through rock nyc as to how Smith died.
This is news and I agree with Anonymous. Nothing is more important, much more important than whether fans except a minor tweaking of the albums, than whether Smith killed himself or was killed.
Anonymous is precisely right in his call for justice.
However, everybody can scream and shout as loud as they want but it won’t have any weight compared to a statement made by Crane.
Which I guess he has made as statement to us to a degree.
In the interim Rock NYC plans to contact the police department and try to figure out exactly how far along the case is. It is probably dead by now. If it is, a statement by Larry Crane will reopen it a heartbeat.
Let’s find out what really happened. We owe it to Smith’s memory.